Ann O'Maly

Is this not after the NEW Heaven and New Earth? Where in the temple of God will be among His people and they will be with Him? 

You're right. I didn't connect them. Sorry!  

Straight answer?  Specifically.....nothing!

*Tingtingtingting* Aaaand predictably they discuss the 'sun-god' Tammuz-Nimrod connection and have bought into other Hislopian pseudo-history, ladies and gentlemen. The video should be re-titled, "Shocking but mostly hooey."

A more scholarly discussion:
KURT M. SIMMONS - THE ORIGINS OF CHRISTMAS AND THE DATE OF CHRIST’S BIRTH
 

Why should there be two different destinies in the first place - especially for Christian believers?
What is the scriptural support that there are two different destinies for Christian believers? 
(These questions are for anyone.)
 

Does 1 Peter 3:15 mean nothing to you then?. It says "everyone who asks you" 

So you are saying that I should pray to God so that he will help you explain how you come to a conclusion that really isn't obvious nor found in the Bible? lol
I believe this is your escape phrase for when you cannot defend a position you have, I've seen it before from you.  You have not provided any scriptural support for your belief. Its ok, you can believe whatever you want, but don't claim it is from God's word if you cannot support it. 

The term of offspring is used as similarity, meaning of the same family/group/ like mindedness.  This is the reason why all belong to Christ who have the same faith as Abraham. Heirs of the promise is described in detail in Galatians chapter 4:21-31 and how the faith that Abraham had distinguishes the difference between those  who try and uphold the law vs the faithful ones. 
then you DO realize that there is not something prestigious about the resurrection of both the righteous and unrighteous as if it were something different for Abraham vs the 1st century Christians. 
 
Again, I have yet to see any scriptural support for there being a different destiny for Abraham vs the 1st century Christians. I want to know how you support this idea. 

I believe you are absolutely right.
I was referring to the idea that I was once excited to see a moderation of this clergy-laity idea, and I was also happy to see a lot of changes recently that move us away from the idea that the Greek Scriptures were only written to the "anointed" and not directly for most of us who profess an earthly hope. But when I saw your question, and the quote from the 2014 Watchtower, it reminded me that it continues to be a topic for conversation and questions.
There were about 6 specific topics, plus a couple of general ones, that drove some of these questions.
One was the difference between immortality and eternal life. Another was a difference between washing robes and being granted white robes. Another was whether Jesus was the mediator of the great crowd / other sheep. Another was for whom Jesus' sacrifice was a direct "propitiatory" ransom sacrifice, and for whom it was a sacrifice with indirect benefits to the rest of the world (those who would gain life on earth). Another was the topic you brought up, sometimes specified as the difference between "righteousness as a friend of God vs. righteousness as a son of God." Another was an older doctrine (sometimes called the "mystery doctrine") that was supposedly dropped in the early 1960's, but which was brought up again by a president of the Watch Tower Society at a time when the "mediator" question was being questioned. #6 is a more complicated one, which I cannot summarize into a single phrase like the others, but it is still reflected in the ideas of #3 and #4, and often leads to phrases about the "other sheep" gaining their righteousness (the benefits of Jesus' sacrifice) through the work of the "anointed."
#4 has not been pushed for many years, and #3 while rarely mentioned is still carefully worded to match the idea that has appeared explicitly in print (that Jesus is not the mediator for the "other sheep.") The term mediator is given a technical legal sense so that it is only applied to those in the new covenant, which is only considered valid for the 144,000.
 
 

Not that curious at all. Every few years another celebrity is supposed to have become a JW. Brother Rutherford's "secretary" used to keep a running list of actual celebrities that had become JWs because she was into that sort of thing. The fact that several celebrities are or have been JWs makes new rumors more believable.
This one evidently started over a picture on the back of one of his CD's.
 

This is what Family Worship Night often looks like now in 2016

A picture says 1,000 words I guess.
Studying the Bible when I was a child in 1979 looked SO much different. And it involved actual reading of the Bible.
Hmmm..
Will these children be prepared to defend their beliefs in the future with only a Bible in hand?

The Jehovah's Witness Church in Australia failed to protect children in its care from sexual predators, a report has found.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse delivered its report into the organisation on Monday.
It stated that: "Children are not adequately protected from the risk of child sexual abuse in the Jehovah's Witness organisation and [the commission] does not believe the organisation responds adequately to allegations of child sexual abuse."
Survivors of sexual abuse within the church and senior church members appeared before a public hearing last year.
The inquiry heard the church received allegations of child sexual abuse involving more than 1000 of its members over a 60-year period but did not report a single claim to police.
In its report on the inquiry, the royal commission found that the organisation's general practice of "not reporting serious instances of child sexual abuse to police or authorities, demonstrated a serious failure on its part to provide for the safety and protection of children."
The royal commission determined that the church's response to allegations of child sexual abuse were outdated, including a rule that there must be two witnesses to an incident, which "showed a serious lack of understanding of the nature of child sexual abuse".
"It noted the rule, which the Jehovah's Witness organisation relies on, and applies inflexibly even in the context of child sexual abuse, was devised more than 2000 years ago," the report found.

Royal commission chairman Justice Peter McClellan. Photo: Jeremy Piper
The Jehovah's Witnesses approach to handling claims internally was not appropriate for children or survivors of sexual abuse, the report found.
"Survivors are offered little or no choice in how their complaint is addressed, sanctions are weak with little regard to the risk of the perpetrator re-offending."
The head of the Jehovah's Witness community's service desk, Rodney Spinks, is considering the report and is expected respond on Monday afternoon.
http://aunews24.com/25951/Jehovahs-Witnesses-demonstrated-a-serious-failure-to-protect-children-Royal-Commission

I see where you are coming from. The standard of righteousness is Jehovah's and his standards do not change. The verses in Romans are applied to Abraham because of his faith in Gods promises. Righteousness was credited to him in the same way as it was credited to 1st century Christians and also to those who have faith in the ransom. According to the authority of the scriptures you cannot have 2 different applications of being declared righteous. I realize that thinking along these lines may seem to muddy the societies teachings however the recent WT study highlights how "the slave" can err in doctrinal matters. As lovers of truth we must rely on the authority of Gods word.
 

I hear his Christmas album is outstanding! 

According to Romans Chapter 4, a person is declared righteous by God through their faith in Christ. The society makes a distinction between the righteousness that was reckoned or credited to Abraham and the righteousness that is counted to the annointed. According to the publications Abraham's righteousness made him a friend of God whereas the annointed are declared righteous for life as God's children and heirs of Christ. However as I read Romans Ch 4 I came across these verses regarding Abraham, especially verses 23 and 24
   20  But because of the promise of God, he did not waver in a lack of faith; but he became powerful by his faith, giving God glory 21  and being fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to do.+ 22  Therefore, “it was counted to him as righteousness.”+23  However, the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake only,+ 24  but also for our sake, to whom it will be counted, because we believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord up from the dead.+ 
As I read these verses it struck me that Paul saw no difference in Abraham having righteousness "counted to him" and 1st century Christians having righteousness "counted to them" .As verse 23 shows this is the same declaring of righteousness with the same resulting promise. I tried to research those verses in the Watchtower Library but strangely enough there were no direct references to explain them.
Any thoughts on these verses ?

Really? JWs' 'biblical truths' change all the time. How can you be sure that what JWs pronounce as biblical truth today won't be pronounced as biblical falsehood tomorrow?

When did Pope Francis do this? Which Catholic conference was it? As will become apparent, Pope Francis did no such thing. 
Alan Murdock has pointed out that this is old news. The catholicsay article goes on to copy much of the March 22, 1987 Awake! article verbatim.
Given how old the information is, the 10,000 figure attributed to La Republica will reflect peak numbers of converts in the 1970s and '80s. If anyone's that interested, they can access Yearbooks from that period online to check the numbers being baptized. But it has to be said that firstly, not all who were baptized would have been Catholics (e.g. what about all the homegrown JW children?) and secondly, there have only been about 4,000 or 5,000 baptisms per year in more recent times.
The Awake! provides a more specific reference ...
In an editorial dealing specifically with Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Jesuit magazine La Civiltá Cattolica of February 18, 1984, wrote: [etc.]
[bold emphasis mine]
 
... and here is the original online, for any Italian speakers here - scroll to pp. 313f.
La Civiltà cattolica, Issues 3205-3210, 1984, 'I Testimoni di Geova'
 
 
 

Extraordinary!!
I presume this is in the Phillipines.
I'm not sure if you can use the word "overkill" for cemetery witnessing, but it does seem a high concentration of mobile witnessing carts in that one location!
Is this a regular feature or is it particularly in connection with the Philipino version of Hallowe'en?

I think that Matthew 24, in context, does indicate that you are on the right track. Jesus said 'this generation will not die off before all these things happen.' He said it to give them confidence that these significant events would surely occur even though they would not occur immediately.
Some of them might die before these significant events happened:
(Matthew 24:9) Then people will hand you over to tribulation and will kill you, and you will be hated by all the nations on account of my name.
Others might be born before the end:
(Matthew 24:19) Woe to the pregnant women and those nursing a baby in those days!
Of the disciples who asked the question about the timing of this "parousia" event upon Jerusalem's Temple buildings, some of them could die from persecution, or perhaps even old age and health reasons prior to that event. At least one of the disciples had a wife, and therefore, probably children, too. Jesus did not know the day and the hour, and therefore he might not have known if any of these particular disciples (apostles) he was addressing would actually survive until the judgment day upon Jerusalem. So Jesus could not necessarily say, as he said earlier:
(Matthew 16:28) . . .Truly I say to you that there are some of those standing here who will not taste death at all until first they see the Son of man coming in his Kingdom.”
In Matthew 16, Jesus would give three of them (Peter, James and John) a glimpse of the parousia through a vision right after saying it. But in Matthew 24 he is speaking of an event that would come 37 years later. So he would not promise that all of them would personally survive, but he could say that the "generation" would survive to see the event. Notice, too, that it was the same group of disciples (plus Andrew) who asked Jesus the question about the Temple buildings:
(Mark 13:3, 4) .As he was sitting on the Mount of Olives with the temple in view, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately: 4 “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign when all these things are to come to a conclusion?”
By referencing the whole generation instead of just the 4 disciples, this allowed Jesus to say the same thing to a living generation of people that could match what he had said to just the disciples earlier. These disciples would undoubtedly take it to mean: "Truly I say to you that there are some of those currently alive in this generation who will not taste death at all until they see the sign of the Son of man's Kingdom as evidenced by this judgment upon Jerusalem."
No matter what Jesus meant, at the time he said it, there were older people in this generation, some of whom might die within the next days, and more for the next 37 years, and there would be new persons born in this time period. Imagine Jesus saying what he said, and then imagine that the generation had gone on for another 70 years.  Most if not all of them would have died off by then. The remnants of an older generation were already beginning to die out from the moment Jesus stated the prophecy, and he was already speaking about living contemporaries who would not completely die out before the fulfillment. Therefore, any argument about overlapping groups in this generation would necessarily include a group of older persons who were already a living component of "this generation."
This isn't just theoretical. An 80-year-old who was part of 'that generation' that Jesus referenced in 33 C.E. would have been born in about 48 B.C.E., just before Antipater the Idumaean appointed two of his sons, respectively, as governor of Jerusalem and governor of Galilee in 47 B.C.E. They could remember a time even before these brothers were named tetrarchs by Rome, and before Herod was named "King of the Jews" by Rome around 40 B.C.E.  An 80-year-old would also have remembered when Herod built this temple as a long-lasting project on a magnificent scale starting around 20 B.C.E., and not considered complete until about 20 years after his death under King Agrippa II:
(John 2:20) 20 The Jews then said: “This temple was built in 46 years, and will you raise it up in three days?”
Therefore if we were to think of a generation as living contemporaries made up of overlapping groups, then the most likely groups who were the significant components of that generation included the older persons who were already dying, and the 'millions then living who would never die' until they saw the Temple event that Jesus warned them about.
It's not necessary to think of it this way, but if we could think of an important single point in a two-team relay race over a course of time, then the only two appropriate groups would be the older group already dying out who were already overlapping with a group that Jesus promised would not die out. Therefore the time of "transition" between the two relay groups was at that point of time in 33 C.E. If Jesus had referred to another group (a third group!) that would arise after the second group died out, then Jesus would obviously have been considered a charlatan and a false prophet.
Yet, this is the argument of the Watchtower in making a modern-day application of Matthew 24.
The entire prophecy of Matthew 24 works without having to tie it "literally" to a second fulfillment at the beginning of a specific generation prior to the final Day of Judgment. If there were such a legitimate date, however, then the only two overlapping groups of any reasonable importance to the definition of "this generation" would have started (group 1) less than 80 years prior to the start of that date and ended (group 2) up to 80 years after that date. If 1914 were legitimate, the span of the two groups would overlap from about 1834 to 1994.  Therefore, it was predictable that, by 1995, the Watchtower would change it to a group of contemporaries no longer bound by a specific lifespan. (Even the book by Ray Franz predicted these types of changes.) The Watchtower chose to quote Robert Wohl, a "worldly" professor of history who had written a book with a most intriguing title:
*** w95 11/1 p. 18 par. 7 A Time to Keep Awake ***
In line with the above, professor of history Robert Wohl wrote in his book The Generation of 1914: “A historical generation is not defined by its chronological limits . . . It is not a zone of dates.”
In one sense they had done the right thing. As one might expect from a "faithful and wise servant," it was wisdom, and it had come at the proper time. This is even how it was presented at the time:
*** w95 11/1 p. 17 par. 6 A Time to Keep Awake ***
Eager to see the end of this evil system, Jehovah’s people have at times speculated about the time when the “great tribulation” would break out, even tying this to calculations of what is the lifetime of a generation since 1914. However, we “bring a heart of wisdom in,” not by speculating about how many years or days make up a generation, but by thinking about how we “count our days” in bringing joyful praise to Jehovah. (Psalm 90:12) Rather than provide a rule for measuring time, the term “generation” as used by Jesus refers principally to contemporary people of a certain historical period, with their identifying characteristics.
That was a statement that I thought came much closer to the spirit of Jesus' words.

Absolutely.
ZWT 1892, Feb. 15, R1372:
The seventy years which followed the overthrow here depicted are frequently referred to as the seventy years captivity, but the Scriptures designate them the seventy years desolation of the land--a desolation which had been predicted by the prophet `Jeremiah (25:11`), saying, "And this whole land shall be a desolation, and this nation shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years." The completeness of the desolation is shown in `verses 8 and 9` of this lesson and also in `2 Chron. 36:17-21`; and although the king of Babylon allowed certain of the poor of the land to remain, and gave them vineyards and fields, yet it was the Lord's purpose that the land of Israel should be desolate seventy years, and so it was. In the same year Gedaliah, whom the king of Babylon had made governor and under whom many of the Jewish fugitives were disposed to return from neighboring countries, was assassinated, and the entire population speedily removed into Egypt for fear of the wrath of the king of Babylon.--`2 Kings 25:21-26`; `Jer. 41:1-3`; `43:5,6`.
 
ZWT 1896, May 15, R1980:
PERIOD OF THE "70 YEARS DESOLATION OF THE LAND."
This period began after Zedekiah's kingdom was overturned when the land was left desolate (`Jer. 40:6-13`; `40:10-18`; `43:5-7`)
Jer. 40 and 43 are about Gedaliah's assassination and the Jews' flight.
There is such a thing as 'prophetic hyperbole.' E.g. 
Zephaniah 1:2, 3 - “I will completely sweep away everything from the surface of the ground,” declares Jehovah.  3 “I will sweep away man and beast. I will sweep away the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea, And the stumbling blocks along with the wicked ones; And I will remove mankind from the surface of the ground,” declares Jehovah.
This was just about punishing Judah.
There is some archaeological evidence that areas of Judah remained inhabited throughout the Babylonian hegemony. Desolation/devastation doesn't necessarily mean complete depopulation. E.g.
Nehemiah 2:3 - Then I said to the king: “Long live the king! Why should I not look gloomy when the city, the place where my forefathers are buried, lies in ruins, and its gates have been consumed by fire?” 
Nehemiah 2:17 - Finally I said to them: “You can see what a terrible situation we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins and its gates have been burned with fire. Come, let us rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, so that this disgrace will not continue.” 
The Jews had been repatriated decades before, yet Jerusalem was still considered to be a devastated, ruined place.
 
 

 
 

Have you tried looking in the 2016 Yearbook on the website?
Edit: Melinda just beat me to it! 

Have you tried looking in the 2016 Yearbook on the website?
Edit: Melinda just beat me to it! 

what exactly do they publish?