Posts by startingover

i saw god {jehovah},after& like moses,i saw jesus,jesus & god coming soon visit my website www.mosessimon.org & know how can i saw god and jesus, god's message,miracles, about me, i am the eye witness how god is.

i am from chennai, india.keep in touch..know god's message.

....moses simon.g.

startingover

I would be real interested in Shelby's take on this guy.

127

Why I Shouldn't Believe in the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth

by XJW4EVR in

when i was a jw, the key issue that caused me to doubt the wt was the trinity.

the wtb&ts's blatent misquotations and misrepresentations of religious scholarship to fit their anti-trinitarian presuppositions are horrid and inexcusable.

that issue, however, was not the issue that caused me to become a christian.

startingover

XJW4EVR,

So you say you started this thread for unbelievers. What did you expect, that all these unbeleivers would suddenly see how foolish they have been and should tell you what a great point you make?

Like ATJ said, "Your challenge seems to be a sneaky way to try and debate a belief you clearly have no intent on honestly "putting on the table."

There have been some great points raised here and you have not involved yourself with them and are now running away. You can be sure there are lots of people on this forum, who were just like me, who were searching for truth and questioning the beliefs they were raised with, and if your intent was as ATF said, I think it really backfired on you. I would really be interested in your take on the Joseph Smith situation that PSac is attempting to answer.

127

Why I Shouldn't Believe in the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth

by XJW4EVR in

when i was a jw, the key issue that caused me to doubt the wt was the trinity.

the wtb&ts's blatent misquotations and misrepresentations of religious scholarship to fit their anti-trinitarian presuppositions are horrid and inexcusable.

that issue, however, was not the issue that caused me to become a christian.

startingover

Joseph Smith that is.

127

Why I Shouldn't Believe in the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth

by XJW4EVR in

when i was a jw, the key issue that caused me to doubt the wt was the trinity.

the wtb&ts's blatent misquotations and misrepresentations of religious scholarship to fit their anti-trinitarian presuppositions are horrid and inexcusable.

that issue, however, was not the issue that caused me to become a christian.

startingover

IMO Joseph is a great comparison.

10

So, what do you do with something like this?

by AGuest in

jw
friends

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/blogs/lab-notes/2008/10/27/found-king-solomon-s-mines.html.

for those who believe that the bible is entirely mythical?

just asking.... peace to you all!.

startingover

My take on the bible is that it is a mixture of history and myth. I don't know of anyone that says it entirely mythical.

Below is an excepert from a book written by Runningman and I think it shows one of the problems with the bible if you take it literally.

THE NUMBERS OF THE BOOK

Every now and then, I run into someone who believes that every word in the Bible is literally true. If the Bible says that men lived for 900 years, and that 5 linear miles of water fell on the earth, then it must have happened. There is really no way to prove that these events did not happen, since by definition, a “miracle” is something extra-ordinary.

However, sometimes the Bible writers slipped up. When they told a story, nothing but superlatives would do. More than anything else, the numbers that are tossed around in the bible show this to be true. Apparently, mathematics was not their strong point, because on numerous occasions, the bible writers made statements that simply could not have happened.

So, basically, this chapter is sort of an accountants-eye view of the Bible.

SOLOMON, AND THE ISRAELITE ABATTOIR

King Solomon was a very devout man. He also liked to do things in big ways. Take, for example, the sacrifice that he offered up during a festival:

“Then the King and all the people offered sacrifice before the LORD. King Solomon offered as a sacrifice twenty-two thousand oxen and a hundred and twenty thousand sheep.” - 2 Chronicles 7:4,5

Now, let’s pause for a moment and let these numbers sink in. According to verse 9, this festival lasted seven days. That means that one animal was killed every 4.3 seconds, day and night, for a week.

Let’s look at it another way. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, an adult sheep would weigh between 80 and 400 pounds. Let’s take an average size of 200 pounds. Oxen come it at around 900 pounds. This means that Solomon slaughtered 43.8 million pounds of animals.

This would be a pretty big pile of animal. If the animal carcasses were stacked, with no wasted space, it would make a pile of 3.9 million cubic feet, or, a pile 5 feet high, covering 18 acres.

And what did he do with this meat? Well according to verse 7, he tried to put it on the alter, along with a cereal grain offering.

“For there he offered the burnt offering and the fat of the peace offerings, because the bronze alter Solomon had made could not hold the burnt offering and the cereal offering and the fat.” - 2 Chronicles 7:7

Talk about an understatement. I could picture Solomon, looking at that mountain of meat, and saying to his attendant, “Gee, do you think that’s too much to put on the alter?”

The sheer volume of meat involved is enough to convince anyone that this passage is grossly exaggerated. I will not even attempt to calculate the economic impact of this slaughter on a relatively poor group of desert farmers.

THE MAGNIFICENT TEMPLE

Solomon’s temple was a lot smaller than most people picture it. 1 Kings 6:2 tells us that it was 60 cubits long, 20 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high. In a rare example of biblical precision, 2 Chronicles 3:3 gives exactly the same measurements. A cubit is 17.5 inches, so the temple would have been 87.5’ x 29’, and about 4 stories high. It would total 2,552 square feet in area. To put this in perspective, it would be less than twice the size of my house, but four stories high. This number is very important, so keep it in mind.

The total temple area was larger than simply the “house of the LORD”. There was a courtyard, a palace, and other buildings. However, as we will soon see, the contents and value are out by at least a factor of a thousand, so, a few extra buildings are hardly significant.

The Gold and Silver

“With great pains I have provided for the house of the LORD, a hundred thousand talents of gold, a million talents of silver, and bronze and iron without weighing, for there is so much of it; timber and stone, too, I have provided.” - 1 Chronicles 22:14

Since 1 talent = 75.5 pounds, this means that 7.55 million pounds of gold and 75.5 million pounds of silver went into the temple - a total of 83.05 million pounds of precious metal. Now, remember the size of the temple. To get this much gold and silver into the temple, there must have been 32,543 pounds of it per square foot. The priest must have had to crawl over the heaps of gold to get to the alter.

Here’s another interesting tidbit. One cubic foot of silver weighs 628.4 pounds. This means that the silver of the temple occupied 120,146 cubic feet. The total gross size of the temple was only 111,650 cubic feet. Therefore, if the silver of the temple was formed into a solid block, it would be bigger than the temple itself - never mind the gold, iron, bronze, timber, and stone.

In addition to the gold and silver, there was apparently so much bronze and iron that it could not even be weighed. Since the gold and silver weighed in at 83 million pounds, that means that the bronze and iron must have weighed considerably more (I will assume that it was double). We are now looking at somewhere in the range of 100,000 pounds of metal per square foot of the temple. That is the equivalent weight of 40 full size cars per square foot. And we haven’t even gotten to the rock and timber, yet.

The gold and silver equates to a dollar value of $54 Billion today. Even given the inflated population figures of Israel that are recorded in the Bible, it still means that every man, woman, and child in the nation contributed almost $20,000, or 40 pounds of gold and silver. In all likelihood, the population of Israel was only about 1/10 of the Biblical figures, so the contribution per person would have been approximately 10 times higher. And, of course, we have not costed the iron, bronze, rock, timber, and labour. Not bad for a group of poor desert farmers.

The Labour Force

“King Solomon raised a levy of forced labour out of all Israel; and the levy numbered thirty thousand men. And he sent them to Lebanon, ten thousand a month in relays; they would be a month in Lebanon and two months at home; Adoniram was in charge of the levy. Solomon also had seventy thousand burden bearers and eighty thousand hewers of stone in the hill country, besides Solomon’s three thousand three hundred chief officers who were over the work, who had charge of the people who carried on the work.” - 1 Kings 5:13-16

By my count, this comes to 183,300 persons who worked on this temple. To put this in perspective, it took 1,283,000 man-years to build the temple, or 503 man-years to build each square foot it.

If I apply this rate of construction to my living room, which is 20’ x 12’, it would take over 120,000 man years to build it. To put it yet another way, if a construction team of 100 persons (which is too big to function on such a small job) worked on building my living room, it would take them 1,200 years to build it.

If 183,000 people really worked for seven years to build a 2,552 square foot temple, they must have worked at a snail’s pace. Their progress could only be measured at the molecular level.

The lumber

According to the above quote, 10,000 labourers brought lumber from Lebanon at a time. There were a total of 30,000 labourers rotating on three shifts. Assuming that each labourer brought back 100 pounds of lumber on each trip, that means that one million pounds of lumber arrived at the temple every month. Don’t forget that the temple was only 2,552 square feet, and it was already piled with gold, silver, bronze, and iron.

That’s almost 400 pounds of lumber per square foot, coming in every month. Every year, the equivalent of 240 semi-trailer loads would have arrived. Where did they put it all?

The staff

When the temple was finished and put into operation, staff was required. King David outlined the staffing requirements:

“’Twenty four thousand of these,’ David said, ‘shall have charge of the work in the house of the LORD, six thousand shall be officers and judges, four thousand gatekeepers, and four thousand shall offer praises to the LORD with the instruments which I have made for praise.” - 1 Chronicles 23:4,5

So, 24,000 persons were to work in the house of the Lord. This must have been a pretty slack job. Based on the size of the temple and courtyard, and considering that access to certain parts of the temple was restricted to the priests and high priest, there couldn’t possibly be room for more than about 100 people at a time. This means that each Levite would have worked for only about one day per year. Where can I apply?

The total contents

Wow, this must have been some building. Consider what was inside its walls:

Ÿ 6,260 cubic feet of gold

Ÿ 120,146 cubic feet of silver

Ÿ 338,000 cubic feet of iron (minimum estimate)

Ÿ 321,000 cubic feet of bronze (minimum estimate)

Ÿ 600,000 cubic feet of Lebanese Cedar arrived every year

Ÿ untold quantities of stone, brick, and local timbers

Ÿ 24,000 staff (not necessarily simultaneous)

Ÿ Assorted fixtures, the Ark of the Covenant, etc.

All of this was inside a building with a total volume of only 111,650 cubic feet. And, don’t forget that buildings are essentially hollow. Again, all I can say is, “Wow”.

10

Pastor Russells Sexual Preference?

by Marvin Shilmer in

jw
friends

pastor russells sexual preference?.

today i uploaded a new article to my blog.

it shares a piece of weird watchtower history that tends to fly under the radar.

startingover

Please post someone, I don't want to be a thread killer.

57

Who was Cains wife?

by trailerfitter in

excuse me for being uneducated on the bible, especially the genesis.

apparently cain had a wife....where did she come from?

were the children involved in incest or were there other people outside the garden of eden?

startingover

Well said! Great analogy!

16

Can Cannibals be Christian?

by startingover in

i got this from a local paper.

i say keep your religion to yourself and leave these people alone.

can cannibals be christian?

startingover

I got this from a local paper. I say keep your religion to yourself and leave these people alone. They don't need you.

First-Person
Can Cannibals be Christian?

By Catherine Doe

On a recent Sunday I found myself heading to the Convention Center, not to attend an RV show or Home and Garden extravaganza, but to go to church. It was the Crossroads Community Church and the main speaker, Caitlin Branderhorst, was going to recount her experience as a missionary in a former cannibal tribe in New Guinea. Her first words after settling on her stool looking out over the crowd were, “I'm so not worthy to be speaking here in front of all of you.” She gave all the credit to God for everything she had accomplished in her missionary work.

So can a nineteen year old young lady convert cannibals to Christianity? The Pukari of New Guinea don't actually practice cannibalism, but they used to. The last group of missionaries to land on their beach in the 1800s were speared and eaten. Caitlin suspected a neighboring tribe might still be practicing cannibalism. They had no tribe members her age. When she asked why they said all the babies born of that generation were killed.

So what did the first group of missionaries say or do so wrong to become dinner? ” It wasn't a comfortable subject to bring up,” Caitlin said, “for them or us.”

She landed on such an incredibly ignored and isolated patch of earth that I wondered what exactly do the Pukari practice? It would be typical white American arrogance to say the Pukari had no discernable religion. But the Pukari had nothing that would be considered a religion. When Caitlin and her six fellow missionaries arrived, the Pukari worshiped rocks and practiced a sort of witchcraft.

So I asked Caitlin the burning question. “How do you start?” She said, “First, you live with them.” For the first two weeks they gathered food, bathed and slept like everyone else in the village to build their trust. During her bucket baths the children were so smitten with her white skin they climbed the trees above where she was bathing to see more of it.

The next step was testimony. This was done with only one translator for several hundred people who spoke many different dialects. The Pukari live three day's walk from the nearest school or doctor. So ninety percent are illiterate and many have long term illnesses. Some of the testimonies were actually communicated through Christian dramas with no words. When spoken testimonies were used the words had to be spiritual and carefully chosen. The Pukari didn't have beds, toilets, or washing machines. Caitlin couldn't even use the word broom while testifying how her right eye was injured as a little girl when hit by a broom. One of her testimonies was how the doctors told her family she would be blind in that eye for the rest of her life. So her church prayed for her and after six months she regained her sight.

Caitlin said, “The missionaries would then ask the Pukari after a testimony if they would like us to pray for them?”

By the end of two months of testimonies and living as Christians, many of the Pukari became followers of Christ. Two days before they left, the missionaries baptized fifty Pukari. I asked if she really thought those fifty people were Christian. She said with all her heart she knows they are. Caitlin said that none of this was her doing but happened through the hand of God. I asked, “Why her?” She said it doesn't have anything to do with her. It just has to do with the fact that she is obedient and listens. She didn't choose New Guinea. She planned on going to Indonesia. But God literally pointed her finger to New Guinea on a map and she merely listened.

Caitlin agrees that she is not typical for her generation who is drifting away from church and religion. She wants to bring back Christian revivals for her age group to bring them back to God. I was skeptical about how she was going to do that. She wants to sit down and talk to kids her age and listen to them. She doesn't like the idea of preaching from the Bible but wants to live by example.

By the end of the morning I felt the essence of Crossroads Community Church was, “walk the walk instead of talk the talk.” It's definitely the church to go to if you are new to town or are disenchanted with your current church. Like all churches, everyone was very welcoming, but there were neither cliques nor fashion wars that can be part of the Sunday ritual at other churches. Caitlin agreed. She said she really believed that the Pukari who were baptized didn't just go through the motions to please their guests, but were truly Christian. “Miracles happened that day. Many of the sick, after years of medical neglect, were healed and some people's disabilities disappeared.”

Caitlin has since learned that the Pukari are building a church in honor of the first missionaries who arrived in the 1800s.