Oh ... and shagging the family dog or sheep ...
So that's put the mockers on the wearing of loose fitting welly boots....
in 2013 the revised nwt came out and changed the old edition's "fornication" and its related words "fornicating," "fornicator" etc.
in all their roughly 70 occurrences.
has the word completely dropped from usage in the witness world?
Oh ... and shagging the family dog or sheep ...
So that's put the mockers on the wearing of loose fitting welly boots....
i'm just curious to get people's views on this.. the bible students seem to start of as quite a liberal group under charles taze russell, albeit he had some whacky teachings going on.
obviously things began to change under rutherford.
but what decade did it become abundantly clear that the society was indeed high control religion or even labeled a cult?.
IMHO, the cult mentality became most prominent around the time of the Ray Franz saga. Definite moves were put into place to limit the time that witnesses spent together unsupervised. This was the time that any new ideas or thoughts could be exchanged between brothers and sisters. The DC's, at one time quite social affairs, were limited timewise as was the inbetween session periods, normally a time for meeting up with old friends. The meal queues were eliminated completely, always a favourite time to get together. Even the 15 minute break between the public talk and the Watchtower study was done away with. Inter-congregation organised socialising was frowned on too. In later years we saw the abolition of the group book study, ostensibly a caring consideration to reduce travelling, it did in effect put an end to any expression of individual thoughts and ideas being expressed among a small unsupervised group.
i have just began to read the above.
yes he is the man who created the fictional detective sherlock holmes.
in his first story called the "scarlett letter" he deals with (i stress this is fiction) with a couple escaping from the new paradise just founded in utah of the mormons.
..and Conan Doyle believed in fairies.
please help .
more research for my book .
There was a 50's mag headline "Should a christian visit a psychiatrist?". The article basically warned against it claiming that the psychiatrist might try to convince the patient that the problem was his religion. I remember it well as I was a young teenager in the throes of depression at the time and wondering how the hell I could carry on as I was such a worm in Jehovah's eyes.
disclaimer: i do not approve or condone any acts of violence that result in the deaths of innocent persons.. alright.. let me just say that i have no idea what motivated the latest mass shooting, nor do i condone those actions.
i am, however, beginning to understand why some individuals may feel that violence is their only choice, although i do not approve of that choice.. when i read topics on this forum that concern religion and legalism, topics that drone on and on, getting nowhere, i feel extremely frustrated.
yes, religions are given certain freedoms, but many are obviously going beyond the spirit that motivated the separation of church and state.
So which is more important: The right to bear arms or the right not to be shot?
so i was recently reading the reasons for disfellowshipping as listed in shepherd the flock of god.
the handbook is available online here: https://thetruthofjehowaswittness.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/jehovas-vitner.pdf.. on page 59, point #4, it lists attempted suicide as a reason for disfellowshipping.
has it ever been removed?
There was a case in my old congregation where a sister had committed adultery and then, filled with remorse, had taken an overdose. She then later confessed to the elders and the adultery was regarded as extenuating circumstances that led to the overdose. As she was married to an already df'd person, the adultery was treated as the minor offence.
it's a deja vu from matthew..."for nation shall rise against nation.....".
it seem that periods of instability occur around the world periodically.
since the arab spring to brexit and trumpism people want change.
BTW what right did india have to secede from the United Kingdom?
It didn't.
The UK granted India it's independence.
i realize that jehovah’s witnesses have been dumbed down for long time now.
.
still, i think there must be something that would make them really question their beliefs, even their life.. i think that if witnesses were told they could take blood or that disfellowshipping was unloving, they might stop and take a hard look at everything they have sacrificed their lives for.. i know the organization has muddled these subjects before but the i think even die hard witnesses might start to second guess the governing body..
I doubt that there's much belief-wise that would make a JW question their allegiance. When people become JW's they buy into an entire life-style. It was only when the entire life-style failed to suit me that I started to question the beliefs.
bless you, that was a big sneeze you let out sister.. sister- ah, what does "bless you" mean?.
oh, it's pagan.
because people bless the soul of the person so they don't escape from their physical bodies.. sister- right, it is difficult to change the little things, but we can please jehovah by staying away from those things.. .... this is a scenario that happened when i accidentally (naturally) said "bless you" to the jw sister.
Yet no-one ever says "Bless you" after a fart.
i happened to come across a time article in 2008. it was basically talking about the high turnover in american faiths.
it mentioned the jdubs and highlighted the following point.. an even more extreme example of what might be called "masked churn" is the relatively tiny jehovah's witnesses, with a turnover rate of about two-thirds.
that means that two-thirds of the people who told pew they were raised jehovah's witnesses no longer are — yet the group attracts roughly the same number of converts.
In the 33 years I had being a JW convert and the six or so congregations I was involved in I could count on one hand the amount of people who came to a meeting through invitations that were regularly distributed in the community.
My father converted around a dozen or so people to the JW religion. None of them came from door to door work, something in which he partook with enthusiasm. 6 of his converts were workmates - all of them air traffic controllers at London's Heathrow. (if you've seen Pushing Tin you'll appreciate what a weird bunch they are) He had an extraordinary personality and could argue and reason anything so as it could be made to appear logical. Extremism masquerading as reasoned logic. At one time he decided to contact the disbelieving husbands of a number of sisters in his congregation and succeeded in bringing 4 or 5 husbands round to his beliefs. The others were fellows whom he'd meet in pubs and he'd witness to them over pints of Gold Label with a Southern Comfort chaser. He kept a tiny diary in which he'd record his hours, and every repeat discussion was logged as a return visit.