Malawi and MCP Cards?

[Pudgy]

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It’s not about David respecting the blood of his enemies, or any animals slaughtered for food, or our respecting the blood.

It’s not REALLY about real blood. 

God does not collect it into some big celestial swimming pool and swim in it.

He considers all blood his personal property to teach us respect for the fact that He is the source of all life, but knows we cannot eat sunlight, so licenses the management of life to us.

That’s why animals have no restrictions on blood. BECAUSE they are not being included in the Ransom. 

The Mosaic law is not in force now, but the underlying principles still are.

That’s what “Abstain from blood” means.

 

[Srecko Sostar]

1 hour ago, Thinking said:

Jay Franklin was three when he had a blood transfusion, 18 when he discovered by chance that it infected him with hepatitis C, and 40 when he died in October waiting for a federal government apology to “tainted blood” victims that never came.

GB behaves similarly, when they say that they do not bother to apologize for bad doctrines and instructions. It is a contagion that affects the "mighty men".

[JW Insider]

14 minutes ago, Many Miles said:

"Animals" are like "man". Each is "soul".

There is no reference to "souls" in that context of Genesis 9, just all living animals and food and meat and blood. 

[Many Miles]

13 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

There is no reference to "souls" in that context of Genesis 9, just all living animals and food and meat and blood. 

I'm no Hebrew reader, so I'm at the mercy of translators. In this case, specifically, NWT translators.

"Only flesh with its soul—its blood—YOU must not eat."

Even more specifically to this discussion, I'm talking about the society's take on Genesis 9 because the teaching under discussion uniquely belongs to the society. Hence my usage of the NWT here.

 

 

[TrueTomHarley]

7 hours ago, Many Miles said:

The question of fractions harvested knowingly and purposely from blood to take what we want is like asking God if it would have been okay for Adam to knowingly and purposely harvest what he wanted to eat from the tree of knowledge and throw the rest away without eating it. And what response do you think that would have evoked from God? Who knows, maybe Adam didn't like peelings.

Seen in that light, it is. Seen in the light of ‘drained animals yet retain traces of blood’ it isn’t. I’m not sure why you’d have to be a microbiologist to serve God. Blood is recognizable, even broken into packed red, packed white, etc. Fractions are not.

Nor did you answer my question, even to say ‘I don’t know,’ about percentages at the Bethels.

At any rate, the problem’s been effectively solved, as you indicated and I responded about that draft letter to be kept top of the chart. It is plain that you’re not going to be satisfied without things going down 100% your way, but nothing in life is like that.

[Anna]

9 hours ago, Thinking said:

The stand on blood comes from the mosaic law.

I think that was his point, that we are no longer under the mosaic law.

[JW Insider]

6 hours ago, Many Miles said:

I'm no Hebrew reader, so I'm at the mercy of translators. In this case, specifically, NWT translators.

"Only flesh with its soul—its blood—YOU must not eat."

True. It says something more like "flesh with its nephesh,blood" where "nephesh" can often mean breath/life/self/being).

I tried to overstate the point as part of the odd "kill-it-first" interpretation that says they could not eat living, moving, breathing animals that still had breath,blood flowing in them. So when verse 4 mentions "flesh with its soul,blood," that's the reason that if you go here, for example, https://www.blueletterbible.org/kjv/gen/9/1/t_bibles_9004 you only see the word life [that is] blood and life-blood as a translation of nephesh,blood. (Except one of the Spanish translations has "alma [o vida])."

You had said: "Animals" are like "man". Each is "soul".  That is not the meaning in the context of Genesis 9. Verse 4 is not using "soul" [nephesh] in the same way that Genesis 2:7 and the most of the Hebrew Bible uses the term. (Even the NWT stopped using the term "soul" as a consistent translation for "nephesh" in the 2013 NWT.) 

We are always taught that the living animal or human does not HAVE a soul but it IS a soul. It is different here. Here the animal is not a soul, but it HAS a soul.

(Leviticus 20:25) You must make a distinction between the clean animal and the unclean and between the unclean bird and the clean; you must not make your souls loathsome by means of an animal or a bird or anything that creeps on the ground that I set apart for you to regard as unclean.

Or "psyche" (soul) in Greek:

(Acts 15:24) Since we have heard that some went out from among us and caused you trouble with what they have said, trying to subvert your souls . . . [NWT leaves out the term souls, here and just says "trying to subvert you."]

(1 Thessalonians 5:23) . . .And may the spirit and soul and body of you brothers, sound in every respect, be preserved blameless at the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 

It's similar to the term "spirit" here in Ecclesiastes:

(Ecclesiastes 3:21) Who really knows whether the spirit of humans ascends upward, and whether the spirit of animals descends down to the earth?
 

So, I'm arguing, as most translators also do, that this is a special case of "nephesh" just as the NWT often treats special cases of nephesh and psyche without translating it as "soul."

[Pudgy]

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

[Pudgy]

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 …..

[JW Insider]

3 hours ago, Pudgy said:

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

I think that MM's questions here to Thinking were pertinent. Did the elders in Jerusalem mean it in Moses' terms, Noah's terms, or some new terms that was different from both of those?

And, per Paul's explanation for at least 2 of the terms of that decree, was it possibly only a necessary but temporary injunction to allow the congregation to accommodate coexistence with gentiles for the time when Jewish Christians were still "condemning" themselves to live by the Law. 

(Acts 21:20, 21) . . .After hearing this, they began to glorify God, but they said to him: “You see, brother, how many thousands of believers there are among the Jews, and they are all zealous for the Law. ²¹  But they have heard it rumored about you that you have been teaching all the Jews among the nations an apostasy from Moses, telling them not to . . . follow the customary practices. 

(Galatians 2:11-14) . . .However, when Ceʹphas came to Antioch, I resisted him face-to-face, because he stood condemned.*  ¹²  For before certain men from James arrived, he used to eat with people of the nations; but when they arrived, he stopped doing this and separated himself,. . . ¹⁴  But when I saw that they were not walking in step with the truth of the good news, I said to Ceʹphas before them all: “If you, though you are a Jew, live as the nations do and not as Jews do, how can you compel people of the nations to live according to Jewish practice?”
 

*The 2013 NWT decided not to translate the Greek of Galatians 2:11 (as was done previously) with "Peter ... stood condemned." They decided to water it down a bit and say that only that "Peter . . . was clearly in the wrong."

[Pudgy]

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”.

[TrueTomHarley]

8 hours ago, Many Miles said:

I was really looking for a view from a casual observer. It means something to me.

Adding to Thinkings list, of which each item is different, so that I think that would have answered your question, is just plain ‘ol human error. Anyone who has ever worked in healthcare (my wife is a retired nurse) knows there is plenty of it. 

In my area, hospitals laid off nurses who would not accepted the Covid shot. This led to collapse of the hospital system, as there were a lot of them, not easily or affordably replaced, so largely not replaced, making the remaining staff take up the slack over which they protested and went on strike. Do you think this worked to increase the safety of transfusion protocol?

Just recently local hospitals were found to be in severe violation of a law that they must not be understaffed. It’s a LAW—how could that have not fixed the problem? It’s as though administrators say, ‘If our nurses quit, the very stones will take care of you!’

Everything is collapsing. And whereas JW’s stand on war, tobacco, alcohol and drug abuse, and compliance with safety laws, place them BY FAR among the safest religions out there, you keep flailing a on a number so relatively tiny that neither Thinking nor myself can think of an example we personally know of. And neither of us are youngsters, especially Thinking.

In a revolving population of several million you are going to find countless examples of anything. But there is such a thing as focusing on the trees so minutely as to not see the forest.