Memorial 2020 during covid-19 lockdown

[Anna]

2 hours ago, 4Jah2me said:

1 Corinithians 11 v 24

 and after giving thanks, he broke it and said: “This means my body, which is in your behalf. Keep doing this in remembrance of me.” 

In who's behalf ? Who was Jesus talking to ? It wasn't to the Domestics / Earthly Class.

I think you forgot this scripture: John 3:16

[Arauna]

2 hours ago, 4Jah2me said:

JW Org don't actually want to think on those things. Is it to gory for you all ? 

No- we think on those symbols and the life it presents for us. By the death of christ we receive opportunity to life everlasting - we think about the last hours of christ, his suffering and loyalty to jehovah. We do not believe as the Catholics do in transsubstatiation -  that the wine supernaturally turns into real blood. So we do not find it gory.......

The Israelites left slavery and were set free on passover when the passover lamb was slaughtered and blood put on doors.  We were set free from everlasting death when Jesus (the passover lamb) was slaughtered.

[Witness]

11 minutes ago, Anna said:

Would you have the anointed and the great crowd segregated?

The question is, how many were invited to join Christ to "eat this Passover" with him?  Luke 22:15  Only the organization has put a new twist on how the anointed should observe this supper.  

ONLY the organization has done so.  

[Arauna]

2 minutes ago, Witness said:

ONLY the organization has done so.  

Thank Jehovah for that!

[JW Insider]

1 hour ago, Arauna said:

No- we think on those symbols and the life it presents for us. By the death of christ we receive opportunity to life everlasting - we think about the last hours of christ, his suffering and loyalty to jehovah.

This is exactly the point!

And I think that by shaking up the traditional environment by which we usually hear these talks and prayers, and by which see the symbols in front of us, that we now have a chance for a new, more focused perspective on these symbols.

Often, in life, (or football games, or even when training animals, etc.) we don't focus on the "rules" until there are apparent exceptions to the rule. I think the exceptional nature of this particular Memorial will make it a time when everyone thinks more about the symbols, even if some of us cannot obtain the best physical version of the symbol. (In our area a brother is going around delivering wine and bread that his wife made.) Liquor stores are closed, although some grocery stores have wine that is "close enough to spec."

I think everyone is going to question what parameters are OK, and what might not be appropriate. There will be differences of opinion about what was appropriate or not. There will be brothers wondering why we didn't put this off for one month, like the Jews did for Passover, and then follow "emergency" procedures if they are still necessary. (Even if we were already at the midpoint of Covid-19, however, we can still expect just as long a curve of suffering and death on the way back down in most places.)

I'm thinking that the shakeup of this particular ritual (and the thinking it will motivate) is one "silver lining" of the Covid-19 cloud.

[JW Insider]

Someone should take a poll on Wednesday and collect all the ideas and questions that we thought about related to the Memorial.

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

52 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

Someone should take a poll on Wednesday and collect all the ideas and questions that we thought about related to the Memorial.

I have an observation now.

For many decades occasionally I would express the wish that sometime, before I die, I would like to hear a Memorial Talk given ENTIRELY from the Book of Luke, who gives details found nowhere else ..... but in over 50 years that I have been paying attention, the complete account has NEVER been spoken of from the platform.

This Tuesday will be the first time. if I make a recording of my own ten minute Memorial.

 

 

[Patiently waiting for Truth]

Quote @Anna You do know that the wine and bread symbolize Jesus' blood and flesh, that they are not really his blood and flesh, right?

To a point, yes. But to the true Anointed they are the real thing. Otherwise there would be no point to it at all. 

New Living Translation   John 6 v 53
So Jesus said again, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you cannot have eternal life within you.

It's not just a ritual, it has true spiritual meaning to the true Anointed. It puts them in UNION with Christ. If they remain true and faithful they will not get a second testing, they will automatically get eternal life. 

Quote "Would you have the anointed and the great crowd segregated?"

In God's eyes they already are. John 10 v 16

English Standard Version
And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.

One flock but two separate folds. 

Quote : I think you forgot this scripture: John 3:16.            John 3 v 9&10

 In answer Nic·o·deʹmus said to him: “How can these things be?” ¹⁰  Jesus replied: “Are you a teacher of Israel and yet do not know these things?

So Jesus was talking to Nicodemus, no to us. John 3 v 16

“For God loved the world so much that he gave his only-begotten Son so that everyone exercising faith in him might not be destroyed but have everlasting life.

Because they will not be tested ever again. BUT the Domestics / Earthly Class will be tested when the devil is released at the end of the Thousand years. 

Quote @Arauna We were set free from everlasting death when Jesus (the passover lamb) was slaughtered.

Is this true ? Or maybe it just opened a door of opportunity to serve God properly with life in view.  The final testing will remove death forever. But that is 1,000 years + away. 

•  

 

[Witness]

2 hours ago, Arauna said:

Thank Jehovah for that!

Are you saying that God didn't approve of the way His Son set up the commemoration of the last supper that he ate with the foundation members of God's Temple and Bride, that both God and Christ chose?  Luke 22:19; John 15:16

Are you saying that with the advent of the organization, it is now time to ADD to the Bible through the addition of men's ideas of what is acceptable to God?

Whatever I command you, you shall be careful to do; you shall not add to nor take away from it.  Deut 12:32

 

[TrueTomHarley]

3 hours ago, Anna said:

The other sheep are merely grateful spectators, with only a very few partaking. Would you have the anointed and the great crowd segregated?

I thought today’s WT study timely indeed, as it addressed:

 (1) How should anointed ones view themselves? (2) How should those who partake of the emblems at the Memorial be treated? (3) Should we be worried if the number of partakers increases? 

The really true anointed don't say: “Well, you can go to the elders if you want, but if you REALLY want to know what is going on, here I am. I am one of the anointed, after all. I mean, c’mon! You don’t think there are some unbalanced ones who will claim—and in most cases, truly convince themselves of it—the status exactly for that purpose? It is such a power-play to do it that way. It is so much like the greater world. 

To hear some here carry on about the ‘anointed being muzzled’ you would think it as though the GB was the media that had succeeded in separating Trump from ‘his base.’ On and on they rage about it. Will some lunatics on this forum rage about what they are going to do as the ‘true anointed’ in just a few short years? We’ll see. They are not too far along in the ‘to do’ list, the first item is to merely show up at all. For every 10,000 persons who can point to what they are going to do, there is only one who can point to what he has done—and so far, the GB are that one.

It doesn’t matter if the number has in rising in recent years. It has risen no more than ten thousand over—what? twenty years? In a congregation of 8.5 million, that is statistically nothing. The organization doesn’t even try to figure it out; it can easily be attributed to possible emotional duress and imbalance. Nobody would argue that there’s not plenty of that going around today in the world, and Jehovah’s servants are not unaffected. Or maybe it is real. Doesn’t matter. It is irrelevant to faithful life.

You don’t have to know it, is the point. You don’t have to figure out: ‘Is he (or she) really anointed or not?’ It is a designation of a heavenly assignment. Unless one is tapped for a GB assignment—and how likely is that?—it is irrelevant for the present life in this system. Should they come to feel they need one more member, surely it will be someone with a long-time record of faithful service and not just one ‘right off the boat.’

One brother commented on how there are VIP clubs today in the world and that it is a sign of status to belong to a VIP club. It is exactly what the really true anointed do not do. Such a club excludes everyone else. Anointed don’t do it.

As to any tendency to treat them as celebrities? Look they do not want that. Face it, why do we usually want to meet any well-known person? Because they have made it to the top! GB members don’t view themselves are making it to the top—it is part of their very aualitficatons that they do not think of themselves in that way.

 

[Patiently waiting for Truth]

Well I suppose it's nice to have some lighthearted jokes from @TrueTomHarley 

Thanks Tom. 

But in paragraphs one and two the GB / writing dept' admit that the JEW is the full amount of the Anointed remnant. 

And that scripture in Zechariah says the 10 men of the earthly class want to go with that JEW class of people, because they know that God is with that JEW class.

So that puts the JEW class as having God's blessing and guidance. ' God is with your people'.

But still the GB / Writing dept' pretend that Anointed 'JEWs' should not contact each other to up build one another. The GB even go as far as saying that the Anointed "would be working against the Holy Spirit"

How disgusting are the GB / Writing Dept to even suggest such things. And this to me proves that the GB / Writing dept are the evil slave that beats his 'fellow slaves'. For the GB to judge their Fellow Slaves as working against the Holy Spirit, that is a very serious charge to make. 

In paragraph 8 it says that the bible 'does not tell us that we can make any HUMAN our leader' 

But the GB say that ONLY they, those 8 men, are the F&DS. So they are making themselves your leaders. 

TTH says " Should they come to feel they need one more member, surely it will be someone with a long-time record of faithful service and not just one ‘right off the boat.’ "

And look at paragraph 10 " ... we will never follow others, even those who are anointed or well known or those who have served Jehovah for a long time" 

But it's not about adding to those already there is it ? If you put a clean white cloth into a dirty puddle the clean white cloth becomes dirty like the rest of the puddle. 

But paragraph 15 is the joke, oh if only it was a joke.  The GB decided to take the F&DS 'title' away from the  rest of the Anointed. That is the simple truth. Thereby making the GB the 'evil slave' that beats his 'fellow slaves'.   

The scripture in Revelation 5 v 9 &10, proves that Jesus 'bought people out of every part of the earth, to make them Anointed ones. 

And they sing a new song, saying: “You are worthy to take the scroll and open its seals, for you were slaughtered and with your blood you bought people for God out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, ¹⁰  and you made them to be a kingdomp and priests to our God,q and they are to rule as kingsr over the earth.”

But the GB et al, cannot accept this. And because the congregants serve the GB, then the congregants will not accept it either. 

 

 

[Anna]

10 hours ago, JW Insider said:

I think everyone is going to question what parameters are OK, and what might not be appropriate. There will be differences of opinion about what was appropriate or not.

I know of an elder and his wife who will not have any symbols at all. I also heard one brother mention the appropriateness of a recovering alcoholic obtaining wine. Our household (3 of us) will have the emblems, but I don't think I am going to pass them around. To me that would feel too pretentious since the reason for passing them is not there...

10 hours ago, JW Insider said:

we don't focus on the "rules" until there are apparent exceptions to the rule

I am not sure what rules you are referring to with regard to the memorial. The only rules I know of, and they are pretty straightforward, is the wine should be unfortified and the bread unleavened and the anointed are the only ones who partake and the great crowd are observers. The exceptions to the rules are If there is no one partaking then the emblems are not necessary. They are only necessary when a whole congregation physically gathers in case someone partakes. In a home where it is clear no one will partake, then to me, having the symbols is like a Catholic having a statue of a crucified Jesus to remind himself visually of the sacrifice that he made. That's how I see it anyway....

As a side line,  the friends fussing over what brand or type of red wine should be used is positively irritating me, lol. Red wine is red wine! As for the bread, as long as it is unfortified flour and water, rolled into a flatbread and baked, it doesn't matter if it's as hard as rock, because no one will eat it! 😄