Posts by Disillusioned JW

162

A new generation of anointed that will not pass away.

by Fisherman in

obviously, the older “ anointed ” from 1914 died.

and because they were anointed, they hopefully went to heaven.

in the first century though, a newer generation did not replace the old.

Disillusioned JW

Bart Ehrman, an influential NT scholar, at https://ehrmanblog.org/was-paul-the-founder-of-christianity/ says the following.

"Jesus preached that the Kingdom of God was soon to arrive with the appearance from heaven of the Son of Man. People needed to prepare for that imminent catastrophic event by turning to God and living in the ways that he decreed through the proper observance of the Torah, principally by loving (and trusting) God above all else and by loving their neighbors as themselves. Those who did so would survive the coming onslaught and would be brought into the Kingdom.

Paul agreed that there was an imminent disaster to take place. But in his view, that would happen when Jesus himself arrived from heaven in judgment. The way a person would survive the onslaught was not by obeying the Law of God or by loving their neighbors as much as themselves. Salvation would come only by believing in Christ’s death and resurrection.

... In other words, Jesus preached about God and his coming Kingdom; Paul preached about Christ and his death and resurrection. Important similarities, yes; but also fundamental and crucial differences."

Of the four gospels in the NT it seem to me that the Gospel which is attributed as being according to Matthew is the one which comes the closest to saying what the entirely human Jew named Jesus taught. I also think it best represents the teachings of Jesus than any of the letters attributed to Paul (and according to Ehrman and other NT scholars many of the letters attributed to Paul are actually forgeries instead of being written by Paul).

At https://www.npr.org/transcripts/300246095 Bart Ehrman discusses his book called How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee. Ehrman says the following.

"The earliest Christians thought that Jesus had been taken up into heaven and then made a divine being and that he was coming back. And they thought it was going to happen very soon. ...

Well, what I argue in the book is that during his lifetime, Jesus himself didn't call himself God and didn't consider himself God and that none of his disciples had any inkling at all that he was God. The way it works is that you do find Jesus calling himself God in the Gospel of John, our last Gospel. Jesus says things like: Before Abraham was, I am, and I and the father are one, and if you've seen me, you've see the father.

These are all statements that you find only in the Gospel of John, and that's striking because we have earlier Gospels, and we have the writings of Paul, and in none of them is there any indication that Jesus said such things about him. I think it's completely implausible that Matthew, Mark and Luke would not mention that Jesus called himself God if that's what he was declaring about himself. That would be a rather important point to make.

So this is not an unusual view among scholars. It's simply the view that the Gospel of John is providing a theological understand of Jesus that is not what was historically accurate. ...

And so when Jesus told his disciples that he himself was the messiah, he was saying that in the future, when God establishes the kingdom once more, I myself will be the king of that kingdom. And so it's not that the messiah was supposed to be God. The messiah was not supposed to be God. The messiah was a human being who would be the future king, and that's probably what Jesus taught his disciples that he was."

At https://www.npr.org/2020/03/31/824479587/heaven-and-hell-are-not-what-jesus-preached-religion-scholar-says Ehrman discusses his book called Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife. There he says the following.

"Our view that you die and your soul goes to heaven or hell is not found anywhere in the Old Testament, and it's not what Jesus preached. I have to show that in my book, and I lay it out and explain why it's absolutely not the case that Jesus believed you died and your soul went to heaven or hell. Jesus had a completely different understanding that people today don't have. ..

EHRMAN: I think one of the hardest things for people to get their minds around is that ancient Israelites and then Jews and then Jesus himself and his followers have a very different understanding of what the relationship between what we call body and soul. Our view is that we - you've got two things going on in the human parts. So you have your body, your physical being, and you have your soul, this invisible part of you that lives on after death, that you can separate the two and they can exist - the soul can exist outside of the body. That is not a view that was held by ancient Israelites and then Jews, and it's not even taught in the Old Testament.

In the Old Testament, what we would call the soul is really more like what we would call the breath. When God creates Adam, he creates him out of earth, and then he breathes life into him. The life is in the breath. When the breath leaves the body, the body no longer lives, but the breath doesn't exist. We agree with this. I mean, when you die, you stop breathing. Your breath doesn't go anywhere. And that was the ancient understanding, the ancient Hebrew understanding of the soul, is that it didn't go anywhere because it was simply the thing that made the body alive.

And so in the Old Testament, there's no idea that your soul goes one place or another because the soul doesn't exist apart from the body. Existence is entirely bodily. And that was the view that Jesus then picked up. ...

EHRMAN: Right. So this is a really important shift for understanding both the history of later Judaism and the history of later Christianity and the historical Jesus. About 200 before Jesus was born, there was a shift in thinking in ancient Israel that became - it became a form of ideology, a kind of religious thought that scholars today call apocalypticism. It has to do with the apocalypse, the revelation of God. These people began to think that the reason there is suffering in the world is not what the prophets had said, that it - because people sin and God is punishing them; it's because there are forces of evil in the world that are aligned against God and his people who are creating suffering. And so you get these demonic forces in the world that are creating misery for everyone.

But they - these apocalyptic thinkers came to think that God was soon going to destroy these forces of evil and get rid of them altogether, and the world would again return to a utopia. It'd be like paradise. It'd be like the Garden of Eden once more. The people who thought that maintained that this Garden of Eden would come not only to people who happened to be alive when it arrived; it was going to come to everybody. People who had been on the side of God throughout history would be personally raised from the dead and individually would be brought into this new era, this new kingdom that God would rule here on Earth." ...

EHRMAN: Yeah. That became a view somewhat in Judaism, and it became a very pronounced view in Christianity. The - after Jesus. Jesus himself held to the apocalyptic view that I laid out. He taught - his main teaching is that the kingdom of God is coming. People today, when they read the phrase kingdom of God, they think he's talking about heaven, the place that your soul goes to when you die. But Jesus isn't talking about heaven because he doesn't believe - he's a Jew - he doesn't believe in the separation of soul and body.

He doesn't think the soul is going to live on in heaven. He thinks that there's going to be a resurrection of the dead at the end of time. God will destroy the forces of evil. He will raise the dead. And those who have been on God's side, especially those who follow Jesus' teachings, will enter the new kingdom here on Earth. They'll be physical. They'll be in bodies. And they will live here on Earth, and this is where the paradise will be. And so Jesus taught that the kingdom of God, this new physical place, was coming soon, and those who did not get into the kingdom were going to be annihilated.

What ends up happening is that, over time, this expectation that the kingdom was coming soon began to be questioned because it was supposed to come soon and it didn't come soon, and it's still not coming, and when is it going to come? And people started thinking, well, you know, surely I'm going to get rewarded, you know, not in some kingdom that's going to come in a few thousand years, but I'm going to get rewarded by God right away. And so they ended up shifting the thinking away from the idea that there'd be a kingdom here on Earth that was soon to come to thinking that the kingdom, in fact, is up with God above in heaven. And so they started thinking that it comes at death, and people started assuming then that, in fact, your soul would live on.

It's not an accident that that came into Christianity after the majority of people coming into the Christian church were raised in Greek circles rather than in Jewish circles because in Jewish circles, there is no separation of the soul and the body. The soul didn't exist separately. But in Greek circles, going way back to Plato and before him, that was absolutely the belief. The soul was immortal and would live forever in Greek thinking. And so these people who converted to Christianity were principally Greek thinkers, they thought there was a soul that live forever. They developed the idea, then, that the soul lived forever with God when it's rewarded."

Folks note that what is being said above are the teachings of Bart Ehrman, an influential NT scholar; they are not the words of the WT though in number of respects Bart is teaching the same as the WT (and in some other respects he is teaching the same as atheistic naturalists [Bart now is an agnostic atheist]).

Folks, please read the rest of what Bart Ehrman says at https://www.npr.org/2020/03/31/824479587/heaven-and-hell-are-not-what-jesus-preached-religion-scholar-says . It is extremely insightful. When you do so note that he says the following.

"And the other interesting thing is that what the Gnostics did, by reading their ideas into Jesus, is also what the Orthodox Christians did, by putting words in Jesus' lips that supported their ideas of heaven and hell. And so in our various Gospels, you have Jesus saying all sorts of things that are contradictory because different people are putting their own ideas onto his lips."

162

A new generation of anointed that will not pass away.

by Fisherman in

obviously, the older “ anointed ” from 1914 died.

and because they were anointed, they hopefully went to heaven.

in the first century though, a newer generation did not replace the old.

Disillusioned JW

Errata

Corrections to my prior post: Where I said "people did no earn the gifts" I should have said "people did not earn the gifts". Where I said "faith without words is dead" I should said "faith without works is dead". Where I said "Part of the Bible are figuratively" I should have said "Parts of the Bible are figuratively".

Where I said '2 Peter chapter 2 speaks of those who "escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ but who' I should have said '2 Peter chapter 2 (NASB Updated) speaks of those who "escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" but who'.

Where I said "2 Peter chapter 3 makes reference to the flood of Noah's day of the day of the Lord" I should have said "2 Peter chapter 3 makes reference to the flood of Noah's day and it makes reference to the day of the Lord",. Where I said "(see verse 11) and be" I should have said "(see verse 11) and are to be".

Where I said "thus indicating is possible" I should have said "thus teaching it is possible".

162

A new generation of anointed that will not pass away.

by Fisherman in

obviously, the older “ anointed ” from 1914 died.

and because they were anointed, they hopefully went to heaven.

in the first century though, a newer generation did not replace the old.

Disillusioned JW

Vanderhoven7, people often only give gifts to people who have acted in certain ways to them. Though no one earned the gifts, the givers often choose to give only to those whom he/she has a favorable opinion of - while at the same time believing that those people did no earn the gifts. Parts of the Bible give the impression of teaching that God acts similarly. The Letter to the Hebrews teaches that faith without words is dead, and it teaches that those who have faith will have works which accompany the faith.

Part of the Bible are figuratively 'at war' with other parts of the Bible, and even parts of the NT are figuratively 'at war' with other parts of the NT. This shows that the Bible is entirely the book of humans and not the book of God. Some of the human writers of the Bible were disagreeing with some other human writers of the Bible, and they were trying to contradict the words of each other. Even some individual books of the Bible contradict themselves, and thus show evidence of being edited to include an opposing view. In other words, some people dared to add words (stating an opposing message) to existing books of the Bible, even to words attributed to Jesus! That is despite warnings like that found in Revelation 22:18-19!

Though parts of the NT say that the salvation of Christians are assured (provided they believe in Christ as their savior), other parts of the NT say it is not guaranteed, but that Christians must also act in a godly and holy manner in order to be saved.

In the story about Noah's Ark, Noah and his family had to build the Ark and enter it in order to be saved. Likewise according to the story, anyone else who wanted to be saved had to exercise faith by entering the Ark. According to the Gospel attributed as being according to Matthew, when the son of man comes, it will be as in the days of Noah. That same gospel claims that Jesus told his disciples that they need to keep on the watch for his return. If they were already eternally saved, why were told they have to keep on the watch?

2 Peter chapter 2 speaks of those who "escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ but who later became overcome by that which they had escaped from. Verse 21 (NASB Updated) says that for those who were overcome that "it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn away from the holy commandment handed on to them."

2 Peter chapter 3 makes reference to the flood of Noah's day of the day of the Lord (though the 1984 NWT says "Jehovah's day") coming as a thief and that as a result Christians are be a people who are "in holy conduct and godliness" (see verse 11) and be "looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells" (see verse 13). Verses 14-15 (NASB Updated) say "Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless, and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation ...".

Revelation 22:12-15 claims that Jesus says he will give a reward to each one as his work is. The book says that Jesus says that those who wash their robes will receive access to the trees of life and entrance into the city. Revelation also says that Jesus says that those outside of the city are "the dogs", those who practice spiritism, the fornicators, the murders, the idolaters, "and everyone liking and carrying on a lie". Verse 19 says there are some (those who take away from the words of the book of Revelation) whom "God will take away his part from the tree of life and from the holy city" thus indicating is possible for some Christians to loose the prospect of salvation.

6

Getting rid of old Watchtower books.

by I quit! in

jw
friends

anyone in the orange county or la area want some old watchtower books that i want to get rid of.

i bought them when i first left the tower to look things up.

they've been sitting around garages or my shed for 30 plus years.

Disillusioned JW

My sister and my mom never seem to discard any of their WT books. I've seen books of my mother from the 1950s and possibly some from the 1940s. Her mother and step-father (who was an elder for many years) retained their old WT books and my mom has inherited them. Those WT books (from my mom's JW parents) go back to the 1930s. I think my sister and my mom think that all WT books are too holy/precious to discard, even if they haven't read any of them in decades.

For a period of time I considered WT books dated to prior to 1965 to be desirable books (due to me having been a very active JW) and thus to me they were collectibles, and thus important additions to my personal library. I found most of the books at two thrift stores (after I ceased being active as a JW). I purchased the books from those stores (and on eBay I purchased other WT books), including all 7 volumes of Studies in the Scriptures. I thought it was so "cool" to find and collect those old books and fascinating to look at them. But after I read considerable sections of all of them my appreciation for most of them greatly diminished. The very old books (with copyright dates ranging from about 1885 to 1965) had many strange teachings (most of which are no longer taught by the WT). To me, many of the books by Rutherford were very offensive to read. Reading the content of many of the books was also boring to me. As a result I eventually sold (on eBay at nice profits) most of the pre-1965 WT books which I had collected, as well a number of later WT books.

263

What Name Does the New Testament Emphasize - Jehovah or Jesus?

by Vanderhoven7 in

it seems to me scripturally speaking, that jehovah's witnesses are emphasizing the wrong name.. it should be jesus, not jehovah.

who is the way, the truth and the life?

(john 14:6).

Disillusioned JW

Thanks Wonderment. Your answer to me makes a lot of sense and you supported it well.

263

What Name Does the New Testament Emphasize - Jehovah or Jesus?

by Vanderhoven7 in

it seems to me scripturally speaking, that jehovah's witnesses are emphasizing the wrong name.. it should be jesus, not jehovah.

who is the way, the truth and the life?

(john 14:6).

Disillusioned JW

A moment ago noticed that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Nimoy says "Live long and prosper" is a Jewish religious blessing, however I don't see that phrase as being anywhere in the Bible, though it might be a paraphrase of something said in the Bible. Likewise I don't yet see that wording as being used in Jewish worship. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcan_salute , which says the following.

"In his 1975 autobiography I Am Not Spock, Nimoy, who was Jewish, wrote that he based it on the Priestly Blessing performed by Jewish Kohanim with both hands, thumb to thumb in this same position, representing the Hebrew letter Shin (ש in Square Script, or Paleo Hebrew 𐤔‎), which has three upward strokes similar to the position of the thumb and fingers in the gesture. The letter Shin here stands for El Shaddai, meaning "Almighty (God)", as well as for Shekhinah and Shalom. Nimoy wrote that when he was a child, his grandfather took him to an Orthodox synagogue, where he saw the blessing performed and was impressed by it."

263

What Name Does the New Testament Emphasize - Jehovah or Jesus?

by Vanderhoven7 in

it seems to me scripturally speaking, that jehovah's witnesses are emphasizing the wrong name.. it should be jesus, not jehovah.

who is the way, the truth and the life?

(john 14:6).

Disillusioned JW

"90+age"! Whoa! Congratulations waton! May you continue to live long and to prosper. You have well exceeded the biblical lifespan mentioned in the Psalms (of 70 or 80 years). Not many people, especially not men, have achieved that. But I don't know whether you are male or female.

[By the way, Leonard Simon Nimoy, the actor who portray Spock in Star Trek, was raised as Orthodox Jewish and he said that the salute his character used in greetings "symbolizes the Hebrew letter shin, the first letter in the word Shadda"i. See whichhttps://qz.com/352855/the-secret-history-behind-leonard-nimoys-spock-salute/ and https://www.startrek.com/article/the-jewish-ritual-that-led-nimoy-to-create-the-vulcan-salute . Since that salute stems from Judaism and since I am now an atheist perhaps I should no longer make that salute.]

Regarding the question of "Jehovah or Jesus" I think it is obvious that the NT focuses on Jesus as Lord and Christ far more than it focuses on YHWH/Jehovah God the Father. It is also obvious that the WT focuses much more on Jehovah than on Jesus. The WT has increasingly focused on Jehovah since about the time it adopted the name "Jehovah's witnesses" (later written as "Jehovah's Witnesses") as the name of the religion it started.

263

What Name Does the New Testament Emphasize - Jehovah or Jesus?

by Vanderhoven7 in

it seems to me scripturally speaking, that jehovah's witnesses are emphasizing the wrong name.. it should be jesus, not jehovah.

who is the way, the truth and the life?

(john 14:6).

Disillusioned JW

waton, I think you meant verse 4 instead of verse 3.

263

What Name Does the New Testament Emphasize - Jehovah or Jesus?

by Vanderhoven7 in

it seems to me scripturally speaking, that jehovah's witnesses are emphasizing the wrong name.. it should be jesus, not jehovah.

who is the way, the truth and the life?

(john 14:6).

Disillusioned JW

My current primary interest in studying the Bible (besides trying to find ways to influence Christians to cease believing in the Bible) might be in treating the Bible as a complex intellectual puzzle. Much of Bible does seem to be an intellectual puzzle to me. There is a fascination for me in solving puzzles of various kinds. Even as a young child I liked solving puzzles, such as jigsaw puzzles, word puzzles, number puzzles, diagram puzzles, and also drawings of mazes (in which one tries find the path from the entrance of the maze to the exit of the maze).

263

What Name Does the New Testament Emphasize - Jehovah or Jesus?

by Vanderhoven7 in

it seems to me scripturally speaking, that jehovah's witnesses are emphasizing the wrong name.. it should be jesus, not jehovah.

who is the way, the truth and the life?

(john 14:6).

Disillusioned JW

Folks, years ago (after I ceased nearly all JW congregational attendance [other than Memorial attendance], when I studied the Bible critically and within its immediate context, without using WT explanatory literature) I first got the idea that some of the content of the Gospel of John seems to be out of the proper sequence.

For example, to me chapter 15 (and maybe chapter 16) seems like it belongs in between chapter 13 and 14, or near that point (such as in between 13:35 and 13:36). It seems to me that the narrative is less confusing and thus easier to comprehend, and would be in a much more logical sequence, if the chapters were located that way and that such might have been original placement (though not preserved in any of the known extant copies of the Greek manuscripts). A moment ago I looked up in two commentaries to see if either of them also says such. I noticed that The Abingdon Bible Commentary (copyright 1929) on page 1084 in the discussion of John 13:31-38 says in part the following (I also noticed I had made a note in the margin of that portion of the commentary).

"Mofffat in his translation of the N.T. places chs. 15 and 16 after v. 31a, and it must be admitted that 13:31b-14:31 indicates that Jesus rose from the table, and that the prayer (ch. 17) was uttered as all stood, ready to go forth to Gethsemane; other indications, too minute to mention here, point to some such sequence. Other arrangements have been suggested: the only one which need be mentioned is that chs. 15 and 16 should follow 13:35. ... Peter's remonstrance against any separation leads to the warning of his betrayal. It is placed on the way to Gethsemane in Mk. 14:29, another indication that the present arrangement of the record is not the original and historical." I own a copy of Moffatt's Bible translation and I notice that in a number of places, including in the Gospel of John, that he has sections of scripture rearranged. I don't remember if I first got the idea that chapters 15 and 16 are displaced from reading that translation of the Bible, or entirely on my own. But I know that for many years (including while I was an active JW and for a number of years afterwards) that much of the Gospel of John was very difficult for me to understand. Furthermore, that Gospel was never one I had much appreciation for, for to me much of its content has always (at least in the long dialogues attributed to Jesus Christ) been very difficult to understand and very redundant to me, and thus very boring to me.

I never had great interest in contemplating spiritual concepts (at least prior to me studying the Bible independently); I always preferred to spend most of my contemplative free time on naturalistic concepts. People have told me that the Gospel of John is the most spiritual of the gospels of the NT. Of the four gospels in the NT, the Gospel attributed to Matthew has always been my favorite. But maybe if I were to read the Gospel attributed to John now, it might would be more comprehensible to me than before (since I now know more about the Bible and since I now have greater reading comprehension of the Bible). If I were to read that entire gospel now perhaps it would give me a better impression than what I had before I became a convinced atheist.