Posts by Ténébreux

40

Memorial Partaker totals for 72 years by request!

by Atlantis in

question from researcher: the other day you posted the australian peak publishers and i was wondering if it would be possible to post the numbers of the "memorial partakers" from 1935 to 2006. that would be about 72 years of totals.. my answer: yes, we can do that for you but it will take a few hours to get everything together and scanned.

i will have to use different forms of wt literature to accomplish this.. unless indicated otherwise, numbers listed show partakers for previous year and some could show: "still incomplete" but they are still listed as a total nevertheless.

cheers!

Ténébreux

Here is a line graph that I made using Excel.

25

Is the Society embarrassed to mention Disfellowshipping / Shunning Policy?

by Gill in

is the watchtower society secretly a little embarrassed by its shunning / disfellowshipping policy.. i haven't seen much in the way of instructions on how to deal with the 'lliving dead' in the watchtower and awake magazines in the last few years.

they tend to talk about df'd persons as 'choosing a course of life that leads to df ing rather than that harsh nitty gritty of how to treat or rather mistreat such people.. is this mistreatment only discussed in the kingdom ministry pamphlets now and deliberately kept hush hush?.

i should imagine the high mortatlity rate due to df ing leading to suicides could be very embarrassing for the organization..

Ténébreux

Any statement that starts with "we" should not have the word "choose" anywhere in it, it's inherently self-contradictory. The "we" refers to the organization, but what exactly is an "organization" anyway? It's an abdication of personal choice to a system of centralized control, that's what.

25

Is the Society embarrassed to mention Disfellowshipping / Shunning Policy?

by Gill in

is the watchtower society secretly a little embarrassed by its shunning / disfellowshipping policy.. i haven't seen much in the way of instructions on how to deal with the 'lliving dead' in the watchtower and awake magazines in the last few years.

they tend to talk about df'd persons as 'choosing a course of life that leads to df ing rather than that harsh nitty gritty of how to treat or rather mistreat such people.. is this mistreatment only discussed in the kingdom ministry pamphlets now and deliberately kept hush hush?.

i should imagine the high mortatlity rate due to df ing leading to suicides could be very embarrassing for the organization..

Ténébreux

It's funny how some concepts are either praiseworthy or deeply embarrassing, depending on the exact terminology used. We merely choose not to associate with wrongdoers; no we don't practice shunning, you've been misinformed. It's all about what word to use, what spin to put on it.

141

Are ex-JW still gullible or serpent-like?

by BEROEAN in

just wondering if ex-jws find it hard to trust others since their bad experience or are they still gullble souls?

just wondering because some of the stories i read about past experiences are off the charts!

some of you, your childhoods, your parents are seriously jacked up!

Ténébreux

I think my experience of leaving JWs has made me less susceptible to coercion and less fearful of the unknown. But I'd say I'm still gullible in some ways. I tend to get scammed easily - it's just not in my nature to steal and take advantage of people, so I get caught by surprise when someone does it to me. But I choose to see that as their personality flaw and not mine.

19

Apocryphal Books

by Black Man in

i've been starting to read the apocryphal books (just for the heck of it and pure academia), you know, those books that were deemed unsuitable to be considered as part of the bible canon by the religous bureaucrats back in 317 c.e.

at the council of nicea (constantinople).

i think the bible and the apocryphal books are probably a bunch of crap, but can someone school me on them?

Ténébreux

I got a book from my local library years ago with a collection of Apocryphal books. It was a really bizarre read. Particularly the "Infancy" which supposedly chronicles the life of Jesus as a child, but portrays him as a right little Hitler. At one point he strikes another child dead on the spot for accidentally bumping into him (or something like that). Really weird.

12

Roof Repair-Could Any Brothers Give a Hand?

by bavman in

a friend/co-worker of mine who is an inactive dub told me today that the old hall i went to is getting a new roof.

however, he was upset because only "special" people are being allowed to work on it (himself not included, nor his active, in good-standing father).

it seems you have to be "invited" to work on your own kingdom hall roof now.

Ténébreux

Captain James Cook got all his crew to eat sauerkraut (to prevent scurvy) by telling them that it was strictly for officers only. Same thing here - make it a special privilege to provide free labour, and they'll all be scrambling to do it.

16

They got him!

by ithinkisee in

Ténébreux

"Venkman, how many times must I tell you, don't cross the streams!"

3

Breaking the mold

by RollerDave in

we are all products of our upbringing to more of an extent than most of us are probably aware.. those of us brought up in the wts mindset have to admit that we have been affected by it.. i, myself, am surprised at the effect it had on me, i sometimes find that i have been molded into the mindset and even though i have discarded the wts trappings, the framework remains to be used be new beliefs just as harmfully.. unless the actual framework, the mold, can be broken; we run the risk of just stumbling from one disastrous belief system to the next.. being a zealot can be so appealing, but it is just a part of the framework that props up the wts mindset.

i have been guilty of it.. as the very glimmerings of disenchantment began faintly glowing within me, i found that redirecting my considerable zealotry helped me to ignore my misgivings for a time.

i redirected my stubborn certainty into computer os bigotry.. i became an amiga fanatic, devoted to that platform with a fervor replicating that of a wts drone.

Ténébreux

As a fellow ex-JW and Amiga enthusiast, I enjoyed reading your story. I guess being raised as a JW affects us all differently. The idea of something being the "one true" way of doing it (to which everyone must be converted) never really rubbed off onto other areas of my life. I loved the Amiga too, and thought it was better than any other computer (which it was, of course) but never felt compelled to convert anyone else to it. I guess I just don't have that proper fundamentalist mindset, which is almost certainly why I failed as a JW.

I now have in my possession a copy of WinUAE and couple of DVDs containing literally thousands of floppy disk images of just about every Amiga game, program and magazine cover-disk that ever existed. Just for a laugh I play around with them occasionally and think "THIS is what I thought was so incredible back then?" I guess that must be the equivalent of picking up a Watchtower and thinking "THIS is what I used to believe?"

76

Why did you leave the org?

by A-Team in

were you dfed, did you find out some lies about the org?.

what was the last straw?

Ténébreux

I simply ran out of reasons to think they were so different from the other religions that they criticize.

10

WatchTower=Ark? (More Fuel For The Fire)

by BlazyJon1 in

i think not, check this link out http://www.beliefnet.com/boards/message_list.asp?discussionid=564945

Ténébreux

All that guff about "What is its modern-day counterpart?" always irritated me. The question never comes after a discussion about whether anything was meant to foreshadow something in our times or not... they just leap straight in with "WHAT does it foreshadow?"