Terry

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Posts by Terry

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  66

  THE LINGERING SHADOW OF '75

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  none of you are old enough to have been there, i suspect.

  i had been in prison two years as a jw conscientious objector when the exciting news about 1975 spread like wildfire.i was paroled from prison in 1969 and immediately began pioneering.

  the pressures began mounting throughout the organization.

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  Terry

  Wouldn't you love a sweet gig like this "Alien expert" has?

  ---

  Maybe I could become a Unicorn expert or a Werewolf expert.
• 
  12

  PAROUSIA: The Watchtower's IRON BALLOON

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  the iron balloon: parousia.

  “up, up and away in my beautiful.

  .balloon,” is the lyric of a popular song from the 60’s.. it captures an emotional exhilaration lifting us from everyday life way up into the sky away from all our cares and woe.. .

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  Terry

  DATA-DOG: So let's pretend that the Bible is reliable, what would the "essence" of the Christ be?
  ___________

  Not everybody finds these discussions fascinating, but I do. You can find a lot of reference material on the dialogue (knock-down-drag-out fights) between opponents in regard to the "essence" and "substance" of Christ.

  http://www.socialmatter.net/2015/08/28/an-ideological-history-of-early-christianity/
  
• 
  5

  DO BIRDS-OF-A-FEATHER really "Flock together"?

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  my grandfather insisted "birds of a feather flock together" and thought it was some kind of genius rule-of-thumb for understanding life.then i began noticing at school, at parties, in neighborhoods, people who looked the same hung out together and excluded others.then, i became a jw.

  they only hang out with jw's.

  the world was further divided into sheep and goats.

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  Terry

  My grandfather insisted "Birds of a feather flock together" and thought it was some kind of genius rule-of-thumb for understanding life.
  Then I began noticing at school, at parties, in neighborhoods, people who looked the same hung out together and excluded others.
  Then, I became a Jw. They only hang out with JW's. The world was further divided into Sheep and Goats. Either/Or.
  As I got older, I noticed people further divided by music they listened to, mocking others for having different "lame" tastes. The way people dressed further divided them. The economic background became a huge divider. More and more I looked and saw things like sports fanatics who hated other teams than their choice, Chevy owners who made fun of Fords, American cars vs. Japanese, etc.
  Birds-of-a-feather seemed to actually flock together even though plenty of Political Correctness pretends it "shouldn't be unfair."
  Among my black friends I was shocked to hear light-skinned blacks put down darker skinned blacks. What was going on with that?
  Is this the secret of the Universe?
  Then one day, I was in a conversation with guy who worked as a Professor, teaching Evolutionary Biology. He brought up something I hadn't thought about--it started to make sense.
  A species survives by seeing "others" as competitors and singling them out and excluding them. It is hard-wired as a survival mechanism.
  It has nothing to do with "fair" or "moral" because it is a leftover from tens of thousands of years of competition and survival of the fittest.
  Humans have left the food chain. We won. But, we can't rid ourselves of these hidden instincts to divide off and exclude "others."
  
  Political solutions don't work because Politics practices the VERY SAME PREJUDICES politicians pretend to want to eliminate. They divide into parties.

  Liberal vs. Conservative. They mock those who disagree.

  Each side will eagerly dehumanize their opponents.

  They camouflage their aggression as "public service." Meanwhile, they enrich themselves just like ancient predator clans.

  It all just another version of the same old bullshit.
  Maybe my grandfather was right: Birds-of-a-feather flock together.

  We once were JW's hanging out exclusively pointing at Christendom as "goats" and now we are Ex JW's hanging out together excluding our old gang, pointing and sneering at "those assholes."
  What can we do about all this other than force our consciousness to broaden and teach ourselves to be more analytical of our motives and actions?
• 
  12

  PAROUSIA: The Watchtower's IRON BALLOON

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  the iron balloon: parousia.

  “up, up and away in my beautiful.

  .balloon,” is the lyric of a popular song from the 60’s.. it captures an emotional exhilaration lifting us from everyday life way up into the sky away from all our cares and woe.. .

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  Terry

  Off topic: When I was studying Physics, I learned that the difference between Lead and Gold was just 3 lousy protons. All those Alchemists for so many centuries were laboring to transform lead into Gold for nought.
  The protons are vanishingly small, but just think about it!
  The tiniest error means ALL THE DIFFERENCE between worthless and invaluable.

  A lesson to be learned for sure.

  _______

  (The number of protons cannot be altered by any chemical means. However, physics may be used to add or remove protons and thereby change one element into another. Because lead is stable, forcing it to release three protons requires a vast input of energy, such that the cost of transmuting it greatly surpasses the value of the resulting gold.)

  http://chemistry.about.com/cs/generalchemistry/a/aa050601a.htm
  
  
• 
  7

  MAYBE GOD DID MAKE "Adam and Steve" after all!

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  here is the box containing what we think we know:.

  let’s think outside the box.

  god is invisible but he made man in his “image.” what does an invisible image look like?.

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  Terry

  Around 1973 I worked as an employment counselor in an Employment agency. The fellow who hired me had been a professional magician. We became casual friends and he gradually opened up to me. After a bit, he would talk to me about MAGIC tricks and the real reasons why they worked.

  "Enough people have betrayed the Magic community over the centuries that there is really no logical or rational reason for the profession to exist any longer."

  I asked what he meant.

  "Magic really comes down to three things. 1. Being in the wrong spot when the "magic" happens 2. Wanting to be fooled 3. Laziness or unwillingness to discover the secret."

  I thought about that for several days and the next time we got together I asked more probing questions.

  "What do you mean when you say the audience is in the wrong spot?"

  He smiled and excused himself while he went to the bathroom. When he returned, he had me repeat the question.

  "Okay, you are sitting in front of me. I'm showing you my empty hand. Now watch. . . ." He flicked his open hand and a business card suddenly appeared! I laughed but resisted asking the question all magicians hate.

  He waited for it anyway, but I sat with my lips firmly shut.

  He continued. "When I showed you my open hand what did you see?"

  "Only your empty palm."

  He grinned sarcastically. "What was behind my hand?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "You couldn't see behind my hand because you were in front of it. That's where I was hiding the card." He slowly turned his open, empty hand over and sure enough--the business card was slightly wedged by its small end between his fingers. You couldn't see from the front. The card was curved under tension like a spring. All he had to do was open his finger slightly and it "popped" as he flipped his hand. "Presto!"

  I felt silly and it was slightly disappointing how obvious that trick was.

  I told him so. He nodded.

  "That's what makes magic work. You can't ever see what you are not allowed to see. You are kept in the wrong spot--misdirected--and you miss the gag behind the production of the hidden card."

  The more I've thought about Magic over the years I definitely see the hard link between such obvious subterfuge as a profession and the game played by religions such as Jehovah's Witnesses.

  The trick which makes the Governing Body believable is how they produce all that "food at the proper time" OUT OF NOWHERE. We are standing in the wrong place, in the board room where Ray Franz sat. We want to believe in their Magic (channeling truth from Jehovah's throne.)
  
  The research necessary to learn their tricks is right there on the Internet, but we trust the Magic is real and we're afraid of Apostate "reveals."

  Of course, once you learn the truth about the truth (how the trick is done) it is disappointing and obvious. They are reaching into their ass and pulling out their "Truth."

  
  
• 
  12

  PAROUSIA: The Watchtower's IRON BALLOON

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  the iron balloon: parousia.

  “up, up and away in my beautiful.

  .balloon,” is the lyric of a popular song from the 60’s.. it captures an emotional exhilaration lifting us from everyday life way up into the sky away from all our cares and woe.. .

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  Terry

  The key character trait among Watchtower leaders is the unwillingness to accept counters to their conjectures.

  They inevitably choose to defend, deflect, deny and reframe the premise when on the losing end.

  The absence of humility is quite remarkable. The word "hubris" comes to mind.

  It's as though they are so completely self-deluded (captives of their own concept, to quote Ray Franz) it is an automatic "We couldn't possibly be wrong, therefore, what's the real reason X didn't happen?"

  What deep bagful of tricks these rascals have!
• 
  12

  PAROUSIA: The Watchtower's IRON BALLOON

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  the iron balloon: parousia.

  “up, up and away in my beautiful.

  .balloon,” is the lyric of a popular song from the 60’s.. it captures an emotional exhilaration lifting us from everyday life way up into the sky away from all our cares and woe.. .

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  2. 
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• 

  Terry

  THE IRON BALLOON: PAROUSIA

  
  

  “Up, up and away in my beautiful. . .balloon,” is the lyric of a popular song from the 60’s.

  It captures an emotional exhilaration lifting us from everyday life way up into the sky away from all our cares and woe.

  

  
  

  Can you feel it? Go ahead--try!

  What creates the lift? Nothing but simple hot air from a gas jet beneath the large Nylon bag.

  _________________________

  BUT. . .

  What if you changed just one little thing, such as a large bag made of IRON instead of Nylon?

  Would that beautiful balloon be able to go “Up, up and away”?

  Hell no! All the hot air in the world wouldn’t help it get off the ground.

  
  

  What you are about to hear is just like that--how changing a nylon bag filled with hot air into an iron bag, marooned a proper understanding to its moorings, incapable of liftoff.

  _________________________

  
  

  IT’S ALL G(R)EEK TO ME

  
  

  If you are one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, you’ve run into a lot of G(r)eek words in your readings from Watchtower printed materials. Do you know why that is?

  The New Testament is called the Christian Greek Scriptures by the Watchtower Society. Knowing this is important to what I’m about to show you. Jehovah’s Witnesses pretend to understand the “true” meaning of Greek words.

  Remember, it matters what the balloon is made of if it is going to lift us “Up,up and away.”

  Right? Well, language is like that. Conveying exact meaning is like that.

  
  

  Amateur “scholars” monkey with Greek

  
  

  I’m now going to take you way back over 100 years to around the time the founder of the Watchtower Magazine, Pastor Russell, began writing about the (presumably) exact meaning of (Greek words in) Scriptures pertaining to the RETURN of CHRIST and the END TIMES.

  
  

  But first, a Quick End Times history lesson:

  1. An unschooled, self-taught Baptist, William Miller (1782-1849), preached that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ would occur some time between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844.

  As many as one hundred thousand people were persuaded to believe his predictions.

  His reckonings proved to be FALSE. This has been called THE GREAT DISAPPOINTMENT.

  2. Others soon followed. Another Millerite, Nelson H. Barbour, came to believe that the correct date for Christ’s Second Coming was 1873, not 1844. Barbour published his version of End Times predictions as well. His reckonings failed.

  
  

  3. One of Barbour’s readers, B. W. Keith, came up with a solution to this apparent “failure” of chronology. Having obtained a new translation of the New Testament, Benjamin Wilson’s The Emphatic Diaglott, Keith noticed a marginal alternative translation of Parousia, the Greek word normally translated ‘coming,’ namely ‘presence.’

  
  

  4. Charles Taze Russell, being a wealthy young man, paid for Barbour to come down from New York to meet him in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and during the conversation Russell was convinced that Christ had indeed returned invisibly in 1874 and was completely absorbed by the Parousia explanation. Russell started The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ’s Presence.

  
  

  ________________________________

  
  

  THE IRON BALLOON: PAROUSIA

  ______________

  
  What you are now about to consider should astonish you--IF you can understand it.

  
  

  WHAT THE HELL IS AN OUSIA? (oo-see'-ah)

  
  

  Ousia is not a machine gun! Ousia is Greek and its origins are rooted in Greek Philosophy.
  That’s right--Pagan Greek philosophy.

  Socrates, Plato and Aristotle concerned themselves with the true nature (substance) of reality as opposed to its mere appearance (essence).

  Note:

  Plato spoke of the objective reality of a thing or its inner reality as opposed to its outer appearance in the Allegory of the Cave. (Discussing men who can only see shadows and must infer their actual reality.) The Apostle Paul ripped off Plato’s analogy (Hebrews 10th chapter.)

  
  

  Paul was from Tarsus. Tarsus was distinguished for the culture of Greek literature and philosophy, so that at one time, in its schools and in the number of its learned men, it was the rival of Athens and Alexandria.

  
  

  (Note: between the 1st and 4th centuries C.E. over 30 Christian councils met in an effort to rid Christianity of Pagan Greek Philosophy and its insidious influences. Forbidding definitions containing ousia was considered the correct approach.)

  ________________

  
  

  You should now want to know the answer to the following question: “Was any of this important to Christianity?”

  Here is your answer: Yes. Christianity split into two pieces over it.

  What we historically call Christianity divided into two parts, The Roman Catholic Church in the Western part of the Empire, and the Eastern Greek Orthodox branch, each had a separate leader, doctrine, and rituals. Why? They couldn’t agree on homoousious! (Was Jesus just a man or was he Divine?)

  
  

  _________________________

  
  

  THE NITTY GRITTY (i.e. “Where the rubber meets the road:)
  
  

  Let’s take a closer look at ousia and its legacy, shall we?

  In everyday life we know the difference between categories of things such as:

  Animals

  canines

  dogs, wolves, foxes

  Chihuahuas

  my dog Pepito

  These are listed from General to Specific. My dog Pepito is the Specific instance of the above General list.

  ____________

  Timeline

  4th Century B.C.E. Aristotle would say Pepito is the (hypostasis) substance and the categories are the (ousia) essence.

  4th Century C.E. Christianity argued over the word homoousios (general essence of Christ)

  19th Century C.E. Pastor Russell would argue about parousia being the “presence” of Christ Jesus; meaning: metaphorically rather than actually.

  
  

  One might say, “Great Granddaddy is here with us today in spirit.”

  This is how Pastor Russell explained the Return of Jesus and why He couldn’t BE SEEN WITH THE NAKED EYE. If Jesus returned in the flesh, there would be hypostasis.

  ________________________

  
  
  
  

  Where does this leave us?

  
  
  
  

  The Terminator : “I’ll be back!”

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYt2HmAxHL4

  ________________

  Where does this leave us?

  Nobody would ask whether or not the Cyborg from the future meant “I’ll be back” literally or figuratively.

  Why not? Because he actually came back! You could see him.

  Charles Taze Russell and before him, Nelson Barbour, were trying to EXPLAIN why their chronology predictions weren’t False.

  “Where is the evidence, we can’t see Jesus?”

  “Aw, don’t worry about that--he meant parousia-essence and not hypostasis-substance.”

  THIS IS THE IRON BALLOON.

  _________

  
  
  

  Here is a True or False question which is a test of your sanity.

  “True or False: If you believe something hard enough, it becomes true; it is guaranteed to happen.”

  Here is the Watchtower / Governing Body official proof of insanity.

  

  Pastor Russell was “assured” in this delusional way of:

  • The Last Days began 1799

  • Jesus Parousia started 1874

  • Jesus started ruling in heaven in 1878

  • The Gentile Times would end in 1914

  Judge J.F.Rutherford was “assured” of Armageddon in 1925.

  They tested their own faith and proved their own insanity.

  
  

  "In the year 1943 the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society published the book "The Truth Shall Make You Free." This moved forward the end of six thousand years of man's existence into the decade of the 1970's. Naturally this did away with the year 1874 C.E. as the date of return of the Lord Jesus Christ and the beginning of his invisible presence or parousia. Page 324 of the above book positively says: "The King's presence or parousia began in 1914."" God's Kingdom on a Thousand Years Has Approached p.209

  _____________

  The core beliefs of this religious organization have been tested again and again and the results have always been the same: FALSE PROPHETS produce excuses and not results.

  
  

  Not know the difference and distinction between OUSIA and HYPOSTASIS has cost them and their followers countless suffering and embarrassments! Many have died, become disillusioned, lost their faith, and turned to atheism and have been targeted as enemy apostates.

  
  

  It has all gone over like an IRON BALLOON which failed to launch.

  
  
  

  
• 
  46

  THOUGHTS ON UPGRADING TO (Free) WINDOWS 10

  by Terry in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i've been using windows 7 for several years and have had no complaints.. i've tried many browsers and settled on google chrome.

  it has absolutely everything i want or need.. i kept hearing about the free upgrade to windows 10, so i went to youtube and watched endless "reviews" pro and con.. what pushed me over the (microsoft edge) was the fact i could test drive the new operating system.

  for 30 days and go back to windows 7 if i didn't like it!

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  Terry

  UPDATE on my upgrade. . .

  I'm now back with Windows 7.

  I'm so accustomed to using it instinctively, I couldn't adjust to the new layout. Some of the steps were easier and some were more convoluted on 10.

  But, the deciding factor was this: CHESS TITANS is not available on 10 and I can't live without it.
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  7

  MAYBE GOD DID MAKE "Adam and Steve" after all!

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  here is the box containing what we think we know:.

  let’s think outside the box.

  god is invisible but he made man in his “image.” what does an invisible image look like?.

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  2. 
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  Terry

  AD HOC arguments by fundamentalists crack me up
• 
  10

  ARE JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES SUSPICIOUS, CYNICAL and WRONG? IF SO, WHY?

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  the intellect gives us our powers of conception, judgment, and free choice in the way which has separated humanity from the rest of the animal kingdom.

  it really works and this is proved by the fact we are out of the food chain dominating all other species.. however, be warned!

  human intellect is not a perfectly functioning machine.

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  Terry

  "I have finally found somewhere with others like me, who genuinely enjoy helping others."

  
  

  Then it is a strange dissonance to discover Jehovah's Witnesses refuse to do any of the following:
  Meals on Wheels, battered women's shelters, build hospitals, establish orphanages, build schools or universities, offer scholarships, create charities for non-JW's.

  Yet, the other denominations which Witnesses call "false" and "Satanic" do all those things and more.
  
  Which speaks louder: actions or words?