Not sure who this is meant for but I have a few minutes before...

  1. 6,410 Posts.
    Not sure who this is meant for but I have a few minutes before afternoon tea.

    Firstly, nobody, not even a Jehovah Witness knows the mind of God, so we don't really know who God is, was or will be pleased with. Matthew 26:52 is not some simple, take on peace. There are just wars, when pacifism, not fighting for justice is the greater crime. The problem with literalism is that it takes a piece of scripture and turns it into a bumper sticker, when in fact it is only a part of the picture of understanding. Do you think that Jesus would have laid down like a beaten dog if a great injustice prevented His mission? Not a chance. Matthew 26:52 is a time and place, in the moment statement. It is not a blanket statement for all times and under all conditions.

    Christendom's clergy are a pox on religion, but don't kid yourself that the rulers of your belief system are somehow clean skins. They in office demand an authority the pope dreams of. They are all powerful and their dictates must be adhered to at the cost of excommunication with all its heartbreaking consequences. They have the power of life and death over the followers with their blood beliefs.

    So how you can imagine them any different than all the clergy that have gone before, just because they don't take on the specific titles of clergy, is beyond me. They act in a clergy capacity, are the sole determiners of scriptural meaning, dole out what specific literature and have greater power than any bishop.

    Wars are not religious in nature, they are a human failing. They do signal however that religion is no longer effective, or is any longer a viable institution to cast one's fate with. And just as Jesus said - 

    No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the new piece will pull away from the old, and a worse tear will result. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. Instead, new wine is poured into new wineskins.”

    You have explained very well how Christianity has come to an end. It collapsed into a mostly useless form because of the clergy and their introduction of man made ideas and interpretations. Then the Jehovah Witness becomes the new wine skin or the unshrunk cloth of Christianity when we have already been told by Jesus that this won't work. Religion can never renew itself from within when it has failed. It is always replaced by a new religion, not a rehashed version of an old religion. You are trying to put new wine in and old wineskin and the results are there for all to see.
 
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