Posted on 04/03/2010 3:12:52 PM PDT by NYer
This is my 16th Easter.
For the first 38 years of my life I did not celebrate Easter because I was one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, a pseudo- Christian group with a very strange economy of salvation. It is not easy to describe life in a cult like Jehovah’s Witnesses. It is very dark. Even their light is darkness.
Jehovah’s Witnesses do not believe in the Trinity, so they do not believe in the deity of Christ. They believe that Jesus was Michael the Archangel before he came to earth, and that after he was resurrected, he went back to being Michael the Archangel — but with the name “Jesus.” They do believe Jesus died (but not on a cross) to save mankind from sin and death by atoning for the disobedience of Adam. Jesus had to be a perfect man, to match Adam in every respect, and thus he takes Adam’s place as our father. I know this is weird — not to mention the whole ontological problem of how he is an angel, then a human, and then an angel again — but I’m telling you about it because I want you to know that I had an idea that I could call myself a Christian and believe Jesus died for me, without conceiving of Jesus as God.
Most of you reading this are like my grandchildren who have heard all their lives that Jesus died for you and that Jesus is God the Son –- true God from true God. It has never dawned on you, because it was always the light that you lived in.
But it dawned on me.
In 1993, after a long and harrowing period of life disruption, searching for the peace and transformative power that I read about in the New Testament, I had an encounter with Christ.
Long my imprisoned spirit lay,
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray—
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.
I did not know then that he was Deity, but I knew that he was not who the Jehovah’s Witnesses said he was. I knew that I would have to leave the religion that I had grown up in and known all my life. I would have to walk away from every relationship of my adult life. I went to a church.
Now to you, that might seem like the most natural thing in the world for me to do. You want to know about Jesus, you go to a church. But for me it was terrifying. I had always been told that churches housed demons. Jehovah’s Witnesses do not even like to turn their cars around in a 
church parking lot. But that visit to a church set me on the road to learning the truth about Jesus. It became pretty clear, pretty quickly that Christians worshiped Jesus. The fundamental fact of my religious upbringing had been that you only worshiped God (Jehovah), who is Jesus’ father. To worship anything or anyone else was to be guilty of idolatry. But there was a tractor beam on my heart. I had to figure out who Jesus really was.
Having left what I recognized to be a religion of error, I was very leery about falling into error or being misled once again. But I knew that I had to open my mind to the witness and the arguments of Christians around me in order to untwist the distorted way I had learned to read scripture.
A humorous skit put on one time at a meeting of ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses illustrated what I was facing. It featured a “Christian” trying to “help” a recently-exited Witness. When the ex-JW expressed confusion about Christian doctrine, the Christian said, “Oh, it’s easy. Just believe everything the opposite.”
“What are you talking about?” the baffled ex-JW asked.
“Well, you didn’t used to believe in the Trinity, and now you do. You didn’t used to believe in the deity of Christ, and now you do. You didn’t used to believe in the immortal soul, and now you do. You didn’t used to believe in going to heaven, and now you do. You didn’t used to believe in celebrating Christmas, and now you do. See, everything is the opposite. It’s easy.”
The appreciative laughter with which this was greeted gave testament to the fact that it is not easy! And the more you care, really care, about the truth, the harder your struggle is. If you have always lived in the truth, you can’t imagine how hard it is.
For a while I lived in a partial shadow. I was in love with Jesus, but still didn’t know what to make of all the Christian adoration of Him? How could I explain this phenomenon if he were not God?
I found some relief by latching onto the biblical image of the Church as the Bride of Christ. After all, what would be more natural than for a bride to be focused on her bridegroom? Of course Christians sang love songs to Jesus! It was the Jehovah’s Witnesses who were strange — like a bride who ignored her groom and tried to give all her affection to her father-in-law instead.
Meanwhile, I was participating in Christian prayer and worship to the best of my limited understanding. I also asked questions, and I studied… and studied and studied. Finally I was turned on to reading the Early Church Fathers. It started to became clear to me that this teaching — that Jesus was Divine, was God in the flesh — was really Christian teaching from the beginning, was the apostolic witness.
There was just one problem left in my mind: If Jesus was God, then that man on the Cross was God.
It would mean that God had died.
It would mean that God had died… for me.
For all time, there will be no more astounding, no more elevating, no more humbling proposal to a human soul than this.
And can it be that I should gain
an interest in the Savior’s blood!
Died he for me — who caused his pain –
For me who him to death pursued?
Amazing love! How can it be
that thou, my God, shouldst die for me?
He left his Father’s throne above
(so free, so infinite his grace!),
emptied himself of all but love,
and bled for Adam’s helpless race.
’Tis mercy all, immense and free,
for O my God, it found out me!
Amazing love! How can it be
that thou, my God, shouldst die for me?
The sun had come up in my life.
[The lyrics are from the hymn, "And Can it Be (Amazing Love)", by Charles Wesley. Enjoy the lovely rendition here.]
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(I didn't get the joke...?)
HMMmmm...
What kind of SILLY things do JW's have that would cause someone to be booted out?
I’m shaking the dust off my sandles.
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Would you like me to put that reference in proper context as well?
Is there some International Association of Cults and Offshoot Sects
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Not that I am aware of, but biblical misinterpretation spreads like wildfire.
We can't afford STATUES in Temple Square or a LARGE publishing budget than would ALLOW us to REALLY discredit Traditional Christianity like the Salt Lake City branch of MORMONism does!
I am diggin’ the “Christ crucified on a post” despite reams of material on the crucifixion techniques used by the Romans as well as the witness accounts.
I am diggin’ the “Christ crucified on a post” despite reams of material on the crucifixion techniques used by the Romans as well as the witness accounts.
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I know. There is a grafittio that John R.W. Stott posts a picture of in his Cross of Christ book, that is late first century and shows a traditional Cross.
True.
Though not sure how you’re connecting those 2 sentences.
Sometimes I think these groups have contrary ideas just for the sake of being contrarian.
Well .. Yeah .. Real estate on Federal Hwy (US1) and Commercial Blvd, Has never not been primo Super expensive property.
Less than a mile from Lauderdale Beach? .. You figure it out.
“And of course .. It was the anti Mormon crowd that is partly responsible for the Muslim in the White House.”
You assume a RINO republican (RINOmney) would have been
better for our country than the Muslim who was elected.
Not so sure about that...
RINOmney gave MA Obamacare before we knew what it was.
RINOmney raised taxes like crazy in MA (he called them fees)
RINOmney was more than eager to suck money out of our pockets to pay for his Olympics in UT
RINOmney forced Americans in MA to purchase insurance
RINOMney redistributed money to pay for healthcare
At least Obama has united America against socialism. RINOmney advocated for it as a republican.
If Americans recognize the teaching of mormonism as the cult that it clearly is, don’t blame them for not supporting one of its followers. Apparently 24% of voters feel that way. That’s a lot of people.
I'm selling clues...cheap.
Ya want one?
Your views are to history what Globull Warming is to science.
First, it is an accident of our Germanic language that we call it Easter (rooted in the ancient Germanic word for sunrise) while most other languages use the word for Passover and liturgically the Church refers to Paschal celebration. The celebration of what in English is called Easter is a celebration of the Christian passover.
Second, The celibate priesthood is not a matter of doctrine, but of discipline. Historically married men have been made priests and even today some married converts from Lutheranism or Anglicanism are ordained priests in the Latin rite. In the eastern rite, in eastern Europe, it is common practice as it is with our Orthodox brethren. Ordination of married men Latin rite is a rule that could be changed and is mostly advocated by the leftists while the Vatican has not shown any inclination towards changing.
Arguments over the date of Pasch is a matter of what calendar is used-even among Christians those on the Julian calendar often celebrate on different dates than those of us on the Gregorian calendar. Roman emperors, like other governments, had their own political reasons for how they enforce decisions by the councils. Also as of the Council of Nicea, Constantine was not actually a baptized Christian, he was only baptized towards the very end of his life, and was mostly concerned with the political ramifications arguments within the Church had on his empire. Throughout history, heresy was often enforced with death sentence penalties in civil courts, but not in the Church courts because the governments use religion as a unifying force within the country- the concept of freedom of religion is are hard lesson still not learned in much of the world- where the Church is much more interested in the proper formation of the conscience and salvation of the individual’s soul. In point of fact, the history of the Church is very often defined in tension with the secular governments with secular governments trying to wield influence in places the Church considered itself sovereign and vice-versa.
97823
When folks THINK they’re on the right path; but aren’t.
Just wondering.
There is property here in Indianapolis that was slum ghetto for YEARS and I passed up a LOT of it, but NOW, after the ex-YUPPIES decided to throw THEIR money into it...
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