These notes were sent to me from a close friend who is biding his time to leave.
Some of this we have read about already, the demo with the two brothers and the damage control they are doing over the ridiculous generation nonsense, but the thing about "Thought Control"™ I had not heard before.... .
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You learn something new every day at the 'sembly. Today at the 'sembly we were educated on the importance of, and I quote, "practicing thought control" . I kid you not. Dude on the stage used the exact phrase "thought control", and repeated it throughout the entire talk XD Meanwhile, I'm sitting next to my mom like "really? . . . . . . really? He eased into it slowly, at first dipping his big toe into the shallow end by saying stuff like "Brothers, we need to control our thoughts, so that we don't allow sinful desires to ruminate, and ferment and create sinful yearnings inside of our hearts.". Then after a few minutes he started saying stuff like "let's turn to 1 Corinthians to see what the apostle Paul said about thought control" and "Thought control is a vital skill for true Christians". Not exact quotes, but you get the gist.
A little bit later in the program there was a pretty cool demo.
Brother Skeptical and Brother Gullible sit together at a table
Brother Skeptical: You know Brother Gullible, this new explanation that the faithful slave's given us for the whole "generation" thing Jesus mentioned at matthew 24:34 really sucks. I mean, the slave just keeps changing the definition of generation. In fact, this new explanation doesn't even make any fuckin sense. It seems like the slave is putting off Armageddon indefinitely.
Brother Gullible: First of all Brother Skeptical, I just want to say that you are a fine brother, and I understand sometimes we want the new world to come so badly, that we get impatient and anxious. But you have to remember, that the light gets brighter. And also, when the bible talks about generations, it often refers to people overlapping other people. And we also can't forget that the no one knows the date except for Jehovah. And furthermore, Jehovah has already set the date for Armageddon on his calendar, and no amount of doctrinal clarification will change that date. And Jehovah will not be late . . . etc.
Brother Skeptical: You know Brother Gullible, you're so right bro . . . you're so right bro. You're like the dudes that invented the airplane cuz you're right brother.
*thunderous applause*
In the final talk of the 'sembly, the district overseer outright admitted that the New World Translation is an imperfect bible translation by acknowledging that the WT doesn't actually know how many times god's name is supposed to be used in the bible, or where it's supposed to be used. He made sure to clarify that, the WT has not unscrupulously added the name "Jehovah" to the bible in places where it doesn't belong, and that every instance of the name "Jehovah" in the NWT is supported by all manner of documented evidence n such -__- However, try as they might, the translators of the NWT were not able to dig up absolutely every instance of the tetragrammaton; hence, he pointed out that there are some bible translations which use God's name in places that the NWT doesn't. He expressed enthusiasm that "In the new world we'll finally find out how many times Jehovah's name is really supposed to be in there".
I still can't get over the fact that this guy admitted that the Bible, a life or death message from the smartest dude in the universe, has translation errors, and that the original text is forever lost to us *facepalm* . C'mon district overseer dude, get your shit together.
As usual there were also a few mentions of the evils of higher education (Satan's four year ploy to get you to leave the troof), blood transfusions, and all that good stuff.