slimboyfat

Joined

• started 531 topics
• posted 17,310 times   see topics posted on
• send a message

Posts by slimboyfat

• 
  51

  2024 year Highlights: JWs hit 9 million Publishers

  by Sanchy in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  watchtower 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.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  slimboyfat

  As Joe points out, if JWs measured their membership as Mormons do then they have far more than 9 million members, probably nearer 20 million.

  They are doing better than practically all other Christian groups in western countries because most churches are in steep decline. In Scotland hundreds of churches are closing every year, numbers are dwindling, and the average age of attenders is now over 60.
  

  The congregation number has flatlined for about a decade and is down from its all time peak. I wonder if it will start increasing slowly again.
• 
  51

  2024 year Highlights: JWs hit 9 million Publishers

  by Sanchy in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  watchtower 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.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  slimboyfat

  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.
• 
  51

  2024 year Highlights: JWs hit 9 million Publishers

  by Sanchy in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  watchtower 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.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  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.
• 
  14

  Do you see it?

  by MeanMrMustard in

  1. social
  2. humour

  .

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  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?
• 
  33

  Historian and former JW Jim Penton dies

  by slimboyfat in

  1. social
  2. current

  i 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.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  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.
• 
  51

  The unending and fruitless argument on Trinity

  by Longlivetherenegades in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  those who say they are christians or follow christianity needs .

  1. father .

  2. jesus .

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  slimboyfat

  unending and fruitless argument on Trinity

  Sign me up, where can I get me some of that? 😛
• 
  3

  To whom should Christians pray to?

  by Longlivetherenegades in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  it 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.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  slimboyfat

  To God in Jesus’ name, amen.
• 
  17

  Dr. James Penton - goin' up yonder dirt nap

  by Nathan Natas in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i 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".

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  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?
• 
  33

  Historian and former JW Jim Penton dies

  by slimboyfat in

  1. social
  2. current

  i 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.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  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.
• 
  171

  Alteration of Revelation 3:14 in the 4th century to support the emerging Trinity doctrine

  by slimboyfat in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  in 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.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  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.