So if there's roughly 1,000,000 JWs in the U.S. then 350,000 are inactive. Now when the pedophilia coverup is aired on Dateline some of those will use it as a reason to quit the Watchtower Society altogether and others now active will become inactive. Wow. The end really is near, sooner than we thought! - At least of the easy money days for Brooklyn.
anewperson
JoinedPosts by anewperson
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24
CO says 35% inactive
by target inthe co visiting a congregation in madison wisconsin told them that 35% are inactive.
i wonder if this is the pattern with most other congregations.
that was about what it was in the last congregation i was in.
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Flood Legends "Proof" of Global Flood...
by AlanF inthe march 1, 2002 watchtower contains a couple of articles on noah's flood and the application of this legend to "our day".
thrust of the articles is first to show that the flood was a real, earthwide event, and then to scare ignorant readers into accepting the jw message by claiming that our world is about to undergo a similar divine punishment.
pretty standard fare for long time jw observers.. in the past the watchtower society has published extensive material purporting to show that a global flood occurred a few thousand years ago.
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anewperson
I'd still like to hear from Alan regarding my rejoinder.
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Flood Legends "Proof" of Global Flood...
by AlanF inthe march 1, 2002 watchtower contains a couple of articles on noah's flood and the application of this legend to "our day".
thrust of the articles is first to show that the flood was a real, earthwide event, and then to scare ignorant readers into accepting the jw message by claiming that our world is about to undergo a similar divine punishment.
pretty standard fare for long time jw observers.. in the past the watchtower society has published extensive material purporting to show that a global flood occurred a few thousand years ago.
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anewperson
Alan I will look into it but believe the Atlantis legend and the Flood of Deukalion were separate legends. And the way this goes is that Plato recounts that Solon mentioned the Deukalion flood to an Egyptian priest who said that even Deukalion's flood was predated by huge floods and then proceded to give the story of Atlantis. From Egypt via Solon the story of Atlantis came to Greece. So it indeed is Egyptian in origin.
As we go into 2002 growing scientific concensus is that there was a cataclysmic regional flood in the area pinpointed by the Bible and this regional flood in turn impacted the rest of the planet, hence was global in impact though localized in origin. I do hope you are respectful of scientists and scholars like these.
Go to the following link and you will learn about midway down of
Ray Ballard whom National Geographic calls its resident-explorer who believes and has evidence that there was a massive influx of water from the Mediterranean into the Black Sea Basin
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/lectures/seattle_events.html
We'll be hearing more from him and other scientists in the future.
Search a little and you'll find lots of other links about Ballard et al.Further, Alan, the Bible Scholar Michael Sanders has noted for example that settlement of early Sumeria in the northern plain of the Tigres and Euphrates occurred after the Black Sea Flood. The water to fill the Black Sea Basin would have lowered the oceans around the world by a foot, which shows how the regional flood was also global. http://ancienthistory.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.biblemysteries.com/library/blacksea/
In surfing I came across the following which argues that Cuba may have been what was actually meant by Atlantis,
http://www.andrewcollins.net/page/secretloc/cubapoints.htm
and in recent weeks some scientists found actual evidence that an unknown ancient civilization was indeed submerged just off the coast of Cuba. Although I don't have that link handy I do recall someone else recently posted about it on this very board, and if you search for it a little with key words like Lost, Civilization, Cuba you should find it.
The points in favour of Cuba being Atlantis are listed as:
Plato says that Atlantis was an island landmass which lay in the Atlantic Ocean beyond which was a series of `other lands' that enabled `voyagers' from his own world to reach the `opposite continent'. This statement perfectly describes the geographical relationship between Cuba and both the Bahamas and the Mid-Caribbean island group which have been used since ancient times as stepping stones to reach the American mainland.Plato tells us that Atlantis possessed a large fertile plain protected from cold northerly winds by mountain ranges. This precisely describes Cuba's great western plain, between Havana and Pinar del Río, shielded between November and February each year from `les nortes', the cold northerly winds which come in from the eastern United States, by the Cord de Guaniguanico mountain range.
Plato tells us that Atlantis was drowned during earthquakes and floods which occurred during one terrible night and a day. Cuba's great plain was partially drowned following the rise in sea level brought about by the melting of the ice at end of the glacial age, c. 8000 BC. Some 500 years earlier, Cuba - along the rest of the Antilles - would have been devastated by earthquakes and tsunamis following the fragmentation and multiple impacts of a comet which devastated the Western Hemisphere in c. 8600-8500 BC. The drowned portion of the plain now lies beneath the Bay of Batabanó and once stretched as far as the Isla de Juventus (Isle of Youth).
Over 60 sites of possible archaeological interest have been noted on the former Bahaman landmass, now known to marine geologists as the Great Bahama Bank. By far the greatest accumulation of sites cluster on its south-west edge close to Cay Guinchos, Diamond Point and Cay Lobos facing out towards the northern coast of Cuba. If these curious features do turn to be of artificial construction then it means that the proposed former Bahaman culture was integrally linked with the Cuban mainland. Before the waters rose up after the end of the last Ice Age only the Old Bahama Channel would have separated Cuba from the Bahaman landmass.
The memory of an Atlantic island called Atlantis which lay in the Far West would appear to derive from Iberic Phoenician, and later Carthaginian, sea-journeys to the western Atlantic seaboard from around 1200 BC onwards. After the fall of Carthage in 147 BC the former Carthaginian territories were occupied by seafaring Berber tribes who as the Moors invaded Spain in the eighth century AD. They reintroduced the concept of a western isle lying far out in the ocean and called it Antilia, a name derived from the same Semitic word root as Atlantis showing their common origin. Geographers have identified Antillia as Cuba, while the appearance of Antilia on medieval maps matches very well a truncated form of Cuba shown on the Turkish Piri Reis map of 1513. Professor Charles Hapgood of Keene University determined that this nautical chart was derived originally from a patchwork of pre-Columbian source maps, suggesting a maritime knowledge of Cuba before the time of the Conquest.
The founding families of various Central American cultures, as well as great civilisers such as Quetzalcoatl and Votan, were said to have come from an island set in the waters located in an easterly direction. Unquestionably it was one of the Caribbean islands, and various traditions record that the island in question was Cuba. The blood-red earth which dominates its western plain accounts for the name given to Quetzalcoatl's original homeland which was Huehue Tlapallan, the `old, old red land'. The other names given to this homeland were Tulan, a word which can be shown to have the same root as Atlantis.
Located on the Mesoamerican island homeland was a place of emergence of the human race known as the Seven Caves. The only location in the Caribbean which appears to fit its description is Ceuva # 1 of the `seven caves' complex at Punta del Este on Cuba's Isle of Youth. Its walls are adorned which dozens of petroglyphs of a celestial nature drawn many thousands of years ago.
Occasionally the seven tribes whose ancestors had emerged from the Seven Caves were seen as having constructed Seven Cities, arguably the root behind the Portuguese medieval belief in the existence of Seven Cities on the island of Antilia, the medieval form of Atlantis.
In the eighteenth century Friar Ramon de Ordoñez y Aguilar, canon of the cathedral town of Ciudad-Réal in Chiapas, told the odyssey of a Central American culture hero named Votan who came out of the east from a land called Valum Chivim and settled on an island named Valum Votan, identified as Cuba, before journeying on to the Yucatán. Andrew Collins demonstrates how Votan is the memory of a Bronze Age Iberic Phoenician seafarer who made transatlantic voyages as early as 2000 BC. A knowledge of Valum Votan's, or Cuba's, topography and catastrophe legends thus entered the classical world prior to the age of Plato. It was from such knowledge, particularly a description of Cuba's western plain, its fertility, its occupation by Iberic Phoenicians and Carthaginians, and the memory of a former great cataclysm which divided the Caribbean into individual islands, that Plato constructed his Atlantis account. A near contemporary writer known as pseudo-Aristotle also wrote about a similar island paradise in his work entitled On Marvellous Things Heard. C. 300 BC.
Cuba can also be identified as one of the Islands of the Hesperides, which the Roman geographer Statius Sebosus (as recorded by Pliny the Elder and Solinus) stated lay 40 days' sail beyond the Gorgades, an ancient name for the Cape Verde islands. It took Christopher Columbus 33 days to sail between the Cape Verdes and Barbados in the Caribbean on his third voyage to the New World in 1498. Like Atlantis, the concept of the Hesperides, the islands of the Far West, is considered to be of Phoenician origin.
Top Italian scientist Emilio Spedicato, Professor of Operations Research, at Bergamo University has recently proposed that the island of Hispaniola, Cuba's easterly neighbor, was Plato's Atlantis. Yet having reviewed Andrew Collins' evidence in favour of Cuba being Atlantis he now sees it `as a very good candidate …only archaeological work will perhaps solve the riddle.'
After and only after reading the foregoing, please go back to your previous comments and make the appropriate reassessments. Knowledge is important but so are courtesy, kindness and humility with a lack of quickness to take umbrage. -
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new blood cards not used
by Dogpatch inplasma) be given to me...," the june - 2001 version reads "i direct .
that no allogeneic blood transfusion (whole blood, red cells, white .
difference in the cards is the use of the word allogeneic in the june .
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anewperson
It's worth noting that the WTS may own stock in the Hemopure company.
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They Have Left Jehovah's Service
by Defender inthis is the standard accusation placed on those that were stumbled by the countless failed date settings of the society.
it happened right after 1914, after 1925, after 1975 and is gradually happening since 1995 after the 1914 generation failed.
since 1995, every year now on average, there are close to 200,000 that are leaving the society.
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anewperson
One group providing spiritual food and respect for Jah and His Christ is called the Christians or more descriptively JAH CHRISTIANS. Many in the Free Christians movement of which the Jah Christians are part are nontrinitarian, look forward to earth becoming paradise on which some are resurrected though others are resurrected to heaven, use any acceptable form of the divine name but ditch the rigid chronology stuff, note Christ says put Mercy over Sacrifice as with the blood thing. So your elder is ignorant, maybe a nice-seeming guy but ignorant. Write jahchristian at yahoo.com for a free subscription to the newsletter, Free Christians News. Visit the website:
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Flood Legends "Proof" of Global Flood...
by AlanF inthe march 1, 2002 watchtower contains a couple of articles on noah's flood and the application of this legend to "our day".
thrust of the articles is first to show that the flood was a real, earthwide event, and then to scare ignorant readers into accepting the jw message by claiming that our world is about to undergo a similar divine punishment.
pretty standard fare for long time jw observers.. in the past the watchtower society has published extensive material purporting to show that a global flood occurred a few thousand years ago.
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anewperson
Alan, Egypt did have a Flood legend which a priest told the Greek Solon, i.e. that Atlantis was distroyed by floods & volcanic eruptions. You've hinged much of your argument on the idea that Egypt had no such flood tradition which weakens the thesis.
The Bible itself does not say if or if not the whole planet was covered by water but that all the "earth" was covered and earth can refer to just the land area under discussion rather than the entire planet.
That the Watchtower Society errs in making rigid statements that come back to haunt them I do not debate. But I do wish to point out these weak points in your overall thesis (i.e. Watchtower being unsound on many points of science) so that you can strengthen it.
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More News Reports
by silentlambs inthe watchtower organization's authority structure is a safehaven for child molesters, and they need to be pressured to change their policies that harm children!.
this article is an update on a previous article found here.. .
a civil suit was filed in washington district courts this week aiming to change the policies of the watchtower society and jehovah's witnesses which protect child molesters.
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anewperson
I believe those organized religious groups professing to be the only fit Christian groups are all false. I believe those groups, whether informal, seminformal or formal which do not profess to be the only fit groups are truthful. I strongly denounce fanaticism but extol the goodness promoted by Christ himself. The one true organization is in heaven not on imperfect earth and those groups professing theirs is the only one that's perfect are false because humans are not perfect.
However on earth there is a Christian "arrangement for good order," for learning more about and promoting God's love, namely Christian informal to semi-formal fellowship, meaning groups of Christians (exJWs etc) who associate based on the unity of LOVE instead of forced sameness of views. Christ in Matthew 7 speaks of there being a narrow road to follow but clearly says that road is not based on teachings but the showing of love, good fruitage.
Many blessings to Erica Rodriguez, her attorneys and all the silentlambs.org helpers. May there be true justice from the courts etc ministering to Erica and all similar victims (Romans 13:1).
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WTS is going down: Illusion or Reality?
by Martini inhi folks,.
it appears that the tides are turning upon the wts.
judging by recent child abuse cases, un scandal and blood doctrine change that the wts is being exposed and that the rest of the world is taking note.
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anewperson
There is anger and denial in the face of reality, a desire to forget the ice water in the face, but it is too late.
The WTS is being choked to death. The more we point out the need to change the more they kick against it. It hurts them kicking against the goads (pointed sticks).
They are bleeding. They won't die totally but are losing all credibility faster and faster. Somewhere there is someone who calls himself a Pilgrim even today, so even the Pilgrim church has survived.
We are deep into 2002 and even the biggest cultists now has his nose rubbed in the reality that his leaders misprophesied Armageddon. Daily JWs and exJWs become aware of the pedophile and other coverups.
The end is closer than they think, but not the type of Armageddon they thought or wanted. Yet it's of their own making.
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NGO-letters mentioned at German KMS!
by GermanXJW inat one of the kingdom ministry schools that took place in the city of gelsenkirchen in germany, richard kelsey of the german branch comitee mentioned the letter campaign conducted by participants of the german forum http://www.infolink-forum.de.
as mentioned on jwd the participants collected adresses of elders and kh and sent letters just before the kms.
now kelsey mentioned during the announcements that some may have received a letter.
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anewperson
I believe many who continue as elders no longer have the same total confidence in what they are told but obey because they would lose their families if they turned against the Watchtower. A few will quit but most will simply cut the money they are donating to the Watchtower, spend it on their own family needs.
When their children miss more meetings they will not get onto their children for this as much in the hope that they will escape. They themselves will slowly drift away from the organization in the years ahead, quitting for reasons such as poorer health as they age a little, so forth. So even though you don't see mass exodus, mentally it is there.
Let us remember that long before Communism literally fell, the people's enthusiasm for its ideals fell. What will help speed it up though is when at some point several of the Circuit and or District Overseers start a new group - who knows, maybe within 1-2 years.
So encourage such things and keep up your good efforts in Europe. You are doing much better than you seem to have thought.
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Silentlambs: Modern-day Folk Hero?
by Derrick inhe's the "knight in shining armor" for many young ones across the globe, who were spared from predators moving in for the kill.
who was instrumental amongst jehovah's witnesses in chasing these monsters off?
it should have been brothers in the watchtower society.
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anewperson
Norm, you began with "Weak emotinalism I leave to the "true believers" after all they are the experts there." So clearly to you only atheists are Logical, Reasonable persons - which most logical reasonable atheists will also admit is false. So you indeed are emotionalizing.
You said "I try to deal with reality and as such I am still waiting for your explanation of how and when Jah has helped all the millions of victims of child abuse?" Since I also honor reality the reality is that whether you speak of our coming from no "source" of creative energy (God) or not, it is a fact, Norm, that all good things come from the efforts of good persons using their minds to do good things, as Bill has done in battling child abuse. And since Bill did not create himself, Norm, then further back in time that source/God that did do so also must get a fair share of the credit.
You again mocked the idea that humans who have died can be brought back into existence even though a source/God originally brought them into existence when you remarked "Your allusion to some kind of mystic future resurrection do not help much in explaining away the obvious negligence and callousness of this Jah figure you keep bleating about." The expression "bleating about" also shows you are emotionalizing, seeking to attack me directly to cloud the reasonableness of what I said.
You say God was Horrible to include the slaying of men and women and yet the humans whom you prefer to God also have done that at times and on a far bigger scale than God ever did. The Nazi's holocaust murdered possibly 10 million men, women, children; but those recorded as slain in the Old Testament do not come to a million, and for all you know God had those in the Bible slain for unspeakable acts against their own children like putting them into the arms of a metal idol, heating it red-hot and slowly burning them to death.
Finally, you really trip over yourself, Norm, when you say you have not used filthy language and then say the very words you did use. Which also again shows that you are not following logic and reasoning so much as emotionalizing and trying to cover it up. Now I leave it to the readers who can scroll up and down this page as to which of us is logical and reasonable in presentation.
If you want to waste our time with debate instead of join us in simply praising Bill Bowen and victims like Erica Rodriguez for having stood up, then you are sadly misleading yourself in a waste of your time and ours.