I was born in. It took me 31 years to figure out how to escape. Now I am 60.
I have had good and bad thru out my life.
A lot of bad came from the witnesses.
God, and if you dont believe in God/ life works in mysterious ways.
If I was never a witness. It could have been better or it could have been worse.
For sure, it would have been different.
i didn't know eric particularly well, and i feel terrible that i didn't reach out to him more or try to help him while i still had the opportunity.. i feel extremely helpless, but the least i can do is help others remember him who knew him better.. here is a video i've uploaded to youtube in his honor.... .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67a0imd6dng.
i hope it helps us as we mourn a much-loved member of this forum.. .
Nice video, very touching.
don't bother me with the josephus addendum.
i've already seen that debunked.. i am quite aware of the fact that the only evidence of jesus comes from his own followers who didn't even bother to write down his life for decades after jesus "died.
" don't know about you, but if i saw all that shit, i would have gone home and written three books about it that same day!.
I am quite aware of the fact that the ONLY evidence of Jesus comes from his OWN followers who didn't even bother to write down his life for decades after Jesus "died." Don't know about you, but if I saw all that shit, I would have gone home and written three books about it that same day!
I would like better proof that Jesus existed also.
But to play the Devils advocate. I dont think Jesus Followers could read and write. All they could do was repeat the stories
untill they got somebody who could write to copy them down.
I dont think they could go to the store and buy a spiral notebook and a bic pen or even a pencil.
They were poor fishermen, today day many Americans in the working class cant read or write.
They say a lot of college graduates cant read or write.
In the end according to his book either you have faith or you dont.
The only way you get faith is by asking for it.
Your not going to ask for it if you are against Jesus.
Thats just the way it is.
our friend, oompa, has passed away.
just recieved the news a couple of hours ago, and have almost no details.
it happened today or yesterday, he took his own life.
His cries for help were ignored by 'The Great Leaders' of the only
true religion in the whole world! They closed their ears, DF'd him
and walked away.
I don't know about him being disfellowshipped. I remember him writing 4 or 5 years ago that he
was never baptised.
our friend, oompa, has passed away.
just recieved the news a couple of hours ago, and have almost no details.
it happened today or yesterday, he took his own life.
I kept telling him to go to AA. AA is a life saving program, a suicide prevention program. But he knew better.
I'm sorry he is gone. I wish he would have listened. I have seen many people choose life
because they went to AA.
what do you wish people told you when you were younger?.
I was told everything good and bad.
I wish I never went in a kingdom hall or had been a Jw.
Everything they told me, the Jw's, ruined all the good everybody else told me.
Good people told me to go to college. The bad people told me not to go to college.
The bad people told me they were good and the good people were bad.
The good people didnt tell me how bad the Jehovahs witnesses were.
And if they did tell me I didn't and couldn't understand it.
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Was Jesus Married? John Barnett
The evidence for this claim comes from two extra-biblical gospels, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene 17:10-18:21 and the Gospel of Philip 63:33-36. Both contain remarks that Jesus had a special relationship to Mary or that he loved her more than any of the twelve disciples. One text uses the term companion to describe her. In addition, there is an appeal in the Phillip text where Jesus is said to kiss Mary on the lips. So the inference is that if he kissed her in public he must have been her husband.
Now the facts are these. First, almost all scholars question whether these extra-biblical gospels contain anything of value in terms of the historical Jesus. However, even if they did, the texts noted do not actually affirm that Jesus was married. In fact, the famous kiss on the lips text actually has a blank in the original manuscript right at the point where it describes where Mary was kissed. So it could be the lips or the cheek, which would simply refer to a kiss of fellowship. The term companion is debated as to its force. Most interpret the term as pointing to a spiritual relationship Jesus had with Mary because of the mystic character of the gospel in which it appears. So it does not allude to actual marriage at all, but to a fellowship that Jesus and Mary shared as believers.
More than this, we have volumes of texts about Jesus from the first five centuries. I have a series in my library of 38 volumes from this period. They are small print, single space, double columned texts of several hundred pages each. They include traditional orthodox texts and those that were rejected as heretical. In all of these materials not a single text describes Jesus as married and most assume he was not, as that was a basis for some arguing that priests should be single.
In 1 Corinthians 9, the argument appears that the spouse of those married should be supported. Had Jesus been married Paul could have clinched his argument by noting this fact. All of this leads to the conclusion that Jesus was single.
Taken from "De-Coding the DaVinci Code: Seizing the Mars Hill Moments" by Discover the Book Ministries.
the purpose of the flood, because man grieved him to.
his heart, so he started over.
did his plan work?
The flood account comes from the Sumerian text.
The Gods are astronauts from another planet that genetically engineered humans.
An ark like device was built to save life from a disaster that the Gods could not controll.
Maybe it was a pole shift.
i posted on another thread about a couple of my experiences of meeting the governing body while i was in brooklyn.
i wanted to see if anyone else had any experiences along these same lines.
i met most of the ones that were current during the 2001-2003 years.
I met Knorr back in the 70's. He wasnt on the governing body. He was the president.
for me, i think it's that the witnesses teach they are god's spokesman.
they represent his "faithful & discreet slave"....and that they alone are expounders of the only truth and that if you disagree with anything they teach, you are considered worse than vomit.. it's unbelievable because these people are wrong so many times, it cannot be excused!.
as a witness, you must accept every viewpoint and if you (and your family) do not accept it all, hook, line and sinker, you are "apostates"!!!.
I was born in in the 50's. It was terrible always going to the meetings. We even had meetings on Friday night.
I had to miss all the good tv shows. I missed a lot of home work, school work.
I had to sit in the principals office when there were holiday celebrations.
I couldnt exchange valentines.
It was very weird and uncomfortable.
