Bonnie_Clyde

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Posts by Bonnie_Clyde

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  27

  Special Bible talk entitled: “IS THERE A TRUE RELIGION FROM GOD’S STANDPOINT?” - Coming to a Kingdom Hall near you on Sunday, April 26, 2009

  by LUKEWARM in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the latest instalment is coming to convince everybody that there is only one channel - one god approved religion!.

  so folks, what arguments do you think the wts will use to "prove" that there is a true religion from god's standpoint?.

  lukewarm.

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  Bonnie_Clyde

  Don't teach the trinity. Don't teach hellfire. Don't go to war.
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  18

  Only 966 years left of the 1000 year reign

  by jwfacts in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  part of the reasoning for the end coming in 1975 was that would be 6000 years after creation.

  the 1000 year reign would start and the end of it would coincide with the 7000 rest for god (like an omnipotent god needed to rest after creation, but that is a different topic.).

  the 1966 book life everlasting, which presented the idea that the end would be 1975 lists in the following table that the 1000 year reign ends in 2975.. that was a neat concept prior to 1975, but since armageddon did not come then it now makes watchtower eschatology look quite foolish, and more so with each passing year.

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  Bonnie_Clyde

  I've heard it explained that the period from 1914 to when the 1,000 year reign actually begins (after Armageddon) could be likened to the period between a presidential election and the actual inauguration. Similar to a president-elect, Jesus is sort of like a king-elect.
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  99

  April 15th WT- Satan = Apostates = Critical Towards Brothers = Shun Them

  by flipper in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  wow.

  and so the wt society tightens down the screwdriver a bit more !

  one of my wife and my lurking jw friends sent us this article which has some very pointed words in it inciting all jehovah's witnesses to take an even harder line view of apostates in this recent april 15th wt.. on pg.

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  Bonnie_Clyde

  "There is a drive towards re-inventing individuals to get around their own pedophile policies. "

  I believe this to be true. My father (elder) leaked a pedophile situation in his congregation from several years ago, but then added, "Well, he's married now, so there's nothing to be concerned about."
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  12

  Congregation Bible Study Comments - Week Commencing 30 March 2009

  by LUKEWARM in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  *** lv chap.

  3 pp.

  28-32 love those whom god loves ***.

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  Bonnie_Clyde

  Is this book "Keep Yourselves in God's Love"?
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  9

  Is there proof somewhere that when a KH is sold...,

  by cawshun in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  is there some place to prove that when a congregation donates time, work, materials, ect... to build a kh, that when it get's sold the money goes to the wts corporation and not back to the congregation that built it through donations?.

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  Bonnie_Clyde

  All I know is that a congregation about 40 miles from us was sold three years ago, all funds were sent to the Society, they purchased some land to build a new hall, but it's been three years now. The Society has all the money. The publishers have to travel about 10 miles to a neighboring town and share another KH. No sign of building is in sight. Maybe they would get the money back from the Society if and when they do.
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  46

  "Black People Will Turn White as They Near Perfection"

  by cameo-d in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i found this quoted by a few people on another thread and they attributed it to wt teachings.. i would like to know for sure....did wt actually teach this?.

  or was some speaker making this up?.

  if you are of african descent, and you heard this....how did it make you feel?.

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  Bonnie_Clyde

  What

  IstheBible’sView? AreBlacksCursedbyGod? - Awake 10/8/1977

  MANY religious leaders have answered "Yes." Clergymen Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown, in their Bible commentary, assert: "CursedbeCanaan [Genesis 9:25]—this doom has been fulfilled in. . . the slavery of the Africans, the descendants of Ham."—Commentary,CriticalandExplanatory,ontheWholeBible.

  It is claimed that not only the slavery of blacks was in fulfillment of this Biblical curse, but their black skin color is too. Thus many whites have been led to assume that blacks are inferior, and that God meant for them to be the servants of whites. Many blacks became embittered by the treatment that they received as a result of this religious interpretation. One observes:

  "It was in the summer of 1951 when I, as an inquisitive seven-year-old, sat on the steps of the First Baptist Church in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, and cried. I had tried diligently to rub off the blackness of my flesh, because my white girl companions had remarked about its offensiveness. The rubbing with Ajax cleanser left only a reddened, puffy spot that ached, almost as much as my childish heart, when I began to ponder why a God of love would make a person black, unless he really did not love me.

  "I had heard that it was due to a curse put on our race by God. But I still didn’t know or understand what we had done to God that merited such punishment. And I think, in reflection, that deep in my heart I had always harbored a private grudge against God for making me black and putting me into a white world.

  "In the crushing disturbances of my playmates’ taunts and racial epithets, such as: ‘If you’re White, you’re all right, if you’re Brown, stick around, if you’re Black, get back,’ a marked condition ensued, wherein I began to seethe, particularly at white girls my own age."

  What about this Biblical curse? Are people black due to a curse that God placed on some ancestor of theirs? And did blacks suffer centuries of slavery in fulfillment of this curse? Does the Bible really teach such things? Let us see. The Bible account in question reads:

  "[Noah] drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren . . . And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. And he said, CursedbeCanaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaanshallbehisservant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaanshallbehisservant."—Gen. 9:21-27, AuthorizedVersion.

  It has been claimed that this Biblical curse singles out blacks for perpetual servitude. In fact, in 1838 the antislavery crusader Theodore Weld wrote in a popular tract: The "prophecy of Noah [quoted above] is the vademecum [constant companion] of slaveholders, and they never venture abroad without it."—TheBibleAgainstSlavery, page 66.

  But, first of all, please note that nothing is said in this Bible account about anyone’s being cursed with blackness of skin. And note, too, that it is Canaan, not his father Ham, who was cursed. Canaan was not black skinned, nor were his descendants who settled in the land that became known as Palestine. (Gen. 10:15-19) The Canaanites were, in time, subjugated by the Israelites, descendants of Shem, and later by Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome, descendants of Japheth. This subjugation of the Canaanites fulfilled the prophetic curse on their ancestor Canaan. The curse thus had nothing to do with the black race.

  From where, then, did the black race come? From Ham’s other sons, Cush and probably also Put, whose descendants settled in Africa. But, as we have seen, the Bible says absolutely nothing about the black descendants of these men being cursed! Yet it was incorrectly assumed that they were. When did church commentators begin applying the curse to Ham?

  A churchman of about 1,500 years ago, Ambrosiaster, applied it thus, saying: "Due to folly Ham, who foolishly ridiculed the nakedness of his father, was declared a slave." And John F. Maxwell observes in his recent book SlaveryandtheCatholicChurch: "This disastrous example of fundamentalist exegesis [explanation] continued to be used for 1,400 years and led to the widely held view that African Negroes were cursed by God."

  Even up to a hundred years ago the Catholic Church held the view that blacks were cursed by God. Maxwell explains that this view "apparently survived until 1873 when Pope Pius IX attached an indulgence to a prayer for the ‘wretched Ethiopians in Central Africa that almighty God may at length remove the curse of Cham [Ham] from their hearts.’"

  Yet even before Christendom’s beginning over 1,500 years ago, yes, possibly even prior to Jesus Christ’s life on earth, Jewish rabbis taught a story about the origin of black skin. The EncyclopædiaJudaica claims: "Ham’s descendant (Cush) Is black skinned as a punishment for Ham’s having had sexual intercourse in the ark."

  Similar "stories" have been manufactured in modern times. Defenders of slavery, such as John Fletcher of Louisiana, for example, taught that the sin that prompted the curse by Noah was racial intermarriage. He claimed that Cain was smitten with a black skin for killing his brother Abel, and that Ham had sinned by marrying into the race of Cain. It is noteworthy, too, that Nathan Lord, president of Dartmouth College during the last century, also attributed Noah’s curse upon Canaan partly to Ham’s "forbidden intermarriage with the previously wicked and accursed race of Cain."

  But such teachings have no foundation whatsoever in the Bible. And there were persons in past centuries who showed that the curse uttered by Noah was wrongly being applied to blacks. For example, back in June 1700 Judge Samuel Sewall of Boston explained: "For Canaan is the person cursed three times over, without the mentioning of Cham [Ham]. . . . Whereas the Blackmores [Black race] are not descended of Canaan, but of Cush."

  Also, in 1762 a John Woolman published a treatise in which he argued that the application of this Biblical curse in such a way as to justify enslaving people and depriving them of their natural rights "is a supposition too gross to be admitted into the mind of any person who sincerely desires to be governed by solid principles."

  What great harm has resulted from the misapplication by churchmen of this Biblical curse! The slavery of African blacks, and their mistreatment since the days of slavery, can in no way be justified by the Bible. The truth is, blacks are not, and never were, cursed by God!
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  65

  Left the WT but why the loss of your faith in God?

  by Luo bou to in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  sure the wt deceived you with its claim to be god's channel but why for so many is there a subsequent loss of faith in god ?

  it puzzles me and makes me wonder why they were jw's in the first place..

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  Bonnie_Clyde

  I've wondered about this too. I remember we were one time given the suggestion that if we met an atheist at the door, we could ask them if they always felt that way. If we discerned that the householder lost faith in God because of their religion's teachings, then we could ask if they felt God was to blame for men on earth who misrepresented him.

  Now that I've learned the truth about the "truth", I don't blame God. I blame myself for being so stupid as to hang in there for so many years even when there was clear evidence that something was wrong. Even so, sometimes I'm puzzled as why certain things are allowed to happen or why he hasn't given us any clear answers to some of our questions.
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  65

  Left the WT but why the loss of your faith in God?

  by Luo bou to in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  sure the wt deceived you with its claim to be god's channel but why for so many is there a subsequent loss of faith in god ?

  it puzzles me and makes me wonder why they were jw's in the first place..

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  Bonnie_Clyde
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  19

  Did Russell waste his millions starting the Watchtower?

  by Witness 007 in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  russell was to inherit a clothing store franchise....he could have been as big as k-mart today!

  instead he created an organisation known around the world as "the watchtower society" which has enslaved 7 million people with it's rules and lies.

  this organisation owns half of new york and millions of dollars worth of properties, so was it a good or bad investment?

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  Bonnie_Clyde

  "He didn't have kids so he left the society to the next guy to take over and oddly enough Rutherford was the next guy."

  As I remember, Russell intended McMillan to be the next guy but Rutherford usurped his position, and McMillan gave in.
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  28

  I was counciled for putting in Pioneer hours and not officially "Pioneering"

  by RubaDub in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i didn't want to hijack the thread about people having to "wait" until the society approves their pioneer status.. i recall once an elder was shocked that i had done the 60 hours a couple of months but not officially on the pioneer list for the months.

  i told him that i didn't need the title, that the purpose was to do the work, not get a title.. i then heard a long lecture about how that was not encouraging to others, etc, etc, etc.. he got rather annoyed when i asked him what the purpose of the preaching work is.

  of course he said to spread the good news.

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  Bonnie_Clyde

  Garybuss - I remember those "sales activity charts." They kept the pioneer numbers separate from the publisher numbers. So if there was only one pioneer in the congregation, the entire congregation knew how well that pioneer was doing.