If those accusations are true then Barr would be an awful person. But I don’t believe an accusation just because someone makes it. If I remember reading about this case before, wasn’t there serious doubt about the timing of the accusation because some of the people accused were not where they would have had to have been? If I remember correctly there was a possibility that the accuser was mixing up some details including perhaps mixing up one GB member for another. The fact is I simply don’t know, so I won’t make a judgment either way. The things I do know about Barr for sure make me think he was a sincere person.
slimboyfat
JoinedPosts by slimboyfat
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62
Ten reasons Jehovah’s Witnesses have the true religion (plus a bonus one)
by slimboyfat inthinking back when i was a true believer these are probably the top ten reasons why i believed jws are the true religion.
1. they show love among themselves by not going to war.
not killing your fellow believers in any circumstances, including war, would seem to be a very basic requirement for true christianity.
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Ten reasons Jehovah’s Witnesses have the true religion (plus a bonus one)
by slimboyfat inthinking back when i was a true believer these are probably the top ten reasons why i believed jws are the true religion.
1. they show love among themselves by not going to war.
not killing your fellow believers in any circumstances, including war, would seem to be a very basic requirement for true christianity.
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slimboyfat
Here are some of mine: I thought they were honest and I thought they really loved me and I thought they really loved Jehovah and I thought they really loved truth and I thought they really loved other people.
Yes, that too. Call me naive, but I do think there were and are many genuine brothers and sisters, including in the leadership. There have certainly been pretty awful people too, such as Leo Greenlees and Ted Jaracz, and some leaders lower down, and local elders. But I still think people like Lloyd Barry, Jack Barr, Geoffrey Jackson, Tony Morris in his own way, Fred Franz even, as well as many elders, and other brothers and sisters I’ve come across could be described that way.
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Ten reasons Jehovah’s Witnesses have the true religion (plus a bonus one)
by slimboyfat inthinking back when i was a true believer these are probably the top ten reasons why i believed jws are the true religion.
1. they show love among themselves by not going to war.
not killing your fellow believers in any circumstances, including war, would seem to be a very basic requirement for true christianity.
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slimboyfat
I’d say the first things that made me doubt were: the fact that Armageddon didn’t come after the generation died out in 1994, and the fact that they didn’t offer a plausible explanation for that, plus they kept changing the explanation. (They should have stuck with the first revision in 1995 that said it was the wicked generation that was around whenever Armageddon happened to arrive. The explanations just got increasingly bizarre after that.) Then I came across the misquotations in the Reasoning book, the Trinity brochure, and the blue Creation book. Then doubts about the blanket opposition to natural selection as an explanation of how life evolved. Plus there was the misrepresentation of data to make it seem like there had been more and bigger earthquakes in the 20th century, followed by the strange cover up and assertion that there didn’t need to be more or bigger earthquakes in order for the prophecy to be fulfilled. Then there was the persistent increases in the anointed when they should be going down. Plus the authoritarian clampdown on brothers doing their own scholarly research in the 2007 Kingdom Ministry. Doubts about the application of specific verses such as Matt 24:45 and Prov 4:18. Doubts about the “gentile times” chronology, obviously, don’t know how I forgot that one. I think those are the main ones.
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Flight MH370 - very thought provoking discussion.
by BoogerMan inthis video presents some sinister claims & info.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79r77zt6jku&t=4234s.
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slimboyfat
This seems like a plausible explanation. Governments get up to all sorts of things like this that we never hear about. This could be one of them. Even if it isn’t, governments obviously do sacrifice civilians in order to keep state secrets in scenarios like this and use their control over the media and other institutions in order to cover it up.
It’s now a matter of historical record in the UK, for example, that the government intentionally exposed its citizens to radioactive fallout from nuclear tests and then monitored them to see the results. They used their control of the media and censorship to deny the reality for decades and delayed acknowledgement until after most of the victims had died. Instead of compensating people they called them crackpots and conspiracy theorists until it was too late. If governments can do that, can they bring down a plane or two of civilians when they perceive a national security risk? Of course they can. It’s probably near impossible to prove it in any particlar case because the government has huge resources and censorship at its disposal, and the “conspiracy theorist” label is a powerful ideological weapon. But we can be sure this type of thing carries on today as it has always done.
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Ten reasons Jehovah’s Witnesses have the true religion (plus a bonus one)
by slimboyfat inthinking back when i was a true believer these are probably the top ten reasons why i believed jws are the true religion.
1. they show love among themselves by not going to war.
not killing your fellow believers in any circumstances, including war, would seem to be a very basic requirement for true christianity.
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slimboyfat
Did you go to the summer convention, no-zombie? It was wall to wall Jesus.
Thanks, Earnest, yes I can see that specific situation is powerful.
I could have added that the behaviour of JWs during the Third Reich was also something that convinced me Jehovah’s Witnesses have the truth. The Nazi regime is as close to a laboratory test of who are true Christians as you could conceivably devise and JWs conducted themselves well when so many others did not. That’s not to deny that individuals of other religions showed courage or that some other small groups also took a stand against the regime, but it seems obvious that JWs stood out as a religious group that stood firm under extreme trial.
FreeTheMasons and Vanderhoven and downvoter you’ve either misunderstood the thread or are not willing to enter into the spirit of it. There are hundreds of threads on why JWs are wrong. I thought one thread on why we thought they were right might be interesting. 💡 -
62
Ten reasons Jehovah’s Witnesses have the true religion (plus a bonus one)
by slimboyfat inthinking back when i was a true believer these are probably the top ten reasons why i believed jws are the true religion.
1. they show love among themselves by not going to war.
not killing your fellow believers in any circumstances, including war, would seem to be a very basic requirement for true christianity.
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slimboyfat
Thinking back when I was a true believer these are probably the top ten reasons why I believed JWs are the true religion.
1. They show love among themselves by not going to war. Not killing your fellow believers in any circumstances, including war, would seem to be a very basic requirement for true Christianity.
2. They honour Jehovah’s name by using it and giving it prominence. Again this would seem to be a very basic requirement for Christians who are said to be called out of the nations as “a people for his name”.
3. They reject the post biblical teaching of the Trinity which uses language that is not found in the Bible and distances people from God by making him appear incomprehensible.
4. They teach the truth about who Jesus is as God’s firstborn and his loyal servant.
5. They point to God’s kingdom as the only hope for mankind as Jesus and the early Christian’s did and don’t get involved in politics or social or protest movements.
6. They preach and publish in more languages than any other group in history, fulfilling the Bible prophecy about preaching to all the earth in the last days.
7. Their founder Russell rediscovered basic Bible truths at a time when technology was in place to facilitate the preaching work worldwide.
8. Jehovah’s Witnesses have increased from a tiny number in one country to be a great crowd of worshippers from all nations of the world.
9. Each of the JW leaders has been just what was needed at the time for Jehovah to accomplish his purpose: Russell to recover Bible truth; Rutherford to arrange a theocratic structure and remove remaining false beliefs and practices; Knorr to organise the logistics of an unprecedented worldwide preaching campaign; Franz to provide a Bible translation that accurately conveys God’s word; the Governing Body in the final part of this system of things to prepare God’s people to come through the Great Tribulation and into the new world.
10. Witness teaching about humans looking forward to endless life on earth makes better sense as our biblical destiny rather than viewing this life a waiting room before we go to heaven.
11. Witness teaching that God’s sovereignty has been challenged and will be vindicated makes sense of human history, gives an explanation for suffering, and offers the hope that it will end permanently in the future under God’s kingdom.
These are the kinds of thoughts and reasons that convinced me JWs had truth. Other groups may meet one or a few of these points to varying degrees, but only JWs meet all of them combined. What were your reasons for believing JW have the truth?
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Rumour 144,000 literal number teaching to be abandoned at Annual Meeting
by slimboyfat insay it ain’t so!
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in one sense it’s a no brainer because the figures just don’t add up any more.. in another (negative) sense it’s a no brainer because it’s been fundamental to jws since year dot and might undermine the whole thing?
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slimboyfat
Maybe it was the hum of changing opinion
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Rumour 144,000 literal number teaching to be abandoned at Annual Meeting
by slimboyfat insay it ain’t so!
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in one sense it’s a no brainer because the figures just don’t add up any more.. in another (negative) sense it’s a no brainer because it’s been fundamental to jws since year dot and might undermine the whole thing?
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slimboyfat
I think they do add up, if you allow for around 50,000 in the first century, 50,000 in modern times, and around 44,000 in between. This takes into account that not all anointed “finish their course” faithful to the end.
50,000 is realistic for the first century going by the figures of sociologist Rodney Stark. And 50,000 is realistic for modern times because I think the peak number of anointed ever reported was around 30,000, and again, not all reported anointed remain faithful to death. Say around half the people who report anointed stay faithful to death as a rough estimate.
The 44,000 in between is a pure guess because who knows what counts as anointed in this period. Figures such as Tyndale and Servetus have at times been suggested, and I think the description of a “trickle” has been used.
So all in all, the numbers do add up, although each year that passes, and each increase reported does put a strain on that.
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slimboyfat
Nice design
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WTS 2024 Annual Business Meeting ...
by careful in... is just three weeks from this saturday.
the org has been tight-lipped, really, successfully secret about advance info on these in recent years,.
now that these relatively recent changes on dress and grooming, reporting fs time, judicial matters, etc.
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slimboyfat
It’s probably safe to say that more people have encountered JWs preaching than any other religion. Their literature has probably reached more people than the literature of any other religious organisation. Their website is in more languages than any other religious website. They spend more time preaching. I could drone on.