i would suggest:.
the short answer is yes.. the longer answer is a qualified yes, with some caveats.
the short answer is yes because jehovah’s witnesses teach that jesus is michael the archangel, their leader, eldest and most powerful, and have taught this since the very beginning of the religion.
In contexts like this, responses like, "You believe in God, don't you?" or ""You believe the Bible is the inspired word of God, don't you?" are classic thought stoppers. They put the brakes on rational dispassionate discussion through a rhetorical religious test. The one who says them is simultaneously saying they will not engage on that topic and that someone who doesn't pass the test is not worthy of being taken serious.
It's not just JWs who use thought stopping triggers phrases.
so, the organization says the “disgusting thing that causes desolation” in daniel 11:31 is the united nations being set up in 1945, but in daniel 12:11 when they interpret the 1,290 days they say it’s the league of nations in 1919. please could someone play devils advocate and tell why this could be anything but inconsistent?
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Some might find this really old thread interesting.
republicans want to make a law that forbids ‘uncontested divorce”.
they based this on this scripture.. matthew 19. is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”.
4 “haven’t you read,” jesus replied, “that at the beginning the creator ‘made them male and female,’and said, ‘for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’ so they are no longer two, but one flesh.
Mark 10:11,12 has Jesus forbid divorce for anyone. When the redactor of Matt revised this passage, he added the interrupter phrase, "except for porneia" he was reflecting the times and community he lived in. Interestingly G. Luke (16:18) either saw and disagreed with the redactor of Matt or it was not yet in the copy of Matt he was using. He also has Jesus forbid divorce on any grounds.
sea breeze: @nicolau,i stated my case rather succiently, which you failed to address.
if you have a better solution to the problem of evil than what jesus offers, then why don't you present that in a new topic?.
pathetic diversion.
Life is not hopeless of meaningless because it is limited in scope. I cannot leap more than a few feet but that does not make my legs worthless. I cannot do advanced math in my head but that doesn't make my thoughts without value. Every day has an evening but that doesn't mean we don't enjoy and appreciate the sunlight.
How strange the idea that some have, that if we cannot live forever there is no 'point' to living. We sound like whining children demanding more candy when we have handfuls in our pockets.
Equally inane is the trope that if we were not the willful product of a deity we have no purpose. Years ago I learned I wasn't a planned child, ought I have concluded I had no value, and my life was purposeless?
a 1st cousin(a) of mine just called me about one of my great aunts(b) getting reinstated.
(b) has been disfellowship for as long as i can remember.
(a) has always stood on the fence with his beliefs.
Pomi is very common. And on my opinion are most to be pitied. POd about someone or some trivial thing, or alienated because of church censure. Always haunted by what ifs or never feeling worthy.
Decades can pass but the programming endures. Some posters here have complained about doctrine or mistreatment for many years. Rejecting the efforts of others to get them to step back from the trees and see the forest.
2023-01-27--civil unrest.
click image to enlarge.. .
https://postimg.cc/gxqvnfcq.
i read something recently on reddit (not sure what thread) where a person related how some jw told them that ‘they hold a grudge’.. this reminded me of something an old jw acquaintance said to me some years back when i related my bad experience in the religion.. so, apparently, jehovah’s witnesses feel they should be forgiven for anything.
people should forget all about it and act like nothing happened and be charitable towards them, etc… when i read in james and ephesians i got the sense ‘holding a grudge’ was referring to the things average people do to offend each other.. i don’t see it applying to a religion that claimed to speak for god and who engendered hateful and unchristian attitudes towards people.. i know because i experienced this.. in addition, some people’s lives were damaged by listening to faulty teachings and interference in things that were clearly none of anybody’s business.. one case in point: them knocking worldly careers and now there are thousands of destitute jws in senior years with nothing.. then in 2023 the religion does away with a century old teaching about counting hours in the ministry.
meanwhile, i got judged over this.
Despite what the SCOTUS said, corporations are not people. The WT corporate entity (with it's ever-changing board of directors is not a 'someone' it is a 'something'. Therefore, the notion of holding a grudge is oxymoronic.
I will always wish to avoid and defeat cancer, for example. It would be silly to suggest I'm 'holding a grudge' against cancer. I consider the WT and churches like them a cancer.
People I can and will forgive, forgiving cancer is just word salad.
perhaps you considering joining the wt cult - here is a concise list of why you should not.. what the watchtower demands of you:.
1.complete obedience to them.. 2. be willing to lose your life for zany blood teachings.. 3.put other cult members before your real family.. 4.refusal to let you leave their religion when the penny drops it's a cult.. 6.accept that they can backtrack and change any of their flip flop teachings at any time.. 7. you can't change your mind about their teachings without harsh discipline,.
8. insistence that you humbly and quickly apologise for your mistakes and errors.. 9.gladly accept they will never be apologising for any of their mistakes or errors of judgement.. 10.accept that even ones who follow and believe in the bible, but not the governing body are worthy of destruction.. please feel free to add more..
They don't demand anything of us.
And if they do. Just say NO
And when they claim their direction to be "God's" direction" or "Jesus' direction" you should say no!, (regardless of what they actually say.) That is the clearest sign of cult control.
So next week when they again, for the thousandth time, claim to be the mouthpiece of Jesus, I heartily recommend you say no! and run.
the acronym uap once stood for "unidentified aerial phenomena," until december 2022. .
then the pentagon updated its terminology to encompass "submerged and trans-medium objects.".
https://www.defense.gov/news/transcripts/transcript/article/3249303/usdis-ronald-moultrie-and-dr-sean-kirkpatrick-media-roundtable-on-the-all-domai/.
I expect we will be seeing more, now that drone technology is so cheap.
i don't know if this has been posted before but i think it is a very in-depth study and definitely worth sharing.. what happens to those who exit jehovah’s witnesses: an investigation of the impact of shunning?.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc9803876/ .
vienne....Massimo has his own agenda and seems to be unaware or calloused to the well documented damage of high control sects like the 7th day Adventists, JWs and Mormons. Essentially his arguing that the JWs are no worse than others is not much of a defense of the Jws.
Also his comments:
....those who have simply become inactive without a public announcement that they have left the Jehovah’s Witnesses are not shunned.....She would have easily learned from it that not all members who leave the religion are shunned, only those who leave publicly (or join an organization whose membership is incompatible with being one of Jehovah’s Witnesses), thus proclaiming their disagreement with and criticism of the organization.
is manifestly not true. I and my wife for instance attempted to quietly leave but were pursued years later and DF in absentia based upon conversations years before our leaving and unwillingness to shun Df'd siblings. Further, and even more disturbingly, his comment implies shunning is reasonable if an exiting person "joins an organization incompatible with the Jw thus proclaiming their disagreement with and criticism of the organization. "
That is the reason a person exits the JWs, because they disagree. Basic human rights include freedom of belief and religion and to support lawful organizations and to be a functioning citizen. This is the heart of the issue. Mossimo seems to be saying this justifies a coercive program of family separation. He is wrong and his reasoning is as twisted as the JWs.
