QUESTION: I just have a question on how demons can affect human beings. What is the difference between Satan's influence and demon possession? Can a demon completely takeover a human being's mind? If so, does it happen at human's will? This is mind boggling for me, your thoughts will be much appreciated.
QUESTION: Why do you think Jehovah didn't want much done in the East? Does it involve today?
On two occasions Jesus warned his followers to stay on the watch for his return, because he was coming at an hour they did not think to be it. He likened his unexpected return to a thief breaking into a home, saying: “But know one thing, that if the householder had known in what watch the thief was coming, he would have kept awake and not allowed his house to be broken into.”
Significantly, the context on both occasions had to do with his coming to judge the slaves of his household. Jehovah's Witnesses, of course, are convinced that Jesus came in 1914. And the Watchtower teaches that in 1918 Jesus cleansed the so-called spiritual temple, as foretold in the third chapter of Malachi. And it was on that occasion that Jesus is supposed to have appointed his faithful slave over all of his belongings. At least that is what the Watchtower used to teach, but evidently that is all about to change.
Question: I was reading your article on the Governing Body changing their view on when it is the faithful slave is appointed over all the master’s belongings. I could not buy this teaching and never got baptized, even though so much else made sense. Here is my question: You see the Governing Body as being destroyed before the fall of Babylon the great. First question - Is there any hope that they will completely reform their teaching or is it destined in prophesy that they will be destroyed? Second question - Do you see some remnant of the current Jehovah's Witnesses as being gathered to do the true final preaching work? How do you see that unfolding?
The April 2013, Watchtower Magazine carries an article with the scriptural title: “Make Sure of the More Important Things,” which tangentially invokes the vision of Ezekiel regarding the extraterrestrial chariot – the intent being, to impress upon Jehovah’s Witnesses the reality of the existence of “the invisible part of Jehovah’s organization.” The article reinforces the belief among Jehovah’s Witnesses that the visible and the invisible are inseparably linked. In fact, it [...]
A lone man stands gazing into the sky as the heavens grow ominously dark and the wind begins to blow tempestuously. A great storm is sweeping down from out of the north. But this is no ordinary atmospheric thunderstorm. As if concealing some other worldly visitor, all around the foreboding, billowing, cloud mass there is emitted a strange and entrancing iridescent glow. No, this is no natural weather phenomenon at all, and the observer of this awesome spectacle is no ordinary man. He is the Hebrew prophet, Ezekiel, and the very hand of Jehovah has come down upon his prophet. Yes, Ezekiel is in the grip of a divinely inspired phantasma!
The enraptured prophet goes on to relate the vision as it unfolds: In the midst of the roiling clouds are quivering rivers of energetic fire. Suddenly there appear, hovering, four tremendous living creatures; each with four differing earthly faces and four wings and the hands of a man; their bodies glowing like super-heated coals. Something like flaming torches are conveyed from one living creature to the other and out of the brightness of the torches great charges of lightening flash – as if transmitting messages to one another by electrical means.
It has now been nearly a century since Charles Taze Russell made the bold proclamation: “The Gentile times have ended. Their kings have had their day.” For nearly four decades before that fateful year Russell’s Watch Tower had been pointing forward to 1914 as a year marked in prophecy that would see the beginning of anarchy and the collapse of civilization.
When Austrian Archduke, Franz Ferdinad, along with his wife Sophie, were assassinated in Sarajevo on June 28th, it resulted in all the Great Powers of Europe choosing up sides and declaring war against each other in a matter of a few weeks – setting the stage for the bloodbath that became known as the First World War. Those tragic developments led C. T. Russell to make his historic announcement on October the 2nd of that year.
Of course, civilization did not collapse then. And the Great War did not lead into the Battle of Armageddon, as the Bible Students had been eagerly anticipating. And the Gentile kings, whose “day” had supposedly come in 1914, have in the decades since then gone on to dominate the world in ways that would have been hard for anyone living back then to even imagine. Oddly enough, though, the year 1914 has ever since become solidified in the minds of Jehovah's Witnesses as the most important date in all human history.
The sanctification of God’s holy name and the vindication of his sovereignty are of the utmost universal importance. Jehovah’s personal interests are supreme. Human salvation is secondary in the outworking of God’s purpose. Jehovah’s Witnesses well know that to be true.
To that end the ancient prophetic book of Ezekiel contains the yet-to-be-revealed judgments of Jehovah that will settle, once and for all time, the issue of Jehovah’s right to rule and the righteousness of his ways and forever sanctify his great name.
It does not matter that the scholars schooled in Christendom have expunged the distinctive name of God from their Bibles. More than any other book of prophecy, Ezekiel emphasizes how the revelation of God’s judgments will serve up to the nations of our modern world a bitter potion; forcing them to know that he is Jehovah, even as it says in Ezekiel: “The nations will have to know that I am Jehovah.”
But as Ezekiel 9:6 establishes, God’s judgment starts first in the holy place, in the very sanctuary of God; beginning with the covenant-breaking priests and older men in Jerusalem and ultimately with the entire house of Israel, exiles and alien residents included.
Because Jehovah’s Witnesses bear God’s personal name before the world, as did the typical house of Judah that fell under God’s judgment two and a half millenniums ago, and because anointed Christians are in a covenanted relationship with Jehovah, as were the Jews in Ezekiel’s day, it is Jehovah’s Witnesses who must first be made to know that he is Jehovah – as opposed to the nations. That is why it says throughout the prophecy of Ezekiel in many places: “And you people will have to know that I am Jehovah” – “you people” meaning God’s people.
"For this is what the Sovereign Lord Jehovah has said: ‘Here I am, I myself, and I will search for my sheep and care for them. According to the care of one feeding his drove in the day of his coming to be in the midst of his sheep that have been spread abroad, that is the way that I shall care for my sheep; and I will deliver them out of all the places to which they have been scattered in the day of clouds and thick gloom.'"
The
prophesied desolation of Jerusalem and the Jewish exile in Babylon was
by no means the end of Jehovah’s dealings with his renegade nation.
Another significant aspect, not only of the book of Ezekiel, but of all
Hebrew prophecy, has to do with the liberation, restoration and revival
of God’s covenanted people. Although the nation as a whole, particularly
the leadership, failed to live up to the obligations of the covenant
into which their forefathers had entered with God, Jehovah did not stay
resentful nor did he cast them off forever, but he extended forgiveness
and mercy in a very large way to a chastened remnant.
But the relationship between God and his people was not to be as before. No, in his compassion Jehovah purposed to permanently repair his relationship with the Jews. At least that is what the prophecies relate. But while it is noteworthy that the repatriated Jews did not resume the degrading form of idolatry that they had practiced before their exile, it is also apparent that the prophecy of Ezekiel only had a relative fulfillment with regard to the post-exilic Jewish society. More importantly, the shadows cast by this portion of the prophecy have profound significance for Jehovah’s Witnesses at the coming of Christ, which is the subject of this article.
QUESTION: Is the act of masturbation a sin? Humans have engaged in this act for a
very long time, far predating Christianity. Considering this was an ongoing practice
before, during and after the OT and NT were written, then surely if Jehovah did
consider it a sinful act he would have included it in his word somewhere. As far as I
can see it is nowhere to be found; leading me to believe that it must not be sinful.
Having been brought up the truth however, I was always told it was a sin against
Jehovah, both by my parents and from the WT itself. But I feel now, thinking about it,
the Watchtower has truly ‘gone beyond what is written’, at least in this case.
