this is the first time i have posted on here in many years..... i seldom visit now although this forum was instrumental to me in gaining my sanity in the early 2000's and recovering from the watchtower religion.. by chance tonight i was on youtube and caught a jw.org video which out of curiosity prompted me to look at the official website and amongst other things i looked up the music section.. why that i hear you ask?
music is my passion and nothing reminds me more or evokes more memories than the kingdom songs i grew up listening to.. i am 49 years old and my mother was baptised in 1974. i grew up in the era of pink songbooks and green bibles.
of the theology of fred franz and types and anti-types.
What a marvelous thread. Loved the OP's words "Presentation and media dominate. Teachings take second place to appearance."
Also liked BluesBrother's and others' comments about how the old ones feel so out-of-place and just want the current JW world to end.
this subject has been brought up before.
the governing body and watchtower have repeatedly encouraged jws to show loyalty to the organization to "keep the congregation clean" by reporting wrongdoing to the elders.. i know directly of two cases.
two jws working in the records department of our local hospital "outed" 3rd gens 1st husband to the local elders when he and his mistress sought medical treatment together for stds.
This is an interesting topic. It makes me wonder if medical employers will soon begin asking specific questions during interviews with prospective hires like, "Are the are any reasons you might feel the need to break patient confidentiality?" and/or make all employees sign statements that would make them personally liable for damage done for such breaches. It might also make lawmakers stiffen the penalties for violating such laws, say, from making them civil to criminal.
i happened to be picking up the family from the kingdom hall today, and it struck me how the outside appearance has changed a little.
i know it's not new, but perhaps being away from it all for so long made a difference.. of course i noticed the blue jw.org box on the side labeled "kingdom hall of jehovah's witnesses", but it was two things that stood out to me.
the first thing was the meeting times.
Why "Midweek Meeting" and "Weekend Meeting"? This way they can change the meeting names, like they did from TMS and SM to CLAM and so on with some regularity and they won't have to change the sign outside.
Changing meeting names can be a big deal in Witnessland. It makes the R&F feel like they're aboard Jah's chariot, that "new light" is beaming down, etc. So a switch in meeting names is easier now with such generic titles available to passers-by, you know, the poor uninitiated.
... or is that one of our memes?
thanks..
From the WT article pictured above. "A generation is not overly long." What does that mean?
for over 20 years subliminal pictures showed up in most books, wt, and awakes- eighties, nineties and into 2000's.... demons, gods, you name it-- .
question: is anyone seeing anything like this in todays publications?
.
If you're interested, a chap named Darek Barefoot (real spelling of his first name) documented a lot of this back in the late 1980s. He, along with his entire family, was DFed for bringing it to the attention of the brothers/org. He later wrote a book about it all. This has been discussed here:
https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/267758/hour-darkness-derek-barefoot
http://www.believermag.com/issues/201302/?read=article_scorah.
i found it a very interesting read.
the article was linked on one of my fav websites digg.
dozy,
Thanks for bringing back this link. I'd remembered reading it several times in the past six years, and it was very timely of you to resurrect it with the NY Times article that some have just posted about her book. Cheers!
just going by memory here with regard to the "old testament' when god promised the land he chose for the jews ,flowing with milk and honey ?.
their is no record in the bible of god ever giving an option to all the nations that already lived their to move on and he would compensate them at a new destination.?.
apparently without warning he just charged up the israelite`s for war with these nations to evict them from this territory that they had resided in for who knows how long.. not only that ,they apparently spared no one in their conquests killing man,woman and even dashing children to pieces ,and not feeling sorry for anyone.. don`t people think that this is a bit barbaric ?.
Judging anything from the ancient world by modern standards will always have this result. I remember a history professor in a course on ancient Rome saying 95% of the people in the Roman world would be labeled sexual predators for life if they were to be judged by the norms of modern western society.
He showed a video about archaeology and the academics in it kept saying over and over how we should not judge the ancient world by modern standards, but by the standards of that time—so very different from our own. The course professor asked if we thought it would be right to for people 2000 years in the future to judge us today by the standards that those in the future will have. The class got the point.
this weeks meeting features a video about maintaining kingdom halls.
it mentions a few times, how kh belong to jehovah, and are dedicated to him.. anybody ever wondered, if they belong to jehovah, how come, they are being sold all the time?
can you give something to jehovah and then take it back?
I remember back in the 80s before the WT financial crisis really hit, they used to sell KHs to churches. Back then it was done to help finance a new KH build. But there was no issue with taking "Christendom's money" to "further kingdom interests"!
evidently they have changed their creative day from being 7000 years per day.
all blood transfusions were taboo but now blood fractions might be allowed to be taken into the body.
vaccinations were sinful at one time but not now.. can you name other views or beliefs that have changed from being considered “truth” to no longer “the truth “?.
SBF,
"it’s a term that Adventists promoted, I think." I don't know about that, but it is sure THE term used by anti-JW (and anti-Adventist) evangelicals when they write their "anti-cult" stuff, and the topic is the state of the dead.
https://www.bizjournals.com/newyork/news/2019/05/16/jehovahs-witnesses-jettisons-brooklyn-development.html.
zing.
Thanks for the post and info.
