Are the only two options 1) join JWs or 2) see JWs as a decisive fraud? Looks like a false dichotomy to me, since there are a variety of responses to JWs including joining, sympathising, disagreeing, apathy, indifference, opposing, undecided.
slimboyfat
JoinedPosts by slimboyfat
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Why do (did) the majority of the general population see the JWS is a decisive fraud ?
by Finkelstein inthe jws /ibsa have been going door to door now for over 100 years in many lands and countries, with numerous pieces of supporting literature counting in the millions.. you would think after all of the publicizing that the jws faith would have grown leaps and bounds but to date the jws has only 8 million following adherents.. other christian based faiths have grown vastly more but never publicly proselytized their faith to the extent the jws have... my basic concise guess is that they see this organization as a bit of commercialized fraud, orchestrated by a religious publishing house namely the watchtower corporation, trying to get people to purchase and read the wts's literature.. and yes the wts did place a set price on its literature including yearly subscriptions.
was it just too obvious ?.
did the wts not think that many people who they called on were from even bigger and older established christian faiths but didn't say or preach what the wts was preaching in their apparent version of the gospel ?.
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Do you know any good novel about faith crisis?
by paradiseseeker ini'm looking for something to read.
i'm interested in ecclesiastical settings like churches and gothic cities.
but the most important thing i look for is the inner thoughts and evolution of the main character: his/her feelings of guilt, regular visits to the confessor, self-comfort drawn from faith, praying god/saints, relapses and self-loathing as well as his/her process of "waking up".. i know it's something very particular and there's a lot of junk literature about the topic with poor writing and archetype characters, but if you have read anything of good quality, i would be very glad to know.. thank you in advance..
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2018 Convention videos leaked by brave insiders
by Room 215 inanopther coup for cedars: http://jwsurvey.org/cedars-blog/leaked-2018-convention-videos-celebrate-anti-lgbtq-bigotry-unquestioning-obedience-doomsday-fear-mongering
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slimboyfat
Conventions probably do still make Watchtower some money, but do they make as much money as they used to?
One huge source of revenue was the food sales. The second huge bump in revenue came from literature sales and latterly donations following the new literature release.
Now that there's no food, and no new books handed out, I wonder how much revenue it generates.
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Personal opinions spouted from the platform?
by purrpurr inhave you ever heard some brothers own ideas and opinions spouted from the platform?
perhaps off brand or crazy ones?
some that i've heard is:.
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slimboyfat
Oh I vaguely remember a meeting part where an elder strongly discouraged using tablets at the meeting because some people can't afford to buy them and it was showing off. I can't remember exactly when that was, but obviously in the period in between tablets becoming popular and Watchtower sanctioning/promoting their use at the meetings. Maybe around 2010 or so? I wish I had a recodring of that for posterity.
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Personal opinions spouted from the platform?
by purrpurr inhave you ever heard some brothers own ideas and opinions spouted from the platform?
perhaps off brand or crazy ones?
some that i've heard is:.
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slimboyfat
Bizarrely a recent CO had something against local JWs meeting up in the supermarket for a snack after the Sunday meeting, I don't know what exactly, but he was quite agitated and sarcastic about it.
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Internet Search Engines And Some Of The First Things I Typed
by Brokeback Watchtower init was back in mid nineties 93,94 or 95 before it became what it is today.
anyway they had a bunch of search engines and the first thing i typed in it was jehovah witness, then jesus christ, next came lsd, magic mushrooms, nude pictures.
i think in that relative order.. i remember reading a different story about jws in germany during the nazi era, not anything like the 74 yearbook's depiction.
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slimboyfat
Among my first Internet searches in 1999, using AltaVista, were "Doug Harris" and "Reachout Trust", followed by many years of arguing with him about JWs on his Reachout forum. I can't argue with him any more, since he died a few years ago, too young. After that I think I read most of what there was on the Internet about JWs: everything on freeminds, Watchtower Observer, H2O, here, Greg Stafford, Jehovah's Witnesses United, Beyond Jehovah's Witnesses (anyone remember that?), Channel C, dozens of yahoo groups, later Watchtower Information Service, Johannes Wrobel's website, JW Studies by Ken Raines, and much more. That was when pretty much everything on the Internet was text based. Does anyone actually read websites any more, instead of watching videos or short forum messages?
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An elder with only one testicle
by stillin ini happen to be one of very few people who know of this condition that the man has.
he had an accident several years ago with some power equipment.
leviticus 21:20 commands that no man present the bread at the temple with damaged testicles... so?.
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slimboyfat
Don't give them ideas. I can so imagine the GB turning this into a rule. And all the ridiculousness that would ensue.
I know an elder who lost one to testicular cancer too.
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$5.5 Million to be transferred to World Wide Work from Assembly Hall fund
by Sour Grapes ina letter was read tonight in our kingdom hall that the money that the circuits in the indianapolis area had in savings to build a new assembly hall will now be transferred to the www to build kingdom halls in lands where they are needed and a new assembly hall for us will not be built.. we had a beautiful assembly hall near downtown indy that was paid for.
it was sold a couple of years ago.
we were promised a new assembly hall to be built in southern ohio near the indiana border but they can kiss that goodbye now.
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slimboyfat
It is this in a nutshell...whilst they are now being very careful with their money and "grabbing"what they can they are in no way going bust financially in our lifetimes.
How do you know that?
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$5.5 Million to be transferred to World Wide Work from Assembly Hall fund
by Sour Grapes ina letter was read tonight in our kingdom hall that the money that the circuits in the indianapolis area had in savings to build a new assembly hall will now be transferred to the www to build kingdom halls in lands where they are needed and a new assembly hall for us will not be built.. we had a beautiful assembly hall near downtown indy that was paid for.
it was sold a couple of years ago.
we were promised a new assembly hall to be built in southern ohio near the indiana border but they can kiss that goodbye now.
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slimboyfat
Back in 2015 Samuel Herd said that most construction projects around the world were being delayed, reduced in size, or halted. with the exceptions being Warwick and Chelmsford. So it's not surprising that Assembly Halls are being cancelled. Presumably this is happening all over the world. It's the same programme of KH consolidation that is being applied to Assembly Halls. So we can expect these same measures to be upsetting and aggravating JWs in locations all over the world, and lower future donations as a result. These are desperate measures for desperate times.
What I'd like to know is if local elders continued promoting donations for this Assembly Hall even after the announcement in 2015, believing the cutbacks didn't apply to their own project. That would only aggravate the situation further,
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Are the J.W's reaching a "Tipping point"?
by karter ini haven't been to a meeting in 15 years but my mother and sister are hard as j.w's.
the brothers they are appointing elders are at best suspect like one guy from my old hall made elder,big time drug used before becoming a j.w his talks are all over the place and would have struggled to make m,s years ago but with at least 60 to 70 % of young ones leaving the pool to pick from is at best reduced.. 2 other recent elders both young and zero life experience both on benefits one not well at all falls asleep all the time.. the decent,kind elders mostly older and are decent people with alot of life experience are burning out fast as there are so few of them left like 3 per congro of 100 publishers.. then you have the rich elders who wouldn't ever think of inviting some poor older or mis-fit person out to the expensive placers they go to as they couldn't afford to go so they are above the r&f and the r&f get pissed off with them.
then we have the ones who have "put the kingdom 1st" who are now old worn out and barely getting by from welfare cheque to welfare cheque that are saying "the system should have been over many years ago" it's still here and they are struggling everyday.. then there are the pioneers who have a low payed reduced hour job that seem to think anyone who has anything is totally materialistic and looks down on anyone getting a new car buying a house ect.. along with the child abuse issues,the generation change,access to information the the g.b don't want anyone to know ,not to mention the issues around blood.. is there a tipping point coming????
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slimboyfat
Ha! I'm so "incited" by reading my old posts.
I think decline is carrying on apace.