by Wasanelder Once 38 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Some elders missed meetings due to work. One was appointed as an elder and couldn't attend the meetings regularly due to his job. My father gave his good paying job up twice in his life so he could attend meetings.
Ucantnome :
I'm beginning to think that a person can do whatever they like with no consequence if they have the internal courage to do it.
If that makes any sense
hoser, you make sense to me. I bulldoze my way through my congregation and the elders give me a wide berth.
anyone else remember years and years ago that illustration of the man who fell out of a building and was hanging on by all five fingers on one hand to a ledge waiting for someone to help/save him.....and then one finger slipped and he was in more mortal danger ....then a third slipped and he was pretty much doomed - well those five fingers hanging on represented the five meetings....you need them all to hang onto that figurative ledge, otherwise you will fall and be smashed to smithereens.
so.....this illustration ran into a grave problem when they discontinued one of the five meetings.....but then perhaps that particualr meeting represented the thumb, and given the anatomy of the human hand it seems kind of a leap to think that the dude could hang onto the ledge with all four fingers plus an opposing thumb..............
There was once an elder who attended the meeting when his father was dead. And everyone praised him for his integrity.
"I'm not opposed to the concept of a Deity but I'm baffeled by the notion of one that takes attendance."
Nice "Amy" quote Pete.
You can get more sense from a sitcom than the KH.
During my second inactive period the elders called on me and asked me why I wasn't coming. I told them my well-documented experiences of being shunned, slander by their wives (did not deny it), and how I felt I was losing my faith in God by coming. I told them how much better I felt not going and subjecting myself to these things. They got up and left. I changed to another congregation eventually (stupid me). One elder left his wife that year and ran off with a pioneer sister; the other elder watched as one by one his children left the WTS (still out) mostly due to the hypocrisy the saw in their parents.
Notice that the WTBTS (and all of what is called Christianity" has established rules and regulations that THEY use to define who and what you are in relation to God and Christ! Christ did not establish any of these rules and regulations.
In fact, it was from such that Jesus freed his first 12 disciples from. He called them out of the domineering Jewish religious system of the day to himself as his disciples. (John 8:31-32)
What we see today is a reversion back to "law keeping." This time, men have established their own unique set of "rules, regulations and decorum" and enslaving men and women by them. There is no freedom of worship to the Most High God "without" following a set of rules and regulations. If one does not follow those rules - such as missing meetings or not putting so many hours each month in field service - one is somehow inadequate. This is from men!
It is really too bad that so many people have bought into the notion that they MUST belong to a system of religion to get to God or to please him. Jesus said something quite different at John 14:6. It would not be "through" other humans or their agencies that one would get to God, it would be ONLY by him.
Thus, our membership (discipleship) and attachment should not be to religious organizations, but to the "person" of Jesus Christ who is "The Way, The Truth and the Life."
And no other name has been given by God as to who it is we should be listening to and following. (Luke 9:35)
Oh wow...yes that old guilt-inducing line!
It has nothing to do with "satan getting you"...its more about "losing control"
