A blog by Tom Sheepandgoats (aka Tom Harley)
Search topic, word, or Bible verse (Bible books may be abbreviated)
-
Revelation and the Congregation Book Study
It does seem like a raw deal. Here is John, the apostle John, he's summoned to heaven to see how things will turn out. …look! an opened door in heaven, and the first voice that I heard was as of a trumpet, speaking with me, saying: “Come on up here, and I shall show you the things that must take place. Rev 4:1 But…
-
Homeschooling and Manny Rivera
When Mrs Sheepandgoats and I decided to homeschool our 2 kids, 21 years ago, some challenged us. How could we expect to do better than professional educators? they wanted to know. We looked at it differently. How could we do worse? To be sure, had we lived in one of the suburbs, we might have been less confident. But we didn't. We lived in the…
-
The Divine Name and the Old Testament
When you are translating your Old Testament from the original Hebrew to English, it’s perfectly acceptable to render the Divine Name as “Jehovah.” Nobody who knows anything will give you any grief over this. All you have to do is translate the four-consonant tetragrammaton, and there it is, over 6000 times, in the original writings. You don’t think if someone puts their name in a…
-
Hal and the Astronaut Farmer
The name of the rocket was Dreamer. It's builder was a dreamer. With "The Astronaut Farmer," my wife and I knew we were in for a quirky film straight from the opening scene, a blend of two American icons. There he is on horseback, riding alone on the deserted plain. But wait! Zoom in steadily and we see he's not a cowboy at all, but…
-
Maria Muldaur and the New York State Bush
It was a proud day for Rochester. Our own purple bush, the lilac, was designated New York’s official state bush! Actually, the deed was signed into law last year, but only now are they getting around to setting up a plaque or something in Highland Park, home of 1200 lilac bushes and the annual Lilac Festival, which started May 11. Of course, these heady days…
-
1935 and the Anointed
Barfendogs is doing his best to get everyone stirred up. But it's not just Barfendogs. Many of Jehovah's Witnesses thought this system would have ended long ago. What are they to think of the 1935 adjustment? Is it a big deal or not? Should we expect a flurry of new anointed ones? No, it's not a big deal. It's been said before that there would…
-
Carriertom Solves Identity Theft
Howard Slickbottom, Transportation Security Administration employee, was lounging around at Starbucks when he got up to use the restroom. Upon returning, his laptop was gone. On it was every conceivable bit of information of 100,000 TSA employees. Perhaps it didn't happen just that way or even close, but it did happen. Didn't his brother Elmodo the same dumb thing last year? And it happens a…
-
Mormons and Jehovah’s Witneses on TV
Dear WXXI: I am writing with regard to the Independent Lens documentary Knocking, which reviews the contributions to society of Jehovah's Witnesses. I had long supposed it would appear, in time, on WXXI. Tuesday I watched and enjoyed the excellent film The Mormons, and my memory of Knocking was jarred. But it does not appear that WXXI has scheduled the film, at least not for…
-
Resume Padding at MIT
MIT Dean Admissions Marilee Jones got pretty good at spotting applicants who had padded their resumes. Nevertheless, the school fired her (April 27). She had padded hers! Padded it quite a bit, actually. She'd claimed BS and MS degrees from Union College, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Albany Medical College. That's how she'd landed her first job 28 years ago. But she'd only studied at Rensselaer…
-
Textual Criticism and the Bible
"If comparative trivialities such as changes of order, the insertion or omission of the article with proper names, and the like are set aside, the works in our opinion still subject to doubt can hardly mount to more than a thousandth part of the whole New Testament." Then too, one must remember that Jehovah’s Witnesses put great stock in the jig-saw puzzle analogy. Even those…