Interesting Article

This whole "cram it down other's throats" id complete nonsense.

Does anyone force you to read it?

Yes we put it in front of you but you are under no obligation to read it, reply to it.

However there are those on here who are so convinced they are right that when they can't make someone else agree they hide away and sulk.

I have no problem inviting criticism. I have nothing to fear from anyone. I am happy to discuss these things until the cows come home.

The thing is that I now no-one can make me read anything I don't want to, any more than I can make them read what they don't want to.

However, if I did not have the Fruits of God's Holy Spirit to help can protect me it might be a different thing all together.

Galatians 5:22-24 https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/bl/r1/lp-e?q=Galatians%205%3A22-24 "On the other hand, the fruitage of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faith, 23 mildness, self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 Moreover, those who belong to Christ Jesus impaled the flesh together with its passions and desires."

Every word of that scripture is true, and the more mature one comes in God's love the more that you display them.

The point is that I do have them, and in a very real sense they are the evidence that God is with me. I now I could never be this patient without God's calming Spirit. So not only should others be able to recognise that God is with me because of them, they are also evidence of that for me also.

As I see it, to seek enlightenment - which in Buddhism is the "bottom line" so to speak - is in no way put into second place any concern for others, or to act to heal others. Most expressions of the Buddhist faith have come to see from the actual living experience of the path that to walk it is to be one in identification with others. Just as in Christianity, by hearing the words of Christ, love of God and love of humankind are a necessary unity where one will always imply the other. "If a man say he loves God and hates his brother, what good is that?"

Walking the path implies a degree of selflessness, which brings to the heart the reality that whoever we "help" is in fact helping us. There can be no "reaching down" but only a reaching across, where "mutual forgiveness of each vice opens the gates of paradise" (Blake)

A larger scale? Will it ever be? I have no idea just what the Biker is saying (I have him blocked - enough is enough for the moment) but he is in a sense right when he often speaks of there ever being very few found. Yet in selflessness it is impossible to dwell on any thought that oneself is necessarily of the few (!); and it is also to have some sort of faith that "all things are possible to God/Reality-as-is" , things that will always seem impossible to us. As Merton has said, our world is always full of unexpected gifts.

If you don't wish to respond, then don't, if you wish to run away and sulk by banning me, feel free. Nothing can stop me as long as I am not banned, because I cannot let anything else stop me, or I would be disobeying the Christ.

I'm not seeking attention, I am simply doing my "job" as a servant of Christ and putting the truth in front of people. That is what Christ did, and it is what his Apostles did, so it is what any servant of Christ and God should do.

If you haven't worked out by now that I don't care if anyone replies or not then you have learned nothing about me in all this time.

Going about it the wrong way? Hardly, I am going about it the only way there is for a follower of Christ, and that is by speaking truth.

I don't worry if you listen or not, if you believe me or not. True, Like God and His son I would like more to listen than not, but it doesn't worry me because That is between them and God. I provide the water, I don't push people's heads into it.

Maybe I am casting pearls before swine, but I am not prepared to make a final judgement on that. You and others may react that way today, but that may change tomorrow, or next month, or next year. If you did you would far from be the first.

I can judge what people teach, I am authorised, commanded even to do that, but I cannot judge the people, no human can, or the preaching work would have ended long ago.

Christ said that no-one could come to him unless his Father drew them. If he isn't drawing you then maybe you should ask why. If He is drawing you then you will accept what scripture tells us al.

Why do I carry on despite the lack of response?

Well how do I know that someone else isn't reading what I post?

How do I know that one day one of them might listen and check up for themselves?

I don't, and probably never will, but that is not important. What is important is that I carry on the work Christ started, and spread the truth, and if that sometimes means telling people home truths about themselves in the hope that to will open their eyes, then that is what it means.

It really doesn't matter what I say, if God wants you, you will respond. My job is just to put the information out there the rest is up to you, or whoever.

I get what you are saying to some extent. We are both talking about the same thing in essence. When I say heal, yes that does mean first showing some empathy or recognizing aspects of yourself in others. It does not mean looking down on them.
Also, what did you mean by ..

"Yet in selflessness it is impossible to dwell on any thought that oneself is necessarily of the few ;"

In Russia you do not read the Bible, the Bible reads YOU.

In a sense that is what the bible does, though it does it because God and Christ gauge your reaction to it and judge accordingly.

It just seems a consequence of being selfless i.e not thinking of self. That we would not identify ourselves as being one of those "found" by God to be righteous upon His return. (Obviously I do not share any literal idea of a "return".) It just relates to how our friend the Biker often speaks, that the "few" are the JW's, who are the only righteous.

You need to get away from these conspiracy theories.

Yes, I do see we are talking about the same thing.

In a very real sense we do reveal ourselves to God, simply by our reaction to His word, as Paul points out. Hebrews 4:11-13 https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/bl/r1/lp-e?q=Hebrews%204%3A11-13 "Let us therefore do our utmost to enter into that rest, for fear anyone should fall in the same pattern of disobedience. 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. 13 And there is not a creation that is not manifest to his sight, but all things are naked and openly exposed to the eyes of him with whom we have an accounting."

Christ chooses who he chooses. We don't identify ourselves as in "here we are" we do so because Christ is always on the lookout for ones he can use. Ones who are willing to accept his Father's word, and be obedient to it. Ones to whom the idea of serving God, and doing so His way appeals and who are prepared to trust Him to guide us.

He sees,as a scripture says, into our hearts and chooses accordingly.

It isma fact that the JWs are God's servants, like it or not,m, and I doubt anyone does. I know I didn't.

As I have said on here f=before, they were the last place I wanted to find the truth, and if I hadn't almost been forced into checking them out I would never have even looked at them.

Not only that but finding out the truth cost me 4 very anxious mixed up years. I literally was, as someone pointed out to me when I spoke of those years, I had been doing exactly as the Glorifed Christ told Paul on the road to Damascus, "kicking against the ox-goads". I knew what I had found but didn't want to admit it even to myself.

However I have never been one to run from truth so in the end it got me.

I've never regretted it, even in my current circumstances, because God's spirit is still with me giving me hope for a return. All I have to be is patient, and await His time. That is why even with the reactions of some on here I can still display the fruits of the spirit, and deal patiently with them in the hope that one day they will awake, or if not that someone else who reads my words may check it out for themselves with reasonably open minds and hearts.

One day all will know exactly where the truth lies. For some it will come too late and they will regret not listening. Some will even then be too proud to admit it and will die at Armageddon telling Christ he is wrong.

Even if some of these die before Armageddon and get a resurrection, are they going to accept what they find? They will know it is all according to "this good news of the Kingdom" as taught by Christ's followers on earth. It will be quite a shock for them.

"Righteous" definitely does not mean "In the right."

It means in the right in God's eyes, and is not a designation anyone can take on themselves. Only God and Christ can judge us righteous or not and that judgement can change from day to day at present.

As usual Dookie, you have a few things wrong in what you like to think I have said. However to an extent I seem to have misunderstood some aspects of what you are saying also.

I have never claimed to be righteous. No human can make that judgement of themselves or of another. Nor have I said that the JWs are righteous, though I can rightly say that they do all they humanly can to earn that designation, but it is between them and God, no-one else. I have simply pointed out, accurately, that they are the people chosen by Christ to organise and run the prophesied preaching of "this good news of the Kingdom".

Because of the need for unity in the message and organisation in it's distribution, it had to be one group, and it had to be an obedient one also. Hence Jesus prayer to his Father that all his followers should be united the same way he and His Father are.

Beside which God has always dealt with ones. At first one person, then one family, then one nation, then one group, and now, also one group. That is simply God's way, since it is efficient.

There is no literal return. The return, or presence that Christ spoke about is precisely what happened in or around 1914, when he took up his throne in heaven and turned his attention to sorting out the earth, or at least gathering his servants on it.

For Christ to take on another perfect body would invalidate the ransom he paid with his right to such perfect life.

To come back as an imperfect human would be unthinkable since he is perfect.

Therefore the return can only be a spiritual one, to reorganise the true worship of his Father as he did before.

Since Christ had work to do on the earth and is not physically returning he had to chose some humans to do it for him.

As you have said in the past, God does not change, nor does Christ, and they have always worked that way.