years ago, the insinuation was often presented, that those who were inactive were actually not witnesses at all.
the point being made was that ''...winesses is a verb, not a noun...''.
i know there were published assertions to this end in the older books and magazines, with possibly even quotes from the likes of rutherford or knorr ,.
For a while now they have said over and over that inactive ones and those who have left the JW's are all still sheep and are still considered brothers and sisters. They've said this ad nauseam for many years.
They don't count inactive ones as being an active witness in their numbers each year, but in talks and the Watchtower they have said they are still considered sheep, only lost sheep.
these excerpts i'm sharing with you are from the july 1st, 1989 letter from the wt society to the elders and it gives outsiders a good idea of the attitude of the wt society leaders towards child abuse victims and even towards their own appointed elders.
and it shows wt society is first, foremost, and mainly concerned about financial fallout from potential lawsuits.
one short quote was used from this letter on the abc news nightline report about candace conti - but what i'm going to share with you will be other excerpts from that same letter that are just as, or even more revealing.
we all know confessing to the eldubs is a bunch of crap.
seriously, once you do it, you are marked.
unless you kiss ass like a true believer for the rest of your days in the cult, forget moving up the ladder.
i'm completely flabergasted at what happened with a couple in my old congregation recently.
they are still active.
the guy messages me that they had their baby and will be at a local hospital for the next couple days.
People are responsible for their own decisions and welfare in these type of situations. I've never heard of elders being part of child birth pre-natal care. It would never have occurred to me to have them involved and I can't imagine 99.9 percent of people wanting them involved.
And my aunt was in labor for 48 hours. Can't imagine that.
is good calling me back or am i just letting my emotions get the best of me?also i really want to be closer to my jw family.
btw i was never baptized and i consider myself a born again christian i go to a baptist church and wath televangelist and i have expirenced gods presence like never before but sometimes i get fearful and think "what if jws are right and i'm wrong" than i'm screwed!but if there wrong and i'm right it doesn't look to good for them.. i would prefer if nobody posted "god isn't real" type comments.
i truly believe he is real but i respect why some are atheists..
My opinion is this: people should do what makes them happy. Others who criticize that are not really being fair.
I used to tell my girlfriend who became Born Again. If you believe in God and religion then at the very minimum one of us is probably wrong.
Go with the one you truly believe. Ignore the other white noise.
of all the threads here about the number of partakers increasing, i don't recall theories as to why they report this.
they could stop reporting numbers altogether or lie.
instead they say, in essence, "our teachings about end times and heavenly hope are still wrong"..
(originally posted march, 2014)anyone who has awakened to ttatt and has conscientiously left the organization--especially a once-prominent, highly-regarded, studious believer from a prominent multi-generational tribe of jws-- after decades of devout, high-profile "serve-us," who continues to put in an annual appearance at the memorial thoroughly subverts and undermines, by this one act, any hope s/he may entertain that his/her departure will stir family or former friends to question the whole watchtower bamboozle.
by this one concession s/he assigns him-/herself by every single jw to their handy and dimissive purgatory: the "spiritually-weak.".
nothing blasts a louder, clearer, and more deliberate message to the jws who personally knew you and those familiar with your jw bona fides that you are not merely "not making the meetings," "inactive," or "spiritually-weak," but that there is a conscientious reason you have rejected the entire watchtower society life than choosing to forego what they know you once believed to be jehovah's must-attend, one-and-only, holy/sacred event of the year for his people, the lord's evening meal.. you hand them the very justification they so relish to self-righteously label you as a "submarine witness" deserving of jehovah's, and more importantly, their judgement.
People go for their families. It's rather silly to think every ex-witness or fader all has to be on the same plain of consciousness and if they are not there is something wrong with them. Every person has to live their life that best suits them. You can't ask people to leave the borg and then tell them, well you now have to exist in a mini-borg or there's something wrong with you or you're not doing the right thing.
Let everyone make their own decisions.
current u.s. federal judge is one of jehovah's witnesses - see more at: http://www.jw-archive.org/post/114109639783/current-u-s-federal-judge-is-one-of-jehovahs#sthash.pz6qywnk.dpuf.
I can't think of any scriptural grounds for someone not to be a judge. This would be a conscience matter. There are cases of witnesses still being police officers, too, even if it is not very common.
There are witnesses who own guns to hunt as well, although it's not common in the mainstream.
And you can't cherry pick out cases this guy may have presided over to somehow question his who he is. People's lives are not perfect yet somehow we act like all witnesses have to live only one type of life and if they are not perfect they are hypocrites. I personally am a work in progress and view everyone else that way too. I see ex-witnesses sometimes are as judgmental as witnesses and many times look for things to be wrong, because they want it to be that way.
None of us know this guy personally. There are enough bad people that we don’t have to make EVERYONE bad because of our emotional response to every witness.
http://www.cato.org/blog/religious-persecution-first-freedom-remains-under-global-siege .
march 19, 2015 10:05amreligious persecution: first freedom remains under global siege.
by doug bandow americans take religious liberty for granted.
if you answer 'yah', why do you so answer ?
Do you even watch the news or even know what's going on in the world?
I know that may be harsh, but the news is full of nothing but murder, beheadings, war, bloodshed, and ISIS is throwing gay people off of building tops and cutting peoples heads off for being Christian or not their being their brand of Islam. Do you know how long it takes to cut a person's head off with a knife? It's minutes. Not seconds. And you don't die until the very end when your spinal cord is cut.
You really need to do some inner soul searching.
