The Jehovah Witnesses, Conspiracy or Religion

"Beware of "organization." It is wholly unnecessary. The Bible rules will be the only rules you will need. Do not seek to bind others' consciences, and do not permit others to bind yours. Believe and obey so far as you can understand God's Word"

My friends father was married to one of these chicks, and just as a suicide bomber will sacrafice themselves, don tget to close to these creatures either, you never know what they do...........

Actually they are very predictable. Other than discussing their faith with you they probably don't want much contact after that. As for your assertions you really have to get enlightened.

Hi Milk:

"Jehovah" is an artificial word made up of the VOWELS of "edonai" ("my lord") and the CONSONANTS of "YHWH" (the clan god of Israel is referred to generally by this name, which is expressed in the Hebrew Bible without vowels, i.e. unpointed, as the text is Consonantal, i.e. consonants only, the vowells having been added by Masoretic Rebbes in Leningrad in the 10th century AD)

When post Exilic (after 480 BC) Judaeans came across the word YHWH in the text of the OT (often written with 4 stars, ****) they would simply say "eDONAI" to replace "haShem" ("the name") since only ha COhen Ha Gadol (the high priest in the Temple at Jerusalem after 480 BC) and ONLY on Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) could actually be allowed pronounce ha Shem from inside the holy of holies (probably sounded something like "Yah-weh", to judge from the Greek pronunciation stipulated in the Septuaginta LXX of Exodus chapter 3) .

But when scholars refer to the clan god of Israel, they generally use YHWH and leave it at that (or they use Yahweh spelled out).

But JEHOVAH never existed as a name in the Hebre tradition: it's just that the VOWELS of eDONAI were placed under the consonants of YHWH to remind the Rebbes to say "eDONAI" when they came to the "tetragrammaton" i.e. YHWH the "four letters" of HaShem....

So to make a long story short, the Jehovah's Witnesses have rocks in their heads if they think the post Exilic clan god of Israel was called Jehovah---it certainly wasn't.

Which means that even the founders of that religion are whacked when it comes to anything like "authentic" teaching, much less "truth".

Most Jehovah's witnesses cannot read Hebrew or Greek anyway when they come knocking at the door.

As for me, I play with their heads since I know the Hebrew text fairly well and catch their screwy logic at every twist and turn. I NEVER turn them away---they end up TRYING TO GET AWAY FROM ME usually.

It's fun.

Originally posted by Amadeus
Hi Milk:

"Jehovah" is an artificial word made up of the VOWELS of "edonai" ("my lord") and the CONSONANTS of "YHWH" (the clan god of Israel is referred to generally by this name, which is expressed in the Hebrew Bible without vowels, i.e. unpointed, as the text is Consonantal, i.e. consonants only, the vowells having been added by Masoretic Rebbes in Leningrad in the 10th century AD)

When post Exilic (after 480 BC) Judaeans came across the word YHWH in the text of the OT (often written with 4 stars, ****) they would simply say "eDONAI" to replace "haShem" ("the name") since only ha COhen Ha Gadol (the high priest in the Temple at Jerusalem after 480 BC) and ONLY on Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) could actually be allowed pronounce ha Shem from inside the holy of holies (probably sounded something like "Yah-weh", to judge from the Greek pronunciation stipulated in the Septuaginta LXX of Exodus chapter 3) .

But when scholars refer to the clan god of Israel, they generally use YHWH and leave it at that (or they use Yahweh spelled out).

But JEHOVAH never existed as a name in the Hebre tradition: it's just that the VOWELS of eDONAI were placed under the consonants of YHWH to remind the Rebbes to say "eDONAI" when they came to the "tetragrammaton" i.e. YHWH the "four letters" of HaShem....

So to make a long story short, the Jehovah's Witnesses have rocks in their heads if they think the post Exilic clan god of Israel was called Jehovah---it certainly wasn't.

Which means that even the founders of that religion are whacked when it comes to anything like "authentic" teaching, much less "truth".

Most Jehovah's witnesses cannot read Hebrew or Greek anyway when they come knocking at the door.

As for me, I play with their heads since I know the Hebrew text fairly well and catch their screwy logic at every twist and turn. I NEVER turn them away---they end up TRYING TO GET AWAY FROM ME usually.

It's fun.

when i was a JW they learned me that the jews was forbidden to speak the name of god so it was forgotten when time past.
indeed the spelling of YHWH was freely trancelated to the name we know now ... Jehovah.

Actually Amadeus they do have the New Test. with the Greek on one side of the page and Eng. translation on the other. I'm surprised you don't know that. I find it hard to believe that they didn't come back with it to discuss. As has been noted, they are persistant.

Hi Intrepid:

Yes, actually I have seen some attempts by these pathetic JW cretins who go around knocking on doors on weekends, often dragging their poor innocent children along with them for "training" purposes....and yes, I did ONCE see something like an English-Greek interlinear when a pair of suited up Jhenovah's Witnesses dared to come up to my front door, but only the one time did they have anything like a Greek-English NT and neither of the two could read the Greek text they were carrying around: they were using it for show only purposes apparently.

Also neither of them knew any paleo Hebrew or even Aramaic, so our conversation was shall we say "limited"...

In fact the two could not even answer basic questions about the clan god of post Exilic Israel (and didn't know what I meant when I said "monolatry" v. "monotheism" and had apparently never heard of Akhenaten).

And their choice of MSS evidence in these texts of theirs is based on their own "scholars" highly selective choice of arbitary MSS readings, without giving (or even acknowledging the existence of) all the variant readings (e.g. to give a simple example, there was no note in their "text" on the "Woman caught in Adultery" pericope in John's gospel which is a "floater" in the Greek texts, occuring in several DIFFERENT places in many MSS families and often missing altogether.

I have engaged in possibly 25 "conversations" over the past ten years with these socalled "missionaries" and every time I was told to visit their church and speak with one of their elders who knew Greek or Hebrew "better than they did", which was virtually none at all...

I still have a lot of fun playing with their heads by asking the simple questions a 10 year old Sunday School pupil might ask: If "Jeeezzzuzz" was sinless, then why was he baptised for the Remission of Sins by John the Baptist? or If "Jeeezuzz" was baptised by John, doesn't that make John automatically Greater than Jeeezuzz?

or, If John the Baptist knew "Jeeezuzz" was the Messiah when he baptised him ("behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the Sins of the World!") , then why after his arrest by Herod Anitpas did he send his own disciples to "jeezuzz" and ask, "Are you the One to Come, or Shall we Look for Another?"

or "If John claimed that one was coming who would baptise with the Holy Spirit, then why did John's disciples say they "never even heard there was a Holy Spirit?" etc. etc. (it helps to know that "spirit" and "wind" are the same word in Hebrew, "ruach", and that the image was that of the threshing floor with "wiind" and "fire" being the more accurate translation, but I digress...)

The solution to most of the JW missionaries is to give them more linguistic and historical training before sending teenagers out to do this kind of selling to the masses. They never know what type of client they're going to come up against.....and if you are selling a product, you better know it INSIDE AND OUT, and not just know the bullet points on all those slick glossies....

'nuff said

Originally posted by Amadeus
Hi Intrepid:

Yes, actually I have seen some attempts by these pathetic JW cretins who go around knocking on doors on weekends, often dragging their poor innocent children along with them for "training" purposes....and yes, I did ONCE see something like an English-Greek interlinear when a pair of suited up Jhenovah's Witnesses dared to come up to my front door, but only the one time did they have anything like a Greek-English NT and neither of the two could read the Greek text they were carrying around: they were using it for show only purposes apparently.

Also neither of them knew any paleo Hebrew or even Aramaic, so our conversation was shall we say "limited"...

'nuff said

I'll leave the rest as is. Your technichal jargon impresses me, maybe I've not been thinking right most of my life.

I find it interesting that these pathetic humans would be willing to spend their time trying to reach such a lofty personage as yourself, and why? They could gain, WHAT? They offered enlightenment, you've offered ridicule, which is more beneficial? You or they? Wanna put that to a vote?

Any new stuff debunking them soon? Waiting Amadeus.

Hi Intrepid:

I'm not sure what you are waiting for? The socalled Jehovah's Witnesses can't even get the name of the post Exilic clan god of Israel right---what else is there to say?

They're basically operating at the functional illiterate stages of their socalled religion, throwing around haf baked pseudo-Greek and Hebrew 1st century Messianic technical terms which they barely understand.

Would you like me to go into more detail ?

If so, I would be happy to oblige you...the whole JW movement is too much of a sick joke to take too seriously: I'm only surprised that so many gullible people in the US seem to do just that...

By the way, did the JW community dump Michael Jackson yet, or is he still funding them?

you cannot forget that they also are victims of the conspiracy.
Blame the ones who created this religion and know that they are victims

I have read Jehovah's Witness literature extensively and have found few religions that are more secretive or scary. They keep a lot of their information and beliefs secret for a reason...its total rubbish. I'm no fan of organized religion but don't have a problem with most aside from JW and a few others. I mean, only 144,000 people are going to get into heaven? With an estimated 8 or 9 million of them running around on the planet, do they all feel lucky or something?

Any religion that actively tells its members not to associate with others or discuss their true beliefs all while trying to get more people to join it is a cult in my book, plain and simple. Here are some facts about their belief structure and history:

The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society (the organization run by the Governing Body of the Jehovah's Witnesses) claims that it is the sole channel of information between God and humanity.

They base this claim on a complicated, Bible-based chronology devised by the Adventist N.H. Barbour in 1875. The founder of Jehovah's Witnesses, Charles Taze Russell, obtained many of his ideas from Adventists and others who speculated in Bible prophecy. In 1884, Russell founded the Watchtower Society, which became the legal corporation used by the International Bible Students, the early name for Jehovah's Witnesses.

The chronology stated that Jesus had invisibly returned to earth in 1874 to set up his kingdom, and that in 1914, at the end of the "Gentile Times", Jesus would come to judge the earth and annihilate the wicked.

When nothing supernatural happened in 1914, the Watchtower Society started transferring all of the doctrines about 1874 to 1914. They explained that Christ's kingdom had been set up invisibly in 1914, and that although secular governments were still in place, their rule was no longer valid. Based on the Society's writings, Jehovah's Witnesses looked forward to momentous events in the year 1918.

When nothing supernatural happened in 1918, the Watchtower Society looked forward to momentous events in 1925.

When nothing supernatural happened in 1925, the Watchtower Society lost three quarters of its members.

Charles Taze Russell had been held to be the "Faithful and Wise Servant" of Matthew 24:45-47, but by 1928 the Society applied that to its leaders. They taught that the scripture was a prophecy, and that in 1918 they had been chosen by Jesus "over all that he hath". Since they believed Jesus was ruling the world invisibly, they claimed for themselves a position as God's channel of communication with mankind.

The Society checked its predictions and explained that all of the prophecies in Matthew 24 and 25 would take place within a "single generation" (Matthew 24:34), so the time of "the end of the world" (Matthew 24:3) could be delayed as long as 30 or 40 years. In 1929, the Society built a mansion ("Beth Sarim") to house the resurrected prophets, who were expected to arrive soon. The new definition of "generation" promised momentous events during the 1940's.

When nothing supernatural had happened by 1945, the Society extended the meaning of "generation" to 80 years (the maximum lifespan of a typical man, as explained in Psalms 90:10). "Beth Sarim" was eventually sold.

Although 1914 plus 80 equals 1994, in 1966 the Watchtower Society decided that the year 1975 was "significant", because they had calculated that it marked the end of six thousand years since the creation of Adam and Eve. Watchtower publications strongly hinted that "the end" would come in 1975.

When nothing supernatural happened in 1975, the Watchtower Society lost many members. It explained that the time between Adam's creation and Eve's creation was not known, so the 1975 date was only speculative.

In 1980, the Society suggested that the Witnesses and the publishing staff had been overly enthusiastic about the "possibility" of Armageddon in 1975. This failed to lure back thousands who had left, but regular door-to-door preaching restored the rapid growth the Witnesses had enjoyed since the "significance" of 1975 had been announced.

When the year 1994 arrived (1914 plus 80 years), nothing supernatural happened. The Society had not ascribed any special significance [1] to 1994, but the "generation" issue was becoming awkward. The ranks of the Society's special members (the 144,000 who were "anointed", based on an interpretation of Revelation) were dying out. The claim that Jesus had appointed the Watchtower Society special status in 1918 was becoming hard to defend.

In 1995, the Watchtower Society decided that "generation" did not mean a physical generation (i.e. 80 years) but meant "age", as in "era". This extended the "end times" indefinitely, although when the last of the 144,000 special members die out, the Society will have to be run by regular members.

A close inspection of Matthew 24:34 in context makes the "age" interpretation hard to understand, since Jesus speaks of the generation "passing away" (which sounds like a physical event). The Watchtower Society states that it alone understands that "generation" means "age" because it has special status, which was granted to it in 1918.

The Watchtower magazine, published by the Society, has said the end is "soon", in every issue since it was first printed ... in 1879.


[edit on 11-8-2004 by Weller]

[edit on 11-8-2004 by Weller]

Weller, you got every thing right there with the exception of the true belief thing. They're more than willing to tell you everything. Aside from that, you got it.

Originally posted by intrepid
Weller, you got every thing right there with the exception of the true belief thing. They're more than willing to tell you everything. Aside from that, you got it.

I have a friend who was raised in a JW family and he indicated to me that there were levels of information about their beliefs that are off limits to outsiders until they join the fold. I was basing my opinion on his comments. The same sort of structure exists in the Church of Scientology and Mormonism from what I've heard as well.

If I'm wrong then my apologies, it took my friend many years to come out of the blanket of fear and indoctrination he endured in his young life and his insiders view seemed accurate to me.

Thanks for your response!

Originally posted by Amadeus
Hi Intrepid:

I'm not sure what you are waiting for? The socalled Jehovah's Witnesses can't even get the name of the post Exilic clan god of Israel right---what else is there to say?

They're basically operating at the functional illiterate stages of their socalled religion, throwing around haf baked pseudo-Greek and Hebrew 1st century Messianic technical terms which they barely understand.

Would you like me to go into more detail ?

If so, I would be happy to oblige you...the whole JW movement is too much of a sick joke to take too seriously: I'm only surprised that so many gullible people in the US seem to do just that...

By the way, did the JW community dump Michael Jackson yet, or is he still funding them?

Actually there is no basis for a discussion until I study ancient Hebrew and Greek, til then we have to take your word in this matter. On the basis of the info you have provided I can not comment, it may be true, maybe not. This is what got me thinking though, you said that you have them "running from you." That I don't buy at all. I was one for half of my life and still have family members that are, and I can tell you that they would back down from no one. Your assertions about MJ are ancient history, he hasn't been affiliated in over 20 years.

Hey Intrepid:

I can only tell you of my personal experiences with the JW Missionaries, which have always seemed "none too bright".

And these first-hand, personal experiences over the past 15 to 20 years have shown me that the JW door to door people are NOT trained beyond the very basics of their own religious fictions.

I don't know where all your JW genius scholar theologians come from, but none of them have ever approached me....where are they hiding, under the bed?

The ones I've come across in the US aren't very bright or knowledgeable about the "bible" about "Pre-Exilic or 2nd Temple Judaeism" or about "Roman History" (one of them even thought Pontius Pilate was a Roman Emperor for some reason...), have never even read a word of the Dead Sea Scrolls (much less DARED to compare the text families of their Old Testament MSS texts with the modern ("received") Masoretic Text used by Jews and Christians today) .

I would actually LOVE to come across a pair who actually know what they are talking about---i.e. beyond their reading some random arbitrary texts and commentaries provided by their "scholars" ---unfortunately the ones I come across can ONLY read in English, and cannot understand the complexities of the text traditions they are selling to the public.

I sometimes let them think they are putting on "good show" at first (it's kind of fun watching them fall into their own traps) and I usually let them babble on in order to lead them into a "false sense of security"--- before I lower the "boom" (as it were) on them.

I'm very polite with them by the way, I never raise my voice, since it tends to startle them: I just start asking them very very very basic questions that any ten year old might ask in Sunday school ("You said "jehovah made a firmament in the heavens to separate the waters of creation: where's all that water ABOVE the FIRMAMENT?" "What exactly is a Firmament? Where exactly IS the Firmament? Isn;t it supposed to be "firm" or solid? I don't see any inverted bowl around a flat earth, do you?" (e.g. Hebrew: Reqia'q, "inverted copper bowl") etc.)

And it usually proceeds from there.

You should hear some of their answers about the formation of the canon of the "bible" (of which they know nothing of the political motives of the Rebbes at Javneh in AD 90, nor of the raucos ouncils in the 4th and 5th centuries that later determined the NT) and then we generally proceed to the inherent racism of the clan god of Israel in the Unpointed Hebrew Text of the Torah (e.g. Deuteronomy chapter 13 or Deuteronomy chapter 20) in the versions (e.g. LXX-Vorlage, MT, Pe#ta, Targums, Dead Sea Scroll Families and SamPent) etc.

None of these socaled JW "misisonaries" that I've come across knows their OT or NT text very well it seems (not even in English!) which becomes apparent even after the first 5 minutes or so and none that I've every come across are "intrepid" as you seem to feel, especially when you get down to brass tacks and start breaing down the text for inconsistencies in the Hebrew, e.g. the Creation Myths in Bere#h (you know how the TWO Hebrew Myths in Genesis chapter 1:1-2:4a and 2:4b-4:32 that DON't match each other etc.)

Generally our conversation quickly becomes a test of the "authority" of the "text" of the "word of god..." and with a few examples of internal contradictions ("If "yahweh" told "Moses" not to make any "graven images" in the Decalogue, then why did "yahweh" tell "Moses" in the Torah (Numbers 21:5) to go out and make a Bronze Snake Idol, and stick it on a pole? Nehushtan sounds pretty idolatrous to me !" etc.)

Then when they get off on the Kingdom stuff, I bring up the little guy David ("I was smaller than my brothers....") whose grandmother was a Moabite (Ruth), and the Torah explicitly states that "No Moabite shall EVER ENTER the CONGREGATION OF ISRAEL, NOT EVEN PAST THE 10th GENETRATION, EVER..." which kind of counts David out of being a rightful "king of Israel" etc.

And for some reason they really get upset when you point to things they've NEVER heard about such as the story in I Samuel 20 where Saul the King is cursing Jonathan his son for allegedly homosexual relations with David "You SON OF A PERVERSE AND REBELLIOUS FEMALE ! Don't you know that you HAVE (lit. "CHOSEN TO MARRY") the SON OF JESSE to the CONFUSION OF YOUR MOTHER'S NAKEDNESS, and TO YOUR OWN CONFUSION? HOW WILL YOUR DYNASTY BE ESTABLISHED IF YOU PERSIST IN THESE ACTS?) to say nothing of the homosexual love poetry which David allegedly wrote in honour of his dead boyfriend in 2 Samuel chapter 1 (O how my heart breaks for you O Jonathan, thy Love to me was full of Pleasantness, full of Wonderment, far surpassing that of woman ! " = 1st Sam 1:26)

Then we move on to more familiar territory for them (i.e. the gospels), and I start asking whether "Jeeezuzzz" carried the "crossbeam" for himself as it states in John's gospel ("seauton") or whether there was another person who carried the crossbeam for him (as the Synoptic Gospels of Matt Mark and Luke seem to indicate with the Shimeon of Cyrene pericopes).

Then other little inconsistencies such as the actual date for the socalled Last Supper (the Fourth "Gospel" places it a day before the others, "on the day of Preparation..." so that the crucifixion "event" can occur at the same time as the slaughter of the pesach lambs in the "temple" at Jerusalem 4 hours before the 15th of Nisan---which is a midrashic attempt to make theological point, rather than history...)

Unfortunately, none of the JW missionaries I've come across even know what a Midrash is, which makes it impossible for them to understand the contents and purport of most of the gospel material in the first place.

That's why I have such an issue with these JWs that go out door to door and try and "sell a product to the masses" when they don't even understand the most basic aspects of their own product.

And I would say that I've been approached by about 40 of them (20 pairs) over the past 15 years or so---which should be a kind of random sample since the demographics cut across several US state borders...

Which leads me to wonder why you are so impressed by these individuals...hmmmmm....

Amadeus, I am curious if you have had any similar experience with Mormon Missionaries??

Hey Number One:

Actually it is nearly Exactly the Same experience with the Mormons.

Even more fake documents and forged "ancient history" to talk about...

They also usually travel in pairs. I play with their heads. They are the ones who walk away from me. I WANT THEM TO STAY AND DEBATE THEIR BELIEF SYSTEM ALL DAY AND NIGHT IF POSSIBLE, but they usually give up after a measley 45 mins or so.

The Mormon Missionaries are typically even younger than the JWs (i.e. a pair of tie wearing 19 year olds on their so-called mandatory "Mission" Tour).

Young "dumb kids" with only enough "ammunition" in their theological satchel to be dangerous.

And since the Mormon kids are generally so "green" I have even more fun with them, but ultimately it is sad to see such decent clean cut kids so obviously duped and conned by such an obviously "faked religion" whose founder (the freemason Joseph Smith) claimed to be able to translate Egyptian Heirogyphics with the help of "Urim and Thummim" stones---his "translations" have been proved fakes (no mention of Avraham and Yitzaac, sorry: the texts he used were funerary "spell pillows" purchased from a travelling Egyptian mummy show from the 1830s) etc.

One could write books

DG

is there someone who have seen the Movie The.Ten.Commandments.1956
in the original movie there is a scene with mozes at the bush
when Mozes asked gods name the answer was Jehovah.
But if you buy this movie know you will see the same scene, but the sound was edited out and replaced with "I am Who I Am".
This was done on command of ...................................................................................................................................................... ...........POPEYE THE SAILOR.

The phrase in the Hebrew in Exodus 3 ("the Place of the Bush" as "Jeeezuz: allegedly referred to it when talking about the Resurrection of the Dead as reported in the Synoptics) is something like : Yechei esher Yechei, however the text is unpointed (no vowells) : but notice, NOT "Jehovah" or even "YHWH" but something apparently different from either name for some reason....

Nobody of course (not even the Rebbes who tried hard to be clever in order to attempt to figure out a solution to it) even remotely knows that this "esher" phrase means, but it seems to revolve around a root (Ch-Y-H) related to the same word for Eve in the garden (Chayyah, to live, hence the Mother of all Living as the 2nd Creation Myth states in Genesis 2:4b -4:32)

The context of the Comment placed into the mouth of the clan god dressed up as a burning bush in Exodus 3 ("the place of the Bush") might well indicate something like what we would say today as: "Mind Your Own Business !" (i.e. I am who I am and that's that, ok?), i.e. a sort of rebuke, or non answer----since after all knowledge of a god's name implies power over him and his attributes via magic spells in the ancient middle east, etc. (which is why post Exilic Jews after 480 BC stopped pronouncing ha Shem, the NAME outloud, e.g. Yah-weh).

But again, "Jehovah" is not an accurate rendition of anything, clan god or otherwise.

When I decided to stop studying with the JW's, she asked me why. I told her that there were many reasons, but one of the main ones was their belief that their "organization" was receiving their information "from Jehovah". She turned on me, and started shouting scriptures at me, so I hung up. About a week later she sent me a letter saying, basically, nice knowing you but if you don't want to hear the truth, I will no longer have any contact with you. Up until that she had smothered me with attention, took me for lunches, anything as long as I was willing to listen to the truth. Before I met them, I had no biblical knowledge. Then I started studying with them, and when things started to sound a little too good to be true, I got on the internet and started researching. I actually feel sorry for them now, imo they are truly brainwashed.