Posts by Joel Wideman

i get a lot of attention from the average passerby and i got to thinking, what kind of reaction would somebody get from wearing one to a meeting [do you think]?

Shunning: Is it really a bad thing?

by thinker in

i met my jw wife about 5 years ago.

she da'd shortly after we met and like most people i thought it was terribly strange and wrong that her family shunned her.

for the first two years of our marriage my wife would call her parents on a fairly regular basis.

The way people behave when in a cult is largely due to their cult persona, which is layered over their real selves. The behavior displayed while in a cult may be entirely different than their behavior once they are deprogrammed and the real persona is freed.
But that isn't to say that some people are simply natural jerks.

21

kwintestal == birthday boy.

by ackack in

jw
friends

i'm jealous.

he's gonna get all the attention.

way to go kwin!

Joel Wideman

Happy Birthday!

42

How do you explain bible prophecies?

by ithinkisee in

you know the ones ... how alexander the great was supposedly predicted in advance .... how daniel interpreted dreams and foretold bablyons destruction ..... how cyrus was named years in advance .... how jesus fulfilled so many hebrew scriptures prophecies ...... how do you explain this?

conspiracy by the early church?

conspiracy by the 70 scholars of the lxx?.

Joel Wideman

Qcmbr, Great Britain helped the South, it is true. But the involvement did not constitute war "upon all nations". Also, while WWI and WWII were by definition war "upon all nations", they had nothing at all to do with South Carolina.
This isn't the only false prophecy, but this isn't an exmormon board, and this thread has been hijacked enough.

6

Do you JW's or ex-JWs or Bacs believe the earth is going to burn up?

by booker-t in

jw
friends

i have been wondering about this question for many years since i left the jw's.

i was wondering what people think about this question especially jw's that are doubting the wt or ex-jw's or even born-again christians(bacs) what do you think jehovah is going to do with planet earth?

is he going to set it on fire and burn it up?

Joel Wideman

Why should he do anything to it? We're more likely to blow it up on our own.

31

Are there any writers on here?

by PaulJ in

ok, i work in a dull 9-5 job that is busy but quite boring.

i guess by being a jw in the past i've been encouraged all along to be settled, work to get by.

my focus was supposed to be serving jehovah and nothing else.

Joel Wideman

I also write. The actual writing is only about 10% of the work, the rest is research and preparation. It is true that you should write what you know, but that doesn't mean you can't research something enough to write about it. As for preparation, here are two examples at opposite ends: Stephen King makes a thorough outline before he starts writing, but his final work bears little resemblance to it. Peter Straub avoids writing any outline at all, though he does have a mental picture of the basic plot.
Writers must write, but they must also read. Read everything you can. Nonfiction, fiction, classics, modern literature, your chosen genre, outside it, non-genre, everything. Join a workshop like Critters that has a variety of authors at all levels of ability. (Critters is mainly for SF, Fantasy, or Horror short stories, but sometimes novels are critiqued.) Learning how to critique other stuff gives you incite to your own writing.
Finally, you can sign up now (until November 25th) for the annually held NaNoWriMo challenge.