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Breakdown at the Assembly Hall Front Door

Great. Just great. My car breaks down exactly at the door of the Assembly Hall as I am dropping someone off!

The downside? It’s embarrassing!

The upside? (which almost became a downside; it was so frequent) For the next 2 hours, until the tow truck arrived, (trust me on this—it needed a tow) brothers kept coming out to see if I needed help. They are all so nice and I am reminded of my non believing dad 40 years ago at my wedding saying to his own brother, ‘C’mon Joe, let’s go out in the parking lot for a smoke. These people are so nice I can’t stand it.’

Being brothers, many of them took for granted that they could get me going right then and there. I had to explain to each and every one that they couldn’t.

Among brothers, there are always some who really are mechanical. One of them quickly diagnosed the issue. No, it wasn’t the slave cylinder, he said, after diving into the interior and pointing out all the possible culprits, but the master cylinder, since the clutch pedal wouldn’t rise on its own. At 194K the car has a right to misbehave. But the tow truck took so long in coming that I sent someone in to the chairman’s office to say if they needed an afternoon interview for the ‘Exercise Patience’ theme, I was available. The Assembly Hall was then being used for the Regional Convention.

No, it wasn’t all the fault of the towing company. Some of it was the roadside assistance app that couldn’t fathom how Tom Harley could possibly be the same as Thomas Harley and so kept issuing denials of service without explanation. With a person, you could straighten in out in 2 seconds, but in the AI world it is not that way. It is, instead, like when your wife, though she has always been friendly, one day locks you out of the house without the hint of a reason and won’t tell you why other than to say that you should have been paying attention.

And no, I hadn’t waited till the last minute to address the issue. I had been nursing it for a few weeks. Sometimes problems go away on their own. Alas, this one did not.

***Revised, in connection with a discussion of ‘the kingdom of God does not come with striking observableness:’

For me, it does come with striking observableness, in the form of a car that breaks down at the Assembly Hall door. You know you have gone directly from last of the last days to last of the last of the last days, perhaps even last of the last of the last of the last days when your car does that. Cars will break down from time to time, maybe on the way to the grocery store, maybe in the grocery store lot, and one does not draw any spiritual conclusions. Even breaking down in the Assembly Hall lot does not make one ‘see the light.’ But when in breaks down at the Assembly Hall front door, Yes—striking observbleness there, no question.

Then, half of all brothers being gearheads, you must suffer a constant onslaught of people sure they can fix whatever the problem there is right then and there, and you have to painstakingly explain to each one that they cannot. Then, one who really does know his stuff, dives into the interior, sees it isn’t the slave cylinder, but the master cylinder, since the clutch pedal won’t rise on its own, and agrees that my goose is really cooked.

Then, the tow truck takes so long to arrive that (this happened during the Regional Convention, not mine, where I had dropped someone off) I send in word that if they need a brother to interview for the any Exercise Patience talk I’m available. Not the tow truck companies fault, but the roadside app, which cannot fathom how Tom Harley could possibly be the same as Thomas Harley and so kept issuing denials of service without explanation. With a person, you could straighten in out in 2 seconds, but in the AI world it is not that way. It is, instead, like when your wife, though she has always been friendly, one day locks you out of the house without the hint of a reason and won’t tell you why.

This is the same car that I used in ‘Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction’ to illustrate the point that you don’t need perfection to get you from point A to point B, only something serviceable and that if it breaks down you can repair it as you go. So it is with Jehovah’s visible organization driving the tangled and crazy roads of this system of things—it need not be perfect, though that would be preferable. It need only be serviceable. I wrote:

“Facts are overrated. You never have them all and if you wait for them all to come in you never do anything. There is no “fact” that is not incessantly resisted and debated by those who don’t want to go in a given direction, so they never do all come in. Eventually, you must just go with what you have, trusting that you can make repairs along the way if need be. You need a serviceable vehicle to get from point A to point B. It need not be perfect. Just like my wife and recently completed a road trip to Florida and back, stopping in at seven sets of friends and one set of relatives along the way. Though I’ve flown several times, I had never driven the distance.

“If you are from up north, as I am, you can depend upon countless friends who have moved south but to varying degrees. In time, they form a series of islands from which you can hop one to another. We only stayed two nights in hotels during our two and a half weeks on the road. All else was the hospitality of friends and the nice thing is that we could do it all over again with a different set of friends. Such is the benefit of spiritual family. Two of them even put us up into their unused time-shares. Our vehicle was serviceable, not perfect, with 180K miles and rust just beginning to peek through. We didn’t feel we had to make it perfect before we left home. We even had occasion for a repair. Blowing out a tire at 70 mph, I limped from the expressway, crossing several lanes when I saw an opening, took the exit ramp, and pulled into the first parking lot I saw. After swapping the bum tire for a donut, locals recommended a nearby shop. They fixed me up with a replacement tire in barely any time at all.

“Hasn’t the worldwide organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses done the same a few times? You think it’s easy holding firm to God in the last of the last days, what with religions seizing upon any misstep as evidence you are a false prophet and skeptics dismissing God because they confuse him with Santa Claus who’s supposed to shower down presents no matter what? It isn’t.”

Now my old car sits in the drive beside a shiny new one, which does the heavy duty. Like Old Jack, Sam Herd’s boyhood mule, I water it every day. I don’t throw if away just because it has grown old. Indeed, my wife hates the new one (you sit down too low and it is less easy to climb in and out) and will only drive the old one. If I protest, she likens herself to old wine that cannot be poured into new wine skins.

 

******  The bookstore

 

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The Circuit Overseer Visit: October 2024

From one circuit overseer visit to the next, a period of about six months, new normals begin to develop in the congregation. Subtle ones, not bad, nothing for which anyone would have to say ‘Stop doing that!’ Things just reflecting the different personalities in the congregation. ‘Slight imbalances’ maybe is the phrase to use. Personal innovations, some which work pretty well, others not so much. The CO visit is like fine-tuning, serving to nudge ones into closer cooperation. Nudge—not shove—and people only partly do it. But they all take note and implement the improved focus, at least to a degree. Then other new normals begin to develop, or maybe the old ones begin to reassert themselves, and the pattern begins again.

It is the advantage of organization. Without it, the new normals grow and magnify and innovate and butt heads with competing normals to the point where factions begin to develop. The CO is a feature so that the worldwide congregation pulls unitedly, he being a direct link to the Christian governing body. If you want to get anything done, you organize. It magnifies your ability. It is a latent power that humans have, to coordinate their efforts and thus get more done. Paul used the analogy of directing his blows, rather than striking the air. There is no need to quote the “power corrupts, but absolute power corrupts absolutely” line. If you do it right, it doesn’t.

Doing it right involves everyone, from the top down, more notably at the top, since there is where the “power” lies, repeatedly putting on the Christian garment. It is repeated clothing oneself with the fruitage of the spirit, and continually monitoring that appearance in the mirror of James. No one can become too prickly over hearing counsel from another. The CO’s talk, one of them, referred to “the spirit that is now operating in the sons of disobedience,” the spirit that makes people “prickly.” A previous speaker gave the analogy of calling a soft tire to the attention of a brother—it is unsafe, he might be unawares, and it could cause him harm. “Oh, yeah?!” the hothead shoots back. “Well, your car has a dent in the fender!” It doesn’t hurt to develop a forgiving spirit, either, since the psalm says (130:3): “If errors were what you watch, O Jah, Then who, O Jehovah, could stand?” Errors are all people watch in the overall world today, and nobody stands. Don’t bring that niggling mindset into the congregation.

The Watchtower Study for that week (July 2024 issue) contrasted kings of Israel, some of whom were bad, though they did some good things, and some of those who were good, though they did some bad things. Responding to correction was a major factor to determine who was who. David and Hezekiah, particularly David, blundered badly, but responded to correction. Amaziah, on the other hand, shot back at the prophet correcting him, “Did we appoint you as an adviser to the king?” (Para 10)

Another talk during the COs visit touched upon Eve’s words to the Devil in Genesis 3, who is trying to draw her away and she is taking the bait. “Did God really say that you must not eat from every tree of the garden?” he says, knowing full well he did. Eve’s answer as to what God said: “You must not eat from it, no, you must not touch it; otherwise you will die.” It’s probably not a bad idea not to touch it, but it is a stipulation God never made. Does upping the requirement show her well on her way to discontent, as in complaining “Sheesh, we can’t even touch it!” even though God never said it? It makes me think of discontented ones today, exaggerating the inconveniences of serving with Jehovah’s people, which do exist, but they are not that bad, so that a third party later reads the complaint and says, ‘Whoa! They can’t even touch it! What an oppressive bunch!”

Chatting with the CO in service, he said the latest brochure, now being used to train pioneers, ‘Love People—Make Disciples’ had changed, not only his interaction with people, but the nature of that interaction. It is a very subtle shift. Never has it been said not to love people.  Always, love has been understood as the motivating force behind what ministers of the good news do. But it is like the tiniest adjustment at the source of a stream that, many miles downstream, produces a torrent in an entirely different direction.

 

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Psalm 93: Symbolic Rivers

Rivers in the Bible are sometimes symbolic. Maybe, also the ones of Psalm 93.

The rivers have surged, O Jehovah, The rivers have surged and roared; The rivers keep surging and pounding. (93:3)

They have surged. Repeat and add: they have surged and roared. Repeat as continuious action, and escalate to pounding: The rivers keep surging and pounding. 

Jehovah is above them all, triumphant, as though the rivers here are a disruptive thing:

Above the sound of many waters, Mightier than the breaking waves of the sea, Jehovah is majestic in the heights. (93:4) The opening two verses set up that scenario, too. 

The Research Guide doesn’t touch it. The Insight Book does. Sometimes invading armies are “rivers.” Makes sense.

“Therefore look! Jehovah will bring against them The mighty and vast waters of the River, The king of As·syrʹi·a and all his glory. He will come up over all his streambeds And overflow all his banks.”  Isa 8:7

Isn’t that how Babylon fell, when the river literally concealed invading armies?

The comparison I like best is the Devil disgorging rivers of water and the earth swallows it up to save the woman:

“And the serpent spewed out water like a river from its mouth after the woman, to cause her to be drowned by the river. 16 But the earth came to the woman’s help, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed up the river that the dragon spewed out from its mouth.”

So I told Duncan about it, but he didn’t call on me during the gems review. He knew I would just be blowing smoke. Besides, he thought of the river, clear as crystal, that flows from the throne 

Turn the page and rivers are clapping their hands. I’m not sure how rivers can do that:

Let the rivers clap their hands; Let the mountains shout joyfully together. (98:8)

At Isaiah 42:10, the rivers are like unmentionables:

”Sing to Jehovah a new song, His praise from the ends of the earth, You who go down to the sea and all that fills it, You islands and their inhabitants.” We all know what it is that fills the sea.
Much talk about a “new song” about this point in the Psalms, as though a new twist in God’s purpose unfolding. From 91 on, and especially 95, the people trusting in God emerge victorious, an outcome many earlier psalms appear in doubt over.
Meanwhile, and having nothing to do with anything except that the congregation is now in the book commenting on Acts:

It can’t have been easy for Paul, to be followed around for days by a crazy person hollering: “‘These men are slaves of the Most High God and are proclaiming to you the way of salvation.’” To illustrate that it would not be, I told a certain someone at the Hall that I would heretofore do it to him.

Did the demon driving her think he had Paul over a barrel? What’s he going to do—cast it out, upon which the servant would be valueless to her masters and the cops would beat Paul up? But Paul cast it out, the servant became valueless to her masters, and the cops beat him up:

“Now it happened that as we were going to the place of prayer, a servant girl with a spirit, a demon of divination,l met us. She supplied her masters with much profit by fortune-telling. This girl kept following Paul and us and crying out with the words: “These men are slaves of the Most High God and are proclaiming to you the way of salvation.” She kept doing this for many days. Finally Paul got tired of it and turned and said to the spirit: “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And it came out that very hour.

“Well, when her masters saw that their hope of profit was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to the rulers. Leading them up to the civil magistrates, they said: “These men are disturbing our city very much. They are Jews, and they are proclaiming customs that it is not lawful for us to adopt or practice, seeing that we are Romans.” And the crowd rose up together against them, and the civil magistrates, after tearing the garments off them, gave the command to beat them with rods. After they had inflicted many blows on them, they threw them into prisonu and ordered the jailer to guard them securely.” (Acts 16:16-24)

 

 

 

 

 

Defending Jehovah’s Witnesses with style from attacks... in Russia, with the book ‘I Don’t Know Why We Persecute Jehovah’s Witnesses—Searching for the Why’ (free).... and in the West, with the book, 'In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction'

Psalm 90: How Long Will [What] Last?

The reason I believe better sanitation and not vaccines (as has been claimed) resulted in the greater expanded life expectancy during the 20th century is found at Psalm 90:10:

“The span of our life is 70 years, Or 80 if one is especially strong.”

So there it is, written maybe four thousand years ago. Yet, in the year 1900, the average life expectancy in the United States was 47 years. Had humans not deviated from the sanitation principles found in the Old Testament, would it not have been the 70 or 80 from the Bible? Unsafe working conditions also played a part, no doubt, but the role of sanitation is still a huge factor.

Today, that 70-to-80 has improved to 80-to-90, and that probably is the role of modern medicine, which may include some vaccines. But the science zealot who tried to tell me how far we have come, since in the Middle Ages, people “crapped in a bucket and threw it out on the street,” consequently dying at thirty—well, that has nothing to do with science. It has to do with correcting (even if unknowingly) a prior neglect of the Old Testament which held that you’re supposed to bury your poop.

We pull a lot of useful verses out of the 90th psalm, verse 10 among them. However, this time around in the congregation Bible reading, verse 13 caught my attention.

“Return, O Jehovah! How long will this last? Have pity on your servants.”

How long will what last? Is it a special period of anger on God’s part? One might easily think it upon reading 7, 8, 9, and 11:

“For we are consumed by your anger And terrified by your rage.  (7) You place our errors in front of you; Our secrets are exposed by the light of your face. (8) Our days ebb away because of your fury; And our years come to an end like a whisper. (9) . . . Who can fathom the power of your anger? Your fury is as great as the fear you deserve. (11)

And yet, the specific affliction appears to be no more than what verse 10 speaks of, that we get 70 years, 80 at best. See how many verses chronicle the fleetingness of life today.

“You make mortal man return to dust; You say: ‘Return, you sons of men.’” (3) For a thousand years are in your eyes just as yesterday when it is past, Just as a watch during the night. (4) You sweep them away; they become like mere sleep; In the morning they are like grass that sprouts. (5) In the morning it blossoms and is renewed, But by evening it withers and dries up. (6)

That’s just ordinary life he is talking about. No special punishment there. What’s with this psalm?

Unless . . . unless . . could this be one of those passages in which the author reveals truths he is unaware of himself, the Bible being the product of “men [who] spoke from God as they were moved by holy spirit?” (2 Peter 1:21)

People settle for so little today. Totally obsessed with what years are left of their present life, most totally ignore the far longer period after their present life runs its course. Is the psalmist lamenting how that circumstance came about? After all, why does God “make mortal man return to dust [and] say: “Return, you sons of men?” Man was intended to live forever. But rebelling against him, in the oldest transgression of history, in the easy-to-understand act of eating an off-limits fruit—the only thing that was off-limits—had the effect of pulling their own plug from the power source. Thereafter, the blades spinning ever slower, till their offspring many generations downstream, are stuck with a life expectancy of 70 or 80 years that quickly pass by and are filled with trouble.

How long will that “punishment” last, you might picture the psalmist saying, having no knowledge then of the means God would employ to reverse it.

It’s an application I like. Even the aforementioned verses (7-9, 11) of God’s anger could be looked at as that original rebellion being what he is angry about. It is maybe one of those passages that has more than one application. Even if it isn’t, we can assign it one, since the assignment would be in keeping with “the pattern of healthful words.” We used to call such passages antitypes. But now, we drop down to a safer level and say, ‘This reminds me of that.”

***

It’s rare to see life as God sees it. But now that we’ve all learned to do photo montages at memorial talks, it begins to happen. A person’s entire life scrolls by in just a few minutes.  Not too different from the psalm:

 

“For a thousand years are in your eyes just as yesterday when it is past, Just as a watch during the night. You sweep them away; they become like mere sleep; In the morning they are like grass that sprouts. In the morning it blossoms and is renewed, But by evening it withers and dries up. . . . The span of our life is 70 years, Or 80 if one is especially strong. . . . They quickly pass by, and away we fly.” (Psalm 90: 4-10)

 

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Burn Up Sons in the Fire? Atheists Strike Again

At a home Bible study, the kind that Jehovah’s Witnesses offer, Darrel had a question. He brought up Exodus 22: 29-30.

You shall give me the firstborn of your sons. You must do the same with your oxen and your sheep.” (New International Version) This meant, he worried, that you burn up your firstborn child for God, same as you would your ox and your sheep. “You must do the same”—he repeated the expression.

He got it from the atheists, I’ve no doubt. They would make a burnt offering of the entire Bible were it up to them. He doesn’t necessarily buy into it. He just doesn’t want to be snowed—by the atheists or by the Witnesses. He even apologizes for raising the question, as though for rocking the boat. ‘What—are you kidding me?’ I tell him. ‘We’d be worried if you didn’t have questions.’

Should one be flustered? The snippet quoted does sort of sound like you’re supposed burn your sons. It will not do just to say, ‘It doesn’t mean that!’ Unless you explain why it doesn’t, it comes across as though you are covering up a crime. The challenge is enough to send the one conducting the study scurrying in search of other scriptures to shed light on the passage—using one scripture to explain another, the tried and true method in the JW world. Me, I’m just the companion, sitting there, taking up space.

Actually, just backing out some and taking the entire passage into account would answer the question, but this is not immediately apparent. The entire passage reads:

You shall not delay the offering of your harvest and your press. You shall give me the firstborn of your sons. You must do the same with your oxen and your sheep; for seven days the firstling may stay with its mother, but on the eighth day you must give it to me.

Three things are being compared in the expanded passage, not two: 1) the first offerings of the harvest and [wine]press, 2) your own firstborn, and 3) the firstborn of the oxen and sheep. You must "do the same," not with the manner of sacrifice, but that all are subject to sacrifice. Grain and drink offerings were not done in the same manner as animal sacrifices. Neither would people be.

And here the atheists are trying to get him all pumped up over that passage! 'Well, it sure sounds like you're supposed to burn your son just like your ox or sheep,’ they mutter. 'If it’s not that way, it could have been explained more clearly!' Really? When we read of a celebrity roast, does anyone expect an asterisk explaining that they're not literally roasted (though many of them should be)?

In time, the conductor emerges with a verse from Jeremiah that explains it all. He had one of three to choose from; the prophet makes the point that many times. Referring to when Israel went carousing with their rowdy neighbors (the nations surrounding them) and in time picked up their bad habits, the prophet speaks for God and says, “they built the high places of Baal in order to burn their sons in the fire as whole burnt offerings to Baal, something that I had not commanded or spoken of and that had never even come into my heart.” (Jeremiah 19:5) Okay? If it “had never even come into [his] heart,” he’s not going to command his people do it. It is Baal they are thinking of.

Ezekiel confirms what Jeremiah related. The raucous neighbors did such things. When Israel proved unfaithful to its God, Jehovah, it followed suit:

Because they did not carry out my judicial decisions and they rejected my statutes, they profaned my sabbaths, and they followed after the disgusting idols of their forefathers. I also allowed them to follow regulations that were not good and judicial decisions by which they could not have life. I let them become defiled by their own sacrifices—when they made every firstborn child pass through the fire—in order to make them desolate, so that they would know that I am Jehovah.” (bolding mine)

These appeals to Jeremiah and Ezekiel fall flat to persons schooled in higher criticism. They will object that Exodus is a work of ‘the priestly tradition’ and Jeremiah a work of ‘the prophetic tradition.’ The two traditions fought like cats and dogs—you wouldn’t appeal to one for support of the other. But Darell is not a person of higher criticism. He is a person of common sense. The point registers with him. Had it not, maybe an appeal to an earlier portion of Exodus (4:22-23) would have sufficed. There, Moses is directed, “You must say to Pharʹaoh, ‘This is what Jehovah says: “Israel is my son, my firstborn. I say to you, Send my son away so that he may serve me.”’” See what God wanted from his firstborn? He wanted service, not burnt remains. Since both quotes are from Exodus, the comparison might work with a higher critic. Though, it might not; even within a given Bible book, they claim to be able to see both the priestly and prophetic traditions squabbling with one another.

Thing is, to the higher critic, any words attributed to God are really human in origin. They cannot prove God by their scientific method, and the scientific method is all they recognize. God, for them, is a human construct. So, necessarily, words attributed to God are merely that of some human spinning his own theology. Moreover, how strong can a human construct be? Strong enough to fly in the face of tribal neighbors who did indeed offer children as burnt sacrifices? The critics judge it is not. Therefore, when Jeremiah and Ezekiel present Jehovah as condemning the practice, they are to the critics just reformers proclaiming what they would like to see, not what is. They are just whistleblowers. Their protests are but the protests of human prophets, not of God himself, who is imaginary. To the higher critics, Jehovah is a tribal god like all the rest. The religious zealots that are Jeremiah and Ezekiel may try to extricate him from the abhorrent practice, but it will not fly with higher critics. All gods to them are really but one god, and all are figments of the common human urge to worship what they can neither control nor understand. The human sciences of sociology and anthropology lead them to conclude that if one god did it, they all did. A passage such as Leviticus 18: 24-25 makes little impression on them:Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants.” To them, it is like the words of an ascending politician explaining why he must beat up on his rivals. He is just talking sweet until he gains power, whereupon he will revert to true form.

Biblical passages drawing a favorable distinction between the God of the Bible and the gods of surrounding nations are defused by the critics in short order. For example, a passage of Deuteronomy: (FN 4:5-8)

See, I [Moses] have taught you regulations and judicial decisions, just as Jehovah my God has commanded me, for you to do that way in the midst of the land to which you are going to take possession of it. And you must keep and do them, because this is wisdom on your part and understanding on your part before the eyes of the peoples who will hear of all these regulations, and they will certainly say, ‘This great nation is undoubtedly a wise and understanding people.’ For what great nation is there that has gods near to it the way Jehovah our God is in all our calling upon him? And what great nation is there that has righteous regulations and judicial decisions like all this law that I am putting before you today.  Deut 4:5-8

With no way to ascertain that there is a God, the higher critic regards the above as a concoction of Moses, who was a great man hoping to impose his theology upon a resistant nation. He is attributing his own forward vision to God, saying the ways of his god are best, when he actually should be saying, ‘My ways are best.’

As an exercise, in the following summation of 2 Kings 17:7-18, replace every mention of Jehovah (FN traditionally thought to be Jeremiah, though you won’t be able to ram that by the higher critics, either). with the name of the author writing the account. Doing so moves it into the realm of a political statement, not one of God. Modern critics can identify with political statements. They cannot with statements of faith, so they repackage the latter as the former:

“[Calamity] happened because the people of Israel had sinned against Jehovah their God, who brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the control of Pharaoh king of Egypt. They worshipped other gods, they followed the customs of the nations that Jehovah had driven out from before the Israelites, and they followed the customs that the kings of Israel had established. The Israelites were pursuing the things that were not right according to Jehovah their God. They kept building high places in all their cities, from watchtower to fortified city. They kept setting up for themselves sacred pillars and sacred poles on every high hill and under every luxuriant tree; and on all the high places they would make sacrificial smoke just as the nations did that Jehovah had driven into exile from before them. They kept doing wicked things to offend Jehovah. They continued to serve disgusting idols, about which Jehovah had told them: “You must not do this!” Jehovah kept warning Israel and Judah through all his prophets and every visionary, saying: “Turn back from your wicked ways! Keep my commandments and my statutes according to all the law that I commanded your forefathers and that I sent to you through my servants the prophets.” But they did not listen, and they remained just as stubborn as their forefathers who had not shown faith in Jehovah their God. They continued rejecting his regulations and his covenant that he had made with their forefathers and his reminders that he had given to warn them, and they kept following worthless idols and became worthless themselves, imitating the nations all around them that Jehovah had commanded them not to imitate. They kept leaving all the commandments of Jehovah their God, and they made metal statues of two calves and a sacred pole, and they bowed down to all the army of the heavens and served Baal. They also made their sons and their daughters pass through the fire, they practiced divination and looked for omens, and they kept devoting themselves to do what was bad in the eyes of Jehovah, to offend him. So Jehovah was very angry with Israel, so that he removed them from his sight.”

None of the above is God’s complaint, according to the higher critics. It is all the complaint of Jeremiah—or whoever is writing as though Jeremiah.

So destructive to faith is higher criticism that it ought to be as banned as DDT and thalidomide, for it triggers no fewer spiritual stillbirths. Instead, it is the method of theological preference today. If you shop the theological schools for your church pastor, it is what you most likely have inflicted upon your congregation. Jehovah’s Witnesses will have none of it. To them, the words of Peter apply, that “prophecy was at no time brought by man’s will, but men spoke from God as they were moved by holy spirit.” (2 Peter 1:21) Those words of Peter lead them to assume unity of scripture, not inherent discord between them. It necessarily makes scripture more powerful. You can focus things that are united. You cannot things that are disunited.

 

******  The bookstore

Defending Jehovah’s Witnesses with style from attacks... in Russia, with the book ‘I Don’t Know Why We Persecute Jehovah’s Witnesses—Searching for the Why’ (free).... and in the West, with the book, 'In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction'