THE NEWS IS BIGGER THAN DATELINE, BBC, CBC, ETC. (page 28)

FinnishInfo

When will we get full information about this?

Cellist

We just went and stocked up on wine today. In anticipation of celebrating. I hope it's something that I can use as an excuse to phone up old JW friends.

Cellist ("waiting for the hail-stones" class)

startingover

Barbara,

Can you post the news in a new thread? Wading through this mess to find out the real thing is going to be difficult.

What I haven't been able to understand how they can register as a charity, undoubtedly recieving charitable funds from possibly even the government, yet they do not have one active charity and have been getting away with this. I think in the warped minds of the Bethel family volunteers they are providing charity by printing magazines and books. Did they get busted? You can't eat a magazine and books make lousy homeless shelters. The Watchtower may be the first publishing company pretending to be Christian to get caught?

::waitingwaitingwaiting::

NOdenial

OK... My turn to chime in here....

I have read and studied darn near every post on this thread. Barb... I wanna hug you. You have been a beacon of hope to both CodeBlue and I as we spoke about the future of the borg. I can only imagine what this is about.

But here is the thing we all need to remember: Whatever this change or expose is... I don't believe it is a change in policy within the borg or an announcement from the WTS. Otherwise it would just be 'new light'. So this excludes any new positions from the Society on blood... or politics ("neutrality") ... or bible understandings (doctrine)... or even dates (1914).

This has to be a third party that will make a shocking exposee whereby the borg will lose credibility. (Think of the UN / NGO scandal). The POWER behind the UN scandal is that it was published by a credible and authoritative source: The United Nation's own Website! This is what makes the accusation so difficult for a Dub to argue.

Since this will be MORE POWERFUL than the NGO scandal... I am on the edge of my seat to consider what possible source of this exposee! A class action lawsuit whereby dozens or hundred of sexual abuse victims come forward? How about a compromising alliance with a worldly political or religious organization? How about an internal prostitution ring supported by the borg (LOL!). Or stockpiling armaments in the basement of Patterson... (Oh my gawd.... my mind is racing!...)

It could be so many things - but I just don't see how it could be just a small internal change in policies.

This needs to be from THE OUTSIDE in order to be a Time Magazine cover story.

NODenial....

donkey

Simon I would take JWD down until the Barb is ready and leave a banner page as something for people to drool over.

Seeker4

Hey, Chic, welcome. You're going to pee your pants.

Katie: Always so nice to hear from you, as you know! Hate your new icon (wrong word, I know, but can't think of the right one). Goddamn little photo can't even be seen, and I can never make them any bigger. You would never have been so intriguing without that great picture of you smiling!

Anyway - no shit on this. It's cool, assuming all that Barbara is saying falls into place, and I have no reason to doubt that at this point. But again, go back and read her posts. Like I said - nothing about Jehovah's Witnesses is cover (I wrote 'front page' - a fault of my newspaper career!) of Time material. BUT, this will have some longterm problems for JWs in a very serious way.

And why doesn't it matter if the WTS is reading this topic and these posts? Again, because it is coming from a source that they have no idea about, and even if they did, they cannot have any affect on this going public

There are a lot of us who have long believed that the greatest threat to the WTS is their own publications, doctrines, talks and policy. Why do you think the WTS is suing the Quotes site??? They are embarrassed by what they've written. They have taught and written just the most ludicrous nonsense over the years, and fed it to millions as the very word of god.

The eventual demise of the WTS began when JF Rutherford instituted the policy of telling the rank and file JW what to believe and do on almost every subject imaginable. Individual thinking and conscience has long been given barely token respect by the WTS. They told ys what to believe, and told us that not listening to them was the same as not listening to god, and they would disfellowship us for doubting that, cutting us off from many of the people, especially family members, that we most loved.

That has already happened to most of us here, and for one, I'm damn mad and seriously pissed off about that.

Starting with Rutherford, and continuing into the present day, JWs have been told how to look, what to read, watch, wear, listen to and think. It doesn't matter if the Bible has been specific on it or not. Witnesses have been told not to join the military (despite the first gentile anointed, according to the Bible at least, being in the Roman army!), not to vote, not to get vaccinated, not to have organ transplants, not to take blood transfusions, not to celebrate any holidays, not to go to college, and on and on and on. Now some of these things are not too critical, but some are matters of life and death, and many, like your level of education, will have a huge impact on your life. The WTS has gone to the highest courts of the land to fight for its own civil rights, and then denied those same civil rights of dissent and opinion and free thought to its own members - under the threat of eternal destruction in the future and extreme shunning in the present.

Wouldn't it be interesting if there were a way to make the WTS responsible for how it has affected the lives of individuals through what it has written and taught, and more specifically, what it has taught through lies and misinformation? Take a look at the "Creation" book, and the overwhelming evidence we have that the WTS completely pulled quotes out of context, made the quotes seem to say exactly the opposite of what they originally meant, in effect lied, in order to support a totally erroneous line of thinking. How many other times has the WTS knowingly done that on all sorts of topics? Do you think the brothers who wrote the 'Creation' book were so totally ignorant of science and journalistic ethics that they had no idea that they were misrepresenting many of the original sources that they quoted?

That sort of unethical journalism by the WTS has really pissed me off, and I've often wondered if there weren't some legal way to prevent that, or punish those who do it. When it's a matter of life and death, maybe there finally is.

Wouldn't it be interesting if there were finally a door opened that could lead to making the WTS truly responsible for some of the lies and nonsense it has written, affecting the lives of millions?

Several years ago I decided that I was goddamn mad and I wasn't going to take it anymore. Anyone else out there share that feeling? Perhaps our time has come.

S4

Apostanator

I sure don't know what it is,,, but it would be nice if the Government started taxing the WBTS INC. ( there's a reason why they're called the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society Inc.)

AuldSoul

If Jourles is happy, and that is obviously the case, it must be blood.

WOOO-HOO!!!!

Someone said the experts must be lawyers, but what if the experts are the ones who have been quoted in their publications about the blood issue? What if they have misrepresented it from a medical standpoint all this time?

Toward the end of last month I was reading some lengthy testimony by JW reps before a government panel in Australia (if I remember correctly). It was very telling testimony in that the panel had a few quotes from medical experts that had been taken out of context on the blood issue.

If blood has been intentionally misrepresented as a big medical risk when it is not actually a big medical risk, how can they silence claims of deception? Using some of their time honored tricks of the trade, I will reconstruct a paragraph from an actual article the way they might reconstruct a quote from an expert:

Lying and deception are commonplace in [the Society]. Deception comes in many forms and has crept into nearly all aspect of modern-day life. Should we be surprised by all this deception? Not really. Regarding "the last days," the Bible warned: "Wicked men and imposters will advance from bad to worse, misleading and being misled." (2 Timothy 3:1, 13) As Christians, we need to be alert to misleading ideas that could turn us away from the truth. This master of deception is especially bent on devouring those who are worshipping God "with spirit and truth." (John 4:24; 1 Peter 5:8) They often resort to distortions, half-truths, and outright falsehoods. However, such individuals are "on slippery ground," for sooner or later their ungodly conduct will catch up with them. (Psalm 73:18, 19) We are wise to learn from the mistakes of others.—Proverbs 22:3

With the exception of "[the Society]" every syllable in this statement came, in the textual order presented, from a Watchtower Bible and Tract Society publication. The words are out of paragraph context, but the sentences are completely intact. I didn't even use ellipses.

A gold star for the first person to find it.

For lurkers, this is a good exercise to demonstrate how hard it can be to find unsourced material quoted by the Society. If you can't check the validity of the statement, how can you be sure it is presented honestly?

Respectfully,
AuldSoul

P.S. During the writing of this (and finding the publication I used) a lot of other posts have come in, including Simon's. If this guess is close to the truth, please be aware I DO NOT have a source. I don't have an inside track, but I am getting incredibly excited over the possibility of the "movement" using my gifts with finding the sophistry in their arguments if this is on the right track. I'm downright giddy with excitement.

Jourles

Seeker4 - Amen brother!

Auldsoul - Who said I was happy?

THE NEWS IS BIGGER THAN DATELINE, BBC, CBC, ETC.