"Questions for Jehovah Witnesses"
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Peace, Naidamar.
So, where are all these contradictions in the Bible that you speak of?
"Yahweh" sounds okay. But YHWH seems to give a signal that there is a problem. We commonly use Bible names based on "Jehovah" like Jehoram (means: "Jehovah is exalted") or Jehoshaphat (means: "Jehovah judged"). What is wrong with just using "Jehovah"?
In Daniel there is a prophecy about a tree being cut down and banded with iron and copper while 7 "times" pass. This is a Messianic prophecy relating to God's kingdom. The tree was cut down when the last Judean king of David's line was taken into exile by Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians. That was king Zedekiah. The Jews returned from 70 years of exile in Babylon in 537 BCE. So the exile must have had it's beginning in 607 BCE. This is also when the 7 times began. The tree represented God's kingship through the line of Judean kings. It was cut down in 607 BCE and would be restored again when the final king of David's line, Jesus himself, began to rule. Each of the 7 times make up 360 years. 7 x 360 years= 2,520 years. So counting 2,520 years from 607 BCE we come to 1914 CE (there is no year "zero").
1914 saw the beginning of the fulfillment of all the things that Jesus said would be signs of the nearness of the kingdom (Luke 21:10-11; Luke 21:31). These included wars, famine, pestilence and eathquakes. All of this "woe" for the earth is on account of Satan having great anger knowing that his time is short (Revelation 12:10-12).
I have skipped a lot a details but these are the main reasons why we believe that these things having to do with the coming of the kingdom are happening right now.
We are still in God's memory even after we die. So he can bring us back from the dead.
Ramadhan
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Here's just some samples of bible's errors and contradictions; feel free to browse through and address them:
http://www.islamicboard.com/comparative-religion/23418-101-clear-contradictions-bible.html
http://www.islamicboard.com/comparative-religion/39201-contradictions-bible.html
http://www.islamicboard.com/general/134295330-scientific-facts-bible-hindu-scriptures.html
http://www.islamicboard.com/comparative-religion/134264419-bible-scholar-discussing-errors-bible.html
http://www.islamicboard.com/comparative-religion/43531-verses-deleted-bible.html
http://www.islamicboard.com/comparative-religion/22634-some-errors-holy-bible.html
http://www.islamicboard.com/comparative-religion/30326-50-000-errors-bible.html
http://www.islamicboard.com/comparative-religion/34554-questions-about-bible-christianity.html
I do hope you have some ample free time, which I suspect you do, if you are a "professional" christian like our fellow Grace Seeker.
The Catholic Encyclopedia says this:τhε ṿαlε'ṡ lïlÿ;1371937 said:CHAPTER THREE
WHO IS JEHOVAH?
Astonishing as it may sound, it is an admitted fact that prior to the sixteenth century, the word "Jehovah," was unheard of. Whenever the origin of this word appeared in its true Hebrew form in Jewish Scriptures (read from right to left as in Arabic) Yet, Huh, Wav, Huh; or Y.H.W.H. these four letters were preceded by a substitute word "Adonai," to warn the reader that the following word was not to be articulated. The Jews took meticulous care in repeating this exercise in their "Book of God" six thousand, eight hundred and twenty-three times - interpolating the words "Adonai" or "Elohim." They sincerely believed that this awesome name of God was never to be pronounced. This prohibition was no ordinary affair: it called for a penalty of death on one who dared to utter it, and this taboo has been more successful than all the "DO's" and "DON'T's" of the Ten Commandments put together.
If Jehovah is the name of God Almighty, and if the 27 Books of the New Testament were inspired by Him, then it is an anomaly of the highest order, that He (Jehovah) signally failed to have His Own Name recorded in "His Word" (N.T.) the Christian addition to the Jewish Bible. The Christians claim that they have in their possession over twenty-four thousand so-called "originals" of their Holy Writ in the Greek language, and yet not a single parchment has "Jehovah" written in it. Curiously this "name of God" (?) has been sacrilegiously replaced by the Greek words ky'ri.os and the.os', which mean 'Lord' and 'God.' Yet, miracle of miracles - Alleluya! - no devil or saint has been able to eliminate the word "ALLAH" from the so-called New Testament of the Christians.
NEW FANGLED DOCTRINES
A hundred years ago, all of a sudden, more than a hundred new cults and denominations of Christiandom mushroomed in the United States of America. The Seventh Day Adventists, the Christian Scientists, the Menonites, the Christiadelphins, The Jehovah's Witnesses and the like. The founder of the last named cult, a Judge Rutherford, about whom the orthodox Christians say that he was no "Judge." This Judge was a voracious book-worm and a prolific writer. He stumbled across the word "Jehovah" which tickled him immensely, and he made a religion out of it.
Judge Rutherford, followed by Charles T. Russell created a new "church," which in its system of organisation and administration is second to none in the world. There is very much we Muslims can learn from their enthusiasm and methodology. Read, "Thirty Years a Watchtower Slave" by Schelin. It is not their theology I am enamoured with but their modus operandi (the way they operate). Read, how this incorrigible sect came very close to conquering Germany before Hitler. Read, about their second come- back in West Germany. Think, why they are making a most concerted effort in Nigeria. Will the system or religion that prevails in Nigeria, be utlimately the norm of the rest of Africa! This giant is the hero of the majority of the African people south of the Sahara. Muslims must reflect.
VIRILE SECT
The "Jehovah's Witnesses," have made the most phenominal progress of all the religious sects of the past hundred years, on a percentage basis. The Bahaies are moving at a snails-pace in comparison, actually receding in ratio with the other Christian off-shoots. These "Witnesses" are the fittest in their fight against the other Christians as well as against the Muslims. Simply because they programme themselves five times a week in their "Kingdom Halls," and what they learn they implement during the week-ends. We Muslims are supposed to be "programmed" five times a day in our daily Salaat, but we have lost the true purpose of this Pillar of Islam. Our Salaat is for earning Sawaab (spiritual blessings) only.
They have made the word JEHOVAH famous. They knock at people's doors, asking the question - "What is His Name?" The orthodox Christian replies - "God." They say, "God is not a name, it is an object of worship. What's His Name?" "Father," says the orthodox as a second try. "Is your father God?" Of course not! So what is His Name? "JEHOVAH! is His Name," says the "Witness" to both Muslims and non-Muslims alike. He has become a professor of this one word. He has made it into a religion.
THE "TETRAGRAMMATON"
Why not for a change ask him, a question or two. Ask him where he got the word Jehovah from? He will surely reply - "From the Holy Bible." What does it say? Does it spell out the word J-e-h-o-v-a-h? "No," he will reply. "There is a 'tetragrammaton' in the Bible from which the word Jehovah is derived." What is a tetragrammaton? No one seems to have heard this highly mystical term. In the University of Illinois in the U.S.A. I asked a gathering of students and lecturers whether any one had heard this jaw-breaker! Not one of them knew its meaning! But every Jehovah's Witness seems to know, even the commonest of them. They have really specialised - ours is a world of specialisation. They are Professors of the one word - Jehovah.
What then is a "tetragrammaton!" The Jehovah's Witness replies, "Y H W Hi!"
"No!" "What I want to know from you is, what does the word tetragrammaton mean?" You will find him most reluctant in explaining. Either he does not really know, or he is feeling embarrassed in replying. "Tetra," in Greek means FOUR, and "grammaton," means LETTERS. It simply means "a four letter word."
Can you read into Y H W H the word Jehovah? I cannot. "No!", says the Jehovah's Witness, "we ought to add vowels to these four consonents to produce the sound. Originally, both Hebrew and Arabic were written without the vowel signs The native of each language was able to read if even without those vowels. Not so the outsider, for whose benefit the vowels were invented.
THE "J" SICKNESS
Let us add the vowels as the "Witness" suggests. YHWH becomes YeHoWaH. Juggle as you like but you can never materialise Jehovah! Ask him, from which hat he drew his "J". He will tell you that "this is the 'popular' pronunciation from the 16th century." The exact sound of the four letters YHWH is known neither to the Jews nor to the Gentiles, yet he is ramming JEHOVAH down everyones throats. The European Christians have developed a fondness (sickness) for the letter "J" They add J's where there are no Jays. Look!
Yael he converts to Joel Yehuda to Juda Yeheshua to Joshua Yusuf to Joseph Yunus to Jonah Yesus to Jesus Yehowa to Jehovah There is no end to the Westerner's infatuation for the letter "J." Now in the busy streets of South Africa, he charges people who carelessly cross them for "jay-walking," but nobody charges him for converting Jewish (Yehudi) names into Gentile names.
The letters Y H W H occur in the Hebrew (Jewish) Scriptures 6 823 times, boasts the Jehovah's Witness, and it occurs in combination with the word "Elohim;" 156 times in the booklet called Genesis alone. This combination YHWH/ELOHIM has been consistently translated in the English Bible as "Lord God," "Lord God," Lord God," ad infinitum.
COMMON ORIGIN
What is YHWH; and what is ELOHIM? Since the lews did not articulate the word YHWH for centuries, and since even the Chief Rabbis would not allow the ineffable to be heard, they have forfeited the right to claim dogmatically how the word is to be sounded. We have to seek the aid of the Arab to revive Hebrew, a language which had once died out. In every linguistic difficulty recourse has to be made to Arabic, a sister language, which has remained alive and viable. Racially and linguistically, the Arabs and the Jews have a common origin, going back to Father Abraham.1
Note the startling resemblance between the languages, very often the same sounding words carry identical meaning in both.
HEBREW ARABIC ENGLISH Elah Ilah god Ikhud Ahud one Yaum Yaum day Shaloam Salaam peace Yahuwa Ya Huwa oh heYHWH or Yehova or Yahuwa all mean the very same thing. "Ya" is a vocative and an exclamatory particle in both Hebrew and Arabic, meaning Oh! And "Huwa" or "Hu" means He, again in both Hebrew and Arabic. Together they mean Oh He! So instead of YHWH ELOHIM, we now have Oh He! ELOHIM.
1. For a closer affinity between Arabs and Jews read Genesis 16:12 and 25:18, and for a further elucidation, see "What the Bible says about Muhammed."
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so apparently 'oh he' is the secret/ancient name of god
Meaning of the Divine Name
Jahveh (Yahweh) is one of the archaic Hebrew nouns, such as Jacob, Joseph, Israel, etc. (cf. Ewald, "Lehrbuch der hebr. Sprache", 7th ed., 1863, p. 664), derived from the third person imperfect in such a way as to attribute to a person or a thing the action of the quality expressed by the verb after the manner of a verbal adjective or a participle. Furst has collected most of these nouns, and calls the form forma participialis imperfectiva. As the Divine name is an imperfect form of the archaic Hebrew verb "to be", Jahveh means "He Who is", Whose characteristic note consists in being, or The Being simply.
Here we are confronted with the question, whether Jahveh is the imperfect hiphil or the imperfect qal. Calmet and Le Clere believe that the Divine name is a hiphil form; hence it signifies, according to Schrader (Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament, 2nd ed., p. 25), He Who brings into existence, the Creator; and according to Lagarde (Psalterium Hieronymi, 153), He Who causes to arrive, Who realizes His promises, the God of Providence. But this opinion is not in keeping with Exodus 3:14, nor is there any trace in Hebrew of a hiphil form of the verb meaning "to be"; moreover, this hiphil form is supplied in the cognate languages by the pi'el form, except in Syriac where the hiphil is rare and of late occurrence.
On the other hand, Jehveh may be an imperfect qal from a grammatical point of view, and the traditional exegesis of Exodus 3:6-16, seems to necessitate the form Jahveh. Moses asks God: "If they should say to me: What is his [God's] name? What shall I say to them?" In reply, God returns three times to the determination of His name. First, He uses the first person imperfect of the Hebrew verb "to be"; here the Vulgate, the Septuagint, Aquila, Theodotion, and the Arabic version suppose that God uses the imperfect qal; only the Targums of Jonathan and of Jerusalem imply the imperfect hiphil. Hence we have the renderings: "I am who am" (Vulgate), "I am who is" (Septuagint), "I shall be [who] shall be" (Aquila, Theodotion)
Unquote.
So we have the meaning, as noted above: "I shall be [who] shall be". Rotheram's translation renders Exodus 3:14 as "I Shall Become Whatsoever I Please". The thought carried by the divine name is that God will cause himself to become whatever they would need in order to help them. That was what the Israelites suffering in bondage to the Egyptians needed to hear. They were desperate for help.
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جوري
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It doesn't matter what the catholic encyclopedia says, considering it hasn't gone down to the etymology and the root of the words as Dr. Deedat has above, they are not anymore astray than you are.. 'to be' isn't god's name the Arabic version suppose that God uses the imperfect qal this is also crap since qal means 'he said' not 'to be' so it isn't any wonder to me that they worship a man if they can't get to the meaning of any word, you can take men for gods, guidance for spirits and God knows what else..
all the best
what you just said seems consistent with the meaning
يا هو
Which means in arabic "oh him".
Let's take these one at a time then.
1. Who incited David to count the fighting men of Israel?
• God did (2 Samuel 24: 1)
• Satan did (I Chronicles 2 1:1)
2 Samuel 24:1 uses a pronoun for the one inciting David to take the census. Some translations render the verse to make it appear that this one is God himself. But this is not necessarily the sense that is meant here. Youngs Literal Translation renders the verse: "And the anger of Jehovah addeth to burn against Israel, and [an adversary] moveth David about them, saying, `Go, number Israel and Judah.'" And the New World Translation reads: "And again the anger of Jehovah came to be hot against Israel, when one incited David against them, saying: “Go, take a count of Israel and Judah.” There is no conflict here with 1 Chronicles 21:1.
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Do you realize that despite 2 "world wars" and what seems like countless other conflicts, that reality is there has actually been less war in the 20th and first decade of the 21st century than any other time in recorded history? There has also been less famine and pestilence. I can't speak to earthquakes comparing one century to another, but even with a couple of notable ones in the news this year, the 2010 seems to be an average year according to the USGS.
The same feast is mentioned in the Quran but nothing about water being turned into wine
(The Noble Quran, 5:112-116)
Behold! the disciples, said: "O Jesus the son of Mary! can thy Lord send down to us a table set (with viands) from heaven?" Said Jesus: "Fear God, if ye have faith." They said: "We only wish to eat thereof and satisfy our hearts, and to know that thou hast indeed told us the truth; and that we ourselves may be witnesses to the miracle." Said Jesus the son of Mary: "O God our Lord! Send us from heaven a table set (with viands), that there may be for us - for the first and the last of us - a solemn festival and a sign from thee; and provide for our sustenance, for thou art the best Sustainer (of our needs)." God said: "I will send it down unto you: But if any of you after that resisteth faith, I will punish him with a penalty such as I have not inflicted on any one among all the peoples."
I cant understand how would Jesus(PBUH) turn the water into the poison of madness which is clearly prohibited in the bible
Do not drink wine nor strong drink (Leviticus 10:9)
http://www.blueletterbible.org/cgi-bin/popup.pl?book=Pro&chapter=20&verse=1&version=kjv
Wine is a mocker, strong drink raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise. (Proverbs 20:1)
*****dom and wine take away the heart. (Hosea 4:11)
Ramadhan
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Wait a sec, we are using KJV or what?
because KJV IS THE Bible, no?
no other translations are allowed, that would be heretical, no?
When the KJV was prepared it probably was the best available version at that time. But only a few manuscripts (and of poor authority) were available then whereas we today have thousands of much older and more reliable manuscripts. Literally thousands of errors have been found in the KJV. It even mistranslates some words as mythical animals such as the cockatrice and the unicorn.
I find the KJV useful mainly because it is widely accepted. But I have to make sure that there are no errors in what is being quoted.
2. In that count how many fighting men were found in Israel?
• Eight hundred thousand (2 Samuel 24:9)
• One million, one hundred thousand (I Chronicles 21:5)
3. How many fighting men were found in Judah?
• Five hundred thousand (2 Samuel 24:9)
• Four hundred and seventy thousand (I Chronicles 21:5)
4. God sent his prophet to threaten David with how many years of famine?
• Seven (2 Samuel 24:13)
• Three (I Chronicles 21:12)
The variations in the numbers may have been the result of copyist errors but this is unlikely. It is more probable that one group of numbers includes the men in the army and their officers while another only includes those of the common people who could fight with a sword. And also there may have been numbers of men that were related to both Israel and Judah and these were grouped differently in the two accounts. Without having all of the details available we cannot be sure.
One explanation for the difference in the years of famine is that there had already occurred 3 years of famine as a result of the sin of king Saul. The year when the census was taken would have been a 4th year (it took 9 months and 20 days). And then the further 3 years that were now threatened would make a total of 7.
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Ramadhan
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So which scriptures are you using?
I presume you are not using kjv?
In what way is your scriptures different from kjv?
Do you find people who use kjv, like grace seeker, heretics?
Is grace seeker christian, according to you?
Mostly the New International Version. I also quote from the JW's New World Translation if no one objects.
For example, the KJV has many passages that seem to support the trinity doctrine.
1 Timothy 3:16 "Beyond all question, the mystery of godliness is great: He appeared in a body, was vindicated by the Spirit ..." NIV
1 Timothy 3:16 "And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit ... KJV
1 John 5:7 "For there are three that testify" NIV
1 John 5:7 "For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one." KJV
Revelation 1:11 "which said: "Write on a scroll what you see and send it to the seven churches ..."" NIV
Revelation 1:11 "Saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last: and, What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches ..." KJV
(The Alpha and Omega is understood to be God. But it is Jesus speaking in this verse.)
Comparison with a modern version like the NIV reveals that there are errors in these verses in the KJV.
No. And I guess Grace Seeker would say the same about me. Even Muslims are divided amongst Sunnis and Shias and hundreds of smaller sects, so I have been told. Is this true?
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