It's not exactly a Platinum selling album - the type the gas stations take out of storage every Christmas, dust down and throw in the 99p "special offer" clearance box every year. A couple of bottles of Macallan for Tony's cellar should suffice. To be honest , the Society should be paying Aled's record company. Any wordly "artist" ( I'm using the term somewhat generously! ) singing one of the Societies ghastly saccharine coated songs should be paid to do so.
Posts by dozy
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12Watchower and BMG agreed confidential settlement ?
by keinlezard ini just read that watchtower pennsylvania and bmg music ave agreed to a confidential settlement .
about "listen,obey and be blessed" by aled jones ?
anybody have more information ?
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12
Birthdays
by Mufasa ini have an honest question, so i hope someone will explain this to me to the best of their ability.
i'm fascinated with learning about religion!
and i've been looking for a place to ask this, believe me it wasn't an easy find.
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dozy
With regard to the poster's initial question , there is some irony that the Society condemn "Christendom" and "Worldly" ( ie all non JW ) sources of wisdom , yet see no problem in quoting church scholars or academic sources as authorities when it pleases them. These quotes often tend to be cherrypicked - particularly evident in references ( quite often misquoted or out of context ) in creation / evolution or doctrinal matters such as the Trinity.
Regarding birthdays , from my experience and many private conversations with JWs over 40 years , a lot of JWs , especially those with young children , in reality aren't really comfortable with the Societies teaching and many skirt or blur the prohibition in various ways. I remember an elder in my congregation annually inviting my own kids to a childs party which "coincidentally" was always about one week after his daughter's birthday - it had cake , presents and essentially was her birthday party but just held a few days later.
For an interesting analysis of the Society birthday prohibition , see https://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/birthdays.php
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22
Degree of Effectiveness of JW Letter Writing Form of Witnessing
by Disillusioned JW ina newspaper article quotes a jw as saying "every (letter) i put in the mailbox, i feel, 'ah, this could reach somebody.
'" the article also quotes her as saying "we are accomplishing even more now than we were door-to-door because this way everybody in the house gets a chance to pick up that letter and respond to it.
it just feels good.
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dozy
Remember , JW activity is largely not designed to be productive - it is just really a "make work" scheme to qualify as "theocratic activity". This applies to all facets of "service" to the Society , be it all aspects of the ministry , building projects for future flipping , meetings etc. In one of Franz's books , the GB allude to this in one meeting when discussing the ministry and one of the GB members bewailing "What will the brothers do , then?" when discussing the lack of biblical basis for the preaching work.
I remember our congregation had an "assignment" every six months to do garden maintenance at an Assembly Hall. We would hire two minibuses and 20 - 30 of us or so would travel 2 and a half hours to get there , spend a couple of hours weeding etc which included at least 30 minutes ( probably more ) eating our packed lunches in the garden and then we would travel back home.
I was the "responsible" elder who organised things for a few years. I made sure that we always pulled into a McDonalds or KFC off the motorway on the way home and everybody enjoyed the day. For some of the older ones and single sisters etc who were lonely and weren't in the usual congregation cliques it was a real social highlight of the year and for the younger ones it was a chance to have a bit of a laugh with their mates and score a few easy spiritual bragging points.
Frankly what we actually usually "accomplished" in terms of work on the garden could easily have been done by a couple of local ( to the Assembly Hall ) volunteer JWs in a day , or a single professional landscape gardener. On a couple of occasions it was raining hard and all we did was basically sit in the Assembly Hall and had our lunches. From an efficiency angle the whole arrangement was a total waste of time in terms of what was achieved and spent in terms of coach hire , gas , time spent etc. But the whole point was that we thought we had done the "Lords Work". The letter writing is exactly the same as this. 100%.
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28
Watchtower takes parody poster to court.
by Lost in the fog inanother youtube presenter falls foul of the wt society's legal team.
the watch tower copyright lawsuit targets creator of "dubtown" lego animations.
https://www.toptutorials.co.uk/watch-tower-copyright-lawsuit-targets-creator-of-dubtown-lego-animations-torrentfreak/.
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dozy
The one thing I would say is that "Kevin" maybe needs to be a bit cuter in his videos to avoid risking this kind of action. His statements suggesting these are unauthorised leaks don't help and are the sort of thing Youtube will pounce on , given a complaint. Youtube don't take the overall obvious comedic parody content into account as this is subjective. I have noticed Lloyd Evans ( for example ) is a lot more circumspect these days having been the subject of the Societies actions before - there has to be an explicit understanding that video clips are the subject of legitimate criticism.
I often wonder about the WT goons whose job it is to actually view this kind of content , trawling Youtube to find examples of transgressions. Are they so far conditioned that they can just view it without in any way being affected or waking up?
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61
Awake Magazine - No Longer Being Printed?
by JWTom insomeone made reference in another post that the awake magazine had ceased publication.
maybe i missed it since i have not been on here as much in the last 6 months.
is this true?
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dozy
Once the Society brought out the Watchtower "Public" edition , it did seem that the "Awake" days were limited.
I guess we will just have to wait with baited breath for the "exciting" announcement that the celestial chariot is moving ahead at great speed and increasingly as the public are benefiting from online material such as video productions , that Awake magazine production would cease. Another certain sign of Jehovah's blessing blah blah...
In some respects it's quite sad , as I spent many happy rainy afternoons as a kid reading through the back issues that my parents and grandparents had diligently filed inside empty Kelloggs cereal packets.
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16
Did I miss any big news?
by Iamallcool ini used to read this site everyday for years!
i am still learning to be ex ex jw.
did i miss any big news, etc?
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dozy
Not much. Meetings worldwide are on Zoom. The preaching has basically stopped ( other than a few letters being posted out. ) Society continues to build and flip real estate with a new media production centre near the HQ to be finished by 2026. Not really much major doctrinal change - the religion is so dumbed down nowadays anyway.
Take a look through some of the Societies recent videos if you want to see what they are promoting. Basic theme - Armageddon is imminent. So you must "simplify your lives" ( other than the leadership ) and focus on "Kingdom interests" ( ie unpaid "voluntary" work for the Borg) and donate , donate , donate for the King & his Kingdom.
That's about it. Nothing much to see here , folks. Check in again in a few years time!
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7/2021 WT Highlights
by neat blue dog in.. darn, the beard trope is back.
bible student has beard, then shaves when coming in the truth.. .
it's also kinda weird that this jw met what looks like his biological brother in the door to door work.
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dozy
Eve looks good..... By the Society's reckoning , Adam didn't make her pregnant for at least 46 years ( mirroring 1975 - 2021 ). That guy had some discipline.....
And a good looking , young , professional "worldly" guy becoming a JW as a result of being called on in first call? It just doesn't happen.....
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240
Derek Chauvin - The Right to a Fair Trial
by Simon inanyone following the derek chauvin trial?.
if you are actually following it, not just listening to the media, you will likely realize that there is a huge gap between what is going on in court and what is being reported in the media.. if the trial was fair, i think he should be acquitted.
there is plenty of reasonable doubt about the cause of death (his dealer doesn't want to testify because he could be guilty of 3rd degree murder for selling him a fatal amount of fentanyl) and even doubt over whether the officer even had his knee on the guys neck or did anything counter to what they were meant to do as per policy.. but is it fair?
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dozy
It's a jury trial so really it could go either way. Having sat on a jury myself for a criminal trial, I don't really have much faith in the process - at least half the guys in the jury I was involved in were either desperately inadequate , unbelievably dumb or totally lacking in any sensible judgement. Two of them basically slept or daydreamed through most of the week long trial. You honestly wouldn't have trust them to choose a best cake contest at the local village fete , let alone to objectively and professionally weigh up innocence or guilt in a criminal trial.
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Mormon Apologetic Article - JW comparisons etc
by dozy inhttps://www.spectator.co.uk/article/what-mormons-like-me-really-believe.
from an ex-jw perspective , i was quite interested in the above article , which the spectator ( presumably ) felt obligated for legal reasons to publish to allow a response to a rather unfavourable article below.. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-troubling-history-of-mormonism.
the arguments are fairly rehearsed and often used by jw "spokesmen".
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dozy
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/what-mormons-like-me-really-believe
From an ex-JW perspective , I was quite interested in the above article , which the Spectator ( presumably ) felt obligated for legal reasons to publish to allow a response to a rather unfavourable article below.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-troubling-history-of-mormonism
The arguments are fairly rehearsed and often used by JW "spokesmen".
(1) We are not a cult - our leader is Jesus.
(2) Previous doctrines , beliefs and practices are gently dismissed as "old light" ( to use JW parlance ) , what really matters is today.
(3) There is an emotional angle as well - the hope that the writer ( a religious professor in Chester , which must be interesting for his pupils and fellow professors , as unlike the USA it would be unusual for a Mormon to have such a position in a mainstream college ) will see his deceased father.
(4) We are basically just like another church - our beliefs may be pretty crazy ( I'm paraphrasing here ) but so are major Christian beliefs anyway . ( I have some sympathy for this standpoint - bible passages like the parting of the Red Sea , Lot having sex with his two daughters , Noah's ark , Adam & Eve etc are no less nutty or weird than some of the Mormon doctrines and churches like the Catholics are just larger cults , basically. )
The one figure I am puzzling over is his stated figure of 200K Mormons in the UK , which seems to be in line from the figure on Wikipedia. This is from 330 congregations , which would represent over 600 per congregation. This seems a lot , especially as many of those congregations have small halls , or even just meet in a village hall. Although I have known a few Mormons , I have always had the assumption that JWs are much more numerous.
I can't see the UK figures , but looking at the figures from Scotland , the 2011 Census had 4,651 declaring their religion as LDS ( which anecdotally , 1 in approx 1000 , would seem about fair ) but their own figures state 26,536 in 2009 which is a huge difference. Are they basically including pretty much everyone who has ever turned up at a meeting? Or all who are baptised ( bearing in mind that baptism is a very quick process , unlike JWs ) ? Perhaps even dead people ( in accordance with another of their unusual beliefs.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Scotland#Other_Protestant_denominations
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False memorial partakers deserve to die???
by Jofi_Wofo inevery memorial, much emphasis is placed on making sure that only the (self-proclaimed) anointed partake in the emblems.
this year, however, the speaker at my wife's congregation presented it as an even more serious matter.
he likened it to individuals in ancient israel who sought position of the priesthood despite never been appointed by jehovah.
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dozy
One of the elders in my ( former ) congregation had very strong opinions about "fake anointed" ( as he termed them. ). Goodness knows what he is like now they have more than tripled in the last few years! It sounds like this guy was similar & allowed that to flavour his talk. As others have said , normally with a Memorial talk , speakers tend to follow the Society outline really closely.