I’ve said it before: my opinion is that the number of congregations is the most significant indicator of growth or decline for a number of reasons, including the fact that it’s a publicly verifiable figure and it’s less amenable to short term redefinition to boost the figures. But it’s one figure they don’t give in the highlights. If the number of congregations has decreased despite all the other numbers going up then I think it raises legitimate questions about whether the growth is real.
slimboyfat
JoinedPosts by slimboyfat
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51
2024 year Highlights: JWs hit 9 million Publishers
by Sanchy inwatchtower put out some highlights for the 2024 service year:.
average publishers: 8,828,124. peak publishers: 9,043,460. a 43.2 percent increase in "those who returned to jehovah", meaning 65,816 were reinstated.
baptized: 296,267. memorial attendance: 21,119,442. missing stat: number of partakers .. womp womp.
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2024 year Highlights: JWs hit 9 million Publishers
by Sanchy inwatchtower put out some highlights for the 2024 service year:.
average publishers: 8,828,124. peak publishers: 9,043,460. a 43.2 percent increase in "those who returned to jehovah", meaning 65,816 were reinstated.
baptized: 296,267. memorial attendance: 21,119,442. missing stat: number of partakers .. womp womp.
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slimboyfat
Those are pretty good numbers.
I make that to be a 2.4% increase in average publishers;
A 2.6% increase in peak publishers;
A 9.9% increase in baptisms;
And a 3.2% increase in memorial attendance.
The publisher increases may be affected both by dropping reporting hours for ordinary publishers and the extra people reinstated this year. So we’ll need to look at growth over the next few years to see how that change beds in over the longer term. But the increase in baptisms and memorial attendance would seem to be positive indicators of growth independent of those particlar changes.
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slimboyfat
If I squint I can see the face of an overweight man possibly with oriental features and clothing. I guess it’s either stereotypically meant to be a Jew or an Arab. Is it meant to say something subliminally against either Jews or Arabs? In fact, forget that, what it looks like is that character Shrek from the children’s cartoon.
On a not altogether unrelated topic, has anyone else been following what happened in Amsterdam and the blanket misinformation about it in the media? What’s going on?
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Historian and former JW Jim Penton dies
by slimboyfat ini don’t know a lot about james penton but i think he deserves a better thread than the one currently on offer.
james penton, who died recently, grew up in a jw family in canada and served as an elder.
unusually for a jw, he studied liberal arts at university and became a history professor.
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slimboyfat
What makes you say he was an angry man? He had a good conceit of himself, for sure. (Is that a Scottish phrase only, or does it translate across the Atlantic?) I think his books can be criticised for being biased in tone against JWs to an extent that is a bit outside academic norms. However, especially “Apocalypse Delayed” really is essential reading for anyone interested in Watchtower history.
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The unending and fruitless argument on Trinity
by Longlivetherenegades inthose who say they are christians or follow christianity needs .
1. father .
2. jesus .
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slimboyfat
unending and fruitless argument on Trinity
Sign me up, where can I get me some of that? 😛 -
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To whom should Christians pray to?
by Longlivetherenegades init is funny how christians argue back and forth over the father, jesus christ and make it look as the father and the son are are loggerheads over supremacy.. even who to pray to between the father and jesus are means to create rivalry.
it boils down to this, your essence of being a christian goes beyond those unending argument making jesus a rival of his father.
psalms 65: 2. o hearer of prayer, to you people of all sorts* will come.. john 14: 13 also, whatever you ask in my name , i will do this, so that the father may be glorified in connection with the son.
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slimboyfat
To God in Jesus’ name, amen.
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Dr. James Penton - goin' up yonder dirt nap
by Nathan Natas ini saw a post on reddit by "big_routine1112" announcing that james penton died.. well, there's always the resurrec... oh, nevermind.. as always, the person expressing the most profound grief and dismay wins!.
"he was my friend" .
"there will never be another of his ilk".
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slimboyfat
Nathan Natas
I note you haven’t given an example of plagiarism from Penton’s book. I’ve got Penton’s book and White/Wills’ book here. If there is any plagiarism it would be very easy to check. Can you give us the page numbers?
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Historian and former JW Jim Penton dies
by slimboyfat ini don’t know a lot about james penton but i think he deserves a better thread than the one currently on offer.
james penton, who died recently, grew up in a jw family in canada and served as an elder.
unusually for a jw, he studied liberal arts at university and became a history professor.
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slimboyfat
Yes, I’ve read it, or most of it - it’s a long book with some dry patches.
The research and writing is by Rud Person. James Penton contributed a foreword and complimented Rud Person on his research and the end product.
I’m not entirely sure what to make of the book. It has a lot of interesting information, for sure, and its central thesis that Rutherford took control of Watchtower illegitimately, a familiar claim among former JWs, is supported in some detail with reference to contemporary documents. The whole matter seems complicated and the discussion is dense. I think it would require more concentration and follow-up on the references than I was able to give to it for a conscientious reader to determine whether the case is convincing. The book has interesting features including mini biographies of some of the key figures and appendices that provide interesting additional material including an interview with old Bethelite recalling his time at headquarters during Rutherford’s presidency.
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Alteration of Revelation 3:14 in the 4th century to support the emerging Trinity doctrine
by slimboyfat inin an earlier thread another poster asserted that there is no evidence that revelation 3:14 played a part in the 4th controversy that led to the trinity doctrine.
this was claimed as evidence that the description of jesus as “the beginning of the creation of god” in the verse was not understood to mean that jesus was god’s first creation.
the scholarly greek–english lexicon of the new testament & other early christian literature 3e (2001) by bauer, arndt, gingrich, and danker, in its latest edition states that “first creation” is indeed the probable meaning of the greek phrase.
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slimboyfat
What I find most telling is that early Christian writers were perfectly happy to apply the phrase “the Lord created me” from Prov 8.22 in Greek to Jesus. Only in the 4th century did this become a problem in light of the emerging Trinity doctrine, and only then were various strategies developed for avoiding the implication that Jesus was created. These strategies generally took three forms: 1) the verse was only talking about Jesus’s humanity (Athanasius’s favoured explanation, but it is almost never exhibited nowadays), 2) the Hebrew word doesn’t mean “created”, and 3) the passage is only a personification of Wisdom and should not be understood as applying to Jesus. Again, none of these arguments were made before the 4th century. Earlier Christians accepted the phrase “the Lord created me” at face value as it was in harmony with who they understood Jesus to be.
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GB's latest prophecy is already wrong!!!
by nowwhat? inat the annual meeting they said god will put it into the nations hearts to give their power to the united nations.
now that trump and the republicans have won, the united states will never give up their sovereignty to the u.n. !
trump has total disdain for the un, who and wef!
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slimboyfat
When I was in high school we were taught the Marshall plan was all about reconstructing Europe after the war and was an altruistic gesture by the United States. When I got to university and studied modern European history we were presented with the thesis that the Marshall plan’s main goal was to secure a foreign market for American consumer goods and to establish United States hegemony in Europe and globally.
When Germany and other European states began to look to Russia for its oil and gas in recent decades they were warned off by the United States. Nevertheless they carried on against the wishes of the United States until more drastic measures were required and somebody blew up the gas pipeline from Russia to Europe.