We are a protestant Christian church. Our basic doctrine is presented below...
[0] The original scripture (which is lost presently) was inspired by God and written by men, all of whom were sons of Jacob. It was perfect for the job of teaching mankind sustainable morality, the laws we need which prevent us from destroying ourselves. The copies we have today are good enough for God's purpose at this time. The Old Testament is the story of an angry God rescuing his youngest children (mankind) from his errant angelic son (Satan) who had kidnapped them and held them to ransom. The Gospels are the story of that ransom paid by Jesus, and of the love and righteousness which together form the morality of God and of his son, Jesus Christ, who was found to be without sin throughout his entire ministry. The rest of the New Testament is the story of the early Christian Church. More Info.
[1] The Bible is a deliberately ambiguous and a deliberately fragmented book. This is not a result of the negligence of a God who could not arrange to record facts in a coherent order or express himself in an unambiguous way. It is the mechanism by which God reveals the truth only to those who love him enough to put the jigsaw together and to work through the ambiguity. The ambiguity and fragmentation enables an unscrupulous or lazy reader to draw the conclusion he wants. And many a church was set up on such incorrect conclusions. This is why one must keep on searching, knocking and asking one's whole life...
7 Keep on asking, and it will be given you; keep on seeking, and
you will find; keep on knocking, and it will be opened to you.
8 For everyone asking receives, and everyone seeking finds, and to
everyone knocking it will be opened (Matthew 7).
12 For the word of God is alive and exerts power and is sharper than any two-edged sword and pierces even to the dividing of soul and spirit, and of joints and [their] marrow, and [is] able to discern thoughts and intentions of [the] heart (Hebrews 4).
Getting the correct bible interpretation is not a 5 second sprint. It is a life long marathon. Only when you have harmonized every scripture on a subject do you have God's view. Only when you have addressed every possible ambiguity and eliminated them all except one, from logic or from other scriptures, do you have the true meaning of the scripture you are considering. It is hard. It is set at the limit of our intelligence. But it is not set beyond that limit. And the holy spirit will guide you to the truth not if you ask, but if you keep on asking in sincerity, not for your glory, but for the glory of God, which is love. The LW position is that God is more intelligent than us. His book is the ultimate academic treatise and when we think we see a mistake in the holy word of God, what we are seeing is a mistake in our grasp of that word. We do not find any mistakes that God has made. He will find every mistake that we have made. More Info.
[2] God is not a trinity. He is an individual spirit being called Jehovah or Yahweh (no one today quite knows how to pronounce his name). He created the angels, the universe and mankind. The trinity is a 3rd century logical mind trick. It is a brainwash-o-meter. If you accept that 3 equals 1 and are prepared to deny the existence of the number 2, then the Catholic church wants you, because you will serve them blindly. You will give them your money, your children, your possessions, whatever they ask for. If you will not accept the abolition of the number 2, then they do not want you because you will see through their other power games and cause them problems. See George Orwell's 1984 or Gul Madred and Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Next Generation (Season 6, Episode 11, Chain of command II) for the 20th century versions of this mind game. More Info.
[3] God invented Love. Hence the scripture says: God is Love.
8 He that does not love has not come to know God, because God is
love.
16 And we ourselves have come to know and have believed the
love that God has in our case. God is love, and he that remains in love remains in union with God
and God remains in union with him (1 John 4).
If you study the understandings of this church you will see the unbreakable eternal love that God has for all of his children, for every human being who ever lived, for every angel ever born, including Satan himself. You will see what perfect love is. You will not see any Lords' Witnesses demonstrate this kind of love very often, for we are as bad as the next guy. But at least you will see man's potential, our capability for love, and you will see our and your own future. You have free will, yes but no sin is sustainable, so you will one day have perfect love. You choose when that day is. And it may be a very long way away. But God will teach you and discipline you and love you until the day that you become a true child of his, a person with the kind of love that he already has. Do not think that greatest expressions of love are confined to true Christians. They are not. CNN recently (May 2007) described how a US soldier saw a grenade having been thrown into his humvee. He could have jumped out of the vehicle since he was sitting on the turret. But instead he chose quietly to lower his body over the grenade. He saved the lives of his 4 friends in that vehicle. That is perfect love. There is no freedom without sacrifice and that soldier will get a lot more from God than the posthumous medal his family will get from George Bush, for Jesus said...
13 No one has a greater love than this, that he should surrender his soul in behalf of his friends (John 15).
That soldier, and many others, not by their words, or by their profession, but by their actions, make themselves sons of Jesus Christ.
[4] Jesus was God's son in the following senses. A human embryo that became the boy called Immanuel and called Jesus was implanted in the Virgin Mary by the angel Gabriel. This boy debated with the Pharisees aged 12 and was baptised by John aged 30. At his baptism in the Jordan, the spirit, the character of Immanuel, was transferred into an angel. Immanuel was raptured. And the angel Michael came down and possessed Jesus' human body. This angelic possession was symbolised by the dove coming down and remaining on the head of the body. So Jesus from his baptism to his death was the angel Michael in the human body of the immaculately conceived Immanuel.
5 Keep this mental attitude in you that was also in Christ Jesus,
6 who, although he was existing in God's form, gave no consideration to a
seizure, namely, that he should be equal to God.
7 No, but he emptied himself and took a slave's form and came to
be in the likeness of men.
8 More than that, when he found himself in fashion as a
man, he humbled himself and became obedient as far as death, yes, death on torture
stake (Philippians 2).
23 From the offspring of this [man] according to his promise God
has brought to Israel a savior, Jesus,
24 after John, in advance of the entry of that One [Jesus], had preached
publicly to all the people of Israel baptism [in symbol] of
repentance (Acts 13).
So Michael emptied himself from his angelic form and entered into Jesus after John had started preaching.
Immanuel was God's son because he directly created Immanuel. Michael, being an angel, was also God's son. Jesus was God's only begotten son in the sense that Michael was the only angel with everlasting life (permanent son) at the time he possessed Jesus. He was given everlasting life when he agreed to ransom Adam at the time of his sin. More info.
[5] Michael, whom all Christians refer to as Jesus, was given the name above every name which name is Jehovah, at his resurrection. Having God's name as your surname, is having his status. So Jesus became a God to be worshipped like his father when he was resurrected. The reason God elevated him in this way is firstly that we are all sons of God and therefore will all one day be so elevated since like begets like, and is secondly that Jesus by his righteousness, his love and his suffering carried God's reputation on his back and his actions confirmed God's divinity. Had he failed, then God's divinity would have been denied. Therefore God was right to give his divine status to Jesus as a gift, since he had carried it successfully as a burden. So after his resurrection Jesus became the only begotten God of John 1:18, in the bosom position of his father, who is the only unbegotten God. More Info.
[6] Today, the LWs worship the two Gods, Jehovah and Jesus (Michael). We refer to our second God as Jesus or Michael interchangeably. We are the only church which recognises the divinity of Jesus without having him as a part of Jehovah or of an illogically defined trinity. So we are the only church that recognises Jesus as an individual God in his own right. Therefore we say Gods' Bless and we are the Lords' Witnesses, being witnesses for two Gods, Jehovah and Jesus. We can pray to Jehovah or to Jesus or to both of them. Simply put every Christian church in the entire world worships either one God (unitarian) or three Gods (trinitarian). But as is the way of religion, they are all wrong. There are two Gods that we should be worshipping! More Info.
[7] Satan was the first angel that God created, the firstborn angel of God, the firstborn son of Jehovah. He was originally called Lucifer (light carrier, light bearer, light bringer), before he started opposing God (Satan means adversary or opposer). God created all angels and all humans with free will. And that made it inevitable that all of us would rebel and break his laws at some point early on in our lives as Adam did. No free willed being has never sinned except Jehovah. Presumably Jehovah conquered sin in his mind before he created an other free willed beings and defined righteousness for them. "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). Michael and Gabriel were later born angels. More info.
[8] Angels are male and female just as humans are. Sex is a tutor to love and all God's children are male and female until they have perfect love, at which point they become Gods to be worshipped, who are asexual since they no longer need that tutor. Angels do not reproduce sexually. They reproduce in a manner similar to the immaculate conception of Jesus. More Info.
[9] The Holy Spirit, is God's heavenly administration, heavenly Jerusalem, the Jerusalem above. It is 144,000 angels covenanted to God as his helper to rule over the heavens and the earth. It is his wife, and our mother as Paul would say. It is all the holy spirits in the holy spirit covenant. So Jehovah, the Holy Spirit and Jesus are Father, Mother and Son. You have now met the family. The family unit is how God runs everything. More Info.
[10] Adam and Eve were real human beings a man and a woman. More Info. They were the first human beings who were able to reproduce sexually. But they were not the first human beings. Pre-adamic man who existed before Adam and Eve reproduced asexually as the angels do. Adam and Eve put mankind into mass production, which we call reproduction in the context of procreation. The fossil record shows the existence of pre-adamic man, this is undeniable. But no pre-adamic lived longer than 50 years. That is an archeological finding and is also provable from the scriptures. Furthermore there is archeological evidence that pre-adamics did not link sex to pregnancy. Pre-adamics were sexually active but did not reproduce by that means. More Info.
[11] Every person angelic or human or divine, has a spirit which is the character of that person, and has a body, which is either human or angelic or divine. The spirit and the body together are called a living soul or just a soul. A soul must be self sustaining. A dead soul is a dead body without a spirit. The spirit never dies in any child of God, human or angelic. This is the love of God for his kids. More Info.
[12] A foetus becomes a human being, a living soul, at the 6th week of pregnancy. That is the 6th week after the last period. That is generally around the 4th week from conception. This physiologically is when the blood starts oxygenating the brain. One cannot be blood guilty for killing a foetus which has no functioning blood. Likewise the foetus develops nostrils in the 6th week after the last period, and God blew the spirit of life into Adam's nostrils. For these and other reasons abortion is not murder before the 6th week and abortion is murder after the 6th week. Once a foetus has gained the spirit of life from God, once its blood starts oxygenating its brain, once it has developed nostrils, then it has an immortal spirit and even if the mother chooses to kill it, that baby will be resurrected by God and stare into the face of its mother. And God will hold the mother and the doctor to account even if lobby groups prevent democratically elected governments from so doing. Women are not the only people with rights in a family. Fathers have rights and foetuses have rights after the 6th week. By the 6th week the mother is 2 weeks late so in times past she would normally know or at least suspect that she is pregnant. More Info.
[13] A human being is born again when he is given an angelic body. This can occur without him realising it and whilst he is still in his human body. Or it can occur when he is resurrected from physical death. When a human is baptised in holy spirit, spirit sanctified, becomes a saint, he gains an angelic body. More Info.
[14] Adam was born by immaculate conception to pre-adamic parents as Jesus was born by immaculate conception to Jewish parents. Adam was born again aged 30. Immanuel was born again when he was baptised aged 30, becoming an angel. Eve was created by God's baptism of a pre-adamic woman whom he chose for Adam. More Info.
[15] Satan, being the firstborn angel, had the rights of the firstborn. God initially did everything through Satan. God created the whole physical universe through him as chief executive, and Satan was the head of the first holy spirit. When Satan enticed Eve to sin by offering her the status of a God and showed Eve how to use Adam's sexual desire to entice Adam to sin, Satan lost his firstborn rights and the first holy spirit was disbanded. God therefore divorced his first wife (actually Satan effectively murdered her). Adam's sin opened mankind up to knowledge of both good and bad. The school in which we have learned about these things is called 'the world' in biblical terminology. The world began with Adam's sin and is ruled by Satan for 6,000 years, which end very shortly.
31 Now there is a judging of this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out (John 12).
8 Again the Devil took him along to an unusually high mountain, and
showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory,
9 and he said to him: All these things I will give you if you
fall down and do an act of worship to me (Matthew 4).
Satan in the heavenly headmaster of this world. But God owns the school. The headmaster following Satan, is Jesus. When the kindergarten of Satan ends, those who pass the entrance exam of faith, will enter into the grammar school, the grade school, of Jesus, which is the kingdom of God. More Info.
[16] All mankind is judicially dead (needing to be born again), we are subject to the death sentence passed upon Adam due to his sin. This is why we age and die. We all exist by virtue of the stay of execution that God granted Adam. This type of death, adamic death, is passed on to our children entirely and exclusively through our genes. Were mankind as a race to conquer ageing and gain indefinite life by our own research we would have outsmarted God. So when Jesus said: Let the dead bury their dead (Luke 9:60), he meant let the judicially dead bury their physically dead. When one is born again, one is no longer judicially dead. More Info.
[17] We think that sexual reproduction and marriage are the natural way to procreate, but they are not. Mankind is judicially dead for the most part, condemned by one sentence passed on Adam which applies to all of his children. And marriage is an institution for the dead which exists to protect the rights of a child to have two parents a man and a woman. Never before in the history of life has God permitted his children to reproduce without his direct permission. Mankind are permitted to create life for God, without a case by case consent because we are dead and our children our dead. We are in fact creating proto-life if you like. The institution of marriage is God's regulation of the procreation of the dead. When you have everlasting life, marriage is not such a good idea! More Info.
[18] When Jesus was killed, his human body ransomed Abraham and his angelic body ransomed Adam angelically. Since Jesus died as an angel with everlasting life, he gave Adam everlasting life directly. So today, any human can gain everlasting life due to Jesus' angelic sacrifice and through Adam. In fact there is a covenant between God and Jesus which we call the Angelic Ransom Covenant and an inferior covenant between Jesus and Adam which we call the third blessing covenant. Sons of Adam by this covenant have angelic everlasting life. More Info.
[19] When Jesus was resurrected he was given the firstborn angel's rights that Satan had lost. Then he became the firstborn of all creation (Colossians 1:15). He then became the head of the second holy spirit. God's second wife. Jesus fixed the holy spirit as well as the adamic sin down here. This is why Jesus promised to send the helper, the comforter, in the Gospel of John, after he died.
7 Nevertheless, I am telling you the truth, It is for
your benefit I am going away. For if I do not go away, the helper will by no
means come to you; but if I do go my way, I will send him to you (John 16). More
Info.
[20] Hades, the first death, is the death of the human body. Just before the body dies, the spirit is transferred into a sleeping angel, and is conscious of nothing. This is why Jesus described all the people he resurrected who were in fact dead, as being asleep. More Info.
[21] Gehenna, the second death, Hell, is the loss of one's angelic body (whether one was alive in it as an angel or sleeping in it in the first death as a dead human). Gehenna is a place of torment, but not a place of physical torture. Those in Gehenna have a 'head' in that they can see and communicate, but do not have a body and do not have a soul.
28 And do not become fearful of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; but rather be in fear of him that can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna (Matthew 10) More Info.
[22] God will save everyone eventually, even Satan. For the good book says...
9 [The] Lord is not slow respecting his promise, as some people consider slowness, but he is patient with you because he does not desire any to be destroyed but desires all to attain to repentance (2 Peter 3).
10 the One telling from the beginning the finale, and from long ago the things that have not been done; the One saying, 'My own counsel will stand, and everything that is my delight I shall do' (Isaiah 46).
So if he does everything he wants, and if he wants everyone to repent, then we will all repent and therefore be saved...
21 For since death is through a man, resurrection of the dead is
also through a man.
22 For just as in Adam all are dying, so also in the Christ
all
will be made alive (1 Corinthians 15).
We will all become his born again sons, he will eventually give us all everlasting life once we have learned the rules of sustainable morality without which everlasting life is impossible. The greatest lesson that the angels and humans will ever get which proves categorically that sin is unsustainable is Armageddon, the self annihilation of mankind. God is going to permit us to destroy ourselves in order teach us once and for all that sin is eventually terminal for any group of free willed beings.
SIN + TIME = DESTRUCTION
At Armageddon, time runs out. After Armageddon, God will resurrect all of us and show us all the video and say to those who caused our destruction: OK boys, were do you think you went wrong there then? More Info.
[23] Jesus made the first new covenant at the last supper on Thursday night March 31st 33 AD (Gregorian/true solar). This covenant is for 144,000 people to be angelic kings ruling over the 1,000 year kingdom of God and for 12,000 reserve kings to take the places of those who abdicate or who sin so as to lose their crowns. These kings include Peter, and John and the apostles (not Judas Iscariot). They form the new holy spirit of Jesus, Jesus' wife, his body (he being their head), in the kingdom of God. More Info.
[24] End Time Chronology. This present system of heavenly and earthly government, called 'the world' in the bible, comes to an end from a heavenly standpoint on March 21 2008. The Kingdom of God which Jesus preached begins on March 23 2008. This being a change in heavenly government. The Sign of the Son of Man appears in heaven on 5/6 May 2008 and the Jesus comes down to earth on 12/13 May 2008. He does not come himself. His wife, the 1NC saints, his body, Peter and John and the apostles and all the 1NC saints descend to the earth from heaven as humans, just as Jesus ascended from the earth to heaven in Acts1.
On October 9/10 2008, 150 days after Jesus comes to collect the faithful, 50% of mankind is raptured into heaven. The remaining 50% left behind will die and then go to Gehenna (Hell). The rapture is the ascension of humans as angels without dying. The 50% who are saved are the faithful one whom God calls righteous due to their obeying their consciences whilst keeping their faith, and due to their repenting sincerely when they fail to obey their conscience. The 50% who are left behind are the faithless or those who defile their conscience and fail to repent. They may be high ranking religious priests. But they will have defiled their consciences without repentance or will have lost their faith. These are the ones who say: Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, expel demons in your name, and perform many powerful works in your name? And yet then I [Jesus] will confess to them: I never knew you! Get away from me, you workers of lawlessness (Matthew 7:22-23). This means that they did nothing in Jesus' name, nothing with his authority. Any powerful works they did were either con tricks or came from Satan or both.
Then the battle of Armageddon is fought between the UN and Jesus. The UN destroys all the remaining religions (referred to in Revelation as Babylon) but loses the war to Jesus after a further 150 days i.e. by April 1/2, 2009. Then there is an extinction level volcanic event which we suspect is caused by a combination of nuclear detonations and global warming which kills every last human by June 10/11 2009, 70 days later. The whole chronology of the last 370 days of human life is identical to the chronology of the 370 days of the flood of Noah. And Daniel says: The end will be by the flood (Daniel 9:26). The final flood is of angels, and then of molten lava after the angels have won armageddon. Then the earth at the end heals itself and incinerates us as garbage in a huge volanic eruption. It resurfaces itself and vapourises all the waters of the oceans into the atmosphere returning to its preflood conditions, ready for the second Eden, the kingdom of God. More Info. More Info. More Info. Even More Info.
[25] You do not have to be a Lords' Witness to be saved at the end of the world. You merely need to have faith in God and obey your conscience to a reasonable extent and own up to your mistakes. You do not need to be a Christian to be saved. Abraham was given the first promise in Genesis 12, the First Abrahamic Covenant, the 1AC, before he got the circumcision and whilst he was outside of any religion. Muslims, Hindus, Jews, Christians, and all people will be saved if they have faith and hold to their consciences and are honest about their mistakes. More Info.
[26] Half of mankind enter into the Kingdom of God on earth and the other half enter into Hell which is a prison. The Kingdom of God lasts for 1,000 years until 3008. The maximum sentence in Hell is also 1,000 years. But the max sentence only applies to those who are unrepentant. Repentant people can get early parole. The purpose of Hell is to rehabilitate those who are willing, and to prevent everyone therein from corrupting the Kingdom of God, which is an almost unimaginable paradise where everyone lives for love rather than for status. More Info.
[27] The dead of mankind going back to Adam are resurrected in reverse order (the first will be last) during the first 500 years of the Kingdom of God. So every faithful son and daughter has a chance to welcome his or her faithful parents into the Kingdom of God. We can thereby repay our parents for their love and introduce them to the next system in the way that they introduced us to this one. The unrighteous from the past are resurrected into Gehenna (Hell). More Info.
[28] A baptism is a cleansing for entrance into a salvation covenant. It is a washing in the blood of the mediator of that covenant. The mediator of a covenant is himself washed in the blood of the validation sacrifice of that covenant. More Info.
[29] There are 3 salvation baptism tests available to mankind. A baptism by men or angels due to faith into the First Abrahamic Covenant of Genesis 12, a baptism by men in water into a true church, and a baptism by men or angels in holy spirit, a sanctification, which is being born again. Those who pass the baptism test of faith, which is obeying the law of their conscience and repenting when they break that law, are sealed in the flesh by the angels and will be citizens in the Kingdom of God on earth. Those who pass the water baptism test of a true church, which is obeying the law of the church and repenting when they break that law, are sealed in the flesh as priests by the angels and will be priests in the Kingdom of God on earth. Those who pass the spirit baptism test of the sons of God, which is keeping faith whilst finding the true church and then passing their water baptism test, are sealed in the spirit by the angels which means they are granted everlasting life and they have the right to be both angels and humans in the Kingdom of God and thereafter for ever. They become Kings or Lords (administrators) in the Kingdom of God. They are effectively the public sector of that Kingdom. More Info.
[30] Women cannot be priests and give birth spiritually by baptism, just as men cannot give birth physically by getting pregnant. Women should have authority in a church just as the wife has authority in the family over the children but not over the husband. Every church in this world is a single parent family. The Lords' Witnesses understand that we should be a two parent family. The whole church should be divided into spiritual family groups of at most 10 people with a male ministerial servant as the head of that group, his immediate spiritual family, and a female ministerial servant as his 'spiritual wife', looking after those 10 people with authority over them but in submission to her spiritual husband. Many people in a church find it easier to speak to a woman about their problems than a man, just as a child might confide in a mother rather than a father. The female ministerial servant and the male ministerial servant are not married in any sense. They are just in a temporary spiritual parenting arrangement that may only last a few weeks. More Info.
[31] The Jews had a large number of covenants given to Abraham Isaac and Jacob. Jacob had 4 wives, Isaac had one wife, Abraham had Sarah as a wife, and Hagar as a concubine and Keturah as both a wife and a concubine. All of these covenants and all of these wives are archetypes which foreshadow Christian covenants. So yes, there is more than one Christian covenant. In particular there is a second new covenant for 144,000 people to be kings not in heaven but on earth. These 144,000 earthly kings will be in 1 to 1 correspondence with the 144,000 heavenly kings in the kingdom of God. The Lords' Witnesses are the church of the second new covenant. More Info.
[32] Jesus is present when a water baptised first new covenant saint exists on the earth. For these ones are promised in marriage to Jesus, and so are one flesh with him. There are two presences of the Christ, each lasting 120 years. Both have small gaps within them. More Info.
[33] There have been 4 true Christian churches in total. The first true Christian church set up by Jesus himself during his ministry with Peter as the first president was corrupted by the Roman empire from 69 AD onwards, and became the Roman Catholic Church which is the 7 headed beast of Revelation 17 in the meaning for that time. The Harlot riding that beast, holding the golden cup, was the First New Covenant Saints in the first century. The golden cup is the cup of the first new covenant.
Yes, even Peter rode that beast. But he repented and left the Roman Catholic church and joined the second true Christian church founded by the apostle Paul. The conflict between the second true Christian church and the corrupt Roman Catholic church is the reason why there are no copies of the Greek New Testament dating to before the council of Nicea in 325 AD, and why there is no first century or second century or third century interpretation of Revelation left in existence. Revelation was correctly interpreted at that time to show that the Roman Catholic church was corrupt, and that God's people should 'get out of her' and join the church of Paul. But all the literature relating to those interpretations and all the first and second and third century bible scrolls or books, were destroyed by the state sponsored Catholics, just as they burnt John Wycliffe at the stake and killed William Tyndale, who first translated, the bible into English.
Amusingly expressions have survived down to this day which seem to tell that story. For example: "Robbing Peter to pay Paul" and "Two little dickie birds sitting on the wall, fly away Peter, fly away Paul." A wall in bible symbolism means the law of the church, the barrier to entry and the protection for those inside. And sitting on a wall means presiding over it and birds mean angels. So the interpretation is the born again Peter and the born again Paul both presided over the law of the first true church and they both left that church. And whilst Peter was a Catholic in the fallen first church and Paul was a true Christian in the second church, Paul's evangelizers were effectively robbing Peter to pay Paul. These are secrets hidden for over a thousand years by the Vatican, but written in the bible. The Vatican B manuscript, which is the oldest New Testament codex (resident in the Vatican) does not have the book of Revelation in it. This is presumably because the interpretation of Revelation shows the Catholic church to be a false church and so the early catholics refused to include it in the bible canon. The Lords' Witnesses are the 4th and final true Christian church of this system of things. More Info.
[34] Lords' Witnesses have to attend the Lord's evening meal, the first new covenant celebration, and the greater festival of Booths, the second new covenant celebration, the Lord's morning meal, every year. There is no other work that they have to do. They must also obey the law of the church which is a series of don'ts. They do not have to evangelise, they do not have to do research, they do not have to teach, they do not have to do charitable works, they do not have to serve as overseers. But they can choose to serve God howsoever they want with their own free will. Like the good book says: He gave some as apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelizers, some as prophets and shepherds and teachers (Ephesians 4:11). More Info.
[35] The Lords' Witnesses do not have a monopoly on correct bible interpretation. No religion, whether true or false, ever has. The holy spirit can give a true interpretation to anyone with faith who can read. Being a true religion does not mean that you get everything right. The LWs believe passionately in doctrinal repentance. We are the church of 1,000 corrected mistakes, and that is why our interpretations are so good. We do not believe in a church doctrine laid down in stone by founding fathers, and not changed for eons thereafter. Churches who follow the so called apostles creed today are fossilized and dead and therefore false churches. Every Lords' witness is a potential founding father of the church, today and tomorrow, with the opportunity to lay a doctrinal foundation stone or to remove one that should not be there. So we publicly admit doctrinal and chronological and prophetic mistakes. Any church was does not admit mistakes is not a Christian church, because if you follow Christ, you are repentant. Repentance is a principle that does not only apply to individuals, it applies equally to entire administrations or congregations, churches. Jesus said that we must become as little children if we are to enter into the Kingdom of God. Well little children trip up a lot. And they do not try to hide it. More Info.
[36] It is the purpose of the LW priesthood to empower every member of the congregation to become a one person church. Someone who will serve God faithfully despite the church or in the absence of the church. The hierarchy of loyalty of a true Christian should be God and Jesus, then his conscience, then the law of the church, then the opinion of his church overseer.
[37] The Lords' Witnesses recognise that Status is the real opium of the masses today not Religion. Although religious leaders with high status are still pretty effective opiates! Mankind will readily accept as gospel the opinions of people with high status, such as celebrities or celebutantes or world leaders or leaders of mainstream churches or large media organisations. But status is the drug Satan uses to control us all through a few chosen corrupt leaders. He makes us dependent upon status with elaborate glorification ceremonies and then he only has to corrupt a few people with high status in order to control all of mankind through them. The solution to this problem is to go cold turkey on status. To God, the entire US government has no more status than a starving African mother in UN refugee camp. Her opinion is just as valid as the entire US government's position. This is why Jesus chose the smelly fishermen of Galilee to carry God's divine wisdom to the perfumed Pharisees of Jerusalem. It is why he chose the Jew from the strictest sect of the Pharisees, Paul, to carry his divine salvation plan to the Gentile emperors of Rome, not the other way around. The higher and more global the status of a person or an individual, the less work Satan has to do to corrupt his admirers. The solution to this, the inoculation against this corruption, is to admire people with great love, rather than people with great status. And to be saved we must pursue love not status. For love is the glory of God, but status is the glory of man. The glory of God leads to life, the glory of man leads to death as we can see today in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Darfur in Zimbabwe, in inner cities in the West, and in many other lawless places.
[38] The bible contains the minimum set of laws that mankind needs to obey in order to live in a morally sustainable way. If any society of free willed beings continually breaks any one of the 10 commandments or one of the further two laws of Moses that Jesus elevated to the status of a commandment, then it will annihilate itself. Mankind is beginning to learn that we have no future unless we live in an environmentally sustainable way. We are beginning to learn how not to destroy our planet. Christianity is God's attempt to teach us how not to destroy not our planet but ourselves. More Info.
[39] The LWs have discovered that the bible is written in a symbolic grammatical code. The nouns acting as nouns in every individual bible story obey two simple counting rules. This code is the key to understanding the greater meanings of bible account. Even literal stories of Abraham or Jacob or David have greater meanings which apply today. Joseph in Genesis and Daniel and Jesus when he explained the parables of the sower and the weeds in the field, and John in Revelation, help us to see how that code works. The code proves for a fact that the bible is inspired and can be used to determine which books or parts of books are canonical. The greatest difficulties in bible interpretation are working out whether a scripture is meant literally or symbolically and working out if the words applied back when they were written or today or both. The bible code answers these questions for each scripture. So we know for a fact that Revelation 17 had a meaning for John in the first century wherein the beast was the Roman Catholic church and has a different meaning for us in the 21st century, wherein the beast is the United Nations. We know it from that code. All other churches mix these meanings up! More Info. Even More Info.
[40] Faith is not a blind belief in the logically unspportable or the scripturally unproveable. It is not believing what your church has believed for hundreds of years nor is it accepting what your priest says. Paul defines it as
1 Faith is the assured expectation of things hoped for, the evident demonstration of realities though not beheld (Hebrew 11).
In other words faith is what you see with your mind from the scriptures which you cannot see with your eyes. It is what the bible assures you is true, but for which there is little physical evidence from this world. It is having the courage of your spiritual deductions.
[41] The Lord's evening meal. This is the greater passover celebration of the Jews. Jesus upgraded it at the last supper. The Jews drink 4 cups and eat 3 loaves one of which is cut in two at this meal. The law of Moses required that it was eaten at midnight, the time of night when the passover angel struck, on Nisan14, in the Biblical Lunar Calendar. This meal should be eaten once a year not twice a day! There are 4 cups that should be drunk each of which represents a salvation covenant. The first cup is the FRC, the second is the ARC, the thrid, drunk with the meal, is the 1AC and the 4th, drunk after the meal is the 1NC. The LWs are the only church to have fully Christianized the 4 cups of the Jewish Passover, as Jesus did on the night of the last supper.
We know that the blood flows round the body so the wine is passed from one to another amongst 1NC saints only. But the loaf is not passed around, it is given by the priest to each saints individually. The LWs are the only church that understands this. Also a passover meal must be eaten with the cups and the loaves. This does not have to obey the rules of the law of Moses, since Jesus died to end the animal sacrifices of the law and the curse of the law. But ones does have to eat a meal, and lamb with bitter greens and unleavened bread and wine are the obvious choices.
But we have not managed to persuade more than one 1NC saint ever to partake of this meal with us hence the scripture says:
18 for I tell you, From now on I will not drink again from the product of the vine until the kingdom of God arrives (Luke 22).
But Jesus did not say that he would not eat again of the loaf until the kingdom of God arrives. Jesus has eaten the loaf of the FRC and the loaf of the ARC and the loaf of the 1AC with the LWs. But he has not drunk the cup either of the FRC or the ARC because he had no one to pass that cup to. So the blood could not flow around the body. And a foetus becomes a living soul when the blood starts flowing and doing its job of keeping the cells in the body alive. More Info.
[42] The Sabbath. The LWs celebrate the weekly sabbath of the law of Moses on the same day that the Jews celebrate it. That is from Friday evening to Satruday evening. This is both a sacred and a secular sabbath. It is a God given rest from secular work and spiritual work. However we do not enforce this as a burden, since Jesus taught that God man the sabbath for man not man for the sabbath. Jesus did not die to end the sabbath. He died to give us the oportunity to enter the 1,000 year sabbath of the kingdom of God. Furthermore the sabbath system of God pre-dated the law of Moses by eons, since it appears in Genesis 1 and 2. So plainly the sabbath principle is still applicable today. We are not pharisaical about it like the Hassidic Jews however. It is suposed to be a holiday, a rest, not a further burden. It just means you can chill out physically financially and spiritually without feeling guilty at all! The LWs also celebrate a land sabbath, which is a sabbath for the administration of the church, on a 50 month cycle rather than a 50 year cycle. This we understand is what the Law of Moses foreshadowed for this time. More Info.
[43] Disfellowshipping (excommunication, disconnection). Regretably, a true church does have to throw out people who sin in such a way that under law they would have been stoned. The law of Moses does not apply today, but Paul said that by law is the accurate knowledge of sin. He did not say that by law was the accurate knowledge of sin. So the righteousness of the law is not obsolete, it is timeless. Although the penalties no longer apply. The LWs give warnings for non capital sins and give instant disfellowshipping for capital sins such as murder and idolatry and adultery etc. But we do not shun people who have been thrown out. We still talk to them and discuss the scriptures with them and love them, but they cannot come to our meetings for 7 months after having been evicted. After 7 months, if they say that they are repentant, and if there is no immediately available evidence to the contrary, we re-admit them, which normally involves a re-baptism. More info.
[44] The Law of Moses and the 10 commandments. Today we are under the 10 commandments of Moses and 2 more added by Jesus. But we are not under the law of Moses. However Paul said...
20 Therefore by works of law no flesh will be declared righteous before him, for by law is the accurate knowledge of sin (Romans 3).
Jesus died to end the physical restrictions of the law, to end the sacrificial obligations of the law and to end the brutal penalties of the law. But his death did not end or change the perfect judicial principles of God that the law made manifest to mankind through Moses, neither did he end the spiritual restrictions of the law or the sexual restrictions. These things even today give us accurate knowledge of sin. When the apostles were deciding which parts of the law should remain binding upon Gentiles this was their decision...
20 but to write them to abstain from things polluted by idols [maintain spiritual restrictions of the law] and from fornication [maintain sexual restrictions of the law] and from what is strangled [a soul is a breather, strangling is a very serious physical restriction to your soul, so this is meant symbolically and means do not keep the physical restrictions of the law] and from blood [abandon the sacrificial requirements of the law] (Acts 15).
So the spiritual requirements of the law still apply. The sexual requirements of the law still apply. The physical requirements of the law no longer apply today and the sacrificial requirements of the law no longer apply. It is really important to realise that if someone knocks your tooth out today, then yes, under Christian law you can defend yourself if he is still attacking you or might continue the attack. Furthermore if in the process of reasonably defending yourself the attacker gets killed, you are not guilty of murder. But if you go after an attacker for vengeance, and knock his tooth out in vengenace, then you are guilty under the law of the Christ today. Vengenace belongs to God, and do not worry, he is far more effective than you could ever be.
19 Do not avenge yourselves, beloved, but yield place to the
wrath; for it is written: Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says
Jehovah (Romans 12). More
Info.
[45] The Kingdom of God, which Jesus preached, is the next heavenly administration of the earth. It begins in heaven on March 23, 2008 and on earth after June 10 2009. It is run by God and Jesus and the 144,000 first new covenant kings from heaven and Melchizedek and Gordon and the 144,000 second new covenant kings on earth. It is divided up into 144,000 individual kingdoms each with an earthly king and a corresponding heavenly king working in partnership. We are the generation which will see the greatest contrast in political leadership ever experienced by mankind. We will see the worst that Satan, the present heavenly ruler of this world, has to offer the nearer we get to the end of this world, and then we will see the best that Jesus has to offer at the beginning of the next world, the kingdom of God. In that kingdom every physical miracle that Jesus performed in his ministry will happen as a matter of course to everyone. So there will be no disability, no ill health, no demonic influence at all, and if you die in an accident you will be instantly resurrected. Then God will cease to be our estranged uncle and start being our live at home father. Then the scripture will be fulfilled which says...
4 And he will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be anymore. The former things have passed away (Revelation 21).
There will be no kidnapping because the angels will see where everyone is all the time and actually tell us. There will be perfect justice, because the angels will not only see everything and hear everything as they presently do, but will actually tell us whatever we want to know, so no matter will be concealable from a court. So lying will be pointless. Both humans and animals will cease being carnivorous and become vegetarian. That is not to say that we should be vegetarian in this system. Quite the contrary, we should be omnivorous, since God gave us meat to eat after the flood, and the law of Moses required the eating of meat. But in the new system nature will reflect our moral advancement, so there will be no predatory behaviour from animals and very little predatory behaviour from humans. We shall not compete for the glory of man, we shall co-operate for the glory of God, which is love. We shall achieve technological and artistic and sociological development that is at present inconceivable. Yet all of that will be as a crashing cymbal or as a sounding piece of brass when compared to our emotional development, our love. A love that will give a billion people a partnership as sweet as Lennon and McCartney, and as enduring as St. Paul and righteousness.
We shall out of free will choose the path of moral sustainability, understanding that freedom requires sacrifice, happiness is putting love first, and love both demands and requires that we obey the law of God. A law which is the perfect soil in which to grow everlasting love between free willed spirits. A law which is the only soil which gives us a permanent future. Oh yes and we will all live in perfect non ageing bodies. Sure, they will still look like us, but they will look better than we did when we were 21! We will have no 'bad hair' days, and we will have the energy of child for 1,000 years.
25 Let his flesh become fresher than in youth. Let him return to the days of his youthful vigor (Job 33).