I'm an agnostic who leans strongly towards atheist...
I was raised in a fundamentalist "Christian" religion (Jehovah's Witness), meaning that I was taught that every word in the Bible was absolute true history ie not just stories to teach morals. JWs will believe what their leaders teach (about Bible, life, science etc) via the watchtower and the meetings (Church) over all else (to remain a member you must believe the Watchtower interpretation of the Bible only, and cannot have your own opinion). So this is based on the JW religion, not mainstream Christianity...
You are very much encouraged to research all u are learning from non biased sources, and use various translations of the bible, in fact many JW publications quote many different bible translations, its just a translation into modern english. The development of the NWT translation was a huge project which took around 30 years to complete and another 10-15 years to perfect. The NWT was developed by intensively looking at the original hebrew and greek scrolls we can find today in museums, and translating it into modern day English so that we can understand it. Our bible was completed by non-JW sholars who had no loyalties to witnesses.
As i said,There are many translations of the Bible. JW's encourage the use of a variety of them in order to make comparisons and to help students to grasp the real sense of the Scriptures. As you may know, the Bible was originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. So we appreciate what translators have done to put it into our language
To say you are not allowed to have ur own opinion is incorrect, we all have to make a choice whether we serve God or not, no one is forced to do anything.
Oh and of course Jesus himself at times used parables to drive a point home, but he spoke of Adam and Eve as real people and the creation account as truth. Its quite obvious when things in the bible are parables, symbolic etc to get a message across or being presented as real events etc, im sure u are aware of this also
I remember an "elder" (kind of leader/priest figure) explaining to me that the dinosaurs were used by God to prepare the earth for humans/life as we know it, and that the dinosaurs went extinct when their purpose was over (flattening the earth?!). I don't recall the JW publications (where JWs learn what to believe) really explaining dinosaurs so I figure they put it in the to hard basket and just glossed over it or something.
I just found Awakes and books covering the subject of dinosaurs in a matter of minutes
Some dating back to 1961.
(as above, JWs follow their publications more closely than the Bible).
All publications are bible based, continually quote the bible. They are study aids, they do not replace the bible. You would know how much the bible is used at meetings and in the preaching work
All beliefs are thoroughly backed up by the bible
For my time in the JWs it was taught that the earth was 7000 years old, which is why carbon dated fossils were deemed suspiciously Satanic. This year however they have brought out "new light" (what they say when they change a belief or rule) and now they are describing earths creation as aeons of years. So at least they have brought the watchtower teaching in line with current science, even if it was a bit slow!! (Yes I still follow what is being taught even though I have left, I find it way more interesting now than I did when I was in
)
I have Awakes dating back to 1973 stating Genesis account is the creation of life on earth as we know it, not the earth itself. The bible hasnt changed in what it says. It says in the beginning God created the 'heavens and the earth' then goes on to speak of the creative days. There is no mention of how long the earth had been around before this. (or how long dinosaurs were around before this either). Their Beliefs do not change but rather become more clearer on certain matters as the bible said they would in the 'time of the end' (Proverbs 4:18 -" But the path of the righteous ones is like the bright light that is getting lighter and lighter until the day is firmly established') Core bible truth have not and will not change.
There is question on how reliable carbon dating is as the rate of radioactive carbon formation in the atmosphere has not been consistent in the past ...they dont just pull information out of thin air. You know we have bibliographies in many publications when speaking on scientific matters, they are well researched.
The thing with Adam and Eve, they had way more kids than Cain and Abel. All of Adam and Eves kids married each other and multiplied (Bible wording for the uninitiated). But trust me, if you read the Old Testament (first half Bible) you will find way more jaw dropping stories than Adam and Eve. (Rapes, murders, baby killing, incest, genocide etc etc often with stamped with Gods approval)
You know what Gods laws are on these matters. Its made very clear. He detests and forbids such things. I have already touched on the subject of incest for one. You are presenting the bible and God in a light that just isnt accurate. Accounts of such things are not stamped with Gods approval, but were committed by the wicked just as they are today. That being said tho, i believe God is well within his rights as our creator to remove the wicked for the benefit of the righteous and meek if this is what u are referring to
@KittyVentura JWs are obliged to preach/recruit every month and count how much time they do and if they manage to get you to take a book/magazine and report back to their elders (priests), you just gave your friend an easy month
We are not required to 'recruit' but rather preach the good news of Gods coming kingdom as Jesus intructs his followers to do in the bible. Its about love for neighbor and giving people a positive hope for the future, reporting is done for information purposes to check how many publishers are in each congregation, the hours in total, publications placed as they take this work very seriously and has to be very well organised and to report how each country is extending this preaching work in the yearbook.
We don't just want people to join for the sake of joining just to create more numbers. We want people to join because we have touched their hearts and showed them the hopes, truth, and reward of knowing about God and what he promises. We are are also adhering to God's command of preaching to the nations which is told to us in Matthew 24:14 to quote one scripture.
Our objective to preaching:
- To inform the householder about the good news of the kingdom that God promises that the righteous will inherit
- Offer if they want to learn more about the Bible and progress to a Bible study
Again, what you have to keep in mind is that we are not just trying to increase the head-count within our organization for the sake of it, but we only want to reach people who are genuinely interested. If you are not interested, we respect that, and accept your decision. We want to spread the truth to the Bible to whoever is willing to listen - whether that is only just 1 person or 1,000,000.
There is no minimum but all are encouraged to do what they can around other commitments such a s family, work etc, there has to be a balance of course, as with anything in life
This includes the 4 years I was a regular pioneer (3360 hours on that alone)!! Needless to say, I am pretty sure there were better things I could have been doing with my childhood, and as a child I had no choice but to go preaching and forgo many other activities for the sake of a religion I found to be false.
back to dinosaurs
