Dealing with Jehovah's Witnesses. I found a way.

[FuryOfFirestorm]

@ixthrock: they changed it at least twice (1914 & 1975). Wiki it.

@diamondstar: My ire is mostly aimed toward the Governing Body. My grandmother has been a JW for 50 years. She witnessed while working and raising 12 kids (not all at once). Now she's 83, diabetic, and cannot walk or stand without aid. She only leaves the house to see her doctor (she hands out JW stuff and witnesses in the waiting room) and listens to the meetings on speakerphone. Yet every so often, the elders drop by to insinuate that she's not doing enough for the kingdom ministry and try to pressure her into driving 30 minutes (each way) to the meetings.

The Governing Body can kiss my shiny metal ass.

 

[MoltenRock III]

They've changed it at least 5 times, and at least 6, if you count in the 1980s to early 1990s, when they proclaimed that the generation that saw and could be of an age to understand the world's goings on in 1914 (start of WWI) would not die out before the end would come. Obviously, that got impossible given anyone from that would have been almost 100 by the time they changed it again.

Keep in mind 1914 is "the big date" (other than 1975) when JWs failed to deliver. After 1914 came and went, and they were still sitting on their thumbs, they then started teaching / preaching that Jesus actually really did come back..... just invisibly. LOL! The took a page out of the Adventist's book after the Great Disappointment in 1844, when they too made this nonsensical claim after it failed. But I digress....

Remember the JWs are from the Millerite sect (which includes JWs, 7th Day Adventists, Branch Davidians, et al...) which was an 1800s puritanical cult that was saying the end was coming soon (originally 1844, and then it too changed). If you've ever seen The Road To Wellville, you'll know how nuts Dr. Kellogg is, an Adventist, who invented the famed breakfast cereal to quell lusty thoughts & masturbation. The entire American breakfast cereal industry was wrought with nutbar religious figures. These "holy" people were also why the US became so circumcision happy, as well.

 

[MoltenRock III]

@diamondstar: My ire is mostly aimed toward the Governing Body. My grandmother has been a JW for 50 years. She witnessed while working and raising 12 kids (not all at once). Now she's 83, diabetic, and cannot walk or stand without aid. She only leaves the house to see her doctor (she hands out JW stuff and witnesses in the waiting room) and listens to the meetings on speakerphone. Yet every so often, the elders drop by to insinuate that she's not doing enough for the kingdom ministry and try to pressure her into driving 30 minutes (each way) to the meetings.

The Governing Body can kiss my shiny metal ass.

What did the GB of the JWs ever do to help your grandmother prepare for her own immortality? Nothing! They taught her she was never ever going to die, ever as well as demand that their followers postpone their life until the end has come. And that is the cruelest, most unJesus like thing I can possibly thing of.

Jesus taught that every day should be a blessing, not to be wasted. The JW people like your grandmother bought a very nice story that they would never have to die, because after all.... who wants to die? Then the book / magazine publishing corporation that is the Jehovah Witnesses, demands things never ascribed in the bible in pushing their printed materials.

High control cults have been around for a long time, in a number of guises, and colorful leaders. It's like the Ponzi scheme. It preys on the very weaknesses that humans of the modern age have always had, and still have, hence why it still works.

Here are signs of aberrational (or high control cults/groups):
The JWs fit every one of them.
http://www.neirr.org/s7-aber2.html

 

[Kulindahr]

That's stereotypical thinking. It's like saying all Asians are good at math and etc. If U guys don't like them, that's fine and I personally could care less. However, I just don't like that U guys are saying that ALL JW are bad people when that's FAR from the truth. Yeah, am a terrible example of what a JW should behave like, but their those who don't behave so scandalous like me or look down on people who aren't witnesses. Their are some JW who believe in the Bible as the book of life and can accept someone who doesn't believe the scriptures and not secretly hate them. I'll shut up now since I know this is going on death ears, but please understand that JW let alone Religious people look down on non believers.

It's not stereotypical thinking: being a JW is something someone chooses (except the poor subservient children). People who choose to believea lie and do so in ignorance are going to tend to have characteristics in common.

Are all JW bad people? Depends on how you define it. But if you define it as accepting the teachings of people so illiterate they can't even see that their basic doctrine is contradicted in the chapter from which they draw the cult's name, then yes, all JWs are bad. They are bad because they don't believe the scriptures, but cling to a mistranslation written to drag out a heresy condemned centuries ago by people not far removed from the Apostles.

Any JWs here, throw away your blasphemous "New World Translation" and go get a New American Standard.You might get a clue about who Jesus is, if nothing else.

 

[Kulindahr]

Here are signs of aberrational (or high control cults/groups):
The JWs fit every one of them.
http://www.neirr.org/s7-aber2.html

Pretty darned good!

Tanks.

 

[Críostóir]

As for correct pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton....
There's a verse where it says, "I am that I am". It's built around averb with the same consonants; the pronunciation comes out something like "Eh-hyeh ush-air eh-hyeh".

Huh. Us-air is pretty close to the correct Egyptian pronunciation of the name most often Hellenized as Osiris.

 

[Kulindahr]

Huh. Us-air is pretty close to the correct Egyptian pronunciation of the name most often Hellenized as Osiris.

In Hebrew it's a pronoun, usually "which" or "that", but sometimes "who" or "what".

Os "I am that which/who/what I am", and "I AM has sent you". Given the form there, "I AM" can actually be rendered "the being one" or "the one having his/its own being" -- implying not just self-generation, but uniqueness on that point... so, "the [only] self-existent One has sent you".


BTW, it fascinates me that the JWs somewhere rounded up some of their own who could handle the Hebrew well enough to produce a translation that is at least reasonably coherent -- but their theology stills rolls on as thought the King James Version was the inspired truth... which leads them, with Harold Camping, to misread the Apocalypse (Revelations) in mangled ways.