SBF, thanks for the analysis re: congregations. It's insightful and well thought out. If there's real substance to it, then it has all the more import if the experience reported here has repeated itself in other places:
careful
JoinedPosts by careful
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2017 Yearbook released
by bohm ini saw this on reddit:.
https://www.reddit.com/r/exjw/comments/5mlgsm/2017_yearbook_of_jehovahs_witnesses/.
overall the numbers are better than last year (1.8% growth compared to 1.5% last year -- as i predicted ;-) ) with an increase in all major figures including 1300 more congregations (i assume this is not physical kingdom halls?).
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ROJW - Religious Order of Jehovah's Witnesses
by OrphanCrow ini was going through some research i had done a few years ago and came across something that referenced rojw healthcare support and a note to myself to take a look at rojw when i had the time.
so i did a search for rojw (an acronym for religious order of jehovah's witnesses).. the search turned up some interesting bits of information.. according to dun & bradstreet, rojw was founded in 2011:.
since 2011, rojw has been providing nonclassifiable establishments from wallkill.. for a list of persons who have worked for rojw:.
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careful
OC,
Thanks for the research. Well done. There's a lot to digest here. It looks like more work could be done investigating this matter since you raise new issues. Slimboyfat, are you catching this?
One question already from what you posted: it looks a discrepancy in the year ROJW was founded—was it in 2011 according to D&B or 1999 according to Erica Belfield's entry (as I'm assuming) on the bizstanding link?
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Bro Knorrs Notes RE Disfellowshipping & Two Witness Rule
by pale.emperor inhi guys.
a fellow ex jw shared this with me.
haven't time to read them yet (i'm using my phone to go on internet).
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careful
The idea of giving the talk after the DFing announcement comes from their interpretation of 1 Tim 5:20: "Reprove before all onlookers those who practice sin so the rest may also have fear."
A good link on the chronology of the doctrine is here:
http://www.silentlambs.org/df.htm
Evidently these "Notes" of Knorr became the basis for the 1952 WT articles first on the list.
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Bro Knorrs Notes RE Disfellowshipping & Two Witness Rule
by pale.emperor inhi guys.
a fellow ex jw shared this with me.
haven't time to read them yet (i'm using my phone to go on internet).
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careful
Bonnie_Clyde:
I think the ref. to 1947 is to the Awake! article that said excommunication was wrong. See here:
This a good find for helping date when disfellowshipping began, evidently between 1947 and 1951. Yet another example of a 180º turn in a short time frame.
Thanks for the post, pale.emperor.
Yes, I remember that they would say "Disfellowshipped for fornication/adultery/smoking/etc." back in the 1970s. Maybe it was in the late 70s when they changed that and just said "for conduct unbecoming a Christian." Then it went to just announcing the DFing w/o any stated reason, along with the aforementioned talk on the sin, in the early 80s, I think.
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Jehovah's Wonderous Creation - The Guinea Worm
by pale.emperor inyou're not likely to see this in an awake!
magazine, but here goes.
for those that believe in intelligent design please explain this one to me:.
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careful
Rainbow_Troll, so is the Book of Jubilees from Satan or Jehovah?
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The Governing Body are doubling down on dogma!
by DATA-DOG inin case you were wondering if the governing body we're going to become kinder and gentler, the answer is a big "no!!!
in the current study edition of the wt magazine, the sheeple are reminded of some very important key points.
1) god has an organization ( corporation ) that you must respect.. 2) only the gb/faithful slave can dispense spiritual food and only the gb/faithful slave can interpret the bible.. 3) individual dubs absolutely cannot learn "truth" on their own.. 4) god requires "unity of doctrine.
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careful
DATA-DOG, when you say the "current study edition" what date do you mean? I have not kept up with the WT lit. in years, so I don't know. I realize from comments at this forum that the mags have changed. If you wouldn't mind sharing the pages numbers this stuff is on, that would be helpful to me. I'm going to have to read it, and I'd like to keep the pain of doing so to a minimum. Thanks in advance.
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Go into the city to So-and-so
by Funchback inmatthew 26:18 ("go into the city to so-and-so..."-nwt) and ruth 4:1 ("at that boʹaz said: 'come here and sit down, so-and-so.
' "-nwt) used to annoy me.
i didn't really understand it.
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careful
If you're interested in more detail, a professor of Hebrew Bible at Vanderbilt University wrote an article in 2012 on this phrase in the Ruth passage. Here's the link. It begins on page 251:
https://my.vanderbilt.edu/jacksasson/files/2013/03/Sasson-So-and-so-Eskenazi-Fs.pdf
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Does anybody know the story with this?
by careful inthere is a book entitled untouchable by jacob miller published in 2010 (© by angel garcia).
the cover says that it's about "the biggest latino gangster ever recorded to be associated with the mafia.
" ordinarily i could care less about things like that.
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careful
There is a book entitled Untouchable by Jacob Miller published in 2010 (© by Angel Garcia). The cover says that it's about "the biggest Latino gangster ever recorded to be associated with the mafia." Ordinarily I could care less about things like that. However, I ran across the book when doing a quick google search on a biblical passage that I remembered (quicker than just looking it up) from the NWT, one that would not be rendered in any other Bible translation as I remembered it because it contained Freddie Franz's unique "systems of things" (1Cor. 10:11). The first hit on google was to this Untouchable book, so I unsuspectedly clicked it. What came up was one of those "teaser" partial electronic copies of a complete book with extended excerpts, actual pages from the book but which also lacked huge sections of it. The purpose, of course, is to get people to buy the book by teasing them with bits of it.
From the three-page Preface, dated April, 2008, which is presented in its entirety, I learned that the author Miller has written a book about a gangster, a Puerto Rican/NYer and an admitted murderer named Frankie, who "was a man of dualities, a veteran criminal to the bone but also a religious man aiming to improve himself" (17). Pages 375-381 (less p. 380) are in the electronic preview. Paragraph after paragraph on these pages contain quotations from the Bible exclusively out of the NWT. It is clear from them, as well as statements along with them that show JW theology, that whoever this Frankie character is, he converted to the Witness faith.
The story of that conversion is evidently told somewhere between p. 327 and 375 as those pages are missing in the preview. It's interesting that this link came up at the top of the search list because, as I understand it, google prioritizes its results in a search by the frequency of users who actually click on the link provided. That would mean this book must have some popularity. However, I did a search on Worldcat and no library in the world that is indexed in that database, a huge number of them, holds the book. Admittedly the market for it is pop culture, but it seems like a strange contradiction.
Whatever the case with that, if indeed some gangster/murderer-turned-brother has gone to a worldly writer to have his life's story told and that story is gruesome and shameful as any seriously involved gangster's life would be, and this brother has not paid his debt to society for his crimes, but is a member in good standing in some congregation (admittedly my speculations since the book sample is incomplete), this could present an embarrassing problem for the org and the GB, especially with all this child abuse exposure they are so actively running from. Again from the details in the Preface, "Frankie" had gone to a shady loan shark to get the money up front for Miller to publish his story, not a very positive thing for a brother to do, eh?
So does anyone know what the story is with this book and/or this "Frankie" guy (perhaps "Angel Garcia")? Does anyone know if the book's publication is now, or will become, a problem for the org? If nothing else, it bears watching.
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question from readers: with all the animal sacrifices, wouldnt the temple smell worse than a stockyard?
by nowwhat? inwith all the cattle, sheep and others wouldn't they be shitting and peeing all over the place?
along with the gallons and gallons of blood being drained and then the flesh being burned as well.
wouldn't the stench be unbearable?.
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careful
It would also have smelled like Burger King with all that beef sizzling on the altar. Maybe one smell worked against the other.
It is good to remember that such was the case in most, if not all, of the other ancient societies. In Homer's Iliad "hactaombs" (the sacrifice of groups of 100 animals, though probably not always to be taken literally at exactly 100) are mentioned regularly (for example, at 1.431-447, 2.306, 4.120). The only way people could eat fresh meat was to slaughter an animal and cook it right away. Since meat was not a regular part of most people's diet, it was offered to the masses at festivals/holidays/celebrations, and these were centered in the temple. The priests were the cooks, their assistants, the slaughter men. It wasn't just the Jews in Jerusalem. If you were an average Syrian, Babylonian, Greek, it was the same story.
Temples were also the banks since they were the most secure places in a city. Hence the common temple robbers, and the money changers Jesus threw out. Knowledge of the temples of antiquity helps one today appreciate why they were so important.
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What is the vow of poverty
by Jafox ini was told by someone that in 2007 two members of the branch committee in greece were removed because they breached the vow of poverty.
the matter was over a small amount, in the range of a few hundred euro.
is there a copy of this vow available and how would this be applied here?
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careful
Partly on topic was a question I had asked about this matter here, just a few weeks ago: