Posts by sunny23

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

sunny23

"Homo sapiens evolved form non-human ancestors over million of years.

There was no Adam & Eve, no state of perfection and no fall.

All living things evolved from a common ancestor.

There was no global flood."

those topics from your post

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

Curious to know Cofty is your opinion to my question the same as yaddas? Also I read your linked post topic. I already agree with two of those bullets. Where do I find the facts that you used to make that post so I can learn.

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

sunny23

"Then we would have to determine the max time we would allot for such a bet on rightfull sovereignty. If you were God when would you have put a stop to it? Consider that ALL forms and types of human rule and satanic influences would need to be explored and tested fully first."Homo spaiens with the ability to feel anguish, loss and despair have been suffering for over 100 000 years. Has it really taken that long for god to settle a silly bet??" Cofty

"Then we would have to determine the max time we would allot for such a bet on rightfull sovereignty. If you were God when would you have put a stop to it? Consider that ALL forms and types of human rule and satanic influences would need to be explored and tested fully first.-Me

What would you say Cofty?

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

sunny23

Yadda Yadda. I already know of pascals wager. I'm at point in life holding my chips in hand (next 40+ yrs) and trying to figure out what to bet my wager on. This forum exists in my eyes to assist in making that bet.

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

sunny23

If you thank god for anything he/she does in your life you affirm your belief in a god who acts in time. You then also have to answer why he fails to act._cofty

YES! That's exactly what I would try and make my stubborn MS younger brother understand. He believed God blesses his people and his congregations. Even elders would announce that financial success of the congregation to provide for the CO was a blessing from God.

You can't attribute blessings and not non-blessings!!

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

sunny23

Then we would have to determine the max time we would allot for such a bet on rightfull sovereignty. If you were God when would you have put a stop to it? Consider that ALL forms and types of human rule and satanic influences would need to be explored and tested fully first.

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

sunny23

Cofty, my original post wasn't satire. I'm here for guidance and scrutiny toward my posts is welcomed. What I posted aren't my words so I won't be offended. I'm legitimately trying to figure out for myself what my beliefs are and as concerns the topic of suffering and pain, I believe the reasoning I posted makes most sense to me right now and that it wasn't addressed in your opening statement.

9. There is eternal afterlife and our life now and the current pain and suffering is less than a speck on the prospect of an eternal timeline.

Btw I think that the idea of Gods hashing it out to prove a point to angels thus causing centuries of pain and destruction only to "shake the etch in scetch" afterwards is perhaps the only dispute I would have with this logic. Yet if its really about sovereignty and there really is eternal life after death then I personally would excuse it. Again only on the premise God makes up for it and a loving God would.

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

sunny23

I met an atheist the other day at a bar and even though i'm against talking politics or religion while at a bar i couldn't help but to intervene as he was bragging to my girlfriend and I about a bad@** atheist church he is starting downtown including 1500 members gathered and in support online. He kept bringing up suffering around the world as a definitive sign that God doesn't exist. I myself since leaving the JW org have been questioning it, however I still believe that IF there is a God and IF most of the current bible is true and inspired then the JW reasoning for why God allows bad sh** to happen is the best reasoning...(bible teach book)

"10 To find out why God allows suffering, we need to think back to the time when suffering began. When Satan led Adam and Eve into disobeying Jehovah, an important question was raised. Satan did not call into question Jehovah’s power. Even Satan knows that there is no limit to Jehovah’s power. Rather, Satan questioned Jehovah’s right to rule. By calling God a liar who withholds good from his subjects, Satan charged that Jehovah is a bad ruler. (Genesis 3:2-5) Satan implied that mankind would be better off without God’s rulership. This was an attack on Jehovah’s sovereignty, his right to rule.
11 Adam and Eve rebelled against Jehovah. In effect, they said: ‘We do not need Jehovah as our Ruler. We can decide for ourselves what is right and what is wrong.’ How could Jehovah settle that issue? How could he teach all intelligent creatures that the rebels were wrong and that his way truly is best? Someone might say that God should simply have destroyed the rebels and made a fresh start. But Jehovah had stated his purpose to fill the earth with the offspring of Adam and Eve, and he wanted them to live in an earthly paradise. (Genesis 1:28) Jehovah always fulfills his purposes. (Isaiah 55:10, 11) Besides that, getting rid of the rebels in Eden would not have answered the question that had been raised regarding Jehovah’s right to rule.
12 Let us consider an illustration. Imagine that a teacher is telling his students how to solve a difficult problem. A clever but rebellious student claims that the teacher’s way of solving the problem is wrong. Implying that the teacher is not capable, this rebel insists that he knows a much better way to solve the problem. Some students think that he is right, and they also become rebellious. What should the teacher do? If he throws the rebels out of the class, what will be the effect on the other students? Will they not believe that their fellow student and those who joined him are right? All the other students in the class might lose respect for the teacher, thinking that he is afraid of being proved wrong. But suppose that the teacher allows the rebel to show the class how he would solve the problem.
13 Jehovah has done something similar to what the teacher does. Remember that the rebels in Eden were not the only ones involved. Millions of angels were watching. (Job 38:7; Daniel 7:10) How Jehovah handled the rebellion would greatly affect all those angels and eventually all intelligent creation. So, what has Jehovah done? He has allowed Satan to show how he would rule mankind. God has also allowed humans to govern themselves under Satan’s guidance.
14 The teacher in our illustration knows that the rebel and the students on his side are wrong. But he also knows that allowing them the opportunity to try to prove their point will benefit the whole class. When the rebels fail, all honest students will see that the teacher is the only one qualified to lead the class. They will understand why the teacher thereafter removes any rebels from the class. Similarly, Jehovah knows that all honesthearted humans and angels will benefit from seeing that Satan and his fellow rebels have failed and that humans cannot govern themselves. Like Jeremiah of old, they will learn this vital truth: “I well know, O Jehovah, that to earthling man his way does not belong. It does not belong to man who is walking even to direct his step.”—Jeremiah 10:23."

___________So I used this logic when talking to the soon to be atheist minister and it seemed to make sense to him. Agreed to disagree even though I myself am still unsure how much I hold it to be true. Either way, you can't prove there is a God and you can't prove there isn't. I just hate having to to try and turn speculation into faith.

42

New to JWN and excited!

by sunny23 in

have been visiting jwn for about a week now and it motivated me to join.

i look forward to meeting everyone i can and learning from their experiences and wisdom as i search for more and more reasons not to get reinstated.

here's most of my story:.

sunny23

"That bit really shocked me, because that was in full force on the East Coast since the late 1960s. It's in the literature, was constantly discussed from the platform, and the dubs gave all the teens the full court press about it all the time in private conversations."-rebel8

I know it was always iterated on platform and at assemblies and conventions but some of the most anti-college propaganda i heard was after i started attending college. There were more statments that i noticed classifying people who went to college as opposing God and being selfish than i personally had heard prior. Maybe that was just my bias as i didn't pay much attention to it in high school though?

Not to mention the fact that in our congregation in Indiana I had several brothers including MS and elders who would whisper to me at applebees after the meetings that I should "do something more" after highschool because they regret not going to further school and would confess how miserable they were at trying to provide for their kids who they want to send to college and to pay the bills while cleaning commercial carpets late at night at age 53 with their wives. They would emphasize though that i should put Jehovah first but that the economy is getting worse and its hard to make it by and stressing about living pay check to paycheck made life miserable in areas where it didnt have to be. Then moving to college town Gainesville, FL. there were a few elders who were engineers and sent their kids to college. Two young brothers unrelated to eachother in my cong in Gainesvile had been regular pioneering since they were young teens and both graduated at age 20 from UF, one an electrical engineer and the other a nuclear engineer and both were MS by 18 and went to bethel at 20. So the college propaanda was "toned down" in my hall and i noticed much more of it at conventions.

42

New to JWN and excited!

by sunny23 in

have been visiting jwn for about a week now and it motivated me to join.

i look forward to meeting everyone i can and learning from their experiences and wisdom as i search for more and more reasons not to get reinstated.

here's most of my story:.

sunny23

"By the way I'm curious why you joined, because it seems like a lot of new members joined JWN recently. Does the holidays help people to overcome their fears and join JWN?"-aBibleStudent

Discovering JWFacts.com and its info on 1914 and various other topics helped me to answer some questions. Plus not celebrating holidays after not attending meetings for a year started to make me question why I was taught not to celebrate and why.

Interesting side note: I was living with a JW roomate in 2012 and I had stopped going to meetings, met my girlfriend, and started bringing her to the house. At the end of our lease on move out day I was "ambushed" by two elders who confronted me about my lack of attendance and my worldly gf who they heard slept at my house. I agreed to a JC even though I thought of not showing up. At the JC they learned that I was fornicating and that I had just signed a lease with my gf and was about to move in. Even though I showed no sign of remorse or repentance they took my divorce as an excuse of spiralling down and offered to not DF me so long as I didn't move in with her YET they said I could still date her!! Was shocked at this and they said "we can't control who you love, and maybe this will bring her into the truth." I decline as moving in with my gf to see how we live together and verify if marriage would become well justified, was moreiimportant to me than being accepted in the eyes of some elders and some so-called friends. Either way. Have had friends with less understanding elders and it proves that the social and emotional lives of members are at the unqualified perspectives and agendas of divinely unguided elders.