Bridge of Reason

  The Watch Tower Society writes: 'Each year, anointed ones look forward to attending the Memorial as partakers. Why do they appropriately partake of the bread and the wine? To answer that, consider what happened on the final night of Jesus’ earthly life. After the Passover meal, Jesus instituted what has come to be known as the Lord’s Evening Meal. He passed the bread and the wine to his 11 faithful apostles and told them to eat and drink. Jesus spoke to them about two covenants, or agreements the new covenant and the Kingdom covenant. * (Luke 22:19, 20, 28-30) These covenants opened up the way for those apostles and a limited number of others to become kings and priests in heaven. (Rev. 5:10; 14:1) Only the anointed remnant, * who are in these two covenants, may partake of the bread and the wine at the Memorial.' ( Study Watchtower for January 2022 ) Did Jesus introduce one new covenant or two? Is there a second 'Kingdom Covenant,' also available only to the '...

Jewish scholars tell us that as many as 20% of first century Israel may have accepted Jesus as the Messiah. We know that three thousand came to the Lord on the Feast of Pentecost (Acts 2:4) and shortly afterwards another 5,000 men plus any women and children became believers (Acts 4:4). Acts 6:7 then records that a large number of priests became obedient to Christ. Many years later when Paul came back from his third missionary journey, probably around 60 AD, we read that the number of true Christians had already grown to tens of thousands - see Acts 21:20. The Greek word used in this verse is murias, which according to The New Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament , literally means; "a ten-thousand; a myriad or indefinite number; an innumerable multitude; an unlimited number" (p.419). See Luke 12:1, Acts 19:19 and Jude 14 for examples of the use of this word. If there were already so many believers in 60 AD, there would be no places left between the 1870...