another example of jehovah protects his people except when he doesn't.
https://www.wifr.com/2023/02/12/rockford-police-54-year-old-man-shot-killed-vehicle/.
I agree the WT has not made any guarantee of safety, they just relish stories of divine protection. A favorite in our circuit was from an older elder who claimed he was shoved off the porch by angels just before a pot of boiling water was thrown at him.
Scores of passages in the Bible similarly speak of protection and refuge for worshippers while at the same time glorifying the death and suffering of the same. Word salad.
i remember having read somewhere, but i cannot find it anymore, that it is possible to debunk the 1914 calculus using only jw publications, like "insight on the scriptures" (chronologies) for example.. do you have any sources about that to suggest to me?.
thanks..
Why does everyone seem to want to forget Gedaliah? He was a notable Jew who governed Judah and invited the people to live in security and plant crops? If there was a "starting point" for "empty land" it would have to be after his assassination........just saying.
another example of jehovah protects his people except when he doesn't.
https://www.wifr.com/2023/02/12/rockford-police-54-year-old-man-shot-killed-vehicle/.
Without the perpetrator, we don`t know. Until then. we assume the most likely cause: `religious hatred`.
Not to sound contrary but I'd assume religious hatred to be about the least likely motive. Far more likely a random drive-by shooting or mistaken identity.
my first week of posts here were very serious and all the wonderful, encouraging replies helped me very much.. so now i want to ask something semi-frivolous.
(actually it's one of the many things that don't make sense to me about "the truth").
why do animals die?.
So the tree was some new superfruit?
assuming that you don't dismiss genesis outright as a collection of myths, i was musing about the actions of god as recorded in genesis 11:1-9 regarding the building of the tower of babel.. this origin story for the multiplicity of languages in the earth has god getting annoyed with humans for staying in one location instead of filling out across the whole world.. yahweh could have stopped the tower being built by collapsing it by means of an earthquake, sinking sand, or an extreme gale.
even using an angel to kick it over when everyone was tucked up in bed asleep.
but no, instead he muddles up the vocabulary and grammar and made brand new languages creating division and confusion.. what's more he didn't scatter them and send them off in mixed multicultural groups, but instead he lets them wander off in tribes and family groups.
Many don't know that building the tower was an open rebellion to God.According to Josephus, Nimrod changed the nature of the government to tyranny under his brutal and evil dictatorship, just as an evil potentate would do, and even more importantly, just as an evil Nephilim potentate would do. Through the brutal and corrupt power of his government, Nimrod imposed his will and state-sponsored.............
This ever so brief pericope of the tower has inspired centuries of addition mythmaking and expansions. Josephus is reciting legends not found in the 9 verses in Genesis. Read the story in situ and you will see none of those colorful associations are in the text. No Nimrod, no rebellion, no arrows into heaven, no pagan idols. These are the embellishments of the intertestamental period and Talmud. The story stood alone as an etiological tale of the origin of languages. In that story the gods foil an effort to become godlike in much the same way they did in the Eden story. It might seem a difficult concept now but this idea is center to many ancient myths wherein the gods withhold something so as to keep humans in their place.
assuming that you don't dismiss genesis outright as a collection of myths, i was musing about the actions of god as recorded in genesis 11:1-9 regarding the building of the tower of babel.. this origin story for the multiplicity of languages in the earth has god getting annoyed with humans for staying in one location instead of filling out across the whole world.. yahweh could have stopped the tower being built by collapsing it by means of an earthquake, sinking sand, or an extreme gale.
even using an angel to kick it over when everyone was tucked up in bed asleep.
but no, instead he muddles up the vocabulary and grammar and made brand new languages creating division and confusion.. what's more he didn't scatter them and send them off in mixed multicultural groups, but instead he lets them wander off in tribes and family groups.
Ray .....You have probably heard from others but no, 'Moses' did not write Genesis. It is an anonymous work that was not explicitly claimed to have been written by Moses until the Babylonian Talmud (200CE at the earliest) It is true the "Law" aspects of the Lev. and Deut. had naturally become identified with the Moses character due to his role in that story and over time even the works in general came to be called "Moses" by shorthand, but the claim that Moses wrote Genesis is a very late tradition.
Objective scholarship has suggested the book of Genesis went through stages of compilation and redaction from the 6th to the 3rd centuries BCE. If there was an historical Moses he was long, long dead.
another example of jehovah protects his people except when he doesn't.
https://www.wifr.com/2023/02/12/rockford-police-54-year-old-man-shot-killed-vehicle/.
When my congo was in the South Bronx a young gal from the church was shot from a roof top while out canvassing. She was hit in the thigh and survived it. We had another guy (stranger) shot in the head right by the church on Sunday morning. I stopped going to that church at that point.
Regarding the quasi-assurance of divine protection, I once brought up the episode where a bunch of JWs starved to death in Africa in a conversation about every missionary's favorite verse, Matt 6:33. I made some angry by suggesting the verse could not mean what we thought it meant.
i thought i’d shear this with you good people.
the cognitive dissonance is just breath taking.
i over heard this comment at a relatives family dinner the other night.
Image is so important when message is so unattractive.
video documentary and academic article on the divine name:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljpgxsyiqtc&ab_channel=johnwyatthttps://www.academia.edu/14029315/the_name_of_god_y_eh_ow_ah_which_is_pronounced_as_it_is_written_i_eh_ou_ah_simplified_edition?email_work_card=title this does not prove gods name was present in the nt, however some points do lead us to that conclusion simply by process of elimination.
assuming that you don't dismiss genesis outright as a collection of myths, i was musing about the actions of god as recorded in genesis 11:1-9 regarding the building of the tower of babel.. this origin story for the multiplicity of languages in the earth has god getting annoyed with humans for staying in one location instead of filling out across the whole world.. yahweh could have stopped the tower being built by collapsing it by means of an earthquake, sinking sand, or an extreme gale.
even using an angel to kick it over when everyone was tucked up in bed asleep.
but no, instead he muddles up the vocabulary and grammar and made brand new languages creating division and confusion.. what's more he didn't scatter them and send them off in mixed multicultural groups, but instead he lets them wander off in tribes and family groups.
Ray...Yes. Genesis is an especially obvious collection of stories from north and south that were collected and somewhat woven into a single text. This produced much inconsistency and duplication. The compiler was more interested in preserving disparate traditions than perfect harmonization. Surely you have seen this in the 2 creation stories, the two flood stories, the 2 genealogies, etc. The basic J (itself with layers J1 and J2) narrative seems to have been the most complete and formed the basic outline. The standalone Flood stories (J and P) placed into that narrative where they are, creates a number of storyline issues. Why are there Nephilim in Cannan when they should have drowned in the flood? Why are there people living hundreds of years after God decreed a limit of 120 years? (J has no one living older but P does) for examples.
Nimrod is one of the Nephilim, 'mighty ones' but that is lost on readers because of the Flood stories interruption.
The standalone J Tower story never mentions Nimrod and was inserted into the narrative at the mention of the city's name. A convenient spot but it doesn't fit the narrative again. Notice in chapt 10 before the tower story there is already a table of nations and empires (itself an insertion) Notice too that 10:31 is continued at 11:10, interrupted by the tower story.
29 and Ophir, and Havilah, and Jobab; all these [are] sons of Joktan;
30 and their dwelling is from Mesha, [in] thy coming towards Sephar, a mount of the east.
31 These [are] sons of Shem, by their families, by their tongues, in their lands, by their nations.
---------------INSERT TOWER STORY HERE---------------------------
10 These [are] births of Shem: Shem [is] a son of an hundred years, and begetteth Arphaxad (GLOSS two years after the deluge).
11 And Shem liveth after his begetting Arphaxad five hundred years, and begetteth sons and daughters.
12 And Arphaxad hath lived five and thirty years, and begetteth Salah.
13 And Arphaxad liveth after his begetting Salah four hundred and three years, and begetteth sons and daughters......................
