I have received a very kind invitation from JJ to contribute to this wonderful website, and it occurred to me that I would be remiss if I were to neglect making some kind of introduction. I then realised that introductions are considerably difficult, if not impossible, when done so anonymously. Like many who frequent this website, and like JJ himself, I am a free-thinking “inactive” publisher. I live in fear of being unmasked as somebody who disagrees with a significant percentage of the teachings of the organization I grew up in and once loved.
A brother using the name AwareBeing sent this to me and I felt it was worth thinking about:
Recently, a lot of current and former Jehovah’s Witnesses have increased their calls for reform in the governing body of it’s Watchtower and Tract corporations. Many are unsure where these efforts may be headed. Yet there are intriguing parallels to another incorporated religious body; that to outsiders looks like a sister faith to WT’s beliefs. It’s The Worldwide Church of God, founded by Herbert Armstrong!
When first made aware of this quote I didn’t really believe it. I didn’t want to believe it! If it wasn’t brought to my attention by a good friend, I wouldn’t even have bothered to look it up in the Watchtower Library. Because I know this person to be a serious Christian I did look it up, still not believing this quote could ever have been printed in a serious religious journal. Guess what, the quote below was copied right out of the Watchtower Library. Do you think this is the kind of thing that an organization directed by Jehovah’s Holy Spirit would print? Hardly! While they are not condoning in print the practice they mentioned, after such a statement, most Christians likely would feel compelled to launch into a condemnation of such a practice! To call it what it is, CHILD ABUSE! No, not the spirit led organization of God. They just take the tone that it’s probably not a good idea because it could cause your children to be masturbators in the future. This is a sick example of the Watchtower going places that they NEVER should go in the pages of their magazine. Is this organization spirit directed, you decide. I have…..
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Daniel was a servant of God known for integrity. What is integrity? Definition: The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness.
Wikipedia says this about integrity: Integrity is a concept of consistency of actions, values, methods, measures, principles, expectations, and outcomes. In ethics, integrity is regarded as the honesty and truthfulness or accuracy of one’s actions. Integrity can be regarded as the opposite of hypocrisy,[1] in that it regards internal consistency as a virtue, and suggests that parties holding apparently conflicting values should account for the discrepancy or alter their beliefs.
Integrity is the opposite of duplicity and hypocrisy.
Duplicity: contradictory doubleness of thought, speech, or action; especially : the belying of one’s true intentions by deceptive words or action.
We are bombarded with assertions and “proofs” all day long by the media, at school, through television and radio, books, newspapers, etc. The result is that we tend to take things with a grain of salt until we have had a chance to investigate it for ourselves. A common phrase is “Don’t believe everything you hear!” and it is for good reason that it is often repeated. The Bible at 1 John 4:1-3 tells us to “test the inspired expressions” so we can see if they are God’s words or not. Under inspiration, Job said “Does not the ear itself test out words As the palate tastes food?” (Job 12:11) When we read or study any subject,Biblical or not, this principle comes into play. We have to test it out for ourselves. Is the argument logical and reasonable? Does it align with the rest of the Scriptures in the Bible, or contradict it? Does it rely on human interpretation or theory? Is it easy to grasp or is the presentation very complicated? All these questions help us to “taste” the veracity of the claim, and figure out in our own mind if it is from God. With that in mind, a question and answer essay is presented on the topic of the star mentioned in Matthew chapter 2.
The Watchtower of 2006, 2/15 “Questions From Readers” article asks this: What three dangers was Jesus warning against at Matthew 5:22?
In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus Christ warned his followers: “I say to you that everyone who continues wrathful with his brother will be accountable to the court of justice; but whoever addresses his brother with an unspeakable word of contempt will be accountable to the Supreme Court; whereas whoever says, ‘You despicable fool!’ will be liable to the fiery Gehenna.”—Matthew 5:22.
Jesus used things familiar to the Jews—the court of justice, the Supreme Court, and the fiery Gehenna—to convey to them the increasing severity of the punishments for sins of increasing seriousness.
“Blinded By New Light” – A Response to the “Anti-Apostate” WT article of 9/11/2011, found in the July 15, 2011 study copy of the Watchtower. The following song represents a response to the inflammatory rhetoric and Ad Hominem attacks found in the Watchtower. It saddens us that the friends have been misled and revved up […]
The title of this article is “Rabbinical Legalism and Bible Study”, and I’m going to get to that first point momentarily. But let’s take the second part of the title first. I have finally been getting through Ray’s second book, In Search of Christian Freedom. It is superb, logical, and thought inducing over and over again. But to really understand the content and reasoning I have been looking up many of the references, and with a length of some 700+ pages, it’s taking me some time. That’s a lot to study! But whatever we choose to study though, you’ll agree that balance is needed. If we drench ourselves in an obscure passage of Hebrew Scripture and every footnote and cross-reference available for hours, days, and weeks, is that balanced if we don’t read or study anything else during those days or weeks?
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Recently we discussed the meaning of Jesus’ words “this generation” in Matthew 24:34 here. Are there more texts in the Greek Scriptures that would seem to indicate that the end, conclusion of the system of things, coming of Jesus etc. would happen in the first century? I have made a partial list of a few of […]
You may have heard the expression “Where’s the beef?” It is a phrase that questions the substance of an idea, event, or product. The Watchtower of 1956, June 1 page 346 paragraph 11 entitled “Keep Pace by Conforming to Theocratic Requirements” said this: Since the “faithful and discreet slave” has been entrusted with all the […]
Brother John May was an elder in Ireland for many years. Back when Brother Ray Franz was wrongly disfellowshiped he was bothered by it so much that he actually went into debt so that he could buy a plane ticket to America. He and another brother flew to Brooklyn, New York so that he could meet with the governing body at that time. He knew a couple of the brothers serving on the body personally, and had been an elder for many years, but despite that they refused to meet with him or the other brother, or to discuss what happened at Bethel and what happened to Brother Franz.
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