OneEyedJoe

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Posts by OneEyedJoe

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  2

  Does the Annual Meeting take place at the Kingdom Hall, or Assembly Hall?

  by Faithful Witness in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i was never a jw, so i never was invited to one of their annual meetings in october.

  are they held at assembly halls or at the local kingdom halls?

  what day and time is the annual meeting this year?

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  OneEyedJoe

  When they handed out bibles was the only time they've had it at assembly halls or kingdom halls (in most places it was a combination of both). That was 2 years ago. I haven't heard anything about them making arrangements to watch it live again this year so I'm guessing it'll just be something online for the uber-dubs to brag about having watched and feel superior to the rest.
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  135

  Latest Leaked BOE letter to Elders Oct. 4th

  by Watchtower-Free in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  october 4, 2015. to all congregations.

  re: new provisions announced atannual meeting.

  dear brothers:.

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  OneEyedJoe

  Wow, the elimination of the school is likely going to make many JWs happy. Of course, those presentations will still need to be handled and you know they aren't going to be done by elders. I wonder if they will have a procedure for determining who can do the presentations? Of course they will, they micromanage everything. Very interesting to see how that plays out.
  

  I think someone else said it - but the change to the TMS is probably due to the lack of qualified men.

  I think the Pew survey last time around showed that JWs in the US jumped to being 2/3rds women - now they can use women for "demonstrations" but they're not "teaching" like when men give a talk from a podium. Now all the parts can be handled by women if needed, but they don't look like they're capitulating to people complaining about the misogynist system they have and they hide the real problem - the lack of qualified men.
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  135

  Latest Leaked BOE letter to Elders Oct. 4th

  by Watchtower-Free in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  october 4, 2015. to all congregations.

  re: new provisions announced atannual meeting.

  dear brothers:.

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  OneEyedJoe

  Another thought on the bi-monthly literature:

  Many have long speculated that they would drop the public watchtower since the name carries so much baggage from all their failed predictions over the years that they want to separate themselves from it. Theories have ranged from things like a new jw.borg magazine or just to using only the Awake! moniker for the public. Well they're one step closer to that now. They get the R/F used to offering only one magazine at a time, and every other month they'll be using only the Awake magazine by itself. They're one step away from eliminating the watchtower completely and just using the Awake magazine, and all done at a slow enough rate that no one will notice.

  When they downsized the awake, they said it was because they were going to focus more on bible topics instead of current events and this created an overlap with the public watchtower. Well now they've got one hell of an overlap - there's essentially no difference between the two magazines now. The road is paved for them to announce in a year or two that they're either discontinuing the WT altogether or replacing both magazines with something by a new name.

  This puts them in a much better position for the future. JWs are conditioned to expect to find "apostate lies" all over the internet, and if they stop using WT and awake names for the magazines, it'll require one more step of explanation before people will be able to see that sites like jwfacts are presenting accurate information from the cult's old literature. Instead I suspect there will be many that perhaps stumble upon it and then only have their preconceived notions confirmed when they see that most of the references are from magazines they don't even recognize the name of. They'll assume it's made up by apostates who can't even get their facts straight.
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  29

  Impression of Leaked Letter Regarding Annual Meeting

  by freemindfade in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  the letter that watchtower free put up was very interesting.

  here is my impression.. the watchtower is becoming more and more geared towards idiots.

  the midweek meeting has a stupid name, and the parts sound equally dumb.

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  OneEyedJoe

  Can anyone think of a financial gain in recruiting lower IQ members?

  Off the top of my head - stupid recruits are better than no recruits. Also, it could be a method to get their foot in the door to hopefully recruit other family members.

  I've seen it said on this forum so many times, but I didn't think I'd be saying it so soon - I've been out 5 months and I don't recognize the cult that I left. I guess there was a trend leading towards this for a while, but the cult is just so completely watered down and the focus is so clearly on emotional manipulation now compared to at least somewhat pseudo-intellectual content before. At least currently with the bible highlights someone can research any topic they wanted and give a comment from that week's reading - they've shut that down and now provide the questions. I guess they heard of too many people commenting on things like genocide and how the desert god couldn't defeat the people that had iron chariots.

  Another thought - it sounds like they're trying to rebrand slightly and make this more like a youth church group. I've never been involved with such a thing, but the names of the parts sound like something I'd expect to hear about from the rabid bible-thumpers that I knew in grade school. Can't put my finger on it, but it really seems to me like they're trying to better appeal to the younger generation.
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  Brooklyn Layoffs and Halt to Kingdom Hall construction projects

  by James Jack in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  a good source just just told me that at morning worship today that the governing body announced that a total of 1600 bethelites will be let get go and not transferred to warwich when the last property is sold in brooklyn and all kingdom hall building projects are on hold for at least a year so that all the focus will be on the preaching work.

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  OneEyedJoe

  all Kingdom Hall building projects are on hold for at least a year so that all the focus will be on the Preaching Work.
  

  It's almost like they're reacting directly to John's thread:

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/479610001/wt-slow-ly-changing-importance-door-door-preaching-work-something-more-profitable
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  8

  Signature Quote - what do you think?

  by Muddy Waters in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i apologize for the self-serving nature of this post.. i first said this to a lovely person here to encourage her and add a bit of humour to a harsh situation, but i've fallen in love with my own words, ha, and would like to use a variation of what i said to her as my new signature quote.

  it's a bit long, and could become tiresome eventually, but do you forum members think that you might like (or could tolerate, heh) seeing this on my posts?.

  .... "may god, or the universe, or airborne spaghetti, or energies or wavelengths or frequencies, or quantum particles that somehow attract things to us, or telepathic manipulation by aliens -- bless you.

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  OneEyedJoe

  But personally, I'm not really much of a fan of signature quotes!
  

  This is hilarious. Thank you.
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  8

  Sickening opportunists!

  by username in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  ok so i just had to go over to the darkside (jwtalk) and see what is the latest buzz.

  i wish i hadn't now because i'm blazing mad at the jw's reply to the current refugee crisis.. am i the only one who thinks this is really sick?.

  op:.

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  OneEyedJoe

  For one, they have an awkward group dynamic. If you want to preach to an Eritrean or Arab, you will have to get him by himself. They seem to feel some sort of obligation to protect each other from our preaching campaign, unless you speak to them on their own, then they're not so defensive.
  

  He could almost be talking about someone trying to help a JW to wake up.

  As for the comment about satan blocking this, that doesn't really bother me too much...but I guess I'm a little numb to it since my wife hasn't been too shy about stating that she believes satan has mislead me.
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  35

  Why did you choose Jehovahs Witnesses?

  by vinman in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  i'm wondering why ones on this forum initially became jw's.

  if you were born in, why did you make it "your own"?

  if you became one later, what was your draw and driving force?

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  OneEyedJoe

  Born in. I don't think I ever "made the truth my own" (well I did, just not "the truth"). I waited until I was 19 to get baptized because I was waiting until I felt a need to do it. I knew all the doctrine backwards and forwards but it still didn't feel right to me. If god wanted to kill me because things didn't sit right with me and I acted accordingly, then he was no god that I wanted to serve.

  One of my biggest reservations was the rules around dating (it seemed stupid to make kids wait until they're dating with a view to marriage since I'd seen that lead to hasty marriages a number of times. Also, how do you ever really get to know someone if you have to be chaperoned all the time?) and the apparent lack of girls that had any ambition in life beyond getting married and maybe pioneering. Then I met one that was going to college and wanted to do something with herself beyond be in the cult. She barely ever talked about cult stuff, which was great for me. I fell hard and then she broke up with me (in hindsight, I think this may have had something to do with my father). One day, while I was emotionally distraught from the break-up, my father walked into my bedroom and started talking about her but didn't take long to get to his point - he asked me "Did she know you weren't baptized?" I said "It never came up so I assume she didn't" His response was "What do you think she would've thought if she knew?" And that was it - I thought this must be a message from god - he showed me that I could find love in the cult but took it away because I wasn't baptized. I'd never be happy unless I was baptized. So I went for it at the next convention. At that point I was stuck and just trying to make it work.
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  43

  New here!

  by Mandy97 in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  hi guys !

  hm.. i'm new in this website !

  my name is mandy and i just want to meet new people!

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  OneEyedJoe

  An apostate is anyone that was a JW at one time but left. I myself would be considered an apostate. If you'd like, feel free to message me to chat. I don't know any French though so it would have to be all English, but it sounds like that's what you're after.
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  53

  What's the craziest thing someone INFORMED on you about?

  by Londo111 in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  the culture of jws as encouraged by the watchtower is one of informing on one another, reporting to either the elders or ones designated head.

  whats the wackiest thing that someone reported on you?

  im not talking about a black-and-white watchtower rule that would land you in a judicial committee, but some judgmental nonsense that someone thought they should turn you in about?.

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  OneEyedJoe

  I always kept my nose pretty clean (read: my childhood was rather dull) so I never got reported on that I know of. Though I did recently hear a first-hand account from a couple in their 30s of being informed on for going to see the movie twilight. Their elders put together a local needs part about movies and spent much of the time specifically talking about twilight (without saying the name of the movie in an apparent attempt to avoid making pharisiacal rules).