Posts by believingxjw

214

Soldiers of Jah

by cofty in

i would like to propose an ethical dilemma for those who believe in the divine inspiration of the bible.. in the following scenarios i am not asking you what you would have done but rather, what you hope you would have had the courage to do.. scenario 1. you are camped on the east side of the jordan waiting for orders to cross into the promised land.

moses is nearing the end of his life but he has some unfinished business to take care of before he hands over to joshua.

he announces that he has had an instruction from god to take revenge on the midianites before he dies.

believingxjw

Diamondiiz,

The Ninevites were warned, is it possible that God knew they would repent and turn around if warned? Yes, thus the warning. Sodom was not warned, is it possible God knew they would not stop their violent ways even with a warning? Yes. Even today there are groups of people who are so entrenched in their violence and hatred that no offer of peace will be accepted. And then there are others who, though in opposition, do want peace and are willing to seek that peace.

"If it's human wars as I see it, I can anderstand it why women and children were killed and why no one was spared but if they were god's wars it doesn't make sense."

In the time of the OT this was the way it was. Whether the accounts are literal or allegorical matters little, either way we learn something about God. God will do what he deems is necessary and what in the long run is best for all concerned including those who have died whether justly or seemingly unjustly. We are not God. We do not have the power to right all wrongs or to resurrect.

If God exists we all have the hope of something better if he does not then this life is all we have. Which is more unjust? That God exists and those who suffer death have the hope of a better life in the future or that God does not exist and this life only we have? In the bottom line of all things which is firmly planted in injustice; God allowing temporary death or no god exists and all who have suffered in extreme poverty and depravation will never have a chance to live a better life, ever! I believe the latter situation is the more unjust for to live our one and only life in misery just because we happen to be born in a poor country or are of another race while others live in comfort with all the food they want is extremely unjust. It is so unjust that every man or woman who believes there is no God should not rest until all humanity has an opportunity to live that one life as a good life. But that will never happen, it is not possible. There is only One who can guarantee that each man and woman and child has a hope for a better life and though we may not understand Him, or think His ways wrong, it is a hard truth that it is only through God that all peoples and individuals can have a hope for a better life, a life worth living.

If there is no God then the millions and millions all around the world living in abject poverty are merely the eternally miserable and hungry dead waiting to pass into oblivion. This is the height of injustice and the legacy that evolution, if true, has doomed all mankind to.

214

Soldiers of Jah

by cofty in

i would like to propose an ethical dilemma for those who believe in the divine inspiration of the bible.. in the following scenarios i am not asking you what you would have done but rather, what you hope you would have had the courage to do.. scenario 1. you are camped on the east side of the jordan waiting for orders to cross into the promised land.

moses is nearing the end of his life but he has some unfinished business to take care of before he hands over to joshua.

he announces that he has had an instruction from god to take revenge on the midianites before he dies.

believingxjw

"You underlined WAR but ignored the word INNOCENT. Men have been tried for war crimes for killing innocent victims."

Was the pilot of the Enola Gay tried for war crimes? Was everyone killed in Hiroshima that day an enemy combatant? There were no children, no elderly, no innocents? Wars kill innocent people all the time.

92

If We Were to Take the Flood Account Literally..

by Yan Bibiyan in

then i cant help but come to the conclusion that everyone who died (like 99.999% of humanity at the time) was doomed from the start.. if god directed noah to build a flotation device with very specific parameters, god must have known exactly how many people, animal species, plant etc, would be in it.. what if people actually listened to noah and thousands upon thousands turned up waiting to enter the ark?

god must have known that only so many people will listen and obey instructions.. no to mention that noahs message didnt really reach that many people.

at that time how many people could have heard it?

believingxjw

"What if people actually LISTENED to Noah and thousands upon thousands turned up waiting to enter the Ark?"

The flood account does not have to be literal to be religiously useful but let's say for the purposes of this discussion it is literal. If many "thousands" had listened to Noah then God would have likely done what he did with the Ninevites, cancelled the devastation. Going by the principle shown when Abraham questioned God regarding the destruction of Sodom and Jonah's experience with the Ninevites it is apparent that no one in Noah's day "listened" to him and wanted to get in the Ark along with him and his family. Otherwise they would have been saved or the calamity canceled.

The Bible is a whole and the whole must be used to understand all parts.

214

Soldiers of Jah

by cofty in

i would like to propose an ethical dilemma for those who believe in the divine inspiration of the bible.. in the following scenarios i am not asking you what you would have done but rather, what you hope you would have had the courage to do.. scenario 1. you are camped on the east side of the jordan waiting for orders to cross into the promised land.

moses is nearing the end of his life but he has some unfinished business to take care of before he hands over to joshua.

he announces that he has had an instruction from god to take revenge on the midianites before he dies.

believingxjw

"If men kill the innocent in war, even unjust wars, are we to point a finger at God when he determines that at a particular point in history this is a necesssary action?

Yes. Men have murdered men as long as they have existed, yet we still try them for murder." (underlining mine)

Are you saying that soldiers who do the very thing soldiers are expected to do, kill the enemy even to bombing his cities, are then tried for murder? Read a little more carefully, I was speaking of war not unjustified murder something condemned both in the OT and in our society as well. You are seeing what you want to see, something Christians are accused of all the time. Oh, well. Such is mankind and womankind.

214

Soldiers of Jah

by cofty in

i would like to propose an ethical dilemma for those who believe in the divine inspiration of the bible.. in the following scenarios i am not asking you what you would have done but rather, what you hope you would have had the courage to do.. scenario 1. you are camped on the east side of the jordan waiting for orders to cross into the promised land.

moses is nearing the end of his life but he has some unfinished business to take care of before he hands over to joshua.

he announces that he has had an instruction from god to take revenge on the midianites before he dies.

believingxjw

Syl,

214

Soldiers of Jah

by cofty in

i would like to propose an ethical dilemma for those who believe in the divine inspiration of the bible.. in the following scenarios i am not asking you what you would have done but rather, what you hope you would have had the courage to do.. scenario 1. you are camped on the east side of the jordan waiting for orders to cross into the promised land.

moses is nearing the end of his life but he has some unfinished business to take care of before he hands over to joshua.

he announces that he has had an instruction from god to take revenge on the midianites before he dies.

believingxjw

Cofty,

"Anybody who subscribes to the inspiration of the bible is obliged to accept that God ordered those massacres of unarmed women and children."

Yes, anyone who believes the Bible is inspired of God or God breathed would have to accept what God did in those instances, which is really what men have done for as long as they have existed. If men kill the innocent in war, even unjust wars, are we to point a finger at God when he determines that at a particular point in history this is a necesssary action? And even so, such acts occur even today in war, women and children and the old are slaughtered in war. Do thousands of sons whose fathers have been killed by another nation in war forget all about that when grown and go on to live in peace with that nation? Can these sons be integrated into this nation as easily as daughters who marry and bear children can be? I'm not giving reasons only trying to say that we today have no idea what it was like in those times. To take our present view of justice, flawed as it is, and apply it to people living at such a different time, place and circumstance is wrong. George Washington was a slave owner, so was his wife. To say today that Washington was a bigot because he did not live as we do without owning slaves is wrong as well. Those were different times and we have learned from those times. If we had lived in Washington's time would we have owned slaves? So too with Moses and his day, different times, different circumstances.

We today are killing millions of unborn children something that in Moses' day would have been considered unthinkable and probably also in Washington's day. So we hardly have a right to say that we today are somehow more righteous than those who lived long before us. Most Americans never experience war, we kill by proxy with our soldiers, our bombs and drones. If you or I had been born in Moses time we would have been trained to defend the nation at all costs. But without the niceties we have today only our own strength of hand. "Finish the job. Don't allow a new generation to come along and our children have to fight this all over again," was a necessary war tactic in times past. Not pretty but at least real, raw truth. The Bible tells it as it was and for this it is today vilified by many. Would more believe in the Bible if it had said that Moses merely asked the enemy to leave and because God had changed their hearts these people then left their lands and homes with peace and love in their hearts for the Jews? No, that too would have been faulted as being a fantasy. People don't give up everything so easily. Or what if it said that after the battle the Jews allowed the women and children to leave alive and alone. They would not have survived long this band of women with children in a world such as it was in Moses' day. That too would be considered wrong by many today. The Bible is damned if it tells the raw truth and damned if it sugarcoats it. I prefer the truth.

"They have no choice but to approve of those events and to hope that if they had lived through them they would have had the "courage" to carry out the orders."

You mistake courage for survival. When our personal or national survival is on the line, we do what we must not what we would like. Do the hearts of most Americans today swell with approval after seeing the pictures of people, children included, whose flesh practically melted away in the bombing of Hiroshima? No, I don't believe so. But I think most hope that what was done was necessary at the time. What Moses' did was necessary at their time and for their time.

501

UNITED NATIONS , NGO's and WTBS

by MacHislopp in

following the link given by kent,.

i have several observation to make:.

(from the link : http://www.un.org/moreinfo/ngolink/brochure.htm).

believingxjw

BTTT

For any lurkers who do not know that the Watchtower not only became a United Nations NGO but also in the 1990's wrote U.N. supportive articles in the Awake! magazine because of their NGO status.

217

DMCA Complaint from The WatchTower for links to KS-10 'Shepherding' book

by Simon in

yes, that's right, they really do not like people being able to read that book so they wanted links to it removed (it appears they have also been going after the hosts of the content itself as well).. unfortunately, i had to removed the links (which were dead anyway when i checked) and i'd ask that people don't re-post them (sorry).

i'm sure there are lots of alternative ways for those with the information to get it to those who need it.. here are the discussions on the book:.

http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/beliefs/200524/1/ks10-chapter-one-discussion.

believingxjw

Shepherd wrote,

"Ronald L. Slater or Gregory Allen, the two who are monitoring this site and sending out the DMCA notices from Bethel,"

Be interesting to call Patterson about this.

30

Flock book F-Bomb - do the r&f know?

by laverite in

jw
friends

are the rank and file generally catching wind of the f bomb (you know -- the flock book's leaking and world wide distribution)?

what have you heard?.

believingxjw

Then we need to figure out how to make that happen!

214

Soldiers of Jah

by cofty in

i would like to propose an ethical dilemma for those who believe in the divine inspiration of the bible.. in the following scenarios i am not asking you what you would have done but rather, what you hope you would have had the courage to do.. scenario 1. you are camped on the east side of the jordan waiting for orders to cross into the promised land.

moses is nearing the end of his life but he has some unfinished business to take care of before he hands over to joshua.

he announces that he has had an instruction from god to take revenge on the midianites before he dies.

believingxjw

Amercan politicians have frequently given their war efforts the God sanction, shall we say. From the American Revolution to the 2003 Iraq War God has been invoked. Remember America's Manifest Destiny?

Also from Wikipedia:

Historian William E. Weeks has noted that three key themes were usually touched upon by advocates of Manifest Destiny:

the virtue of the American people and their institutions;
the mission to spread these institutions, thereby redeeming and remaking the world in the image of the U.S.; and
the destiny under God to accomplish this work.