Indecision in the Watchtower Society Over Cardinal Ordinances

Acts 15

The apostles establish four cardinal ordinances for new Gentile converts, "That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication..."

One of the cardinal doctrines of the Jehovah's Witness religion comes from this 'blood' provision and they derive from this that one cannot receive blood transfusions.

Yet they also find in Paul's letters Paul's plain teaching of the permissibility of eating meats sacrificed to idols, which Paul outrageously defends, wherewith he undermines the of the ordinances, which he has no right to do.

How can they remain consistent by strongly emphasizing the 'blood' provision and yet denounce the first proposition? It seems that to maintain consistency they must abide by all four laws or dismiss them all.

And how does the Word remain infallible once it's recognized that Paul taught against apostolic counsel in Acts 15?

So clearly, where Paul's teachings are found, so also are errors.

Phil Robertson is a Douchebag

Media Generates New Anti-Gay Scandal Following Video of Phil Robertson Sermon

For the record, I am 100% opposed to homosexuality and the gay agenda, but in a most logical way, I have to point out that that question has no bearing on whether Phil Robertson is a douchebag because I think quite agreeably they are both true. Phil is a douchebag, but so are the homosexuals.

"Radar Online reports Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson said politically incorrect things about homosexuals during a sermon at his church in West Monroe, Louisiana on Easter Sunday. He compared gays to thieves and adulterers.

"During the sermon Robertson criticized the corporate media for misunderstanding biblical verse following an interview he made with GQ in December. During the interview Robertson paraphrased a passage from First Corinthians. He said homosexuals, adulterers, idolaters, and other sinners “won’t inherit the kingdom of God.” The interview resulted in A&E suspending Robertson from Duck Dynasty."

I guess he got off so much on the fags in the media ripping him a new one he came back for more. Did he really not learn his 'lesson'? Now he'll really be ripped a new one.

"You want the verse? The news media didn't even know it was a verse! They thought I was just mouthing off."

Oh, so I get it. You're just so fucking smart everyone misunderstood you. You're just a fucking Einstein and I'm sorry us peons are so beneath you Phil.

"Is homosexual behavior a sin? The guy asked me."

Here he doesn't even accept responsibility for what he said. "He asked me! I was just bein' nass' by  answerin' the question!"

LET'S BE VERY CLEAR ABOUT PHIL ROBERTSON'S TRUE BELIEFS

The Church of Christ explicitly teaches its members that YOU MUST BE A MEMBER OF THEIR CHURCH TO BE SAVED. Otherwise you are damned.

This is what is so stupid about the Christian cult mentality.

You all see it in black in white: 'Christian' makes politically unpopular statements (that happen to be popular with the Christian conservatives) --- Criticized in media --- Christians rush to defend him

Let's get one thing straight.

"___________ won't inherit the kingdom of God."

Was Phil's quote. I left the first part blank to illustrate the point.

How does Phil fill this in?

He names the obvious...

Idolaters.

Homosexuals.

Adulterers.

But the laws of subterfuge dictate that you never really say what you mean, you only acknowledge up to and  including the point your audience is willing to accept.

Look at some of Obama's lies he told leading up to being elected.

He derailed the Patriot Act and the general lessening of civil liberties post-9/11. Yet in 2012, he was  dissatisfied that NDAA did not contain a provision to allow for the indefinite detention of American  citizens. The national security aparatus has grown exponentially in Obama's tenure, but that didn't stop him from filibustering the PATRIOT Act.


Obama's Signing Statement on NDAA

"...it should first be remembered that the very bil President Obama threatened to veto was controversial due to the language the Obama White House itself pressured Congress to add to the bill, according to Sen. Carl Levin." Aaron Dykes, January, 1, 2012 Infowars.com

You see, he said what he had to say to get elected in 2007, because no Democrat was going to support a candidate who believed in the PATRIOT Act or indefinite detention, although despite his 'voting record', he shows in his leadership that he believes in all of these.

The weed vote.. He had to turn out the weed vote. So he says circa 2006 "I support decriminalization.." Did  that really happen though? No. The Feds just grew more bold in prosecutions of California dispensaries.

Gay marriage.. Very explicit.. does not support an individual right of gays to marry. What happened with that? He feminized and homosexualized the military, overturning the very sensible Don't Ask Don't Tell  doctrine, he refused to defend DOMA, presumably in violation of his duties as chief executive, he appoints a lesbian (?) to the Supreme Court, he pushes for gay marriage, he weaponizes his DoJ as an arm of the gay mafia and passes the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act.

My friends, if Bill Clinton was the first black president, then Obama is our first gay president. And he is not black either.

I read Niccolo Macchiavelli's The Prince some months back and if it was not 1:56 am on a Saturday morning I would be tempted to draw it out and make a few pertinent quotations. However, it's 1:57 am on a Saturday morning and I'm tired.

But what you'll find if you read him and just study the world around you, there is a thing called subterfuge. It's how a politician achieves a mandated for a stated vision and purpose, and as soon as he is elected, he goes much furtherto the left or right and implements his true vision.

Phil cleverly sought to court the Christian demographic by appealing to certain of the sensibilities among them, but he was careful not to clarify what the Church of Christ religion really teaches.

Now how do you fill in that box, Phil?

[Anyone who is not a member of the Church of Christ] including Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, pentecostals and ALL OTHER BELIEVERS

WILL BURN IN HELL

If you get to the bottom of Phil's true beliefs, he ultimately has to conclude, to be a good, upstanding member of the Church of Christ, that if you do not believe precisely as he and his church does, you are DAMNED.

My Position, Not Heretofore Stated

I will NEVER believe a doctrine that demands me to accept it. If you tell me I'll be damned, then I guess I'll just be damned.

I will never join a bigoted small-minded little cult like the Church of Christ because they think everyone else is damned.

And I especially will never accept your dumb, infantile, moronic Trinity doctrine and it is all your fault!

Because I had to listen to you Christians non-stop for years talking about this crap then I am never going to accept it. I'm going to keep teaching against it and denouncing it and mocking the Scutum and maybe I'm just a devil. Or maybe the Christians are the devils for constantly berating anyone with a non-established viewpoint and making them feel like worthless little diseases that world authorities try to eradicate because they can't accept anyone with a different viewpoint.

Jehovah's Witness addendum:

Let me tell you that I studied with the Witnesses for about six months. I did because I'm a liberal and I think everyone has a right to speak and be heard. I never had any desire to join them. But I feel sorry for them in some was how they get treated, nevertheless while they harass people.

But I should tell you, in all my studies with them, I NEVER ONCE HEARD this sort of bigotry espoused that I have heard from the Church of Christ. It is the most bigoted religion other than Catholicism I've ever seen.

The Catholic Church is a Farce

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/missouri-murderer-executed-after-supreme-court-rejects-appeal-n38511

A Missouri man who kidnapped, raped and murdered a 15-year-old girl near Kansas City 25 years ago was executed early Wednesday after the U.S. Supreme Court denied a last-minute stay.

The state Department of Public Safety said Michael Taylor, 47, died from a lethal injection at 12:10 a.m. (1:10 a.m. ET), shortly after the high court joined the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in rejecting pleas from his attorneys, who argued that the state's makeshift execution protocol was cruel and unusual punishment.

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon also rejected a clemency request, turning aside Taylor's pleas based on the state's use of using a secret compounding pharmacy for the lethal dose of pentobarbital and for executing previous inmates while they still had appeals pending.

Taylor offered no final statement, The Associated Press reported, adding that he took two deep breaths before closing his eyes for the last time.

Anti-death penalty advocates held a vigil Tuesday opposing Taylor's execution in Springfield, where 10-year-old Hailey Owens was similarly brutally murdered last week.

"Crime deserves punishment," Bishop Van Johnston of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield-Cape Girardeau told NBC station KYTV of Springfield, Mo. "We're here to say, basically, that killing someone when you can punish them in another way is not the solution."

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This is just a huge embarrassment. We have a separation of church and state in this country and a Catholic bishop, or child-fucker, has no place to lecture American citizens on how best to run our society. Our society is in ruins, as it should be. But we still are decided that we don't want the priests to run it for us.

Years ago, this is the Church that murdered people for simple disagreements. For instance, they killed the Anabaptists just for saying that infant baptism was incorrect.

Now they are telling us, peculiarly that if you rape and kill teenage girls, the Catholic church is going to provide you with official advocacy.

Not surprising, when you consider how they have allied themselves with NAMBLA in defending and harboring known child molesting priests, some of whom engaged in abuse for decades while the Church covered it up.

You fucking trashy ass nigger. Twenty-two years old, and you abducted a little white girl standing on the corner waiting for her school bus. You and your groid friend took her and passed her around a few times then dumped her body.

You lived 47 years. That's 32 more then that white girl ever lived to see. And you cried till the day of your death to be let off with life in prison. I never shed one tear over one that starves in Ethiopia the same way I don't when three gangsters get smoked in a drive-by. The way I see it, you can't get rid of yourselves fast enough. And if you would only use some god damn birth control. Because people are tired of dealing with you trashy ass niggers.

And then you bishoprics, I have a mind to call you bishop pricks, because you're a bunch of pricks that prick little kids. You are a shameful embarrassment. You have made Christianity the biggest joke. We have to defend our religion from people that 500 and 1000 years later constantly rehash crimes of the Catholic church which true Christians had nothing to do with.

 Now your fag church has come to say atheists go to heaven, with your fag pope who said that one. Then your bishops rush to embrace child killers and molesters and let Nancy Pelousi take Communion. When she openly embraces Molech sacrifice through abortion. And even Ted Kennedy took communion almost to the very end, when one honorable New England bishop intervened. He really did a lot for this country you know. It was quite a stand up act when he got that malignant brain tumor and died so we no longer had to deal with his pontificating filibusters and meddling with our democratic-republican government. I wish more in Washington would take his lead. 

Infant Baptism and the Church of Christ

I live in an apartment complex and one of my neighbors who I stay in touch with frequently is a member of the Church of Christ. She stated her belief that only members of her denomination could possibly be saved. I was stunned because the Bible to my knowledge stated only one rule of faith. It was late last week I talked with a woman online who also made this same claim and a member of the Church of Christ.

But what about secluded islands or places, maybe such as Madagascar or the Maldives, or whatever island it is that the Church of Christ has not reached. Do they all burn miserably in hell because 'the' true church did not reach their island paradise? Either the Church of Christ does not understand this or they do not care.

Rousseau asked, "Will they all go to hell because of their seclusion?" [Émile, 1762]

And I also recognized that the Church of Christ insists that baptism is necessary for salvation. So in their system, they have three necessary articles of faith, to contrast my one.

This enters us into the topic of infant baptism.

"There are those who at heart are unwilling to grant that infants who die without Baptism ought to be condemned simply on account of lack of justice, as I have said.... If you think it over, however, even this sentence of condemnation of infants is not very different from the verdict of human beings. Suppose, for example, some man and his wife were exalted to some great dignity and estate, by no merit of their own but by favor alone, then both together inexcusably commit a grave crime, and on account of it are justly dispossessed and reduced to slavery. Who will say that the children whom they generate after their condemnation should not be subjected to the same slavery, but rather should be gratuitously put in possession of the goods which their parents deservedly lost? Our first ancestors and their offspring are in such a condition: having been justly condemned to be cast from happiness to misery for their fault, they bring forth their offspring in the same banishment. When the cases are similar, therefore, there ought to be a similar verdict, but in the latter case it ought to be all the more severe, since there is less likelihood that their crime could be condoned...

"Therefore, if, as I said, original sin is some kind of sin, it is necessary that every human being born in it be condemned unless it is remitted." [Anselm, The Virgin Conception and Original Sin, XXVIII, c. 1099-1100 tran. by Joseph M. Colleran)

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Baptism

"He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned." [Mark 16:16]

This would be the initally offered proof-text for the CoC or some other deranged group. But this statement just can't be read to say those two are necessary sums to combine to result in salvation. That is because it isn't an affirmative demonstration that either of the two individually without the other is not sufficient to effect the result. Elsewhere we see that belief is crucial to salvation,

"He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God." [John 3:18]

So from here it's just as valid to salvation to have belief without baptism as it is to believe and be baptized since they both result in the person being saved.

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For children

Anselm thinks that the child is made guilty through original sin and baptism is necessary for remission. I have a couple problems with this.

I don't expect God holds anyone accountable who is not capable of comprehending the basic circumstances of human origins, the subsequent introduction of sin, and our need to act and of a Savior. At some age, a child may still understand the basics of right and wrong but still not understand the basic points the Christian faith makes. If that's true, there are different stages of development when the child begins to gain an awareness of the reality of sin and their personal need to be saved. Prior to this, I don't expect children to be condemned. In many cases, of children, of isolated tribespeople, they may be judged according to what they did know but I can't see God justly requiring a person's acting in accordance with an agreement they have never made and are not cognizant of. That sounds monstrous. The Anselm quote where he refers to children born into slavery, it reminds me of the Calvinists who quietly tolerated slavery or practiced it while Arminians, in England and America, Methodists notably, fought for abolition. (http:///theologicalgraffiti.com/two-different-thabatis-the-calvinist-and-the-abolitionist)

The biblical teaching, that I do not want to read anything into or derive any extra teaching from, but I want only to stand for itself comes from Jesus... Jesus had the same problem much of His followers are now experiencing. They are surrounded by people of many different faiths and backgrounds and many of them well-meaning people. But because they have not received the revelation God has for them, they often times can only think the way the world does, with the same heartless, uncompassionate, impatient, self-centered thinking. Small children were hoping to get close to the Lord and have Him lay hands on them and pray for them. The disciples shooed them away. Yet Jesus rebuked them, saying,

"Suffer little children and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven." [Mark 19:14]

"And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea." [Mark 9:42]

The little ones are afforded a special dignity from the Lord. This I want to neither add to nor take away from. The idea that this is the guy who wants millions of babies burning and skin melting, with worms crawling through them, and being impaled on spikes is really absurd. That's cool Anselm, that's cool CoC if you have secret fantasies of babies on spikes but do not dare say that that is what the Lord and His Father taught.

As to the problem we suffer today, that Jesus also knew, we are surrounded by religious people, zealots, who are troubled in their minds, they identify as being righteous, as being chosen of God. But this they find in themselves. They are self-righteous, self-pious, they are good in their mind's eye, self-religious, and they feel so convinced of this inherent goodness they find within themselves they assume it is the unction of God confirming it to them. Proverbs 21:2 says, "Every way of a man seems right in his own eyes: but the LORD pondereth the hearts."

One I noticed earlier, I stated 'the Lord'. I do not speak in the way the common man does who says 'Our Lord' or 'My Lord'. I'd not identify an 'Our Lord' because I do not know who your lord is. Your lord may or may not be the same as my Lord. And 'my Lord'. This one bothers me. If as many people did as their Lord said to say and do rather than only vocalize it, then I think this life would be a lot more bearable for many more people. Why vocalize when you can demonstrate through your actions? It makes no sense for any sinner to speak of an 'Our Lord' or 'My Lord' like a 'My couch' or a 'Your couch', or 'The guy who seemed pretty interesting so therefore I check a little box on applications to say I'm a Christian even though I live a depraved lifestyle."

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I have discussed a three-step salvation, a two-step, and finally I've referred to my one-step salvation process. Many think they already know what that is. But the more I visit churches, the more I see they have added to the words of the Lord. They each have different requirements, but they all share one thing in common: They fundamentally miss the mark. I hope to soon write to my three readers, or however many it is now, to shed light on the crucial question fundamental in all man's traditions, "What must I do to be saved?/What is the meaning of life?"

Baptism and the UPC

I met with a couple tonight who are members of the United Pentecostal church. Tne subject was going to be the proper baptism formula where the UPC claims baptism in Jesus' name is biblical whereas other groups claim that baptism in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in accordance with Matthew 28:19 is the correct way. I can't stress to you how skeptical I was simply because I have always been a part of churches which did it the tradition (i.e. non-UPC way). I felt that because Paul's teachings are of a dubious nature that it was no point for them to show that Paul had used this, which he did at Acts 19, where we see at verse 5 "When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus."

What I needed to see was that this was the practice, not Paul's but the church's. They showed me that Peter also used this formula. Peter, speaking to Cornelius and his household commanded "...them to be baptized in the name of the Lord. Then prayed they him to tarry certain days."

So it became apparent that what the disciples understood from the Great Commission was much different than what we understand. There were also several other verses quoted to support their notion.

What struck me here was it's Pre-Catholic implications.

The packet that was printed for me held a few quotations.

Encyclopedia Britannica, 11 ed., vol. 3, page 365-66, "The baptism formula was changed from the name Jesus Christ to the words Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in the second century by the Catholic church."

Caney Encyclopedia of Religion, pg. 53, "The early church always baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ until the development of the Trinity doctrine in the second century."

Catholic Encyclopedia vol. 2 page 263 line 7 acknowledges the Catholic church changed the baptism formula.

As I spoke of earlier, the role of a Unitarian understanding of the nature of God, in opposition to the Trinity doctrine, must be stressed in any discussion of Pre-Catholic faith.

It appears to me now, after this Bible study conducted by a couple from the United Pentecostal church, the current understanding of the Great Commission has been undermined by a propagation of the trinitarian doctrine, and has politely crept in as of 1800+ years ago as a manifestation of the Christian obsession with Triunity. However, if the disciples had an understanding of the command to baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, contrary to our own, as a cursory examination shows they did, then this has implications for the doctrine of the Trinity, and the material also provides a motivation for the Catholics to alter the formula in order to posit an unquestionable support for their view, as a reading of Matthew 28 provides no reason to think it is being done incorrectly. It is therefore a Catholic relic in the Protestant churches that has no role in a pre-Catholic system.

I cannot say that I am now against the traditional formula due to my liberal view of unity and diplomacy between churches. However, I now accept the Oneness Pentecostal view as valid.