@flipper:
First of all - you obviously didn't read my responses to TOTALLY ADD in that my daughter IS NOT aware of ANY of the things I told this elder- except for the concern over child abuse policies.
In the future, please take a moment to think the very next time you decide to say anything as foolish as what you say here to anyone else. You're never going to be able to do any kind of logical thinking until you learn first how to think. You are exchanging a post with a thinker, and, clearly, you did not doing any thinking, @flipper. It should have been obvious to you that I posted my message after @TotallyADD had posted his response to your post and before you posted your message to @TotallyADD's post. I don't pretend to be able to read your mind nor anybody's else's mind, but I'm familiar with your perspective in believing that you managed to keep your apostate view concealed from this elder. Pretend that I'm smarter than you are for a moment and receive these next five (5) words: You did not do that.
I don't care if you flip burgers for a living , assist attorneys , or strip in an all male nightclub for women as a male stripper. You're still just a JW apologist trying to be an antagonist. What you do for a living has absolutely NO bearing on how the WT society or JW elders operate. Period. Your opinion registers on the level of Zero to me.
I pointed out what I do for a living just to let you get some idea as to how naked your motives are when seeking to keep your apostasy on the "down-low" to someone like me that makes a living interrogating and probing the things that people say. I thought I should be the one to let you know how delusional you came off to me in thinking that your views weren't manifest in what things you said to this elder. Do you want to think your apostasy is on the "down-low"? Ok.
I don't have a problem with you or anyone at all that should choose to be a male stripper, whose job is to strip and dance in an all-male nightclub for men or women. I don't have a problem with folks flipping burgers for a living. Don't project your prejudices off on me because I'm not judgmental at all. I have talked to female strippers and to folks that flip burgers and to S.W.A.T. police officers and to rooters, and it is not my place to judge any of these folks for the work they do for a living. Generally, people must decide whether or not their choice of work in compatibility with what they learn from the Bible to be compatible with true Christianity. For example, I know someone that is one of Jehovah's Witnesses in North Carolina that carries a pistol concealed on his person. This is his choice, and while his choice makes it impossible for him to serve as a pioneer in his local congregation, he wants to feel secure in the knowledge that he will be able to protect his own life and the lives of his family, and he does.
Is a male stripper or someone that flips burgers for a living in your view somehow disqualified from their having a Bible study? Not at all! Do you have scruples against male strippers or against someone that flips burgers studying the Bible? Then that would be a personal bias which is not a bar from your helping those folks that want to know what the good news we preach is all about, according to the Bible, to know what this good news about the kingdom of God consists. You are like that slave to whom Jesus entrusted with a talent that buried it instead of, at least, putting it in the bank so that it might draw a little interest.
You came to learn things about God's kingdom that others were desirous of hearing, but never heard, and yet it was so easy for you to bury your talent instead of putting it somewhere where it might earn interest. You're upset with a few elders, with the way a few imperfect men treated you, and you're so disgruntled about these men so that it doesn't occur you, assuming that are right about these men abusive their power as congregation elders in your case, that both they and you my end up perishing, they for their bad treatment of God's flock, and you because you decided to keep the good news that you were entrusted to preach all to yourself, so that, as it turns out, no one is saved by any efforts on your own part.
You call me a JW apologist trying to be an antagonist, but I'm not here defending any policy that Jehovah's Witnesses might have in dealing with apostasy. I'm not here defending bad policies employed by bad elders. If I am an "apologist," I'm someone that defends Bible truth, and I don't care if you don't agree with Bible truth. You have the right to believe whatever it is you want to believe, to live your life exactly as you may choose to live it. So do I. I may not believe in the same things that you believe, or believe in the same way that you believe, but I'm not here to antagonize you or anyone.
My opposition to what the Bible identifies as wickedness is IMO where I stand as an individual, for I'm someone that thinks pursuing God's righteousness makes sense, but this doesn't mean that you have to be opposed to wickedness. You don't have to be and I have no hostility whatsoever toward you for being the kind of person that you choose to be with respect to God's righteousness. There are a lot of people that I've met over the years that have never entered a Kingdom Hall because their belly is their god, for "they have their minds upon things on the earth" (Philippians 3:19), and I have no hostility toward them either. I'll be trying to talk to these folks until God says "Enough."
I was merely telling you here that had you said any of those things that you told this elder to your daughter that you may have let the proverbial cat out of the bag with respect to your down-low apostate views. I'm a smart guy and your approach wasn't very smart, and I'm pretty sure that you didn't fool this elder if he went in looking to find confirmation of your apostate viewpoints. This is what I was saying to you. One of your views has to do with blood transfusions, and your objection is just as ignorant as that of many active Jehovah's Witnesses. You wrote:
Then I stated that I had problems with the blood transfusion policies. I told him that several years ago the organization said it was O.K. to take " blood fractions " and justified it by saying it came from water- but I stated the fractions actually STILL come from blood . So what about the thousands who have lost their lives before who didn't take fractions ? He said, " Well - blood transfusions or fractions are a conscience matter now. " Incredible.
These folks tend to repeat some of what they read in our publications without their ever really doing any study of the subject, so, in this case, they really don't know what the subject of blood is about, nor do you appreciate what the Bible's view as to using blood is. Actually it only when something intrudes upon their own life or the life of a family member, something that potentially involves the use of blood, do they seek the advice of elders. It turns out that they thought they did, but they really didn't know what Jehovah's Witnesses believe.
They believe, as do you, that Jehovah's Witnesses are forbidden to receive a blood transfusion for any reason. It's true that Jehovah's Witnesses do not accept blood transfusions because we believe that God's word commands us to "abstain ... from blood" (Acts 15:20), but not one of Jehovah's Witnesses are forced to obey God in this regard. The elders in the local congregation will urge fellow Witnesses and non-Witnesses alike to seek medical treatment from those hospitals that pursue blood management protocols and offer bloodless surgery as an alternative to blood transfusion, but the medical decisions that one makes are personal matters, so often elders will not even know that anyone is struggling with a conscience matter or know what a patient's decision turned out to be in this regard unless the patient or someone associated the patient's family should disclose this information to them.
Congregation elders have no right to such personal information any more so than they have the right to ask for your Social Security Number that is used here in the US to benefit retirees and their spouses and is private. Nor do elders have the right to pry or to insert themselves into the personal matters of anyone, and this would include matters of conscience, whether medical-related or not.
There are many Jehovah's Witnesses that became such having germ phobias of one kind or another, and there is hardly a time when I don't hear someone say something ignorant, for example, how it their custom to always ask to be seated in a different section of the restaurant in order to avoid a particular waiter or waitress or server that seems to them to be gay, because they do not want to risk ingesting food that might have become contaminated as the result of it having been handled by someone that engages in behavior that could lead to their contracting AIDS. Many articles on the subject of AIDS have appeared in our publications, but they don't really read them, but focus only on the parts of the articles that seem to agree with their ignorant point of view.
Being transfused with someone's else blood means losing the chance for eternal life. This is not true. The risks associated with the use of blood in connection with the transfusion of blood and blood products far outweigh the benefits that one hopes to obtain. This is true. But health benefits also accrue to those that are putting their faith in God and obeying His command to "keep abstaining ... from blood." (Acts 15:29)
An article published a study back in 1993, entitled "Effect of Stored blood Transfusion on Oxygen Delivery in Patients with Sepses," by Paul Merik, M.D., Critical Care Specialist, suggested that transfusions weren't the job that they were supposed to do, that is, carrying oxygen to cells in the body. Donated blood degrades after 42 days and degrades and as it ages, red blood cells become misshapen, which makes in harder to maneuver through tiny capillaries, so that the older the blood is, the greater the number of complications and less effective the blood is in delivering oxygen to the patient.
You were making such a big deal in your post, @flipper, as do many folks here on JWN, about blood fractions, but this is just food for thought, since Jehovah's Witnesses do not give medical advice to anyone and what they should decide to do in this regard is a matter of conscious as it has always been. You want to believe that the elders go into hospitals and actually dictate to patients that are Jehovah's Witnesses what kind of treatment that cannot have, but it is not anyone's business what decisions they have made, nor are such patients obliged to explain medical decisions that pertain to blood fractions -- or to anything else for that matter -- to anyone, their only duty is to their own doctor and to Jehovah their God! Here are some facts for you:
In fact, back in 2008, a Cleveland Clinical Study in Cleveland, Ohio, hospital reviewed some 6,000 heart surgical patient records, and found that those patients receiving blood that was more than two weeks' old had a significantly higher risk of complications, including post-operative infections, respiratory problems, kidney failure, and death, with things like colorectal cancer recurrence, organ failure and a significantly long-term impact on the recipients' immune system with respect to things like anemia, allogenic blood transfusion and immunomodulation found in critically ill patients. A blood transfusion lowers the host's immune response and ability to fight infections, so that it predisposes a sick patient for the inset of infections that their immune system could have fought off were it not for the transfused blood introduced into the patient's body.
When asked whether there are any risks associated with a patient's receiving a blood transfusion, Aryeh Shander, M.D., Chief of Anesthesiology and Critical Care, Englewood Hospital and Medical Center in Englewood, New Jersey, responded: "Absolutely. If you can't demonstrate benefit, all you are offering the patient is risk."
Richard Benjamin, M.D., Chief Medical Officer, American Red Cross, and Harvey Klein, M.D.,
Department of Transfusion Medicine, National Institutes of Health's Clinical Center, believe that there is no substitute for a soldier that might otherwise die on the battle field or from a gunshot wound sustained by someone that gets shot wile walking in an alley than a blood transfusion, and would not hesitate to recommend the use of blood in a operating room when the patient begins to bleed like crazy on the operating room table.
However, Dr. Shander points out that since 1995, that with blood conserving care and patient blood management, the bloodless surgery patients treated in his hospital without blood transfusions did better when compared to patients that have gotten blood transfusions, for when comparing the cardiac population in his hospital with the populations in other institutions, the risk of adjusted mortality is lowest in the state of New Jersey with probably the lowest transfusion rates in the world.
When asked what the circumstances are where you really absolutely have to transfuse someone, there just no question about it, Dr. Shander responded: "There are patients that we've had here with hemoglobin levels of less than two grams per deciliter, which is considered to be incompatible with survival, who have gone home without a blood transfusion." Even if one of Jehovah's Witnesses or one of their children should die due to waiving off blood transfusions in connection with medical treatment, we already knew that there was no opportunity afforded to them to live forever in this current system of things where not-to-many people are living to see their 100th birthday, so we have faith that most of us will require a resurrection anyway if we are going to live forever.
Furthermore, giving up the eternal prospect of living forever makes our gaining another 10, 20 or 30 years of life in this system of things seems to me to be akin to trying to save $50,000 at the rate of $1/day for 100 years when its mathematically impossible to save up this much on your own. There's really nothing that can compare with someone forfeiting their soul in order to gain 10, 20 or 30 more years of life in the world. (Matthew 16:26)
In 2010, some 100 hospitals in the US that belong to what is known as the "Society for the Advancement of Blood Management" offer blood management programs, whereas there were only 25 in the early 1990s. Irwin Gross, M.D., Eastern Maine Medical Center, indicated that in 2007, transfusions were cut over the next three years at Dr. Gross' Bangor, Maine, hospital facility by sixty percent (60%), which saved his hospital almost $1.5 million per year.
Really, the question that patients ought to be asking when they know that an invasive surgical procedure is indicated is whether there is anything that they can do to reduce their need for transfused blood. As a result of the increased awareness brought to the attention of the medical community regarding the request made by Jehovah's Witnesses of their need to have hospitals perform bloodless surgical procedures, in February 2010, the US Centers for Disease Control launched its National Hemovigilance Program, the first national adverse event blood transfusion monitoring program.
All US hospitals are presently uploading data to CDC so that analysis and comparisons of the results that relate to blood transfusions involving the age of the blood used in transfusions given to patients by hospitals around the country, including as it pertains transfusions of blood stored more than two weeks. Regardless of what the final results turn out to be, Jehovah's Witnesses are determined to obey God and to "abstain ... from blood," as He commands all Christians to do.
Furthermore, anyone that was formerly one of Jehovah's Witnesses, as you were once, @flipper, even though you are presently putting on this pretense of being something you weren't aren't, like someone on the down-low about their duplicity in claiming to be someone that you really aren't, that would dare to criticize a parent for their refusal to allow a doctor to subject any of their children to the risks associated with blood transfusions, including compromising their immune system once transfused blood has invaded the body -- there are only attendant risks and no benefits -- is not someone that has come to know the kind of faith that Abraham demonstrated in the resurrection, for he was asked by God to kill his only son, which Abraham would not have been willing to do were it not for his faith in God, the very same faith that Jehovah's Witnesses have in Jesus will keep his promise to raise the dead during Judgment Day. (Hebrews 11:17-19; John 5:28, 29) May I remind you that nowhere in the Bible have you ever read that Jesus was given the keys to Gehenna!
Anyway, @flipper, what difference does it make what other people do? Why are you so concerned about what other people are doing? You believe that the Society is just using the organization to get free medical insurance, free meals, free lodging so that they don't have to get real jobs. To this, Jesus would tell you something along the lines of what he told Peter, "Of what concern is that to you?" (John 21:23) I told you in my previous post that you may not really be interested in hearing what I think, but I was commenting on your "strategy" to get your daughter to stop shunning you. Maybe.
Why must you be "a busybody in other people's matters," @flipper? (1 Peter 4:15) You have to know that this is the reason that you're suffering these days like a murderer, like a thief, like some evildoer, crying about how your daughter is being so unfair to you. Jesus would tell you to "continue following me" (John 21:22), and once you start attending meetings again as one of Jehovah's Witnesses, and stop all of your whining and complaining, and realize that I'm much smarter than you because I'm not a busybody, not a whiner, not a complainer, but just someone that is obediently following Jesus, when you realize that I'm much smarter than you, period (a little repetition for emphasis there), and you know that?
And when you begin to attend meetings again (you don't have to raise you hand when the discussion turns to overlapping generations, or 1914, and all of that kind of stuff that you cannot understand!), your daughter may, in fact, return to you, that is, if you are really interested in not being shunned by your daughter any longer while you are still able to draw breath.
This is how I see things: As long as you keep behaving in such a contrary way, you are the one guilty of shunning her!
Now on the matter regarding the two-witness rule, discussion of which during one of the many Watchtower studies you missed while you were being marked "Absent" over the last seven (7) years' time at your local congregation, let me set this up so that you'll have a much better understanding of why it was I told you, after reading your opening post in this thread, that you have a bit of a problem with thinking:
@djeggnog wrote:
[H]ow on earth can you hope to escape the two-witness rule? If this visit should turn out to have been a pretext for an investigation, then your daughter may have unwittingly made it easier for the elders to establish what your position on things is!
Matthew 18:16 states that "at the mouth of two or three witnesses every matter may be established," and so while this elder would be Witness #1 to these statements, your daughter would be Witness #2. You were safe saying those things here on JWN, but not to an elder at your home.
@Retrovirus wrote:
Applying a two-witness rule to separate incidents is, well, legally ridiculous.
@TD wrote:
In a fashion, I agree with DJeggnog. I don't think it was wise to discuss "spiritual" matters with this man.
@DesirousofChange wrote:
It does not take 2 witness TO THE SAME EVENT, it can be 2 witness to 2 different events of the same thing (support of apostate teachings) to set you up for a Judicial Committee. So, if a different elder returns to talk to you, or if Elder #1 returns with Elder #2, but Elder #1 goes back to the car, by you saying all the same things to Elder #2 will constitute TWO WITNESSES to your apostate views and qualify for you to be invited to a JC.
@Mary wrote:
If you want to avoid getting DF'd, I would not speak to any elder about anything doctrinally related, even if it's to only one of them. If they need 'two eye witnesses' to your 'apostasy', they could still get this with two seperate visits by individual elders---it doesn't have to be in front of both of them at the same time.
@Pistoff wrote:
DJeggnogg, what a piece of work you are; you couch your brainless defense of the WT in advice to Mr Flipper.
Except for @Retrovirus and @Pistoff here, there are many people here that are telling you exactly what I told you. You freely discussion your religious beliefs -- or lack thereof -- here on JWN, so there's no reason for me to believe that you don't do the very same thing IRL, and that you haven't said some of the same kinds of things to others that know you IRL, things that could make the one that heard you say any of these things "Witness #2," with this elder that you had the audacity to confess your disparate viewpoints as to your feelings about God's organization being "Witness #1." I might have asked you, "What were you thinking?" but I already know that you must have had a strong desire to confess your sins to an elder -- and you did! -- and thinking wasn't even an afterthought.
You can cry and whine and complain tomorrow, but I would rather you come back to Jehovah today, @flipper, and I can help you to do just that if this is something that you want to do. I'm not trying to antagonize you, @flipper; I really want to help you return to Jehovah with at least some of your dignity intact. I have no interest in your daughter; she didn't get lost, but you were the one that did get lost. Jesus said "continue following me" (John 21:22), and this is what you really need to be doing.
I've used theocratic warfare right back at em !
What exactly do you believe "theocratic warfare" to mean? You don't even believe in Jehovah at the moment, so think about what this phrase means -- do some research -- and then do not mindlessly use this phrase again without knowing what it means.
I know my daughters will come around some day- it's not a question of IF they exit the cult, but WHEN they'll exit the cult. I'm convinced of that. I have to be to keep hope alive.
You cannot really be hoping that your own daughters will both perish in this wicked system of things along with you, can you? You don't really believe a loving father would want something bad to affect their own children. What kind of a loving father would wish evil to befall any of their children? What if your bitterness against a few imperfect men -- "glorious ones" -- appointed by holy spirit should lead to their leaving Jehovah's organization with you? (Jude 1:8; Acts 20:28) I suppose you could start your own cult in which you redefine the meaning of "theocratic warfare" and "sanctification." Maybe "you guys" could make Noah the center of your worship since certainly without Noah, not one of us would be here, right?
@djeggnog
