Great comments Blondie! They pay lip service to charity and helping others but we all know Brooklyn values reporting time in the field service above any other human kindness.
I was sitting through this today and heard comments "the paragraph says" "the brothers are telling us" "the point the paragraph is making is" repeated over and over again...
Ray Franz in his "Christian freedom" book sums it up nicely on P.460:
"I found it hard to understand how the Apostles Peter, Paul and John, and the disciples James and Jude, could write entire letters to congregations and never say anything stressing the need for the readers of those letters to get out and go from door to door...about putting in more hours in the 'field service'...The letters of the Apostles seemed deficient according to the viewpoint that had been developed in me"
But what does it matter what the Bible says because it's been superseded by "The Watchtower" and their unreasonable obsession with the filed ministry!
Blondie's Comments You Will Not Hear at the 3-22-09 WT Study (UNDESERVED)
by blondie 28 Replies latest jw friends
-
LUKEWARM
-
passwordprotected
@ reniaa - Interesting that you choose Acts 1:8 to help prove Witness dogma. Did you notice who Jesus said his followers should be witness of?
- Jehovah
- Jesus
You may choose one.
-
hamsterbait
Thanx B-
Great resume as ever.
Well an entire Witchtower study that didn't even mention the only name under heaven by which we are to be saved.
I reckon if they could invent a derivative of YHWH to replace "Christian" they would.
Para 12 is so evilly disingenuous it must have slipped past the sheeple. Those in the congregation are twice referred to as "Christ's disciples". After the "Follow the Christ" A$$embly we now know they really mean the Gibbering Buddy is the Christ. The Old fossils at Crooklyn that Jehovah trusts to tell Him what to teach. (The old Mystery Doctrine)
para 14 i found especially sad. Roni and wife have given up their lives to help rebuild homes and do relief work. In itself that is the spirit of real Christianity.
They are prolly doing it for absolute subsistence rations and funding. Whilst the free labor of these people rebuilds homes, the big money in the form of INSURANCE checks is sent to the WTBTS.
They actually requested people whose homes had been rebuilt by the brothers to donate their insurance payments to the Society.
Ren-
I personally believe that the spirit is given to all people. However the verse in Acts only applies to the Annointed in Witness-land according to all the relevant literature of the WT. In fact they have said IN PRINT that the Christian scriptures are only for the annointed. The other sheep benefit from them merely as "onlookers" - like at the Reject Jesus "celebration."
HB
-
hamsterbait
leo-
Your extended quote from Paul is very apposite. However the WT has already shown how it doesn't mean what it says, it ACTUALLY says what they mean.
In a study in the 90s this passage was done in a WT study. By the end it was clear that Paul had been unable to state clearly what he wanted to say: That EVERYBODY should be an evangelizer. (I pointed out that if this was what Paul meant, the language of the time was quite able to express it.)
The way of explaining away such passaes is along the lines "weell what the passage says is not what he really wanted to say. It really means what we mean."
HB
-
Billy the Ex-Bethelite
I found it interesting that they included the ages of Ryan and Roni. I would assume they're trying to get the 20-somethings to do more to sacrifice decades of their childbearing and secularly productive years in WT slavery to generate good PR for the publishing corporation. When they're in their 40s and "the end" still hasn't come, they'll be wishing they had a house as nice as what they had constructed for others.
Anyway, that's my opinion after having spent too many years slaving directly for the Watchtower Corporation.
B the X
-
Doubting Bro
Paragraph 11 struck me as a change, perhaps a significant change. I don't ever recall either hearing or seeing in print the statement that "Similarly, we need to share in both aspects of our service to God in order to be complete as Christians. Thus, instead of regarding our assignments to preach the good news and to build up fellow believers as unrelated, we view them just as the apostles Peter and Paul did--as responsibilities that complement each other."
I am seriously beginning to wonder if a major change on reporting FS time is about to be made. The dropping of the stats in the KM was a big deal in my opinion. Now, saying that taking care of believers is just as important as FS?? The only way that would ever trickle down to reality would be if 1) they allowed members to count the time spent visiting the elderly, sick, depressed, etc or 2) eliminate FS reporting for the rank & file (still having pioneers & aux pioneers turn in a slip due to the specific time requirements).
I'm not sure what's going on and maybe I'm reading too much into it. Has anyone else ever seen them put preaching & "looking after widows & orphans" on the same level? Actually, that would be more in line with Jesus teaching and the rest of the NT anyway but then that would also mean they would be becoming just a touch more mainstream.
I'm sure I'm wrong on this. But, I also know that they put things in there for a reason and this seems like a trial ballon.
-
sir82
which is more important....both?--but which one is counted on the time slip....not helping other jws.
That's the key question for the whole study right there.
JWs are trained to do things for show, things that others can see. If you turn in an impressive report at the end of the month, all the elders know it. If you are out in service every Saturday and Sunday, all the "spiritually strong" ones know it.
If you go to visit Sister Frail and clean her bathroom or buy her groceries or just keep her company, who's going to know about it? And if you do that stuff instead of going out in service, you will be perceived as spiritually weak.
The WT is giving lip service to being balanced, but they don't practice what they preach.
-
undercover
Doubting Bro - you bring up a good point about parapraph 11. This does seem to be a change in normal JW service expectations. It's always been "preach, preach, preach". Relief work and support were always relegated to side work that was allowed as long as your service hours were accaptable.
In this article they're emphasizing the support/relief work as equal to the field service. Very strange...
They even go to the point of giving the extreme experience of someone who quit their jobs, moved several states away and worked as volunteers in relief work for fellow witnesses. Never have I seen the Society give the experience of someone quitting jobs and moving to where the need was greater to share in...relief work... Always before it was someone quitting jobs and moving to serve in the pioneer work.
My take is this: The Society is shifting "christian works" from field service to relief work and kingdom hall building/remodeling. The publishing part of the corporation is no longer a profitable venture, even with free sales reps knocking on doors. The double dipping donation arrangement didn't work. Slowly, over time, the field service will become less and less what JWs are known for.
In time, the Society will have built a network of RBCs all over the world to build kingdom halls and assembly halls. They will use free labor to build/remodel existing properties under the control of the organization. They'll continue to speculate in the real estate market by buying and building, then selling and re-buying.
But you need volunteers to make this work. Slowly turn the door-knockers into free labor for building projects.
Another oppurtunity arises when a disaster strikes. When a "Katrina" hits, flood the area with volunteers to "help" rebuild JW homes/halls first, and then help other non-JWs just enough to get some good press. They'll guilt the JWs whose homes were repaired into signing over insurance payments, thus making a profit on someone else's misfortune.
Maybe I'm too cynical in seeing it this way, but an organization as big as the Society needs a constant in-flow of money to survive. They have to do something. Exit the non-profiitable publishing aspect, enter the real estate aspect...and take advantage of the oppurtunity to pass yourself off as a "good samaritan" whenever disaster strikes.
-
blondie
Actually it reminds me of the "new" thought that sacred service was more than d2d in 1976 and then jws had that yanked out from them in 1980 after several years of negative "increases."
-
Doubting Bro
Blondie - Your thought gives me even more cause to believe that if they ceased the monthly reporting, then they wouldn't have the increase issue to worry about any longer. They could talk about total number attending the Memorial or even baptised folks. The only decrease would be those who are actually disfellowshipped or DA. I think the number who go inactive are probably greater than the df/da number on an annual basis.
Undercover - cynical, yes? However, their behavior gives reason for that cynicism. I didn't think about the experience but you are exactly correct. I really can't remember seeing very many times when moving for reasons other than preaching was looked on favorably. Very interesting.
Of course, this could be completely lip service about Christian charity to prove to taxing authorities that the WTS does encourage charitable works and therefore should keep their tax excempt status.