Good to study JW past .... New "Writing Archives" under direction of the Writing Committee

by wannabefree 85 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  factfinder

  @MrDarkKnight- That is a shame that the brother you mentioned who worked so hard on that project was "downsized" after the project was complete.

  I agree with you- the WTS will never make all of that information available to the public. Its interesting that they did not reprint older BVs of g before 1970 or include them on the wt library. Some of the g issues from the 60's had articles about the expansion at Brooklyn Bethel which I wanted to have. I always thought it was strange they make w issues available up to 1950 or 51 but for g only go back to 1970.

  It is interesting that you bring that out!

  They will only release what suits their purposes and we cannot expect anything more.
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  AGuest

  "To know where we are going, we have to know where we have come from."

  Really. (May you all have peace!) Since when has looking back down the road one has already walked revealed to one what is on the path AHEAD?? Doesn't looking back... (for any reason, but particularly as here: with the intent of covering ones tracks)... create the risk of running smack face first into a tree one didn't even see coming? Afterward requiring such one (who may have set themselves up as a "guide") to have to make excuses for that... ummmmm... painful "error"? Like... "Uh, yeah, we KNEW that tree was there! We were SUPPOSED to run into it! Part of God's "plan"... you know, 'cause the [face] scars are our PROOF that we know this road! If we didn't, we would have wandered among the bushes... and so no [face] scars! So, don't worry - we really do know where we're going!"

  Just my opinion, but knowing the Way (pun absolutely and totally intended!) would be far, far easier. Then, there's no need for track covering... no tree scars to endure... and a whole lot less lying to do! The Way is foreign to such imposters, though... which is why they... and those who follow them... are SO "lost".

  Again, peace to you all!

  A slave of Christ,

  SA
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  factfinder

  If God's spirit is guiding the organization then why must it look to its past, or am I missing something here?
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  nugget

  The society has said it is good to study it's past so that would be one reason. Also the roots of an organisation and history tell us alot about the religion. It is not pointless since so much of the societies present credibility is based on their supposed record of integrity and service. We know what the society tells us about the past and therefore there should be no harm in testing this record against established facts.

  You raise an interesting point if god is with an organisation then you would expect that they would stand up to scrutiny and that by examining the past we can see why they were thought to be chosen. It should also be possible to look at zealous examples and use these as inspiration. Do we not look to the bible and take courage from examples of people who lived eons ago so why not those who lived closer to us in the stream of time.

  What is of concern to many here is that the actual history does not match the steralised version many are led to believe as fact. If this is the case then you have to ask how can a religion that calls itself the truth be complict in lies.
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  InterestedOne

  The latest article about archival is letting everyone know that they have people working on the painstaking process, and I would think digitizing would be part of the process. Clearly they have people working on archival, so I don't see why anyone would say it is too labor-intensive to make the archives publicly available.

  Even if it's not part of the WT-lib program with all the nice text cross-referencing features (which I agree require extra labor), why not provide the public with the digitized archives? Since the writing department is already going to the trouble to dig up tidbits and write commentary on them, I don't see why it would be a stretch to make the archives available like they do with the latest publications on jw.org - which reminds me . . . they make it difficult to get the KM's by requiring a password. This tells me they could make this digitized information (whether current KM's or older archived publications) readily available to the public if they wanted to, and I am inclined to think their decision has little to do with extra labor.
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  factfinder

  I think they should make the km available to everyone on their website just as they do the magazines.