The widespread dissemination of hate speech contributes to a climate of hostility in which real hate crimes are generated, and sometimes materialize, from which our country is certainly not immune.
peacefulpete
JoinedPosts by peacefulpete
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5
Bomb explodes in front of a KH in Italy (at night-time)
by psyco inhttps://www.vastoweb.com/news/cronaca/1118535/ordigno-esplode-davanti-la-chiesa-dei-testimoni-di-geova-a-san-salvo.
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peacefulpete
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Did Babylon Destroy the Temple?
by peacefulpete indid the babylonians destroy the jerusalem temple?
personally, i never questioned this, of course they did, doesn't 2 kings 25 say:.
9 and he burned the house of the lord, the king’s house, and all the houses of jerusalem; even every great house he burned with fire.
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peacefulpete
Did the Babylonians destroy the Jerusalem Temple?
Personally, I never questioned this, of course they did, doesn't 2 Kings 25 say:
9 And he burned the house of the Lord, the king’s house, and all the houses of Jerusalem; even every great house he burned with fire. (this is cut and paste added as one of the many additions to the end of Jeremiah).
Also at the Chronicler's revision of 2 Kings (2 Chron 36:19):
19 They set fire to God’s temple and broke down the wall of Jerusalem; they burned all the palaces and destroyed everything of value there.
Notice however in the most extensive and detailed version of this story at Jeremiah 39, no mention of the Temple:
8 The Babylonians[c] set fire to the royal palace and the houses of the people and broke down the walls of Jerusalem.
No mention of Temple destruction.
Most commentaries have assumed a haplography, a scribal error of omission. That might well be the case, but another issue may suggest the text is accurate.
Recently we discussed Gedaliah as the governor in Jerusalem after the final destruction of Jerusalem. An interesting detail stood out to me in
41:4 The day after Gedaliah’s assassination, before anyone knew about it, 5 eighty men who had shaved off their beards, torn their clothes and cut themselves came from Shechem, Shiloh and Samaria, bringing grain offerings and incense with them to the house of the Lord.
Jeremiah not only omits the Temple from the destruction but continues implying the Temple was still accepting worshipers.
So, then who destroyed the Temple?
1 Esdras 4;45 You also vowed to build the temple, which the Edomites burned when Judea was laid waste by the Chaldeans.
The Edomites? That seems to be consistent with the spirit of Psalm 137:
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Remember, Lord, what the Edomites did
on the day Jerusalem fell.
“Tear it down,” they cried,
“tear it down to its foundations!”Anyway it's all provocative. Perhaps the Babylonians themselves had not destroyed the Temple but after the last evacuation after Gedaliah's assassination some Edomites entered the city to burn the Temple. It wouldn't be surprising if retelling the stories 50 years later the author lumped together closely timed events and blamed Babylon.
Drawing from observations by Richard Friedman.
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Better off PIMA than POMA or POMO.
by ExBethelitenowPIMA inthe situation is many of us are pima and all putting on a front, sometimes saying something we don’t fully believe.
or at least are actually agnostic about but a hope that it’s true.. but it can be useful if someone is really going through a hard time or has something they are very worried about, to say things like well let’s hope there is not much longer of this old system.. this can be useful in an awkward situation where you just don’t know what to do or say.
it’s a little bit of hope that can help when there is nothing else.. my agnosticism just means i won’t look back over decades thinking i wasted my life.
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peacefulpete
Habakkuk famously declared that what he was told would happen for those who devoted their lives to Yahweh worship, never happened. It seemed clear that Yahweh wasn't even watching them. However, instead of reconsidering the pointless sacrifices he and his people had made, (maybe even stoning their own children if they left the religion), he imagines Yahweh's reply, "just keep waiting. though it might linger it will not delay," whatever that means.
I attended a funeral yesterday. WELS Lutheran. Very religious family. They have spent thousands of hours sitting on hard wooden benches. Must have heard the pastor declare that the deceased was in heaven now 30 times. Those words didn't keep anyone from mourning.
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The (Shunned) Woman at the Well
by Sea Breeze ini always found the account of the "woman at the well" to be particulary interesting.
this unknown shunned woman of ill-repute was specifically sought out and chosen by jesus.
why?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=el7dzonv3iy&ab_channel=michaelpapale.
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peacefulpete
I can't hear you either, but know what you just said. Is God greater than a computer?
My wife pretending to be me typed that.
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Christmas Decorations at the Kingdom hall
by Simon ini can't remember if i've told this story before .... but back in the day, in irlam congregation (northwest england, uk, cheshire #1 circuit i think) we used to rent a kingdom hall for many years before we eventually built our own.. preston hall.
ah, the memories .... it was primarily used as a community hall for old folks, but we had it friday night and sunday morning.. there was a loft and fold-out ladder and we used to store the chairs up their.
every meeting, there would be an assembly line of all the "lads" to pass the chairs down and set them up, then collect them up and pass them back up at the end of the meeting.
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peacefulpete
In the 70's we built a KH (now sold off and congregation dissolved). Paper wall murals were popular so Dad picked one of a park scene for the wall behind the podium. After it was pasted up we noticed a nun dead center in the background! Dad refused to admit it and it stayed there for decades. It was a little inside joke.
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The (Shunned) Woman at the Well
by Sea Breeze ini always found the account of the "woman at the well" to be particulary interesting.
this unknown shunned woman of ill-repute was specifically sought out and chosen by jesus.
why?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=el7dzonv3iy&ab_channel=michaelpapale.
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peacefulpete
Who heard the conversation so as to record it later? -
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What is Greg Stafford up to these days?
by slimboyfat inyou may have been wondering: what is greg stafford up to these days?
lots of interesting things, is the answer.
exposing the false trinity doctrine, of course, but keeping on top of other issues too.
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peacefulpete
Worse than sad. It's delusional. He clearly has not read anything on the site. The series of some 20 temple circles are filled with anthropomorphic idols/steles. They are humans wearing loin cloths/flaps. At least one is giving birth. The largest circle has steles that weight at least 8 tons. So he is now supposing an old vine dresser and his sons spent hundreds of years creating these temples to house his animal collection? on the side while making the ark? -
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Why are JW's THIS blind?
by BoogerMan ini had a conversation about this 22 carat gold contradiction with a couple of zealous jw's a couple of days ago.. even their personal "explanations" contradicted each other as they tried justify their cognitive dissonance!.
an absolute delight to witness such absurdity.. "after all, no one will be allowed to practice vile things in the new world.
the unrighteous must have practiced these vile things [john 5:29] before their death.
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peacefulpete
I understand.. Christian origins and early development is a puzzle with a lot of pieces missing. Even so, I really enjoy the detective work.
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Why are JW's THIS blind?
by BoogerMan ini had a conversation about this 22 carat gold contradiction with a couple of zealous jw's a couple of days ago.. even their personal "explanations" contradicted each other as they tried justify their cognitive dissonance!.
an absolute delight to witness such absurdity.. "after all, no one will be allowed to practice vile things in the new world.
the unrighteous must have practiced these vile things [john 5:29] before their death.
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peacefulpete
I've pondered trying to "recreate" a hypothetical Jewish form. It just seemed pretty much impossible to divine what was Jewish from Jewish Christian. Like I said earlier, it strikes me as a series of verbal dioramas. They may not have even been drawn from a single original document. IOW the Christian author/redactor may have collected material from separate works and married these with his own. Without at least some guidance, it would be impossible convincingly separate sources.
You may have read that Cerinthus was one of the proposed authors. IOW, It was apparently at some point anonymous. The name 'John' is the single reason it was eventually included into the Canon of most churches. It seems reasonable to say that it was added to facilitate its inclusion into the Canon. Even then keen readers recognized the style differences from the Gospel and so assumed it referred to a different John. Eventually the Orthodoxy firmly established the tradition that the writer was the same man as the author of the 4th Gospel, the epistles and the John from the Gospel story.
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Why are JW's THIS blind?
by BoogerMan ini had a conversation about this 22 carat gold contradiction with a couple of zealous jw's a couple of days ago.. even their personal "explanations" contradicted each other as they tried justify their cognitive dissonance!.
an absolute delight to witness such absurdity.. "after all, no one will be allowed to practice vile things in the new world.
the unrighteous must have practiced these vile things [john 5:29] before their death.
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peacefulpete
I think my last comment addresses the issues you are seeing. The way the writer (and redactor) structured the whole thing wasn't meant for it to be read as a narrative but a collection of scenes, utilizing familiar symbols and language from earlier apocalyptic works. Ultimately it was written for a particular sect of Christians experiencing Roman oppression who felt sure things would deteriorate. The basic themes are vindication and vengeance. Few Christians read it or liked it then. It took hundreds of years for it to be widely accepted. Ironically about the time Christianity became the State religion of the empire.