It's often when we get the 'freedom' to do things that they become less tempting. Forbidden fruit and all.
peacefulpete
JoinedPosts by peacefulpete
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37
Avoiding Temptation As a Young Elder
by TMS init was the summer of '72.
i was 24 but had been the presiding overseer or congregation servant of a small congregation in the county seat of an arkansas county for about 3 years.. my regular pioneer wife of nearly four years was big and pregnant, with our attempts at birth control unsuccessful.. one of my wife's several bible studies was with a young woman named brenda whom my wife had encountered in door to door work.. brenda had two young children she could barely handle and was married to a very countryfied arkie named henry who worked as a chicken catcher, one of the most difficult jobs at the local chicken plant.. brenda eventually revealed that she'd been raised as a jw, but was never baptized, having left home to marry henry at age 14. she spoke of her family in texas, mentioning her mother and two older sisters, all jws she said.. one morning, just before the meeting for field service, we noticed a small car in kingdom hall parking lot.
my wife and i were parked to one side of the hall in our aluminum nashua house trailer.. two young women got out of the car and soon joined us for the meeting for service, identifying themselves as brenda's sisters from texas.. the two girls, ages 17 and 20, were distractingly beautiful, with the eldest decked out like a magnificent southern belle including hat and heels, her high-end clothing accentuating her very obvious curves.. with no one else showing up for field service, it ended up just the four of us in the car group with the two texas girls in the back seat.. starting our time at a not-at-home, the 20 year old asked if she could accompany me to "hear my presentation.
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299
Who told the first lie?
by nicolaou inthis is a continuation of the discussion which sprang from an unrelated topic.. so according to genesis, who told the first lie?
god told eve that if she ate from the tree of knowledge she would die that very same day.
in response to that statement the devil told her she would not die.. eve ate from the tree and did not die.
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peacefulpete
A last thought about that 'ancient writer' mentioned in my last post. Maybe the writer was just like many of us, struggling to understand his place in the world and clinging to a belief system in the face of overwhelming evidence against it. As part of a community of similarly conflicted believers, he wanted to appear resolute, so wrote about how his God had everything under control and how someday everything will be better. I can relate to that guy, as it wasn't so long ago I did the same.
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299
Who told the first lie?
by nicolaou inthis is a continuation of the discussion which sprang from an unrelated topic.. so according to genesis, who told the first lie?
god told eve that if she ate from the tree of knowledge she would die that very same day.
in response to that statement the devil told her she would not die.. eve ate from the tree and did not die.
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peacefulpete
However, God himself reveals exactly who he is.
The Bible writers depicted many faces of God. Some of those are not very attractive.
And altho the scriptures repeatedly demonstrate his consideration and affection for his creation,...
It's good you focus on that rather than the God that sends lions to kill innocent children.
...many simply cannot accept that he also has the final say.
Who gets the final say? The GB? the Pope? an ancient writer we never met? God hasn't said anything.
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The true pronunciation of God's name....
by Kosonen ini found a very interesting video by a jewish biblical scholar about how to correctly pronounce jehovah.
it's not yahweh as other scholars claim.. https://youtu.be/4vgxmmbst8w?si=yq7ggwstkpnd3f18.
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peacefulpete
Gordon's theory is a mix of conspiracy (along with the typical dismissal of established scholarship) and a bit of showmanship in a digital age. He makes factual errors, ignores the extensive disconfirming evidence, uncritically accepts the folk etymology of Ex 3 and mocks the efforts of those more qualified.
In short, the name, YHWH or YH is ancient, predating it's adoption by Judah and Israel, it's original meaning possibly "blow", or "jealous" from an Arabic root HWY. Its pronunciation changed along with the languages in which it was used. The very exhaustively researched conclusion regarding the number of syllables and basic vowel sounds is that 'Yah" and 'Yahweh' are reasonable approximations for much of the time period in which the Bible was written. Regional cognates in Arabic, Samaritan, Egyptian, Ethiopic, Assyrian, Babylonian, Coptic, Greek support the Yahweh pronunciation.
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What has the Spiritual Paradise of the WTS been over time
by blondie inthe first mention i find in the wts publications is 1958. although the wts says the index goes from 1930 to 1985, nothing appears before 1958 a search only found by using the phrase "spiritual paradise" not in the index.
in 2015 there was a clarification of the phrase "of course, we should not conclude that the terms “spiritual paradise” and “spiritual temple” are the same.
the spiritual temple is god’s arrangement for true worship.".
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peacefulpete
It's propaganda. Repeat mantras/slogans that insist all is wonderful to prevent concerns about leadership. It's gaslighting. You are in a 'spiritual paradise', if you have a problem, the problem is you.
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Alteration of Revelation 3:14 in the 4th century to support the emerging Trinity doctrine
by slimboyfat inin an earlier thread another poster asserted that there is no evidence that revelation 3:14 played a part in the 4th controversy that led to the trinity doctrine.
this was claimed as evidence that the description of jesus as “the beginning of the creation of god” in the verse was not understood to mean that jesus was god’s first creation.
the scholarly greek–english lexicon of the new testament & other early christian literature 3e (2001) by bauer, arndt, gingrich, and danker, in its latest edition states that “first creation” is indeed the probable meaning of the greek phrase.
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peacefulpete
...both sides in the fourth century debate took Wisdom/Word/Son to be a person at the beginning with God, the difference is Arians maintained the distinction that the Son was created and subordinate to God...
Bingo again. The Arians 'literalized' word pictures. They made too much of the expressions "son' and 'beginning' having been hundreds of years distanced from the esoteric language. When Wisdom was 'created as the beginning of God's works' the writers did not literally believe there was a woman in heaven that was created to perform for God. It/she was a hypostasis of God's power. JWs are similarly literalizing the words and making much noise about their uninitiated take on these passages.
I'll remind you that it's my position that the Catholic fathers had themselves mistaken metaphor for history, in large part because of the success of the Gospel stories that euhemerized and embellished the Logos concept into a Roman crucifixion setting. The Arians simply took it a small step further by reducing the Logos to a demigod because of focusing on descriptions such as 'created' and 'son'.
The EL/Yahweh and Yahweh/Michael parallels contributed to the 2 powers concept from a different angle.
The main point is that Schafer and others have demonstrated that there were indeed pre-Christian and early Christain concepts of God that eventually congealed into the Trinity doctrine formulation. The belief that the Christ was a manifestation of God was not secondary to Christianity it was a fundamental underpinning that literalizers complicated/ denied.
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Alteration of Revelation 3:14 in the 4th century to support the emerging Trinity doctrine
by slimboyfat inin an earlier thread another poster asserted that there is no evidence that revelation 3:14 played a part in the 4th controversy that led to the trinity doctrine.
this was claimed as evidence that the description of jesus as “the beginning of the creation of god” in the verse was not understood to mean that jesus was god’s first creation.
the scholarly greek–english lexicon of the new testament & other early christian literature 3e (2001) by bauer, arndt, gingrich, and danker, in its latest edition states that “first creation” is indeed the probable meaning of the greek phrase.
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peacefulpete
Another thing that should be taken into consideration when looking at texts such as Rev 3.14; Col 1.15, John 1:1 and so on is that these passages are clearly drawing on the Jewish Wisdom tradition. In that tradition Wisdom was spoken about as God’s first creation, an archangel, or principal angel beside God. Therefore it’s entirely within the cultural context of the period to understand these passages in the NT along those lines.
Bingo. But somehow you have literalized these passages just as the 4th Arian 'heretics' did.
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Do we have "original" indipendent documents proving that Rutherford was an alcoholic?
by psyco ini was wondering if you could prove with "original" independent documents that rutherford was an alcoholic.... .
i read penton, but since he is a former jw he could not be considered an independent source.... .
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peacefulpete
vienne....72,73 according to wiki
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Marking has it's merits IMO
by enoughisenough init would appear the context about marking has to do with those who are not working to feed themselves, but meddling in others business.
a couple more scrptures to think about.
jesus said not to throw your pearls before swine.
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peacefulpete
Just adding that some "serious wrongs" are just opinions. That's why I used the expression 'harmful' rather than wrong. 'Wrong' is a word like 'sin' that can be a blanket term that really only has specific religious meaning. To a Catholic, it is a 'serious wrong' for a bishop to appoint woman priest. But to others it might be progress.
That said, it is a citizen's responsibility to protect the vulnerable. "See something, say something", doesn't just mean terrorists.
Drop the whole loaded 'marking' lingo. Its cult-speak.
BTW.... 2Tim was not written by Paul, and the reference to Jannes and Jambres (3:8,9) are characters from Jewish Midrash on the Moses story. It is one of a number of examples of writers referencing noncanonical works as "scripture" (vs 16).
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Marking has it's merits IMO
by enoughisenough init would appear the context about marking has to do with those who are not working to feed themselves, but meddling in others business.
a couple more scrptures to think about.
jesus said not to throw your pearls before swine.
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peacefulpete
Choosing not to be close with toxic or harmful people is very different from a church labeling individuals with different opinions as persona non grata. It's a cult spin on normal behavior.