How a Christmas song would lead me to believe that our 1914 teaching must be right after all.

[TrueTomHarley]

4 minutes ago, xero said:

We're fooling ourselves if we imagine that there will always be tangible external evidence which we can point to and say "See! They rejected the truth!"

Sure. I have no idea who will be saved or not. Nor does it make any difference to my personal responsibility to make known the good news.

[xero]

1 minute ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Sure. I have no idea who will be saved or not. Nor does it make any difference to my personal responsibility to make known the good news.

Your doing so is imperative as you are saving YOURSELF when you do so. You cannot save anyone else.

[TrueTomHarley]

Ha! Right in the title we see how JWI is playing with us all, up to his old tricks of putting the cart before the horse:

How a Christmas song would lead me to beleive that our 1914 teaching must be right after all.

Is it “I before E except after L?” I don’t think so.

[JW Insider]

19 minutes ago, xero said:

Your doing so is imperative as you are saving YOURSELF when you do so. You cannot save anyone else.

Unless you are Timothy:

(1 Timothy 4:16) . . .Persevere in these things, for by doing this you will save both yourself and those who listen to you.

Or Paul?

(1 Corinthians 9:22) ²² To the weak I became weak, in order to gain the weak. I have become all things to people of all sorts, so that I might by all possible means save some.

Or those who declare the good news?

(Romans 10:13-15) . . .. ¹³ For “everyone who calls on the name of Jehovah will be saved.” ¹⁴ However, how will they call on him if they have not put faith in him? How, in turn, will they put faith in him about whom they have not heard? How, in turn, will they hear without someone to preach? ¹⁵ How, in turn, will they preach unless they have been sent out? Just as it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who declare good news of good things!”

Of course, I will agree in advance with the explanation I would expect you could give.

(Romans 14:4-10) ⁴ Who are you to judge the servant of another? To his own master he stands or falls. Indeed, he will be made to stand, for Jehovah can make him stand.. . . ¹⁰ But why do you judge your brother? Or why do you also look down on your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.

[xero]

To me this is why I don't sweat it when someone says that I gave a "bad witness". I try not to, but it's going to happen and happen repeatedly. We all have patterns. I just keep trying and relax while doing so. Straining to me or OCD-like obsessive behavior like somehow I held the life of another person in my hands is spiritual narcissism in my view. The same kind of spiritual narcissism I see in apostates. If the GB screws up, so what? They'll figure out how they screwed up and do better next time. I doesn't change me or my responsibility to take charge and responsibility for my own actions or beliefs. You want to know who's engaging in idolatrous creature-worship? It's apostates. They imagine the organization is equal to Jehovah or Jesus and they aren't. We aren't Catholics with a holy see and a pope. Jehovah may be using the organization, but it's not infallible, nor do they have any urim and thummim. They have the bible, just like the rest of us. It isn't "disrespectful" to take note of that. The path to apostasy in my view is an over-reliance on human organizations as if these were Jehovah or Jesus. Organizations are necessary, but not sufficient. They can't point the way, but we individually have to make decisions. We CAN disagree and make our own conscientious decisions and we should. True that some of us in my view want to ride the coat-tails of others, but eventually they'll be bumped off by time and circumstance to stand on their own biblical legs.

[Arauna]

16 minutes ago, xero said:

comes down to "Do you trust Jehovah or not?"

Or, do you truly believe that jehovah is the only one who can rule the earth successfully.  This entails absolute obedience. 

[xero]

9 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

Unless you are Timothy:

(1 Timothy 4:16) . . .Persevere in these things, for by doing this you will save both yourself and those who listen to you.

Or Paul?

(1 Corinthians 9:22) ²² To the weak I became weak, in order to gain the weak. I have become all things to people of all sorts, so that I might by all possible means save some.

Or those who declare the good news?

(Romans 10:13-15) . . .. ¹³ For “everyone who calls on the name of Jehovah will be saved.” ¹⁴ However, how will they call on him if they have not put faith in him? How, in turn, will they put faith in him about whom they have not heard? How, in turn, will they hear without someone to preach? ¹⁵ How, in turn, will they preach unless they have been sent out? Just as it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who declare good news of good things!”

Of course, I will agree in advance with the explanation I would expect you could give.

(Romans 14:4-10) 4 Who are you to judge the servant of another? To his own master he stands or falls. Indeed, he will be made to stand, for Jehovah can make him stand.. . . ¹⁰ But why do you judge your brother? Or why do you also look down on your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.

 

...he would have better said "provided an OPPORTUNITY to be saved"...

But you know that already.

[Arauna]

16 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

save both yourself and those who listen to you.

This verse does not literaly imply we are saving anyone. It is the action of preaching which saves because it involves the other person to listen and obey. They themselves have to bring of themself to jehovah AFTER we have done our duty out of love. 

However, we should all be careful by our verbal  communications and actions to not be a cause of stumbling.  It is not what goes in but what comes out which defiles us.

[JW Insider]

5 minutes ago, Arauna said:

This verse does not literaly imply we are saving anyone.

This is very true. (I never thought it did, either.) It occurred to me to include the scripture because it's a reference I had in mind when @Anna was speaking of those in Calcutta, for example.

[xero]

14 minutes ago, Arauna said:

This verse does not literaly imply we are saving anyone. It is the action of preaching which saves because it involves the other person to listen and obey. They themselves have to bring of themself to jehovah AFTER we have done our duty out of love. 

However, we should all be careful by our verbal  communications and actions to not be a cause of stumbling.  It is not what goes in but what comes out which defiles us.

Anytime I hear the whiney sound "I was stumbled!" I want to dump a bucket of ice water over that person's head.

[TrueTomHarley]

48 minutes ago, xero said:

To me this is why I don't sweat it when someone says that I gave a "bad witness". I try not to, but it's going to happen and happen repeatedly

From what I hear the local saying is, “Dan has killed his thousands and xero his tens of thousands.”

[xero]

1 minute ago, TrueTomHarley said:

From what I hear the local saying is, “Dan had killed his thousands and xero  his tens of thousands.”

BTW Dan's at Patterson now as legal counsel.