WOW!

I suppose in the interest of unity I should have tolerated during my entire adult lifetime, which is almost over, the unrelenting discrimination, ostracism, alienation, by the Elders, over and over and over in “the little back room”, being shunned and rejected by the Congregation brothers and sisters, in EVERY Congregation where I had a beard (… except ONE near Pittsburgh, PA, in 1977-1978), and having been sent home in bitter tears when I showed up for field service at a grocery store parking lot rendezvous for having a beard.

In the interest of unity, I should overlook and forget the 60 continuous, unrelenting years of boneheaded stupidity that made my life defensive and hard, denying me opportunities for service and Christian fellowship, and the life distorting, crippling, crushing loneliness I had to endure, each and every day.

Oops!

Silly me.

wooOoOoEeeOoooh …..

Of course, for 40 years and more I believed that Cain married a sister, because I never thought of it that there could be another explanation that made a lot more sense.

At the time he was exiled, besides Adam and Eve he was the only direct created man on earth … “Homo Theocraticus” if you will … and since there is hard fossil evidence … hundreds of tons of hard fossil evidence from all over the world of “homo sapien” civilizations that predate Eden … enough that Cain was afraid of being killed WHEREVER HE ROAMED, there is no need to assume incest with his imaginary “sisters” who did not yet exist.

One explanation of why the pages are blank is that you are using your smart phone on the data plan and it’s not loading because the connection is overloaded this time of day. If you are at home on your Wi-Fi it would probably be a lot faster and you to get the full pages.

Well, in order to get the straight story and an accurate explanation of what is going on, simply go to the JW. org website and read the current news about this.

Let’s ALL of us curious about this do that, and get this explained and cleared up immediately!

… or an igloo shaped doghouse !

Yes!

That is why everyone should have their very own Whack-A-Mole setup.

Practice makes perfect!!

why bother?

…. because sometimes playing Whack-A-Mole with the deliberately clueless is a moral imperative.

Like stinkbugs, they are hard to squash, and with morons it’s illegal to kill them.

Yes

28 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

I’m on it. It will be a fine successor to ‘TrueTom vs the Apostate!’

The details have already been checked for timeline accuracy and hard fossil evidence under the working title “ The First Cain Mutiny”.

I rejected including two big honkin’ dinosaurs because they died 65 million years ago.

… just waiting for the blockbuster movie “Adam and Eve vs Australian Aborigines”.

9 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

It would also rescue me from the young earth creationists. I’ve always been leery of these guys. As speculation goes, I kinda like it. 

Play your cards right and you could even start your own religion, with yourself as the Grand Pudge.

or the White Knight.

… sigh ….

… hard to play cards right with no thumbs.

1 hour ago, TrueTomHarley said:

I have never heard this before? Where did you?

”Where did this pooch get his wisdom? Is this not Pudgy, who we used to walk every day?”

I developed this understanding when I started integrating information from all sources, and STOPPED ignoring hard evidence.

It explains who Cain was afraid of and why they would want to kill him on sight, even if he wandered a thousand miles away.

It even explains who Cain “married” in exile.

It even explains the Aborigines in Australia, whose culture is 60,000 years old.

Genesis 4 even explains how God considered the blood and lives of his direct created “Homo Theocraticus”  in Eden his personal property as a special possession.

Learn all you can about “Punctuated Evolution”, then substitute the term “Punctuated Creation”

Then TEST your conclusions against the Bible. They should be consistent.

It’s like the Genesis account of Creation. It makes no sense from a Space based reference point, but from an observer standing on the Earth, it does.

(  … assuming you already understand the last 4 billion or so years of Earth’s geological and atmospheric development …)

31 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

Blood made it taboo, and therefore blood WAS considered a sacred substance by decree of God himself. 

43 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

Maybe. Maybe not. The Jews of the Hebrew Bible did not necessarily consider Jehovah to be an invisible Spirit the way we do. They considered Jehovah to have a body that could see and hear and EAT and SMELL. (FWIW, ancient Jewish rabbis had no trouble agreeing that Jehovah was circumcised!!!) The idea that smoke from "incinerated" meat created a kind of smoky incense that ascended upwards toward heaven was likely an indication of this consumption by God, leaving only a few ashes. And this idea was spelled out even more clearly in other nearby cultures.

I can confidently completely ignore what “some” influential Jews of any rank or ilk thought about the character or nature or substance of Jehovah.

Moses brother Aaron saw with his own eyes the column of smoke and the pillar of fire, and STILL made a golden calf and said  paraphrased “See, this is jehovah your god, who brought you out of the land of Egypt!”.

Sometimes … most of the times … almost all the time … “church” authorities are dumber than rocks.

It seems to be a job requirement.

The “Neolithic Period” STARTED about 12,000 years ago.

Before that, people were living all over the Earth, before God directly created a NEW specis, in Eden, that had an opportunity to live forever.

Their blood was sacred to him, for the first time in history, and He considered these people, and their signature blood, his personal property.

Much like the Jews later became a “Special Possession”, and if you were not a Jew, you were SOL.

Pre-Neolithic, human societies were primarily characterized by a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. While they didn't develop complex civilizations, several notable cultures and groups existed during the Paleolithic and Mesolithic periods. Some examples include:

1. **Paleo-Indians:** Early human inhabitants of the Americas during the last stages of the Pleistocene epoch, known for nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyles.

2. **Upper Paleolithic Cultures:** Various cultures in Europe, Asia, and Africa known for sophisticated tools, art, and symbolic expression, such as the Aurignacian and Magdalenian cultures.

3. **Maglemosian Culture:** Inhabited parts of Northern Europe during the Mesolithic, known for microlithic tools and hunting.

4. **Natufian Culture:** In the Levant, a pre-agricultural society that practiced sedentary living and some early forms of cultivation around 12,000 BCE.

5. **Jomon Culture:** In ancient Japan, known for pottery and a hunter-gatherer lifestyle during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene.

6. **Hoabinhian:** A term used to describe various cultures in Southeast Asia during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene, characterized by tool technologies.

7. **Mesolithic Cultures in Europe:** Including the Azilian, Tardenoisian, and others, marked by continued hunter-gatherer lifestyles and regional variations.

While these groups did not form complex civilizations, they developed unique technologies, artistic expressions, and social structures that laid the groundwork for the transitions into more settled agricultural societies during the Neolithic period, which STARTED about 12,000 years ago.

That’s why Cain was terrified of being banished …. outside the Garden the whole world was filled with proto-people that were not direct creations from God … “the land of exiles”, where life was hard and dangerous, and NO ONE lived forever.

They would naturally want to kill Cain on sight, because his family would have lived forever in a protected Paradise …. and they did not.

A modern day example is “everybody” hates and wants to kill the Jews because they suspect they might REALLY be God’s chosen people, and suspect that they, themselves,  are not.

Grrrrrrrr ….

It also proves that “eating blood” is viewed by God according to HIS way of putting sentences together!

19 minutes ago, Many Miles said:

The whole notion that God has somehow always held blood as a sacred substance is nonsense. There is no evidence for such a broad claim.

You are flat wrong.

This proves it.

“We?”

Jehovah never accepted a sacrifice “as food”. He didn’t eat it AT ALL, for nourishment. Fat on the alter had to be prepared “as food” …. not incinerated like medical waste.

Only fat melts and falls into the fire as a liquid fuel.

Perhaps that is how a person separates fat from steaks with no obvious fat.

Well done …. crunchy. (?)

AND … if all else fails, and we get wrapped up in a matrix of semantics traps, and ONLY as a last resort …. look up a scripture IN CONTEXT. I know its a novel idea, but watch what happens when you DO! …

3 “‘If his offering is a communion sacrifice*+and if he is presenting it from the herd, whether a male or a female, he should present a sound animal before Jehovah. 2 He is to lay his hand on the head of his offering, and it will be slaughtered at the entrance of the tent of meeting; and Aaron’s sons, the priests, will sprinkle the blood on all sides of the altar. 3 He will present part of the communion sacrifice as an offering made by fire to Jehovah:+ the fat+that covers the intestines, all the fat that surrounds the intestines, 4 and the two kidneys with the fat on them that is near the loins. He will also remove the appendage of the liver along with the kidneys.+ 5 Aaron’s sons will make it smoke on the altar on top of the burnt offering that is placed on the wood that is over the fire;+it is an offering made by fire as a pleasing*aroma to Jehovah.+

6 “‘If his offering is from the flock for a communion sacrifice to Jehovah, he will present a sound male or a female animal.+ 7 If he is presenting a young ram as his offering, then he will present it before Jehovah. 8 He will lay his hand on the head of his offering, and it will be slaughtered in front of the tent of meeting. Aaron’s sons will sprinkle its blood on all sides of the altar. 9 He will present the fat from the communion sacrifice as an offering made by fire to Jehovah.+ He will remove the entire fat tail near the backbone, the fat that covers the intestines, all the fat that surrounds the intestines, 10 and the two kidneys with the fat on them that is near the loins. He will also remove the appendage of the liver along with the kidneys.+ 11 And the priest will make it smoke on the altar as food,* an offering made by fire to Jehovah.+

12 “‘If his offering is a goat, then he will present it before Jehovah. 13 He will lay his hand on its head, and it will be slaughtered before the tent of meeting, and Aaron’s sons must sprinkle its blood on all sides of the altar. 14 The part he will present as his offering made by fire to Jehovah is the fat that covers the intestines, all the fat that surrounds the intestines,+ 15 and the two kidneys with the fat on them that is near the loins. He will also remove the appendage of the liver along with the kidneys. 16 The priest will make them smoke on the altar as food,* an offering made by fire for a pleasing* aroma. All the fat belongs to Jehovah.+

17 “‘It is a lasting statute for your generations, in all your dwelling places: You must not eat any fat or any blood+ at all.’”

How about that?

“All the fat” is specifically defined!

Who knew?

Practical experience gives me insight into what the “ … eat no fat at all …” command is all about.

My wife and I usually eat at Golden Corral several times a week and if we get there early we hang around so it’s supper time we get free steaks but believe me, they’re not the best steaks in the world …. and when you asked for a medium steak what you get is about a half a steak and a half a slab of fat.

I get two steaks and cut the fat off. Sometimes this involves asking for the second steak in a very loud voice.

I can understand the scripture that says eat no fat at all…. if thats the only thing on the plate. 

1. "Will" is often used to express a future action or a party's intention to do something. It implies a commitment but is generally not as strong as "shall."

2. "Shall" is considered more imperative and typically imposes a duty or obligation. It's used to indicate a mandatory requirement.

3. "Should" is more discretionary and suggests a recommended course of action, but not a strict obligation. It implies a degree of flexibility.

Well … for me … I’m gonna go with the comprehensive integrated context I have … not guess that God changed his very character.

As I said before, it’s not REALLY about blood. It’s about respecting what God specifically says BELONGS TO HIM.

If I should say “You have permission to use my drafting tools, but if you touch my Hewlett Packard HP-41CX Calculator I will kill you …” it would be wise to take that at face value, and not look for “loopholes”.

Did I ever tell you about my three-legged pig (circa 1973) that I used to ride in my car? I hit a drunk driver, and Norma pushed me out of the car before it burst into flames. 

A pig that special and talented you just can’t eat all at once.

She was a good companion, and never gave me indigestion …..

Are we still under the full text in context of “Abstain from blood”?