Watchtower Moves In For Kill On silentlambs

by silentlambs 141 Replies latest jw friends

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  abbagail

  Hey Lieu: LOL! Loved your Happy B'Day story! Library of Death -- good one!

  Re: JC's, yes, I've heard that if you never admit to anything, then there is nothing they can do. So as long as you kept replying to them: "You Yourselves Said It," then I guess that settles it (unless there were 2 or more witnesses seeing whatever you did or didn't do, etc.). Very clever. Do you still go to meetings?

  To FOCUS: WOW! Thanks for posting those court transcript exchanges. I love reading those. So is that WHEN and WHY the Society quit publishing NAMES of writers, editors, etc.? And all those years I always heard it was because they didn't want to bring any PROMINENCE to any one writer or individual. BaFOOEY! When the truth is, ever since they began getting in trouble with the law, they learned to CYA, and have been doing it ever since? My Oh My, and Tsk Tsk, Shame on them, like the policeman said on Panorama.

  GRITS

  Edited by - grits on 18 July 2002 19:28:48
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  dungbeetle

  As I explained in my post if you people would bother READING before you answered, they didn't HAVE disfellowshiping in those days as they do TODAY.

  Back then, you just went around telling everybody that this person was not a 'brother of good repute' or some such thing. Everyone then was supposed to treat you like a worldy person. That's what the Watchtower tried to do. But, Moyle was not that type of person and could prove it.

  Watchtower claims in its literature and website that they only disfellowship unrepentant sinners. Disfellowshiping means two things..that you rEALLY did do xxx and that you were not repentant. Watchtower also claims they there must two witnesses and/or a confession.This means, that when someone has been disfellowshiped, they have committed a disfellowshiping offense. Well, Olin Moyle was accused of committing offenses, and 'cast out' of the Watchtower (it wasn't called disfellowshiping then). He sued for slander and libel becasue he had committed no offenses.

  So yes, again, Watchtower has been successfully sued for disfellowshiping someone. Whatever they CALLED it was not the point.

  When confronted with the facts, Watchtower uses that same wording.."We have never been successfully sued for disfellowsiping." Technically I guess that's true...but in the REAL WORLD that we all live in, they WERE successfully sued.

  By the way, initially Olin Moyle won 30,000. The case was remanded back to the court, and Watchtower SETTLED for the 15,000. So Watchtower was FOUND guilty the first time, but CONFESSED, OWNED UP, the second time around.

  And by the way, Russell tried the same thing on Maria Russell. Told everyone she was of ill repute. Told everyone not to talk to her or include her in activities. Banned her from Watchtower activitites. Today we call this disfellowshiping. That behavior on Russell's part cost him WELL over $9,000--a WHALE of a sum in the early 1900's.
• 

  Derrick

  Bill, wear your titanium-mesh shark suit to the hearing, and don a miniature digital recorder (the ultra-sensitive flash memory type from Panasonic or Sony are reliable, and you can download the audio to MPEG).

  The voice and tone of this letter is all too familiar. This is the Watchtower Society that I knew back to 1974 since I was baptized and they periodically cracked-down on large scale defections (cutting off entire congregations that turned "apostate"). Back then, I viewed them as the modern equivalent of a stern and disciplinarian "Moses" leading spiritual Israel to the Promised Land (which I envisioned as a paradise right out of a Lassen painting -- see a depiction of the "prize" that I mentally envisioned for faithfully pioneering at http://www.lassenlasvegas.com/Art/lelndscpocean.htm). Of course we never made it to the Promised Land, but got sidetracked on deadend excursions into the jungle where many perished. Today, we're so deep in the jungle that our spiritual journey resembles the misadventures in the movie "Anaconda" with Jennifer Lopez.

  Around your boat, Bill, I see lots of blood and chum in the water that has stirred the big whites (GB) and bodies of elders into a frenzy. I smell another wave of mass disfellowshippings on the horizon, and see you being served up as a literal sacrificial lamb, with the intent that others will fear the GB and fall in line. People like yourself who are willing to fight tooth and nail for those too weak to defend themselves are what modern "folk heroes" are made of.

  You are in my prayers, and if ever I can find the strength to somehow help your fight, I will. Much that is best not to talk about publicly is going on in my life to where I can't help at present (except to direct those visiting H2O to visit your site, which isn't much but I hope it counts for something). I respect your strength to carry on all the more knowing how difficult it is for myself (and I know for many others) to get through each day. May Jehovah give you the strength to carry on.

  If anyone deserves to join the anointed remnant who become priests over Earth during the coming millennium, it is you.

  Derrick
• 

  Focus

  To Dungbeetle - yep, I see your point (you were somewhat cryptic the first time around)! Perhaps, the very act of DF'ing could be held to be defaming the character of the virtuous DF'd person to those who know about it... unrepentant "sinner" and so on. But the new lawyer-designed baptismal vows were designed, among other things, to protect the Watchtower against this, so that DF'ing can be achieved simply by showing, either by admission or by conduct, that the person no longer has utter faith in the Gibbering Baboon (G.B.) Class. A bit like how Adolf Hitler got the whole Wehrmacht (German Armed Forces) to swear personal allegiance to him rather than to the Reich. Any act or word against him was therefore breach of that vow by definition - no matter what the circumstances...

  GRITS wrote:
  

  WOW! Thanks for posting those court transcript exchanges. I love reading those. So is that WHEN and WHY the Society quit publishing NAMES of writers, editors, etc.? And all those years I always heard it was because they didn't want to bring any PROMINENCE to any one writer or individual. BaFOOEY! When the truth is, ever since they began getting in trouble with the law, they learned to CYA, and have been doing it ever since? My Oh My, and Tsk Tsk, Shame on them, like the policeman said on Panorama.

  Indeed! The Spiritual-Pimps were not that clever in the 1940s. Franz thought naming Jehovah as the Editor was a wonderful wheeze and buck-pass: ERRRM, MR MOYLE, YOU MUST SUE GOD, WE ARE JUST THE PRINT ROOM STAFF REALLY.
  But then Franz was also the moron who set them up for 1975. Ray may be in awe of his evil uncle's intellect: I KNOW his uncle was just a cheap shyster, a one-eyed king in the land of the Moroni.
  The jWs should have anticipated that the COURT WOULD BUY NONE OF THAT "GOD AS EDITOR" stuff, and instead Moyle (himself a lawyer, and a far better one than Booz Rutherford) and his legal team WERE ABLE TO SHOW THAT THE LIBEL WAS MORE SERIOUS AS THE READERSHIP TOOK THE WORDS AS IF THEY WERE COMING FROM GOD HIMSELF (as the idiotic Franz and Knorr had conveniently confirmed).
  This blunder cost the Watchtower all the more in the end. $15,000 (let alone the $30,000 initially awarded) in those days, plus all the costs of a 4-year long lawsuit was, I repeat, an ENORMOUS SUM.

  They are much smarter now. That doesn't mean they are invincible. At the end of the day, they are WRONG. TRUTH will out. And like all tyrannies, their tyranny will perish - they will either be destroyed and ruined entirely, or will be compelled BY THE LASH to moderate themselves from a GREAT WHOREDOM into a more reasonable, less arrogant and (Sheol forbid) somewhat HUMAN Cult.

  --
  Focus
  (I refuse to Pay for it! Sod the Flock! Class)
• 

  ErieGuy

  DungBeetle:_________
  For all intents and purposes, Olin Moyle WAS DISFELLOWSHIPPED in March 1940.________
  His Milwaukee "company" first sent him a letter dated March 9, 1940, in which the "Company Servant" told him that he would no longer be permitted to "answer questions or make comments", but that he would be "ignored".________
  A followup letter, dated March 21, 1941, was sent by the "Zone Servant" and "Company Servant", which withdrew ALL "privileges as a publisher for the Theocracy"._________
  Thereafter, Moyle acknowledged that he had been "excommunicated" from that "company".
• 

  dungbeetle

  thankk you thank you ErieGuy..

  These people, (Maria Russell, Olin Moyle, William Schnell, Ray Franz and many many others like them) gave so much to the Watchtower, the best years of their lives, and Watchtower used them and then when they were done with them threw them away like yesterday's dishwater.

  It just makes me really mad.

  What they did to Maria Russell was beyond redemption, they SLANDERED and LIBELED that woman years after she was DEAD. There would have BEEN no Watchtower without her, and yet compare what they said about her in the 'Proclaimer's' Book and compare that with the events related in 'Visions of Glory' (on Freeminds.org).

  RUN WATCHTOWER RUN YOUR DAY IS COMING
• 

  Lieu

  I haven't been "regular" at "meetings" for over 10 yrs, Grits. (Mostly because I work swing shifts.)

  However, I do still like to go to see how everyone is doing. As for what I consider the lecture part of it all, I endure that because my mother is there. Even when I was young, I had problems with certain aspects of JW lectures. The "plug-in" half of a scriptural verse here and there has always bothered me. Particularly since I had actually read the Bible (I used to love to read everything as a youngster) and knew when a verse was being mis-applied or just entirely used out of context. I would find myself reading over the entire chapter of a quoted scripture during the meeting. I know quite a few others who do this also. I have always been fascinated with the Bible.

  Ex. JW Sunday boretalk with real quick mention of 1 Tim 5:17..."let the older men be reckoned worthy of double honor....yes, friends the elders deserve our extra honor."

  What happened to the rest of that scripture? Where's the part about "presiding in a FINE MANNER"?.... the indiscriminate deletion of key portions of the scriptures drive me up the wall.

  Besides that, I absolutely hate lectures...and poor question and answer sessions (If that's what you want to call them).

  Once, during a Watchtower study concerning the splitting off of the Orthodoxy, I rose my hand and commented with some info NOT from the mag. My comment had to do with the one group crossing with three fingers and the other with two...as the divine nature caused a serious fallout between the two groups. Anyway, it just about stopped all breathing in the Hall and I think most were turning pages to see if it was somewhere in the "lesson".

  I apologize to all for going off topic.
• 

  scumrat

  they may try to pull that stunt with bill, but my childhood friend is the district manager for the southeast territory for ramada inn. he's well aware of what's going on.
• 

  waiting

  Thank you, Scumrat, I needed that. A chuckle has much value

  waiting
• 

  hillary_step

  Hi Dungbeetle,

  As I explained in my post if you people would bother READING before you answered, they didn't HAVE disfellowshiping in those days as they do TODAY. Back then, you just went around telling everybody that this person was not a 'brother of good repute' or some such thing. Everyone then was supposed to treat you like a worldy person. That's what the Watchtower tried to do. But, Moyle was not that type of person and could prove it.

  Yes, I do understand this, and I did read your post, but I was under the impression that the WTS settled out of court with Moyle for the libel he endured. If this is the case, and I may be misinformed, no precedent has ever been set on a court of law in the US over 'shunning', 'disfellowshipping', or whatever it was described as then or now. Settling out of court is not an admission of error in the eyes of the Law. My argument is that the WTS have never been succesfully sued over this issue and you seemed to indicate that they had been.

  Best regards - HS