TrueTomHarley

You did. You asked real politely and I’m a little ashamed of myself for being so curt. 
On the other hand, you reached exactly the same conclusion you would have had I been more cooperative, so I don’t know what you have to complain about.
It is possible to be too transparent, you know.

I’m not going to clarify anything just so whatever clarification I give you will declare wrong, as you do with JWI.   Let the context of the remark itself be your “clarification.”

Prehistoric history is the only type of history that has nothing to do with man’s politics. What—history just happens to people, or is it people who cause it to happen?

Even were there something objectionable about it, it only does leave a bad taste to you. There are only two notable participants here, maybe four altogether, not counting yourself. Do you think every other Witness in the world  is on the edge of their seat cheering, booing, approving, or disapproving?
In fact, let this be a test. Anyone reading this, respond in some way—upvote, downvote, laugh, frown—doesn’t matter—and I don’t want them all to be you. 
My guess is that people have far more to do with their time so that it is not necessary for you to scold ones who comment on things you find uninteresting.

Prehistoric history is the only type of history that has nothing to do with man’s politics. What—history just happens to people, or is it people who cause it to happen?

Even were there something objectionable about it, it only does leave a bad taste to you. There are only two notable participants here, maybe four altogether, not counting yourself. Do you think every other Witness in the world  is on the edge of their seat cheering, booing, approving, or disapproving?
In fact, let this be a test. Anyone reading this, respond in some way—upvote, downvote, laugh, frown—doesn’t matter—and I don’t want them all to be you. 
My guess is that people have far more to do with their time so that it is not necessary for you to scold ones who comment on things you find uninteresting.

Whatever perception that is will be solved when they learn to mind their own business, as we are all advised to do.
Just how do they do that? Are we to believe that the Wt expects people to eat Bible sandwiches 24/7? I think not. It is indulging an interest that is going on here, that is all, same as if brothers were working on a souped-up stock car, and trading shop-talk back and forth.
There are 8.6 million Witnesses in the world. Whatever two or three of them may being doing does not sink the ship.
Besides, for me, a hidden delight is to see that other yo-yo clucking his tongue at those showing an interest in “worldly politics.” I’ve known many brothers to take an interest in history. What are current events other than history in the making? Frankly, I have learned more here on the subject, in a condensed version, from the interplay of two with decidedly different experiences and viewpoints, than I have learned anywhere else.
An added benefit to me is that it validates the verse: “let God be found true, even if every man be found a liar.” There is not a position on earth that cannot produce reams of research to validate its view.

Even were there something objectionable about it, it only does leave a bad taste to you. There are only two notable participants here, maybe four altogether, not counting yourself. Do you think every other Witness in the world  is on the edge of their seat cheering, booing, approving, or disapproving?
In fact, let this be a test. Anyone reading this, respond in some way—upvote, downvote, laugh, frown—doesn’t matter—and I don’t want them all to be you. 
My guess is that people have far more to do with their time so that it is not necessary for you to scold ones who comment on things you find uninteresting.

Whatever perception that is will be solved when they learn to mind their own business, as we are all advised to do.
Just how do they do that? Are we to believe that the Wt expects people to eat Bible sandwiches 24/7? I think not. It is indulging an interest that is going on here, that is all, same as if brothers were working on a souped-up stock car, and trading shop-talk back and forth.
There are 8.6 million Witnesses in the world. Whatever two or three of them may being doing does not sink the ship.
Besides, for me, a hidden delight is to see that other yo-yo clucking his tongue at those showing an interest in “worldly politics.” I’ve known many brothers to take an interest in history. What are current events other than history in the making? Frankly, I have learned more here on the subject, in a condensed version, from the interplay of two with decidedly different experiences and viewpoints, than I have learned anywhere else.
An added benefit to me is that it validates the verse: “let God be found true, even if every man be found a liar.” There is not a position on earth that cannot produce reams of research to validate its view.

If it was JWI, you’d still be reading it. 
Because that “merely” is a pretty big merely. 
What if my roof caves in tomorrow and I decide it’s God’s fault? What if I park on the Kingdom Hall lawn, the elders tell me not to, and I say, “Oh yeah?! Well I show you right here on my blog!!!!” If I do it at Bethel, the GB will “merely” decline to put their stamp of approval on my rant—they will put me on potato-peeling detail in the kitchen instead, and call up someone from the bullpen who has his head screwed on straight. But if I am a loose cannon with my own blog—there is nothing anyone can do when I go haywire. That’s why I don’t ever expect to be acknowledged for my self-appointed role as an apologist, much less commended for it. Even the real apologists of the early centuries have not fared will at the hands of the writing committee, that tends to focus on things they got wrong.
No, the “merely” is a big deal. It makes for constancy and consistency. Call it a “think tank” at Bethel if you will. It is a concentration of gray hairs and experience, of meeting trials, of knowing they are to be judged for their actions (or inaction), of following up on having brought understanding of the sacred writings to begin with. 
I can just shoot my mouth off here, say whatever pops into my head, insult 4Jah whenever he deserves it (which is almost always), praise the Benoit Blanc movie even though there is crude language—and perhaps I have never faced a care in the world. But they can’t. 
What are my morals? I could (to paraphrase Bob Dylan) “be respectably married—or running a whorehouse in Buenos Aries.” Nobody knows. But the Bethel writers are vetted, not just for being good writers, but for being good Christians. They take it for granted that if your conduct is sullied, somehow that will come out in your guidance, even if it doesn’t seem to at first glance.
I had a friend that, eccentric though he was, had a gift of making complex things simple—even oversimplifying to drive the point home.  I can still hear him recounting to someone just how it works in Jehovah’s organization: “At Bethel, the Governing Body study their Bibles. An idea will occur to one of them. They will discuss it among themselves and when they all come to agreement, it will appear in print.”
“Now, the thing is,” he continued, “you also study your Bible. The same idea might have occurred to you, maybe even before it occurred to them. ‘And if this were Christendom, you’d run out and start your own religion over it.’  But because you know it is not a free-for-all, and you know that Jehovah is a God of order, you wait for material to come through the appointed channel.”
So if they have called themselves “Jehovah’s  mouthpiece” in the past, I can live with that. They have the greatest think tank collection of gray hairs that per the scriptures denotes wisdom, of experience in Christian works, in safeguarding and extending the king’s belongings, in knowing the will be held accountable before God. They have the  greatest sense of direction and following up on momentum. No, I will not do a Miriam and say—“does not Jehovah speak through all of us?” I am happy to have a thought that makes sense—I don’t go thinking I am God’s gift to the brotherhood for it.
The trouble is that there are so many literalists who see the expression “crocodile tears” and take it as proof that the one shedding them is a crocodile. There are so many literalists who do not strive to think of how phrases like “Jehovah’s mouthpiece” might apply, but they strive to think of how they don’t. It is the same with “being led by spirit.” It is almost too explosive a phrase to use because of the literalists—if you go to the bathroom—well—how can you be guided by spirit? since holy spirit would never do THAT!
It’s the same with elders and servants being “appointed by holy spirit.” How do you know they are? To my mind it is because the qualifications are in the Book inspired by holy spirit and the judgment as to how they measure up is made by a (small) “think tank” of holy spirit, and seconded by a traveling minister patterned after scripture—another repository of holy spirit. It works for me. But there will be some who think that if an appointee ever goes bad afterwards it must be that they were not appointed by holy spirit. I think not. Any of these terms must necessarily be “watered down” some when put in the context of humans, “in whose heart the inclination to do bad” is ingrained from youth up.
I think of certain brother appointed upon the recommendation of the BOE. The circuit overseer, an older and very experienced man, okayed the recommendation, with the observation: “He’s not the most humble brother in the world.” He didn’t have to be. All he had to do was to meet each of the qualifications to an acceptable degree. Alas, the CO should have listened to his gut, for the man in time went apostate. He was the one who was a history buff and used to impress the householder by answering, “Because I’m an historian,” when asked how he knew this or that about the past. Once I said to him, “Will you knock it off?! You are a history buff. An historian is when other people acknowledge you, not just you yourself!”
I could be wrong, but I bet the GB has learned to be very leery of such phrases and terms as “mouthpiece” and “inspired” and “spirit-directed”—not just for all the literalists, but for all the critics (who are often the same).  Some things if they say just once, it is magnified 100 times. Other things they say 100 times, only to find it ignored. “Don’t save seats for everyone you know,” they would say about the Regionals, “think of the elderly.” Finally, they gave up, and said to let the elderly in early, and everyone else only after the oldsters were seated. Innumerable directives went unheeded. Yet if they speak just once about “forums,” theIr words are enshrined for all time. I alluded to this in Tom Irregardless and Me. The organization would say that the Governing Body does not endorse such and such, and the friends would accordingly have a helpful sense of priority and focus. And then Oscar or someone would be found doing it, and Tom Pearlandswine would descend to tell him that the Governing Body DOES NOT ENDORSE!!! such and such. You never know what quote will be magnified and what will be forgotten, but I bet they are advancing on the learning curve.

Whatever perception that is will be solved when they learn to mind their own business, as we are all advised to do.
Just how do they do that? Are we to believe that the Wt expects people to eat Bible sandwiches 24/7? I think not. It is indulging an interest that is going on here, that is all, same as if brothers were working on a souped-up stock car, and trading shop-talk back and forth.
There are 8.6 million Witnesses in the world. Whatever two or three of them may being doing does not sink the ship.
Besides, for me, a hidden delight is to see that other yo-yo clucking his tongue at those showing an interest in “worldly politics.” I’ve known many brothers to take an interest in history. What are current events other than history in the making? Frankly, I have learned more here on the subject, in a condensed version, from the interplay of two with decidedly different experiences and viewpoints, than I have learned anywhere else.
An added benefit to me is that it validates the verse: “let God be found true, even if every man be found a liar.” There is not a position on earth that cannot produce reams of research to validate its view.

Whatever perception that is will be solved when they learn to mind their own business, as we are all advised to do.
Just how do they do that? Are we to believe that the Wt expects people to eat Bible sandwiches 24/7? I think not. It is indulging an interest that is going on here, that is all, same as if brothers were working on a souped-up stock car, and trading shop-talk back and forth.
There are 8.6 million Witnesses in the world. Whatever two or three of them may being doing does not sink the ship.
Besides, for me, a hidden delight is to see that other yo-yo clucking his tongue at those showing an interest in “worldly politics.” I’ve known many brothers to take an interest in history. What are current events other than history in the making? Frankly, I have learned more here on the subject, in a condensed version, from the interplay of two with decidedly different experiences and viewpoints, than I have learned anywhere else.
An added benefit to me is that it validates the verse: “let God be found true, even if every man be found a liar.” There is not a position on earth that cannot produce reams of research to validate its view.

Apartheid means segregation. We mingled in the day and worked together but each night we went home to our own towns. There were many terrorist incidents and demonstrations in 1976 which ended in a shooting of rioters. Steve Biko was held in custody and then died - similar to events now in USA. There was police brutality against an ethnic majority (they were the majority) because they were feared....by the whites. The whites did not want to relinquish to the majority vote because they feared what is now happening. They saw what happened in the rest of Africa with communist dictators receiving help from Russia and Gaddafi. 
There was a small group of white police criminals who did kill some black leaders in secret - as many governments do. This came out in the Reconciliation Commission which was held after apartheid.  All the sins of the white regime came out. My brother went to prison because he refused to help them with poisons. He was called up for military duty and then targeted.  He has bad eyes and was exempted for his eyes but was then recalled and badly illtreated. Most of the JW brothers who served a 3 year sentence were illtreated and still have a police record until today.
Our government was very advanced but one had to play along or find yourself on the fringes of society.  Most whites called the JWs communists because we did not help fight on the borders.  They hated us - traitors. Instead we preached on the borders.  I knew a circuit overseer who worked at the most northern border. The communists were on all our borders and we were fighting wars against them.
My present  husband (married him after the death of my husband) was listening in on the Russians at that time because he had security clearance. SA weaponry (and mine-proof vehicles ) were exported all over the world and also to America. I think Sadam used our long range guns in the first Iraq war. he had bought them years earlier.  We had the atom bomb but this was dismantled before the government was given over to the ANC when majority vote brought in Mandela as president. My daughter survived a full day operation for cancer at age of 9 months.  Our heart surgery etc was tops.  Infrastructure was excellent and houses (albeit smaller houses) were built for the black people in their townships.  But their population was exploding and we could not keep up with providing minimal cost housing.  Shanty towns existed and the crime rate was high there. Unfortunately - the situation is now 100 times worse because the present ANC government has stolen S Africa bare (all the money in overseas private accounts) and very little infrastructure was replaced or built and government housing was not provided. 
Now the opposite is happening but on mega scale. Reversed racism which has godless spiritism to fire the zeal for killing. The new generation which is now 22 years old (born after apartheid) still blame apartheid or whites for everything that goes wrong even though they never lived under apartheid.  Whites still pay most of the taxes and have to give 51% percent of their business to a black owner otherwise they cannot get any contracts and by law they have to employ black people - even if they do not have the skills..... so many businesses fail due to this.
Whites cannot get in at universities now (very hard) but a 30 percent pass rate has produced people who cannot do the job.  So university is worthless. SA qualifications are worth nothing any longer.  My one brother who has 5 degrees refused to teach at the university after he closed up his engineering business. He was afraid to sign off on jobs which BEE built because he was afraid he would go to prison for shoddy work which he was not responsible for.  He has been retired for 22 years. He was a member of the American engineering Society. he only does consulting work for free.
Before becoming a JW, I was glad I was white because our education was very good and discipline in our schools were very high.  University standards were very high when I was there.  I was privileged due to my skin color.... just by luck of birth. Now schools are mixed and terrible rapes, corruption  etc going on.....
JW education is needed to improve people's lives and to get them to ditch bad practices such as spiritism.  Unfortunately, this will only happen in the new system.  The brothers in south Africa are tight knit and the love in all congregations abound..... thanks to the education of Jehovah. The racial divide in USA is now getting murderous …… but not yet as bad as in the general population in SA. 
Thought I will give you my opinion. I hope nothing in here is offensive.  It is a very racist country...….. on both sides of the divide. 
In the schools they are now focusing on the history of the Opium wars - to create a hate for the west and loyalty to CCP.

God is incompetent is what you are saying—his holy spirit incapable of motivating peope to do his will.
Really?

God is incompetent is what you are saying—his holy spirit incapable of motivating peope to do his will.
Really?

You can’t “compare” because you don’t anything about the first topic, and you appear to think it is a sin to find out.. So how are you going to “compare?” You wouldn’t even know that Eastern culture emphasizes group if I hadn’t had said so. 
Your knowledge of the first topic is zilch, and your knowledge of the second is so tainted by childish petulance and manifest ill-will that it is not far from zilch. So I (and probably I can speak for @Arauna, too) don’t appreciate being summoned before a master of ceremonies who doesn’t know anything.
It was a trolling comment when you put it on @JW Insider’s  thread, where it had absolutely no place and was just inserted to insult people who hold to your old faith. Rebuked for putting it there, you now put it here? Do it without involving Aruana and me, for your zero knowledge of the “worldly politics” you wish to compare  doesn’t increase just because you have entered a different room.

You can’t “compare” because you don’t anything about the first topic, and you appear to think it is a sin to find out.. So how are you going to “compare?” You wouldn’t even know that Eastern culture emphasizes group if I hadn’t had said so. 
Your knowledge of the first topic is zilch, and your knowledge of the second is so tainted by childish petulance and manifest ill-will that it is not far from zilch. So I (and probably I can speak for @Arauna, too) don’t appreciate being summoned before a master of ceremonies who doesn’t know anything.
It was a trolling comment when you put it on @JW Insider’s  thread, where it had absolutely no place and was just inserted to insult people who hold to your old faith. Rebuked for putting it there, you now put it here? Do it without involving Aruana and me, for your zero knowledge of the “worldly politics” you wish to compare  doesn’t increase just because you have entered a different room.

Chivchalov made a similar point about Russia. ‘Why doesn’t the outcry of human rights organizations have more effect to alleviate the persecution of our people?” I asked him. “Because they [Russian human rights people] are too few, and besides, Russia views human rights organizations as largely a tool of Western meddling, he said.
In the end, these have the most credibility to us, and from this one may extrapolate into situations not involving JWs. Any other testimony from any other source is subject to revisionists claiming it was faked or skewed or misleading or incomplete—it may or may not be true—but with JWs that will not be the case. Why? Essentially, it is because we know the integrity of our people. We know that when they tell of what happened to them, it happened to them. We know of their indifference to politics. We know how they interact with the governments of whatever country they are in: “Find out what the king wants for social order, and then do it. That way, he will leave us in peace to worship God.” Witnesses don’t care about changing the government, and everyone knows it.
For the most part, this works well in all countries except for authoritarian ones. “We are not in America,” the cops told our brothers while beating them.” (I think it was in Surgut) When our own human rights are treated with such disdain, I can accept that it happens to others, even if political biases may skew reports this way or that.
With regard to communism, I’ve no doubt that human rights groups do not identify with “the good that we are trying to achieve here” and in some cases, have achieved  They focus on “Bill of Rights“ type of human rights—freedom of speech, of worship, of assembly, of press, of protection from search and seizure.” They do not call out the West for manipulative or predatory economic policy. But then, to my knowledge, they don’t do that to the East, either. It is not the type of rights violation that they are into. Maybe they should be, so as to be more “even-handed,” but they don’t. To that extent, I guess it is fair to say that they do have Western leaning. 
‘The group is more important than the individual,‘ is the Eastern mentality going back thousands of years, grounded in Confucianism. The individual rights, even needs, are subservient to the group in such a culture. In the West, it has been the opposite—rights and needs of the individual override that of the group—and human rights groups identify with the latter orientation

Chivchalov made a similar point about Russia. ‘Why doesn’t the outcry of human rights organizations have more effect to alleviate the persecution of our people?” I asked him. “Because they [Russian human rights people] are too few, and besides, Russia views human rights organizations as largely a tool of Western meddling, he said.
In the end, these have the most credibility to us, and from this one may extrapolate into situations not involving JWs. Any other testimony from any other source is subject to revisionists claiming it was faked or skewed or misleading or incomplete—it may or may not be true—but with JWs that will not be the case. Why? Essentially, it is because we know the integrity of our people. We know that when they tell of what happened to them, it happened to them. We know of their indifference to politics. We know how they interact with the governments of whatever country they are in: “Find out what the king wants for social order, and then do it. That way, he will leave us in peace to worship God.” Witnesses don’t care about changing the government, and everyone knows it.
For the most part, this works well in all countries except for authoritarian ones. “We are not in America,” the cops told our brothers while beating them.” (I think it was in Surgut) When our own human rights are treated with such disdain, I can accept that it happens to others, even if political biases may skew reports this way or that.
With regard to communism, I’ve no doubt that human rights groups do not identify with “the good that we are trying to achieve here” and in some cases, have achieved  They focus on “Bill of Rights“ type of human rights—freedom of speech, of worship, of assembly, of press, of protection from search and seizure.” They do not call out the West for manipulative or predatory economic policy. But then, to my knowledge, they don’t do that to the East, either. It is not the type of rights violation that they are into. Maybe they should be, so as to be more “even-handed,” but they don’t. To that extent, I guess it is fair to say that they do have Western leaning. 
‘The group is more important than the individual,‘ is the Eastern mentality going back thousands of years, grounded in Confucianism. The individual rights, even needs, are subservient to the group in such a culture. In the West, it has been the opposite—rights and needs of the individual override that of the group—and human rights groups identify with the latter orientation

Here it is: Bart Ehrman’s Heaven and Hell—Any JW Could Have Written This
Okay, start by walking it back. They couldn’t. Not all of it. But the gist of it they could, and that is a claim that few others can make.
When I read Bart’s contribution to Time Magazine, it was as though I was reading the Watchtower! The occasion is the release of his latest book Heaven and Hell, (he has over 30!) in which he speaks in absolute agreement about topics that Jehovah’s Witnesses know well—and have known well for over 100 years—topics such as soul, psyche, Sheol, Gehenna, notions of heaven, and notions of hell. 
A very few of his paragraphs wouldn’t fit—mostly the ones that are muddled. But for the most part, the content of his book is very very familiar. It is so familiar that I even begin to float the notion that he keeps up with Watchtower publications—the writers there are far and away the most vocal proponents of the ideas he has picked up on—some might say the only proponents.
Not that he would accept the Watchtower as a source in itself, I don’t think. But what I can easily picture is him keeping abreast of their writing and the explanations that only they have, then tracing it back to original sources, whereupon he verifies it all and presents it as though his own research—which it would be, minus the credit for who put him on the right track in the first place. 
Okay, okay—maybe he’s not ripping off their work. Probably he is not. He is a respected scholar, after all. But in that case, the scholarship of the Watchtower must be elevated, for it is the same—and their critics generally assume that they have none.
Take a few excerpts of Erhman’s article:
Neither Jesus, nor the Hebrew Bible he interpreted, endorsed the view that departed souls go to paradise or everlasting pain.
Unlike most Greeks, ancient Jews traditionally did not believe the soul could exist at all apart from the body. On the contrary, for them, the soul was more like the “breath.” The first human God created, Adam, began as a lump of clay; then God “breathed” life into him (Genesis 2: 7). Adam remained alive until he stopped breathing. Then it was dust to dust, ashes to ashes... When we stop breathing, our breath doesn’t go anywhere. It just stops. So too the “soul” doesn’t continue on outside the body, subject to postmortem pleasure or pain. It doesn’t exist any longer.
The Hebrew Bible itself assumes that the dead are simply dead—that their body lies in the grave, and there is no consciousness, ever again. It is true that some poetic authors, for example in the Psalms, use the mysterious term “Sheol” to describe a person’s new location. But in most instances Sheol is simply a synonym for “tomb” or “grave.” It’s not a place where someone actually goes.
and later: 
Most people today would be surprised to learn that Jesus believed in a bodily eternal life here on earth, instead of eternal bliss for souls, but even more that he did not believe in hell as a place of eternal torment.
In traditional English versions, he does occasionally seem to speak of “Hell” – for example, in his warnings in the Sermon on the Mount: anyone who calls another a fool, or who allows their right eye or hand to sin, will be cast into “hell” (Matthew 5:22, 29-30). But these passages are not actually referring to “hell.” The word Jesus uses is “Gehenna.” The term does not refer to a place of eternal torment but to a notorious valley just outside the walls of Jerusalem, believed by many Jews at the time to be the most unholy, god-forsaken place on earth. It was where, according to the Old Testament, ancient Israelites practiced child sacrifice to foreign gods. The God of Israel had condemned and forsaken the place.
In the ancient world (whether Greek, Roman, or Jewish), the worst punishment a person could experience after death was to be denied a decent burial. Jesus developed this view into a repugnant scenario: corpses of those excluded from the kingdom would be unceremoniously tossed into the most desecrated dumping ground on the planet. Jesus did not say souls would be tortured there. They simply would no longer exist.”
Anyone who knows anything about Jehovah’s Witnesses knows that these are exactly their views. Is Bart just taking our stuff? No—it can’t be—I wouldn’t make the charge. But I can be forgiven the suspicion. Do a search on any of these terms at JW.org and you will find what he now says. Maybe it is simply basic research that any decent scholar could uncover, as Bart has, but in that case it is all the more damning for the world of churches. Not only do they make no mention of these things, but they consider most of them heresies.
Witnesses were there before he was born. He can’t not know it. When I search his own blog (which I am jealous of—he has a good gig going, and I like the platform), virtually nothing about Jehovah’s Witnesses comes up, apart from a post about the name Jehovah itself, in which he misses entirely the import of God having a name rather than a title, to focus on its Latin letters, and thus declaring it false. I found nothing else beyond a few brief, usually derogatory comments from contributors, to which he typically would answer that he is not very familiar with it.
Nobody espouses on these ‘afterlife’ views of his like Jehovah’s Witnesses, and apart from them almost nobody else does—and yet he never mentions Witnesses. This seems parallel to when Ronald Sider suggests four reforms that he thinks would solve the problems of the evangelical church (that they don’t practice what the preach), stating that nobody implements these reforms, and ignoring completely that Jehovah’s Witnesses do, and that yes, they do go a long way in solving the problem he has identified. 
“Most people today would be surprised to learn that Jesus believed in a bodily eternal life here on earth, instead of eternal bliss for souls, but even more that he did not believe in hell as a place of eternal torment.” says Bart.
We’ve taught this for 100 years and, yes, they are surprised. Why? Because such things were never taught at church. Instead, the near-universal teaching of church Christianity is that when you die, you go to heaven if you were good, and hell if you were bad. That is what just about everyone of church background thought before becoming a Witness. I have said before that, given the universality of the heaven/hell teaching, you would almost expect it to be on every other page of the Bible. Instead, apart from a handful of verses that can be tortured for that meaning, it is never encountered. It is among the reasons that, on becoming Witnesses, people are wont to say that they have “come into the truth.” The explanations are so simple. The Bible comes together and makes sense. After all, if God wanted persons in heaven, why didn’t he put them there in the first place?
“There are over two billion Christians in the world, the vast majority of whom believe in heaven and hell. You die and your soul goes either to everlasting bliss or torment (or purgatory en route). ...The vast majority of these people naturally assume this is what Jesus himself taught.” states Bart.
Yes, of course they would assume it. Most church teachings—people simply assume that they are to be found in the Bible. For many, the you-know-what hits the fan when they discover that they are not. From this arises the saying among Witnesses, not heard so often as it once was, that new ones ought to be locked up for six months until their zeal is tempered with common sense.
There was a pesty fellow who used to challenge me a lot on trinity and other church teachings. One day he sent me a video of “4 famous church leaders“ hubbubing in conference, in which he said they acknowledged that everlasting life on earth was the actual Bible hope—it wasn’t just JWs who taught it. I couldn’t get far into it—it was just too smarmy. I told him I’d take his word for it. Though these leaders knew and discussed the actual role of the earth as our permanent home, the problem was “Bible illiteracy” among the masses, he said. 
If the problem is Bible literacy among the masses, I replied, why don’t they fix it? Isn’t that their job as leaders? Ones taking the lead in our faith manage to keep people on the same page.
So what to do with Bart? Is he taking our stuff? Nah—I guess not. If the four famous church leaders knew things that they hadn’t bothered to tell the masses, maybe it is out there for Bart to find as well. I have not been especially kind to him in previous posts, and maybe I should walk some of it back. He presents as though an agnostic/atheist in his Great Courses lecture series and annoys me on that account. I’ve written about ten posts, none of them kind, with several more in the hopper that I may or may not ever get to, and I may have to rethink some of them. Fortunately, I have already made it clear that nothing is personal—it is ideas that you squabble with, not the persons who have them, who are more-or-less interchangeable placeholders.
But he had better be careful. He joins the ranks of people like Bruce Speiss, Jason Beduhn, Joel Engardio, and Gunnar Samuelson, who write something that squares with JW beliefs, and spend the rest of their days on earth denying that they are one of them. Occasionally, they must even issue statements to the effect of  “Look, I'm not one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. I don’t agree with Jehovah’s Witnesses. I don’t even like Jehovah’s Witnesses.” But it’s too late! The damage has been done! Sigh....what's a scholar to do? Agreeing with Jehovah’s Witnesses is detrimental to one’s career, and yet Jehovah’s Witnesses are right on so many things. And the things they're right about, they have been saying for a long time, so it’s embarrassing for cutting edge scholars to endorse what the JWs, for the most part unscholarly and ordinary folk, have long maintained.
Fortunately (or unfortunately) he veers aside frequently enough so people may not make the mistake. Such as:
“Some thinkers came up with a solution [shortly before Christ] that explained how God would bring about justice... This new idea maintained that there are evil forces in the world aligned against God and determined to afflict his people. Even though God is the ultimate ruler over all, he has temporarily relinquished control of this world for some mysterious reason. But the forces of evil have little time left. God is soon to intervene in earthly affairs to destroy everything and everyone that opposes him and to bring in a new realm for his true followers, a Kingdom of God, a paradise on earth. Most important, this new earthly kingdom will come not only to those alive at the time, but also to those who have died. Indeed, God will breathe life back into the dead, restoring them to an earthly existence.” (italics and bolded text mine. “Some mysterious reason”—he doesn’t know that?! after nailing it on so many other points!)
Not to mention his muddled:
“And God will bring all the dead back to life, not just the righteous. The multitude who had been opposed to God will also be raised, but for a different reason: to see the errors of their ways and be judged. Once they are shocked and filled with regret – but too late — they will permanently be wiped out of existence.” Sigh...it is as Anthony Morris said: “Just stick with publications of the slave, and you will be alright.” The moment he goes “off-script” he comes up with some half-baked “nah nah—told ya so!” diatribe from his born-again days that he grew out of (and they do not look upon him kindly for that reason).
One of my own chums pulled me back from the edge, just as I was about to go apoplectic and accuse Bart of plagiarizing us: “I don't think all of this is that new to Bart Ehrman. I caught some of this on his site. But I had never noticed before, that he now sees Jesus' actual words in pretty much the same sense that JWs believe,” he said. He had spent the few dollars to subscribe to the Bart site for a month, so as to ask a question or two. I read some of the Bart site, and he makes a better impression on me there than he does as Great Courses lecturer.
My chum said of our own work and of Bart’s: “I think that the Watchtower (Bible Students and JWs) have done an enormous service to the religious world by "putting out the fires of hell." It has taken the last 100 years, but I believe that there are a lot of churches where the Watchtower has provided a strong influence so that those churches and their teachers are not so likely to emphasize the teachings that make God seem like a monster. For good or bad Ehrman does have influence, especially on new students, and this last book might even help a bit in opening up some opportunities for our own work.”
Odd “allies” we may yet become.
...
It may be that one should take a new look at Time Magazine, as well. I subscribed to Time a little over two years ago, enticed by an absurdly low rate, with the thought I would cancel when the auto-renewal hit. When it hit, I did cancel, because the magazine—once a powerhouse, but now upstaged amidst the digital revolution, seemed no more than “same-old same-old” to me. Nothing wrong with it, but neither was it unique. My curiosity had been peaked by the low subscription rate. 
I now think super low rate was because a sale was pending, and they wanted to enhance whatever subscriber base they still had to pretty it up for purchase. Mark Benoif has bought it, he who is the Salesforce company founder—a guy worth 6 billion, I am told. He joins Jeff Bezos who bought the Washington Post, and Lourene Jobs (widow of Steve) who bought a majority stake in Atlantic.
Not sure how the new owners will change the brands they bought, however I can’t picture this Ehrman piece in the old Time (or in fact, anywhere). This may be evidence that it is no longer “same-old same old.” In an effort to compete, these outlets may be going places that they have never gone before.

Bart comes from an evangelical background. In his blog, he speaks rather poignantly of tragically losing his faith, something that happened once he began to examine the Bible through “critical thinking.” 
He never had a firm foundation to stand on. I would lose my faith, too, if I had to uphold all the nonsense that is part and parcel of church teaching. One can almost feel sorry for him—but one does not, because he does not feel sorry for himself. He has a good gig going—top selling author, nifty website with a paywall that donates to charity, a reputation that prompts the Great Courses Lecture series to engage him as a professor, chair of a university religion department, where he destroys the faith of his students—but since it was founded mostly on the doctrines of churches, it was barely defensible in the first place. No, he has a good gig. Nobody has asked me to chair a Great Courses series, nor (I assume) you.
If not atheist, he certainly is hard-agnostic, unless he has had a recent change of heart. I often wonder what would have happened if those now atheist had been presented accurate Christian teachings first—would they have gone atheist in that case? A naive me once assumed that the answer would be no. 
Sometimes it does work that way, but these are crazy times, and if you keep up with atheists, you find that they are likely to detest JWs most of all! It does not help that JWs have “accurate” Bible teachings. The allure of breaking free from any “control” is just too enticing to be countered by a fresh look at Bible teachings. There is no way that those on the “cramped and narrow road” are not going to be derided as “cult” members by those on the broad and spacious one. This is so predictable that I kick myself for not having predicted it long before—it is so obvious. 
To break free of “control” holds irresistible appeal today, and the atheists add (and even put foremost) those who would claim to represent God, as our brothers do, “controlling “ people by that means.. So, to them, JWs are the worst of the lot, because most churches have watered down “speaking in God’s name” to “God works in mysterious ways,” and have pretty much learned to roll with whatever happens, being content to add a smiling “God” emoji to events. Most have made their peace with the world—they seek to hopefully modify it for the better, and think the view of JWs far too extreme—even “murderous”—that God means to replace it. 
I see happening in these threads that 4Jah hopes I will comment on—but I probably won’t because they are “same-old same-old,” and few, if anyone, had written on the topic more that me, it forming a significant portion of ‘TrueTom vs the Apostates’—I see arguments included that are irrelevant to the topic of concern, such as how various ex-JWs strive to present the picture that obedience “to men” is essential if you are a JW, how they are under enormous pressure always from top leaders, and how JWs terrify children with expectations of Armaggedon. (How about when Newsweek surveys the world scene, and presents the magazine cover “What the *@#! Is Next?” I countered.)
The “obedience” that JWs are expected to render is no more than following directions of the teacher, the coach, the mentor, the employer, the counselor, the traffic cop—something that was once the most unremarkable thing in the world, but is now presented as selling out one’s soul. JWs have not changed—the world has. One may look no farther than it’s collective response to Covid 19 to see what chaos follows. Mark Benioff, the Salesforce founder, the fellow who purchased Time Magazine, has stated that if everyone had masked up for just three weeks, the virus would have been defeated. Of course, this is what JWs have done, because being obedient to authority is not an issue for them, but the illness is out of control today because the world ridicules obedience and challenges the authority of any who would advance it. The very first sign that this would escalate to disaster occurred very early on—when toilet paper sold out, despite knowledge that the virus doesn’t hit people that way. I told Hassan, the CultExpert, he of the “FreedomofMind” hashtag, that my people have behaved far more responsibly than his—you don’t think some will use their “freedom of mind” to tell the government where they can go with their “rules?”
It doesn’t matter if the world’s obsession with “independence” ends in disaster—as it surely will—as it is with Covid 19. To be free of “control” is just too strong a pull. Those on the broad and spacious road—that’s what makes it broad and spacious, ones on it listen to no one but themselves—will invariably present those on the cramped and narrow road as manipulated by a cult.

Here it is: Bart Ehrman’s Heaven and Hell—Any JW Could Have Written This
Okay, start by walking it back. They couldn’t. Not all of it. But the gist of it they could, and that is a claim that few others can make.
When I read Bart’s contribution to Time Magazine, it was as though I was reading the Watchtower! The occasion is the release of his latest book Heaven and Hell, (he has over 30!) in which he speaks in absolute agreement about topics that Jehovah’s Witnesses know well—and have known well for over 100 years—topics such as soul, psyche, Sheol, Gehenna, notions of heaven, and notions of hell. 
A very few of his paragraphs wouldn’t fit—mostly the ones that are muddled. But for the most part, the content of his book is very very familiar. It is so familiar that I even begin to float the notion that he keeps up with Watchtower publications—the writers there are far and away the most vocal proponents of the ideas he has picked up on—some might say the only proponents.
Not that he would accept the Watchtower as a source in itself, I don’t think. But what I can easily picture is him keeping abreast of their writing and the explanations that only they have, then tracing it back to original sources, whereupon he verifies it all and presents it as though his own research—which it would be, minus the credit for who put him on the right track in the first place. 
Okay, okay—maybe he’s not ripping off their work. Probably he is not. He is a respected scholar, after all. But in that case, the scholarship of the Watchtower must be elevated, for it is the same—and their critics generally assume that they have none.
Take a few excerpts of Erhman’s article:
Neither Jesus, nor the Hebrew Bible he interpreted, endorsed the view that departed souls go to paradise or everlasting pain.
Unlike most Greeks, ancient Jews traditionally did not believe the soul could exist at all apart from the body. On the contrary, for them, the soul was more like the “breath.” The first human God created, Adam, began as a lump of clay; then God “breathed” life into him (Genesis 2: 7). Adam remained alive until he stopped breathing. Then it was dust to dust, ashes to ashes... When we stop breathing, our breath doesn’t go anywhere. It just stops. So too the “soul” doesn’t continue on outside the body, subject to postmortem pleasure or pain. It doesn’t exist any longer.
The Hebrew Bible itself assumes that the dead are simply dead—that their body lies in the grave, and there is no consciousness, ever again. It is true that some poetic authors, for example in the Psalms, use the mysterious term “Sheol” to describe a person’s new location. But in most instances Sheol is simply a synonym for “tomb” or “grave.” It’s not a place where someone actually goes.
and later: 
Most people today would be surprised to learn that Jesus believed in a bodily eternal life here on earth, instead of eternal bliss for souls, but even more that he did not believe in hell as a place of eternal torment.
In traditional English versions, he does occasionally seem to speak of “Hell” – for example, in his warnings in the Sermon on the Mount: anyone who calls another a fool, or who allows their right eye or hand to sin, will be cast into “hell” (Matthew 5:22, 29-30). But these passages are not actually referring to “hell.” The word Jesus uses is “Gehenna.” The term does not refer to a place of eternal torment but to a notorious valley just outside the walls of Jerusalem, believed by many Jews at the time to be the most unholy, god-forsaken place on earth. It was where, according to the Old Testament, ancient Israelites practiced child sacrifice to foreign gods. The God of Israel had condemned and forsaken the place.
In the ancient world (whether Greek, Roman, or Jewish), the worst punishment a person could experience after death was to be denied a decent burial. Jesus developed this view into a repugnant scenario: corpses of those excluded from the kingdom would be unceremoniously tossed into the most desecrated dumping ground on the planet. Jesus did not say souls would be tortured there. They simply would no longer exist.”
Anyone who knows anything about Jehovah’s Witnesses knows that these are exactly their views. Is Bart just taking our stuff? No—it can’t be—I wouldn’t make the charge. But I can be forgiven the suspicion. Do a search on any of these terms at JW.org and you will find what he now says. Maybe it is simply basic research that any decent scholar could uncover, as Bart has, but in that case it is all the more damning for the world of churches. Not only do they make no mention of these things, but they consider most of them heresies.
Witnesses were there before he was born. He can’t not know it. When I search his own blog (which I am jealous of—he has a good gig going, and I like the platform), virtually nothing about Jehovah’s Witnesses comes up, apart from a post about the name Jehovah itself, in which he misses entirely the import of God having a name rather than a title, to focus on its Latin letters, and thus declaring it false. I found nothing else beyond a few brief, usually derogatory comments from contributors, to which he typically would answer that he is not very familiar with it.
Nobody espouses on these ‘afterlife’ views of his like Jehovah’s Witnesses, and apart from them almost nobody else does—and yet he never mentions Witnesses. This seems parallel to when Ronald Sider suggests four reforms that he thinks would solve the problems of the evangelical church (that they don’t practice what the preach), stating that nobody implements these reforms, and ignoring completely that Jehovah’s Witnesses do, and that yes, they do go a long way in solving the problem he has identified. 
“Most people today would be surprised to learn that Jesus believed in a bodily eternal life here on earth, instead of eternal bliss for souls, but even more that he did not believe in hell as a place of eternal torment.” says Bart.
We’ve taught this for 100 years and, yes, they are surprised. Why? Because such things were never taught at church. Instead, the near-universal teaching of church Christianity is that when you die, you go to heaven if you were good, and hell if you were bad. That is what just about everyone of church background thought before becoming a Witness. I have said before that, given the universality of the heaven/hell teaching, you would almost expect it to be on every other page of the Bible. Instead, apart from a handful of verses that can be tortured for that meaning, it is never encountered. It is among the reasons that, on becoming Witnesses, people are wont to say that they have “come into the truth.” The explanations are so simple. The Bible comes together and makes sense. After all, if God wanted persons in heaven, why didn’t he put them there in the first place?
“There are over two billion Christians in the world, the vast majority of whom believe in heaven and hell. You die and your soul goes either to everlasting bliss or torment (or purgatory en route). ...The vast majority of these people naturally assume this is what Jesus himself taught.” states Bart.
Yes, of course they would assume it. Most church teachings—people simply assume that they are to be found in the Bible. For many, the you-know-what hits the fan when they discover that they are not. From this arises the saying among Witnesses, not heard so often as it once was, that new ones ought to be locked up for six months until their zeal is tempered with common sense.
There was a pesty fellow who used to challenge me a lot on trinity and other church teachings. One day he sent me a video of “4 famous church leaders“ hubbubing in conference, in which he said they acknowledged that everlasting life on earth was the actual Bible hope—it wasn’t just JWs who taught it. I couldn’t get far into it—it was just too smarmy. I told him I’d take his word for it. Though these leaders knew and discussed the actual role of the earth as our permanent home, the problem was “Bible illiteracy” among the masses, he said. 
If the problem is Bible literacy among the masses, I replied, why don’t they fix it? Isn’t that their job as leaders? Ones taking the lead in our faith manage to keep people on the same page.
So what to do with Bart? Is he taking our stuff? Nah—I guess not. If the four famous church leaders knew things that they hadn’t bothered to tell the masses, maybe it is out there for Bart to find as well. I have not been especially kind to him in previous posts, and maybe I should walk some of it back. He presents as though an agnostic/atheist in his Great Courses lecture series and annoys me on that account. I’ve written about ten posts, none of them kind, with several more in the hopper that I may or may not ever get to, and I may have to rethink some of them. Fortunately, I have already made it clear that nothing is personal—it is ideas that you squabble with, not the persons who have them, who are more-or-less interchangeable placeholders.
But he had better be careful. He joins the ranks of people like Bruce Speiss, Jason Beduhn, Joel Engardio, and Gunnar Samuelson, who write something that squares with JW beliefs, and spend the rest of their days on earth denying that they are one of them. Occasionally, they must even issue statements to the effect of  “Look, I'm not one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. I don’t agree with Jehovah’s Witnesses. I don’t even like Jehovah’s Witnesses.” But it’s too late! The damage has been done! Sigh....what's a scholar to do? Agreeing with Jehovah’s Witnesses is detrimental to one’s career, and yet Jehovah’s Witnesses are right on so many things. And the things they're right about, they have been saying for a long time, so it’s embarrassing for cutting edge scholars to endorse what the JWs, for the most part unscholarly and ordinary folk, have long maintained.
Fortunately (or unfortunately) he veers aside frequently enough so people may not make the mistake. Such as:
“Some thinkers came up with a solution [shortly before Christ] that explained how God would bring about justice... This new idea maintained that there are evil forces in the world aligned against God and determined to afflict his people. Even though God is the ultimate ruler over all, he has temporarily relinquished control of this world for some mysterious reason. But the forces of evil have little time left. God is soon to intervene in earthly affairs to destroy everything and everyone that opposes him and to bring in a new realm for his true followers, a Kingdom of God, a paradise on earth. Most important, this new earthly kingdom will come not only to those alive at the time, but also to those who have died. Indeed, God will breathe life back into the dead, restoring them to an earthly existence.” (italics and bolded text mine. “Some mysterious reason”—he doesn’t know that?! after nailing it on so many other points!)
Not to mention his muddled:
“And God will bring all the dead back to life, not just the righteous. The multitude who had been opposed to God will also be raised, but for a different reason: to see the errors of their ways and be judged. Once they are shocked and filled with regret – but too late — they will permanently be wiped out of existence.” Sigh...it is as Anthony Morris said: “Just stick with publications of the slave, and you will be alright.” The moment he goes “off-script” he comes up with some half-baked “nah nah—told ya so!” diatribe from his born-again days that he grew out of (and they do not look upon him kindly for that reason).
One of my own chums pulled me back from the edge, just as I was about to go apoplectic and accuse Bart of plagiarizing us: “I don't think all of this is that new to Bart Ehrman. I caught some of this on his site. But I had never noticed before, that he now sees Jesus' actual words in pretty much the same sense that JWs believe,” he said. He had spent the few dollars to subscribe to the Bart site for a month, so as to ask a question or two. I read some of the Bart site, and he makes a better impression on me there than he does as Great Courses lecturer.
My chum said of our own work and of Bart’s: “I think that the Watchtower (Bible Students and JWs) have done an enormous service to the religious world by "putting out the fires of hell." It has taken the last 100 years, but I believe that there are a lot of churches where the Watchtower has provided a strong influence so that those churches and their teachers are not so likely to emphasize the teachings that make God seem like a monster. For good or bad Ehrman does have influence, especially on new students, and this last book might even help a bit in opening up some opportunities for our own work.”
Odd “allies” we may yet become.
...
It may be that one should take a new look at Time Magazine, as well. I subscribed to Time a little over two years ago, enticed by an absurdly low rate, with the thought I would cancel when the auto-renewal hit. When it hit, I did cancel, because the magazine—once a powerhouse, but now upstaged amidst the digital revolution, seemed no more than “same-old same-old” to me. Nothing wrong with it, but neither was it unique. My curiosity had been peaked by the low subscription rate. 
I now think super low rate was because a sale was pending, and they wanted to enhance whatever subscriber base they still had to pretty it up for purchase. Mark Benoif has bought it, he who is the Salesforce company founder—a guy worth 6 billion, I am told. He joins Jeff Bezos who bought the Washington Post, and Lourene Jobs (widow of Steve) who bought a majority stake in Atlantic.
Not sure how the new owners will change the brands they bought, however I can’t picture this Ehrman piece in the old Time (or in fact, anywhere). This may be evidence that it is no longer “same-old same old.” In an effort to compete, these outlets may be going places that they have never gone before.

Will JWs religious activity ever return to normal?
What normal? I think we are having a ball if we are honest!
I have never had so much time for spiritual matters.....Prayer!.... Personal study!.... Meetings where I can see EVERYONE in attendance!........All my calls are on interested people!..........  And I have only filled my fuel tank 3 times in the last 6 months!..........If this is ABnormal.....I'll take it any time!

We in NewZeland as of today from 12 miday are returning to Lock down 4 as for new outbreak of COvid 19, we be in for a longer haul .The video meeting has increased atanded and from local and cross section of congregations.

A favorite line, when trying to distance ourselves from the 24-hour days-of-creation people, has been to point out that “we are not the religionists that put dinosaurs on the Kentucky ark.”
I heard via social media report that the Kentucky ark was suffering a devastating decline in tickets sales. I responded that this was a problem in the original ark, too—tickets sold out after just eight were purchased.
My wife and I once stayed at a Best Western in Cincinnati, a last minute change of destination because our original one was beset by hurricane. The next morning in the breakfast room, nearly everyone was headed out for a day at the Ark, most of them with kids in tow. We did not go, of course, but saw some other sights of the city. Animal-wise, we went to the Cincinnati zoo, where I learned that was the zoo at which a boy fell into the gorilla enclosure, prompting the gorilla to be shot to death. They had a little memorial to Harambe there. I am not sure why, but a top ten list for ‘best zoos in the country’ includes three from Ohio—Cincinnati, Columbus, and Toledo.