i knew many of them.
some in my own family.
they were the ones considered spiritually weak because they:
Looking at this matter from the other way around:
- during my time in the borg, I more than once heard it observed that "It was always the 'zealous' ones who seemed to get disfellowshipped."
Of course, in the JW world, the sole criterion for whether you are "strong / zealous" or "weak" is that column on the Monthly Report Form that bears the title "HOURS".
Given that, the terms"Strong Publisher" and weak publisher" surely do not mean too much!
large numbers of jw congregations are going to be trouble long before they lose their last elder to death or resignation.. most congregations i know have at least one - and often several - elders who can barely function at all, due to illness, old age.
or just plain inability to accomplish anything.
the society seems loathe to remove these men, despite their 'elder in name only'.
How things must have changed! The congregations that I was with 20 - 25 years ago were spilling over with Elders and Ministerial Servants. That was not the end of it, either: - those who weren't Servants or Elders were climbing over each other to get there! There used to be a surfiet of Elders and Servants - plus a huge pool of Wanabees. Now, it seems like the prevailing attitude now is NAFI i.e. "No Ambition, and ##ck All Interest" How sad! (like hell) Jack
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if the nwt was produced by people who can't read and write the translated languages - can it really be a translation ?
or, is it a transliteration - have they used other bibles (of english) to produce the work - altering the words as they go ?
Reefton Jack,
That's me all-right.
I reckon that I know you, too:
- There were only about three days of the year when you weren't wearing that NZ Railways issue Swandri!
The Mayor.
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if the nwt was produced by people who can't read and write the translated languages - can it really be a translation ?
or, is it a transliteration - have they used other bibles (of english) to produce the work - altering the words as they go ?
Previous threads on this board have left the impression, that - despite himself - F.W. Franz actually produced a reasonably accurate translation (at least of the Old Testament).
In this, though (as in all other matters, let's face it) a woeful lack of scholarship on the part of the WTS is evident. Your suggestion that Fred Franz just used existing English translations - but threw in some words of his own - could well be right.
The Mayor.
btw: excluding joining jwism unless it's too intriguing not to say.
here's mine: .
it was in the day when the paraffin man went around selling to those that still had the old paraffin burners to keep their house warm.
I don't even have to stop and think about the answer to this one!
The most stupid thing that I ever did was (unquestionably) first picking up an Awake magazine:
- and thus beginning the descent down the proverbial Slippery Slide into JW Madness.
(That single unwise move far eclipses any of the other ecapades that I had with petrol & matches, shellite & matches, or methylated spirits & matches as a boy - or with firearms, motorcycles or wild women as a young man!)
This, though, is easier to say with the benfit of hindsight - an dunfortunately, Hindsight always seems to be 20/20!
The Mayor
i'd say out of 10 elders, the average "sharp" ones are 2 or 3.
Many - maybe most - of the elders that I knew suffered from a lack of education.
Given the WTS's downer on education, this is hardly surprising.
Some others had been appointed as elders while they were still very young, and as a consequence, suffred from a lack of experience in life and living.
The majority , though, did seem to be of average intelligence, or slightly above.
One I know of is of extremely high intelligence ( an IQ shared by just 5% of the population):
- How any such highly intelligent person can have allowed themselves to be deluded by the WTS is, of course, another story altogether!
I think that is the crux of matter when considering whether all elders are "dumb" or not:
- Whatever their individual levels of intelligence, ALL are deluded - and this is going to show in their beliefs / actions / attitudes.
i grew up in the borg and can remember feeling a disconnect with the portrayal of witness behavior in the literature and what i actually experienced.
the stories from the yearbook about people wanting to study with witnesses "thirsty for knowledge of the truth" were so different from the responses i got in the fs, where people just seemed annoyed.
the pictures of happy folk and families of all colors looking toward some ray of light, united in the love for jehoober and each other, did not square with what was going on in my congo.
Lowden sums it up perfectly:
"Nobody can live up to those standards - we all fail from time to time, and sometimes quite miserably."
There was a time when I sincerely thought that I was the only one failing to meet the standards, and that everyone else was a good JW - except for me.
(The again, there was once a time when I believed in Santa Claus, too!)
It must be said on this matter, though :
- JWs are no different from any other religion in failing to live up to their own standards (But man alive, they surely think that they are different!)
STATEMENT OF BELIEF:
"I believe in Unicorns, Tooth Fairies, good JWs - and all other Mythological Creatures."
The Mayor of Turiwhate.
PS: There are others around who would take matters one step further, and declare that the only Good JW is a dead one!
one of my best friends in the world pam who is a non-judgmental born-again christians told me that she thinks that we are only "pawns" in a chess game played by jehovah and satan.
at first i thought pam was joking with me but she told me she was serious as a heart attack.
she then started to explain her position.
I am having a bit of a problem with this one - perhaps somene else can enlighten me:
- What freedom of choice did Job's ten children have in their lives being snuffed out, while the principal players in the game sought to prove a point?
my original post: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/112134/1.ashx.
again, i quote from the "bible teach" book, on p.89: millions of people have been killed in wars during the past century.
one british historian wrote: "the 20th century was the most murderous in recorded history...it was a century of almost unbroken war, with few and brief periods without organised and armed conflict somewhere.
I have previously been attacked on this board for repeating this quotation (!), but I will repeat it once more:
"In this world there are three things:
1) There are Lies
2) Then there are Blatant Lies
3) And then there are Statistics!"
(Authorship unknown)
- Given the WTS record with honesty, you would want to always (seriously) question any statistics that they bandy about.
- Add to this the total lack of scholarship amongst the WTS, and it does not exactly inspire confidence in anything that they might say!
the "bible teach" book, on p.89 says:millions of people have been killed in wars during the past century.
one british historian wrote: "the 20th century was the most murderous in recorded history...it was a century of almost unbroken war, with few and brief periods without organised and armed conflict somewhere.
" a report from the worldwatch institute states: "three times as many people fell victim to war in [the 20th] century as in all the wars from the first century ad to 1899.
You would get the impression that WTS claims about the huge upsurge in deadly wars from the time of WWI onward primarily refer to the wars that took place in Europe.
Other posters on this thread, though, have drawn attention to the massive death toll of (earlier) wars that were fought in Asia.
Even in Europe, large scale warfare has run in cycles:
eg: - The Thirty Years War of the 17th Century (any war that kills 75% of a country's population has to be treated as a large-scale one!)
- The Napoleonic Wars of the first decade of the 19th Century.
Concerning the last 100 years, would it not be correct to say that the 61 years since the end of WWII is one of the longest periods of stability that Europe has known?
Perhaps W. Schnell, in his "Thirty Years a Watchtower Slave", had a point:
He maintained (when discussing this thought of "more and more deadly wars") that the WTS merely capitalised on the great upheaval in Europe that followed the First World War.
- After all, they had to do something to detract from the fact that they were completely wrong about 1914!
