Posted by felix a [angler] on April 03, 1999 at 20:43:15 {Ed9c7782HMJwrLA196zEXXuUsiPcoA}:
Early Catalogues and the Christian Greek
Scripture
Canon (w63 4/15 249)
"It should not be thought that the early Christians
lacked vigor in the collecting of inspired writings, or were all
too poor to afford copies. Since false writings
worth nearly £3,000
($8,400) were burned on one occasion by those embracing Christianity,
it is certain that they would be replaced by copies of the Scriptures
as soon as opportunity afforded. (Acts 19:19) It has
been
calculated that by the end of the second century 60,000 copies
of the major part of the Christian Greek Scriptures could have
been in circulation, even if only one in every fifty of those
professing Christianity possessed
a copy."
This is something that struct me while researching
some information on the catalog of the Greek Scriptures as we
know and accept them today. This brought that activity to a
stop
and moved me into a very different line of thinking and the implications
once again to a current teaching held by us as Witnesses and its
contrast to the selective quoting and acceptance of the writers.
The paragraphs following the one quoted
above refered to early Christians from the second century. And
the quote itself is making reference to the end of the second
century and what was in existence then, namely some
60,000 copies
of the major parts of the Greek Scripture. (Depending on the source
material you read the full canon of Greek Scripture had yet to
finalized.) The language used in the article is couched in such
a way as to
reflect a conservative approach to the number of copies
and to the number of professed Christians possesing those copies.
It would seem that at the end of the second century there were
some three million Christians now worshipping
here on the earth.
A number that has always grown through the centuries.
This lead me to reflect on the teaching
of a literal 144,000 faithful ones who would serve in heaven.
If we follow our
current understanding, there was no earthly hope
yet available for those who were faithful therefore we have nearly
three million apostate worshippers of God before the third century
began. We have been taught that sincerity of
belief has no merit
when it comes being part of false religion. All we need do is
look at how Matt. 7:21-23 is so frequently quoted to remind us
that not all worship is approved by God. Or how about the use
of Romans 10:2,3
which again is used to bear this thought out
all so often in the literature.
In the world today we have approximately
one billion individuals professing to be Christian. Of that billion
some five
million are Jehovah's Witnesses. This, if I did my math
correctly gives us a ratio of one true Christian out of two hundred
professing Christians. What happens if we apply this ratio to
that earlier number of three million? Well
it would mean that
there was a total of 15,000 true Christians at the end of the
second century. There has since been 18 more centuries within
which Christianity has been preached and the number professing
this belief has
continued to increase leading up to todays numbers.
Yet we have a teaching that has taken a number found in Revelation
and treated it as a literal number for those who will serve in
Heaven. This number we know to be 144,000. This
number is also
treated as the understood number of true Christians who have lived
on the earth until the earthly hope was opened up during the 1930's.
Even with maintaining this high level of apostasy it seems we
are
consistently faced with a severe over booking of the heavens.
So this suggests the question, is this a reasonable conclusion,
a reasonable belief?
A hammer
rises, a hammer falls. Nailed in place
are the coffins walls.