xjwsforChrist

I believe Christianity started off as a cult.

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To fear me is to love me....

I disagree with you Char, based on this and many other scriptures





Loz x

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"This is my son. LISTEN to Him!"

I can, in terms of this forum, know and state that Shelby doesn't, nor ever did, tell lies here.

Loz x

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"This is my son. LISTEN to Him!"

Well, no, with respect, actually, you can't, not in respect of posts she has made based on her private correspondence with another member, nor in respect of posts she has made based on her own personal experiences.

That you trust and believe her is one thing, and lovely of you, but it says nothing at all about Shelby's veracity, merely about your trust of her.

For the record, I am finding it highly offensive to be judged on the basis of being an exJW, as if none of us have moved on, used our intellectual skills and our spirituality so as to know where we stand now, what we believe and know, and why. It's patronising, insulting and incorrect.

This has been pointed out time and time again, over and over, and still it is being repeated as if it is relative, and true. It isn't.

Loz x

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"This is my son. LISTEN to Him!"

Well, that's ok, Loz. I didn't expect otherwise.

To my mind your quoted passage above doesn't say what it says to you at all.

Why don't we agree to disagree there? I'm a Catholic, I suspect you wouldn't be a Catholic for love nor money, so there it is. Wisdom and understanding do not even come close to meaning full understanding of God, as far as I can see.

Let's leave it. There's no future in the discussion.

Wrong again. My confidence in Shelby's credibility here, even if I doubted it, which I don't, is attested to by Christ, to me personally.

Loz x

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"This is my son. LISTEN to Him!"

I'm sure you do, Loz. Fortunately, not by me. I'm not judging you at all. It's not my way. There are people on this forum, which is not as single-minded as some would have us believe, who know me better than that.

Well, there you are. Nothing to say to that. I don't know your personal prayer life any more than you know mine. I am not arguing with you, Loz. Not at all.

Yes, it did/was viewed as such.

And that is a very valid concern and point.
Of course, on the flip side, we shouldn't judge others based on them being ex-anything's or even current anythings because, while we can and shoudl judge the actions of others, we are not qualified to judge their faith or beliefs.
So, because a person may be a member of a Christian denomination we may have concerns about, we should NOT think that those concerns apply to them as individuals.

You can't give someone the benefit of the doubt and then also go on for paragraphs being sarcastic in implying that they are lying. (surely, not... oh my... no you couldn't be lying, could you?) That is actually the opposite of the benefit of the doubt. I am sure you will be completely 'who me' innocent on this, but while you may be fooling some, you are not fooling me.


For the record... Catholics DO have their own bible. The Catholic bible has more books in it than the generally accepted bibles. I buy a bible in the book store, it will be different than the bible that my son brought home in his elementary catholic school.

I don't have a problem with them having different books in their version of the bible... I have not read them all, and I am sure there are plenty of books that should have been made available to people. It is the protestants who rejected those as canon (though still beneficial to read as some of them outline some Jewish history) But it is no lie to say that they have their own bible. Their version is the only one they distribute at their schools; I'm going to assume it is the one that they have in their churches. It is not the one that I buy in the book store... unless there is a catholic bible specifically set aside.


Peace,
tammy

It should be noted that the majority of translations are based on the original catholic bible and that the differences are the "apocryphal" books that reformists dismissed.

The most up-to-date catholic translation is the NRSV, IIRC.

Oh! Well, that's not what I understood was being said. I thought it was a translation that was being referred to.

To be exactly accurate, the Catholic Church does not have its own Bible. It has the bible, which consists of a collection of documents deemed without doubt to be worthy of regard as Holy Scipture.

At the time of the Reformation, the newly emerging Protestant sects, breaking away from the Church of the 1500 years since Jesus, rejected some of those documents in full and others in part, and so their version of the Bible is more limited and doesn't contain all of Daniel.

The books contained in the full Bible are Tobias, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, First and Second Maccabees - and parts of Esther (10:14 to 16:14) and Daniel (3:24- 90; 13; 14). Some Episcopalian churches do recognise these books as Scriptural but publish them separately in the Apocrypha. They don't say they are false. They say there is some doubt as to whether or not they are all true.

Some of the doctrines, such as purgatory and praying for the dead, that Protestants accuse the Catholic Church of inventing are in fact very ancient, and to be found in those books missing from the newer Protestant Bibles. (Sorry, Paul, when I started writing this post I hadn't realised you had already addressed it, but anyway, this fills in more of the detail.)

The oldest Christian Bible known contains the full Bible, not the expurgated one.

Tammy, please feel free not to answer this if you don't want to, but your statement contained one curious fact. Given the nature of your beliefs, why did you send your son to a Catholic school? You say an elementary school, so he was in his most formative period

I agree, and don't believe I ever have Paul, in fact I've repeatedly clarified that my disapproval of corrupt institutions isn't personal to anyone here at all. On the other hand these critical references to us personally as exJWs or still possessing JW thinking, don't seem to ever be challenged.

Loz x

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"This is my son. LISTEN to Him!"