Saturday, March 10, 2012

A Rare Note Lifting the Witnesses in Praise

Ok so I have to tell everyone what makes the Witnesses better than us Christians. It's pretty easy to see that as Christians, very few, very few of us live up to the Christian standard, and even take being a Christian seriously. Let's face it, the majority of us spend our time criticizing other Christians, or talking bad about the other denominations, or here is something seriously twisted spreading lies amongst the congregation about things such as the Catholic church and the King James Version of the Bible, or that Jesus started a religion, or a number of them. I am going to clear some of that up right now: Catholicism did not exist during the time of Jesus, and they did not try to convert him. Catholicism is a descendent of the original church founded by Christ's followers. Jesus did not start any religion. He did not necessarily encourage his disciples to start one either. He sent the message of how we are truly supposed to live our lives and not live them in the manner of the Pharisees and the teachings of the other religious leaders of the time. The church was to make sure that the truth of God and how he wants us to serve got out and then also make sure people knew who Jesus is. The King James Version of the Bible did not exist during Jesus' time, nor did he use it. I am sure that he would not have used it even if it had. Jesus did not need scriptures to read from, he helped inspire some of them. He knew exactly what he had to do when he came to earth, so you can be he knew every word of the Scriptures. Here is the big shocker for some of you: there was no Bible as we know it in Jesus' time. The only thing that the people had was scrolls. Yep, scrolls of parchment on which the books were written. Also, not everyone even could read and Bibles were not printed for thousands of years after Moses' death. And, there is no wrong or right translation of the Bible. Grab any Bible translation that is different from yours and open it and explore just how much it says the exact same thing as yours. This includes the Witnesses' translation. There are two things I have noticed about the Witnesses' Bible. The first is that they do not translate the word sheol, they leave it as that, most of our Bibles actually tell you the translation, which is grave. Also, given their disbelief of Hell, and the fact that Jesus preached about that more than anything, they do not even have hell in their Bible. They have some funny g word where it should be. Ok here's a third difference, and while not a big deal it drives me nuts. They do not call the Old Testament, the Old Testament; it is the Hebrew Scriptures. The New Testament is called the Christian Greek Scriptures. This is not really a big deal, but it drives me nuts, because it says that the two Testaments are not connected. It also divides the Jewish people. Jewish Christians were still Jews. They may have written the New Testament books in Greek as opposed to Hebrew, but then they were trying to reach the Gentiles, non-Jews, just as much as the Jewish people, so it made sense to use a common language among the people. Both Testaments are important, and are both part of the same story God is telling us. God is telling us how much he loves us. God is telling us how much we mean to him. How much it pains him to see us disobey him and choose to ignore him instead of getting to know him. 
Well, now it is time to give the praise I said I was going to give the Witnesses, it is related to what I said about us. Ok, so here it goes, they do not treat anyone despite their religion the way we treat not only other Christians, but other religions. They do do their own negative saying against us, but they do so through their materials and study. A lot of people give comments about things and I sit there and think how is them telling like minded people the bad things about Christians any different then what I do on here? It's not, and also off topic a little. Ok, so anyway, they pretty much treat people respectfully and kindly and everything, they try  not to gossip or spread lies and all that stuff. How many of you just can't wait to tell people the juicy stuff you heard about your neighbor or the preacher or preacher's wife? Worship leader? Yeah you know you do. Well, that isn't Christian, it isn't even right no matter if you are Christian or not. There is a lot we all need to figure out if we want to go to heaven. Faith and obedient service is required to go to heaven, not just belief in the saving power of Jesus. I know it is hard to change into the good Christian, but we can do it. We need to raise our children to be that way so they do not have to learn to change behavior. We all could use an eye opener, and I think God is using the Witnesses in my life to show me how he wants us all to be. They are united, we are divided. We are divided through our sins (mistakes), beliefs, lifestyles, way we talk, dress, treat people, etc. The list just goes on. We need to be united. I was going to work on a sermon on love, but I think it is best if I work on one based on Acts 15. We need to learn how despite the diversity of the early church, they still managed to be unified. They all had different beliefs, spoke different languages, were raised in different religions, etc. Yet, they manage to remain united through Christ, which is exactly what are not. We are divided, and it is because of our division and our lack of concern for people who are different from us that we fail to show people why they need Jesus and to serve and love God. We need to take some tips from the Witnesses and mimic their behavior and attitudes.

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