The WTS’ message now, especially with those Caleb and Sophia animated videos (theocratic Sesame Street), seems at least to appear sort of more warm-and-fuzzy-like. But I thought that they would be gearing up to the time (shortly . . . . evidently) when the message is supposed to be getting really hard-hitting, supposedly like ‘giant hailstones.’ Looks like their whole scheme is getting a subtle rebranding right across the board.
Posts by SAHS
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17The ignorance of the "sheep"...and will door to door work phaze out due to being "challenged" too much at the door?
by integ inhello friends.. i notice alot of talk about the future and what it would take to bring the whole thing down and no one seems to think it can or will happen any time soon.
just seeing people here talk about what will happen once 2034 comes and goes is very discouraging.. i'm amazed this religion continues to move along as it does.
building, growing etc.
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24
Let's Say 1914 Was The Establishment of God's Kingdom....what is the significance?
by minimus inas hillary clinton might say, what difference does it make???.
even if god's kingdom was established in 1914, why is that such a big deal?
other than unprovable actions in heaven, what can jws say is the significance of it all...with a straight face?.
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SAHS
“ScenicViewer”: “It also happens to be the only thing about 1914 that Watchtower says today that it also said in C.T. Russel's time. And that is it's the end of the Gentile Times.”
Actually, even this thing about the gentile times ending in 1914 is based on contrived falsehood.
For one thing, the WTS are the only people who claim that the destruction of ancient Jerusalem was 607 B.C.E. All the other religious historical scholars consider that date to be 20 years later, in 587 B.C.E. If you read the book The Gentile Times Reconsidered, by Carl Olof Jonsson (a former JW), which I read myself, you will see that it is very obvious that there is a period of exactly 20 years which the WTS has stretched to accommodate its own peculiar theology. That book absolutely and thoroughly blows this 607 B.C.E. thing to bits! It also shows the deliberate dishonesty and high-mindedness of the WTS. And, of course, no 607 B.C.E., then no 1914 either!
Another point is: if, theoretically, the WTS’ 1914 date was in fact to mark the end of the gentile times, then they would still be off according to the “evidence” because according to their scheme, the date would be in the month of October 1914, but, as we can see from history, the First World War started on July 28, 1914.
So, either way you look at it, the WTS’ 1914 date as both the end of the gentile times and as the commencement of the kingdom of Jesus Christ is simply wrong.
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16
Let's Review: It's a cult!
by Oubliette injust in case any of you were wondering: let's review: it's a cult!.
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SAHS
“Phizzy”: “All Christians should strive to "shun foolish questionings and genealogies and strife and fights over the Law, for they are unprofitable and futile."-Titus 3:9.”
Yah, I guess such “foolish questionings” would be “unprofitable and futile” – for the WTS, that is . . . because such questionings (inevitably) just serve to prove them to be the ridiculous and outlandish liars they are!
“Rattigan350”: “Simple. Mediators do not ransom. Mediators mediate. Jesus as mediator, the antitype of Moses, mediates between Jehovah and the 144,000 the new covenant.”
That is the “take” of the WTS alright. But according to them, all the non-144,000ers are not actually God’s children and won’t be until they pass the final test at the end of Christ’s Thousand Year Reign. What the WTS doesn’t realize – evidently – is that God’s son died for “the world” (all of it), for the benefit of “everyone exercising faith in him.” (John 3:16) Also, Galatians 3:23-26 (RNWT) tells us: “However, before the faith arrived, we were being guarded under law, being handed over into custody, looking to the faith that was about to be revealed. So the Law became our guardian leading to Christ, so that we might be declared righteous through faith. But now that the faith has arrived, we are no longer under a guardian. You are all, in fact, sons of God through your faith in Christ Jesus.” I.e., all Christians are God’s children (or “sons of God”) – not just 144,000, which was symbolic and not meant to be a literal number anyway. . . . In other words, it is Jesus Christ who is the Mediator and Ransom of all Christians – not Moses, and certainly not a group of seven wingy old farts in New York!
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24
Let's Say 1914 Was The Establishment of God's Kingdom....what is the significance?
by minimus inas hillary clinton might say, what difference does it make???.
even if god's kingdom was established in 1914, why is that such a big deal?
other than unprovable actions in heaven, what can jws say is the significance of it all...with a straight face?.
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SAHS
“Let's Say 1914 Was The Establishment of God's Kingdom....what is the significance?”
Um, where is it? There would only be a significance if there were any such kingdom to be observed. To quote a line from a famous movie, Jerry Maguire (1996): “Show me the money!”
This “invisible kingdom” is really just another psychological mechanism for control, just like all the other imaginary concepts religion uses, such as hellfire, purgatory, limbo, heaven (sometimes with “72 virgins,” depending on which side of the world you live), Valhalla (Norse mythology), “enlightenment”/Nirvana (Buddhism), etc. It’s always the same thing: something invisible (of course!), or at least only visible to “special” people with “special” glasses or something (think Joseph Smith of the Mormons, native Indians hopping around the campfire strung out on “magic” mushrooms, African “holy men” wildly bouncing around to banging drums bombed out on rum and Coke or whatever in a “spiritual” trance, etc.).
Sigmund Freud could see through the modus operandi of religion as an anthropological/sociological phenomenon. His opinion was that religion was a “neurosis” – a figment of human imagination arising from “repressed feelings of human dependency on a father figure.” Looks like nothing but of sleight of hand there. So, I guess folks who are bend on “seeing” and reporting on the invisible goings-on of the big “upstairs” of the netherworld are just basically kind of, well, nuts – especially when they keep getting things wrong all along!
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Female Subjection Lunacy
by metatron inhttp://www.uaeinteract.com/docs/%e2%80%9clike_a_bird_leaving_its_nest%e2%80%99_-_first_batch_of_female_military_pilots_to_serve_in_the_emirati_armed_forces/31557.htm.
i do wonder about the 'head covering'.
looking on the bright side, at least they're eliminating vicious mysognists with bombs.
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SAHS
From above newspaper article: “Several air forces, including those of the US, the UK and Pakistan, have female pilots, although most have not been deployed in combat. In the Emirates, the decision to embrace women pilots is part of a broader campaign to increase female participation in key areas: ministerial posts, where women now hold four portfolios; parliament, which has nine female members; and, more recently, the judiciary, with the appointment of the first female judge.”
And women can do all of that, even in those Middle-Eastern countries, and they are not allowed to even work behind the literature counter, operate the sound system, or handle the microphones in the Goddamn Kingdom Hall! I have to say – that really blows me away (and not in a good way).
My thumbs up and genuine respect for the women. . . . But as for the Watchtower organization, well, all I can say is, Ridiculous! Shame on them.
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24
Why I Refuse to Accept the term APOSTATE
by Black Man inbeen going back in forth with my mom (who is a longtime pioneer and dyed-in-the-wool jw) about the term apostate.
she has labeled me one because of my fading and because i stopped attending meetings a few years ago.
i told her that i refuse to accept the term apostate because its a lazy way for the wts to not deal with dissenters and address why people are leaving this organization in droves.
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SAHS
I don’t think that there is necessarily anything wrong with the term “apostate” – it just depends on what a person is an apostate to. It can be a very positive thing, as in the case of XJWs. Those folks who have “turned apostate” toward the WTS have done so for a reason – and a damn good one at that! The reason for those who become “apostates” from the WTS is valid as a conscious and logical decision, and as such their “apostasy” is not something for which they should either be ashamed of or judged upon.
But if, say, a person became an “apostate” toward something that they rightly shouldn’t be, such as an apostate toward the category of people who follow beneficial legal laws like not drinking and driving, not stealing, not committing hate crimes, etc. – if a person were to be an active apostate to that, which is beneficial and required under basic “natural law” of general human society, then of course that would be a bad thing. No one would be proud to claim that they were an “apostate” of the followers of the laws about not drinking and driving, fire safety laws, public sanitary laws for food preparation, etc. (This is just a hypothetical, philosophical example about actively abandoning a particular type of “former beliefs” and principles, specifically in relation to legal standards of law, order, and public safety.)
However, if, say, someone were to become an “apostate” toward something like the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), Hell’s Angels, the Mafia, the Bloods or Crips, al-Qaeda, ISIS, etc. – if someone were to be an apostate of that, then that would be a totally different kind of scenario in that what is being apostatized from as a “former belief” is something known to be negative, and so apostatizing from that would thus be a good thing, something to rightly be proud of. There would certainly be nothing wrong with the term “apostate” in that case, wouldn’t there?
Now, in the case of being an “apostate” to the JW religion, that is really a beneficial scenario, as the WTS is proven to be something with definite and significant negative aspects. Also, wasn’t “Judge” Rutherford and his corporate empire apostate from Russell? And, indeed, aren’t all of JWs apostates from beliefs which the GB had taught previously? And the current GB teachings will no doubt be considered apostate in relation to whatever future “new light” changes arise.
So, I belief that being considered an “apostate” is not something which should necessarily be taken in a negative or undesirable context. Although it may be rather “lazy” of the WTS to broadly use that label for everyone who simply decides to not accept their teachings and move on, that word “apostate” is something that denotes an intelligent an methodical decision – and the bearer of that term can rightly walk with their head held high.
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Blondie's Comments You Will Not Hear at the 10-11-2014 WT Study (
by blondie inunited nations http://www.randytv.com/secret/unitednations.htm.
opening comments.
the word of god is alive and exerts power.heb.
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SAHS
This part in paragraph eight should be a definite red flag:
“He has found that the way the tracts are written prompts people to respond much more readily, and this often leads to stimulating conversations. He feels that this is because of the question and multiple-choice answers that appear on the front of the tracts. The householder does not have to worry about giving a wrong answer.”
No need for doing any thinking there. No worries about the target subject householder expressing his/herself. Just repeat the answers already selected for them.
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FuGK This Religion- Stop Ruining My Life!!!
by wallievase ini am sorry for the title but today just took the cake.
after not going to the meetings since august and trying to sort through this with my family, my wife today told me she wants to separate because of our differences over being a witness or not.. this is ridiculous.
so i said- how can you separate from me when the religion you whole heartedly believe says you can only separate for 3 reasons- abuse, willful non-support, or stopping her from her meeting attendance, etc.
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SAHS
“Hairtrigger”: “The three reasons for separation is new to me. I was under the impression the bible allows for separation/divorce only in case of infidelity.”
You have to distinguish between a separation and an actual divorce.
Actually, the position of the WTS (as they interpret the Scriptures in their literal, fundamentalist way) is that the only grounds for a divorce is adultery, which involves any act considered to be a form of “porneia.” A divorce is an actual legal proceeding, eventually resulting in the annulment of the administrative marriage status.
A separation, however, is just a physical separation, which can be temporary or permanent and can be undone anytime by simply making up and getting back together. It is a separation that is completely legitimate under the circumstances of, as the original poster listed, “abuse, willful non-support, or stopping her from her meeting attendance.”
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How Religion Got in the Way
by Billyblobber ini feel this is an excellent mini-summary of the relationship of religion to science of the years and is a good read.
the only part i disagree with is "defining yourself by atheism.
" marginalized groups are defined that way by the majority and are forced to have it as part of their self identity.. .
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SAHS
“Apognophos”: “I just don't know why we can't call that "curiosity", "awe", "wonder", etc. Why use the same word that is used by others to refer to things that happen in a spirit realm, or to a belief in that realm?”
You have a good point there. I agree that the lexicography of the word “spirituality” is prone to cause misunderstanding and confusion. What I understand “spirituality” to mean is simply that which is metaphysical; i.e., a more or less an abstract construct of ideals and principles, or a logical yet higher order manifestation of emotional functioning and cognitive processing, as opposed to anything that “exists” being of real substance in itself, such as an entity of matter or energy. Something in that non-physical context could be a mathematical law such as 1 + 1 = 2, or an emotion such as fear, hate, love, etc. – things which do not exists purely by themselves, and thus cannot be created or destroyed, but are an emergent property of something that is, in fact, a real entity (such as a brain, a biological cell, or an atom).
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How Religion Got in the Way
by Billyblobber ini feel this is an excellent mini-summary of the relationship of religion to science of the years and is a good read.
the only part i disagree with is "defining yourself by atheism.
" marginalized groups are defined that way by the majority and are forced to have it as part of their self identity.. .
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SAHS
“Billyblobber”: Yes I definitely believe that, as you said in the last paragraph of your initial post in this thread, we should “approach spirituality as individuals.” Spirituality is really a journey for each individual to travel and explore him/herself, and it’s not something that should be institutionalized (i.e., organized religion), and certainly not something that should be arbitrarily codified, dictated and forced on anyone or group.
“Apognophos”: “Emotions are the enemy of reason, are they not? . . . If someone wants to make decisions in a clear-thinking way, then they should rely on reason. Leave emotions for the things that aren't life-changing decisions, . . .”
“jgnat”: “I'm not entirely convinced that spirituality makes us any better at these things.”
Actually, science has proven that the brain is not just all intellect or all emotion – what we perceive as our conscious existence is the sum total of various processes for different types of functioning in the brain, which include things like fear, aggression, well-being, empathy, etc. (“emotion”), as well as the logical cognitive faculties such as sensual perception, memory, differentiation, prioritization, decision-making, etc. (“reason”). They do, and must, exist in tandem. The end result is, as the expression goes: “The total is greater than the sum of its parts.” Our consciousness, as such, is an emergent phenomenon consisting of all the various properties found in the various lobes and structures within the brain, all operating as a whole.
Spirituality is the emergent driving force, contingent upon all the multi-faceted logical, as well as primal emotive, properties which make up who and what we are – a driving force compelling us to investigate, explore, categorize, organize, enjoy, and share things in our collective environment. It is the higher-order logistical functioning which acts to express our fundamental ideals, communicate our ideas, and perform our actions in a manner which promotes social interactions with each other and with society as a whole that are advantageous and mutually beneficial. In short, spirituality is that which causes desired and beneficial thought, well-being, and action which is beneficial to oneself and the general community. It is that which promotes universal and fundamental ideals for the greater good and well-being of the unique individual and of society as a whole.