The cart location was almost certainly a coincidence. If she wanted you to join she most likely would've pushed you to come to meetings or study herself. Most likely she feels deep down that you're too smart not to see the flaws, and doesn't want you to prove the cult wrong to her. I'm doing a bad job explaining this, as it would all be happening on a subconscious level for her. Anyway suffice to say that she, as a woman in a deeply misogynistic cult, is almost certainly unable to influence the locations used for their career witnessing.
OneEyedJoe
JoinedPosts by OneEyedJoe
-
77
In The Name of Love, Need Your Opinion
by thankyou ini'm non-jw.. been following this forum.
most of you folks have been through hell, but are still loving souls.
i'm reeeally impressed and glad to be here.. my question is at the end of this.
-
-
-
77
In The Name of Love, Need Your Opinion
by thankyou ini'm non-jw.. been following this forum.
most of you folks have been through hell, but are still loving souls.
i'm reeeally impressed and glad to be here.. my question is at the end of this.
-
-
OneEyedJoe
What say you/folks?
It's a cult.
Seriously. Don't get sucked in this way, you're better than that. Why else would they need to use social pressure like this in order to get you to join up (if you don't "progress spiritually" and get baptized into the cult, she'll drop you again) if it's a legitimate religion? This is how cults work - they prey on someone who's in an emotionally or mentally weakened state (heartbreak is a very common one) and they provide social support while slowly pressuring you to conform to the group. Please research this cult further (jwfacts.com is a great resource) and information about cults in general (freedomofmind.com is very useful here) before you even consider beginning a study. Please please please do not become another victim of this cult.
-
20
Have the Governing Body caught themselves out in a lie?
by slimboyfat inall sorts of suspected deception going on surrounding the cutbacks and the reasons for them.
but hard to pin down a direct falsehood.
sure, they initially said they were reducing the magazines so the brothers had less to read, then later said it was to save money.
-
-
OneEyedJoe
While I suspect you're entirely correct, there's enough other explanations that you won't get a JW to accept that it was a lie. They could've been caught off guard by some large expense at warwick or elsewhere, or their projections could've been way off. I am, however, having trouble coming up with an explanation that doesn't at the very least make them incompetent. Certainly all this shows that they're neither faithful nor discrete. -
31
Sometimes I think Jehovah's Witnesses overuse the word "historic"
by slimboyfat inat the beginning of the may broadcast stephen lett said this was a historic broadcast.
he explained that every member of the governing body had hosted a show and they were starting over again.
that was all the explanation he gave.
-
-
OneEyedJoe
Just like the historic convention in ohio that fulfilled prophecy. It's all just an appeal to the ego of JWs. Puff them up with false significance and it gives them further to fall should they ever doubt. The more of their self worth they can get them to invest in their association with the cult, the less likely they'll be to risk losing it by examining their doubts. -
77
In The Name of Love, Need Your Opinion
by thankyou ini'm non-jw.. been following this forum.
most of you folks have been through hell, but are still loving souls.
i'm reeeally impressed and glad to be here.. my question is at the end of this.
-
-
OneEyedJoe
Yes, please please please do yourself the favor of not bothering with her. She's already tried to get rid of you and maybe you'll win her over short-term but more than likely even if you start dating someone will find out and the other cult members will turn up the pressure on her to drop you. It will be constant and unless she doesn't believe in the cult or is willing to live without contact with her family ever again, she will most likely submit to the pressure.
I don't believe the nonsense that there's one person out there for everyone. You can find another girl that will be just as compatible and you'll feel just as strongly about that won't be in a cult. Just move on. I absolutely promise you that your life will be better if you do. There is no doubt in my mind.
I want to tell you to call on thanksgiving, because that'll likely make her pull away more which would be in your best interests. You have the right to decide for yourself, so I'll just say she'll probably not appreciate the call. Even if you don't mention thanksgiving, the correlation will probably be obvious and will only serve to remind her that you're not a cultist and she is, and she's strongly discouraged from having any dealings with you (romantic or otherwise) because you are "worldly" and "bad association." To her and her family and other cultists you are going to be viewed as an instrument of Satan, trying to draw her away from god. Reminding her of that is unlikely to help you with her.
-
7
Seems like the perfect holiday for j-dubs
by rebel8 inif this article is correct, (american) thanksgiving's origins have several things j-dubs love.
the xian god.
genocide of nonbelievers that included men, women and children alike.
-
-
OneEyedJoe
Just one problem - it might let them have some small connection with non-JWs. Gotta keep the virtual cult compound walls in place! -
4
Former witness in local newspaper
by Saltheart Foamfollower inthis article is a follow up to a recent case which was discussed here.. http://www.hartlepoolmail.co.uk/news/local/former-jehovah-s-witness-says-church-s-policies-don-t-help-abuse-victims-1-7588106.
sf.
-
-
OneEyedJoe
Gotta love all the publicity they're getting. It's almost like they've set out specifically to disprove the saying "there's no such thing as bad publicity." -
10
The Shocking Origins Of...
by freemindfade ini can't deal with this crap witnesses plaster on social media (facebook).
"the shocking origins of christmas!
" first off no one cares, leave the people alone.
-
-
OneEyedJoe
Not only that, but it seems that most JWs are under the impression that "worldly" people don't realize that the bible doesn't say to put up a tree and lights or that Jesus was born on the 25th. I've found that not to be the case. I once got all self righteous on someone because I knew that christmas was pagan and she said "Yeah, I know it wasn't Jesus' birthday but it's just a nice time for family to get together and enjoy some pretty things and presents and think about christ. What's wrong with that?" The response shocked me because I was only prepared for her to bow before my superior bible knowledge. -
17
WT history repeating?
by WasOnceBlind ini war reading an interesting research article about charles taze russell and all of his financial dealings.
this caught my eye:.
charles taze russell and the watchtower society were in deep business distress after the "busted" october 1914 prophecy failure, and particularly after the "busted" october 1915 prophecy failure.
-
-
OneEyedJoe
Hrm....yes that's interesting!! let's just hope the WT doesn't take on an even nastier, more controlling form again, as it did under Rutherford!
If it means that they lose 75% of their membership like what happened between 1914 and 1925, I think that's a bargain I'd be OK with. They'd never recover like they did the first time in this day and age.
-
44
Decrease of numbers in Jehovah's Witnesses via Deaths, DFings, or Turning Inactive
by flipper inso i'm sure a good number of us saw the chart that i believe the poster splash put on another thread of figures since 1990 regarding how many baptized and % of increase each year .
i started analyzing it ( and i know some referred to it briefly on the other thread ) and guessing of reasons the % of increase didn't match the number of newly baptized.
and of course common sense tells us that either jw's leave the cult each year through death, fading into inactivity, or getting dfed.
-
-
OneEyedJoe
There is no correlation between publishers and baptisms.
IMO this is too strongly worded. There's definitely a correlation, it's just that the number of baptisms will lag behind the number of new publishers. Looking at a single year the numbers don't mean that much to one another, but looking over a longer period I think one can fairly accurately estimate the number leaving. The number leaving might not always include those who were baptized at some point, but if someone becomes a publisher and then leaves I think we can still count it as a win for team TTATT.
I was under the impression that the "peak publisher" total was taken from any given month showing the highest publishers reporting. It would explain special campaign months where irregular publishers and even some inactive publishers are encouraged to engage in the campaign and report time for the month. That month would generate thousands more publishers in the ministry and would be used as the "peak publisher" mark reported in the yearbook
The last two Augusts have been good examples of this. I think typically they'll do some sort of reminder that it's the end of the service year and ask for any late reports to be turned in (thus concentrating the late reports in a single month to generate a false peak vs allowing them to come in whenever which would average out) but they definitely did that this year. Then in 2014 they had the big JW.org campaign in august. I think the reason for this campaign was primarily to allow them to post a significant increase in 2014 (which it did, the increase in publishers for 2014 was between 25% and 90% higher than the years prior) because they were concerned that any drop in numbers as a result of the arrival of 2014 would be detrimental to them. I think they're paying for it this year, though, because they can only artificially inflate the numbers like that so much before they reach a ceiling.
What percentage of active publishers are not (yet) baptized?
I'd estimate this at ~10% at most. In recent years it may well have gone down as the average age of baptism seems to have gone down.