Old Goat

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Posts by Old Goat

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  25

  My Family's Bible Student History

  by designs in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  recently my cousin on my mother's mcconnell side of the family stopped by for a visit and brought several boxs of photos and memorabilia and family bibles.

  two of the bibles are very worn and contain many hand written notes from my grandfather, grandmother and uncle who were bible students and then jws.. leafing through the pages of one bible this morning i came across something i had never seen- a jw calling card, a business card size.

  it says 'one of jehovah"s witnesses' second line 'preaching the kingdom of jehovah our god' the capitals and lower case words were interesting in how they saw things after 1931.. there are photos of russell, knorr with van amberg (who stayed with my grandparents on visits to california), knorr with a fellow taller than knorr who looks like chairman mao (anyone have a guess who that might be).

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  Old Goat

  i'd love to see the photos. macmillan stayed with my uncle when he came to this part of the country in the 1940s. I regret not taking photos.

  can you post some of them for us to see?
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  19

  Elders and former elders: Judicial cases how often?

  by A question in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  how many judicial cases did you serve on, in how many years as an elder?

  feel free to talk about the cases too..

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  Old Goat

  I was a company servant, later congregation servant, then elder. I resigned in the 1990s due to health and age issues. At the risk of making myself identifiable, my wife and I were moved from place to place sometimes specifically to address issues in troubled congregations. That did not alway require a "judicial" approach. Common sense and kindness does wonders. Legalism is a bad path to follow except as a last resort.

  The worst year saw a back log of unaddressed issues extending back for almost a decade. There were many meetings, not all of them 'judicial." it was an exhausting year. A good year saw most issues go away without a committee meeting. You get from a congregation what you put into it. Create an 'elders' club" and you will have trouble. Be a shepherd and you will have far fewer problems. Unfortunately, many elders are power hungry dolts who create their own problems.

  My wife and I (and another elder from California) were sent into a mountain states congregation and told by the Circuit Overseer to open every committee file and review it. That review revealed years-long abuse of power by the past congregation servant/presiding elder. He was a nasty bit of work who came to my house to rant and managed to keep it up mostly without a breath for an hour and a half. He called his son-in-law, an elder in the next congregation down the road, and tried to get him to come to our congregation to "clean our spiritual clocks."

  If 'the truth' fails, it's because of people like that.
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  6

  Sample Pages

  by Old Goat in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  this is a follow up to my last post about the history written by schulz and de vienne.

  they've posted sample pages from their forth coming book on their blog.

  http://truthhistory.blogspot.com/.

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  Old Goat

  No connection to anointed.org or what ever that is. Dr. de Vienne also writes fiction and has a literary/arts blog that is a bit chatty and sometimes about her daughters' antics. she is not a Witness. Mr. (Dr?) Schulz has no other web presence as far as I know. He is a long-time Witness. I worked with him at International Conventions and such back in the day. Nice guy. One of the few Witnesses I found worthy of respect. They both teach.
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  6

  Sample Pages

  by Old Goat in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  this is a follow up to my last post about the history written by schulz and de vienne.

  they've posted sample pages from their forth coming book on their blog.

  http://truthhistory.blogspot.com/.

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  Old Goat

  I'm sure it does. I just don't know what it is.
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  6

  Sample Pages

  by Old Goat in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  this is a follow up to my last post about the history written by schulz and de vienne.

  they've posted sample pages from their forth coming book on their blog.

  http://truthhistory.blogspot.com/.

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  Old Goat

  This is a follow up to my last post about the history written by Schulz and de Vienne. They've posted sample pages from their forth coming book on their blog. Take a look.

  http://truthhistory.blogspot.com/
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  6

  Can you help?

  by Old Goat in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i seldom post here, though i read the posts here daily.

  i spend most of my time just growing older.

  (i became a witness in 1948, so you can guess my age.

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  Old Goat

  Nathan,

  That's a very interesting comment. I've read snippets of their material on Paton. There is a finished chapter with his biography. It's really good. I see that they see him as a bit nasty. I've read some of their notes on his break with Russell, and though I reject Universalism, some of what he wrote strikes me as very thoughtful. In this era Russell associated with G Myers, a Restitution evangelist. I've read some of his sermons. I can see why he didn't stay with the Watch Tower, and I wish they were more readily avialable. Do you have any other names of "the thoughtful" that fall into the period before 1890? This topic interests me.
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  6

  Can you help?

  by Old Goat in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i seldom post here, though i read the posts here daily.

  i spend most of my time just growing older.

  (i became a witness in 1948, so you can guess my age.

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  Old Goat

  As I understand it, A. D. Jones does not come off well. He became a major fraudster and was responsible for someone's death. He was arrested and fled NYC for points west. One of the authors told me that Conley hired a clergyman for his faith cure house that seduced the young women. Conley was suitably horrified, I suppose. I've read bits of their research on A P Adams. Apparently he was a corpulent bully.
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  6

  Can you help?

  by Old Goat in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i seldom post here, though i read the posts here daily.

  i spend most of my time just growing older.

  (i became a witness in 1948, so you can guess my age.

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  Old Goat

  I seldom post here, though I read the posts here daily. I spend most of my time just growing older. (I became a Witness in 1948, so you can guess my age.) I have an enduring interest in Witness history. I follow the two history blogs run by Schulz and de Vienne, the authors of the biography of Nelson Barbour. They endlessly impress me with their work.

  Today on the public blog one of them posted a question concerning their next book. They are considering publishing volume one now. I’ve read almost all of this in rough draft as they post it on their private blog. It’s startlingly good. The research is the best I’ve ever seen and it is readable. In a quiet and scholarly way (they’re both teachers) the authors reveal parts of the Watchtower’s past I’d guess the Watchtower Society does not itself know and in detail. It’s not the expose some of us might want. It’s good, solid history.

  It’s drawn from original sources including the private papers of the principals. I’ve noted in their footnotes private letters from J. C. Sunderlin, family papers from the von Zech family, Stetson's private letters and similar things. The chapter on Russell’s childhood and young adult years is the most complete I’ve ever seen, and it’s illustrated with photos of original documents. The photos they’ve uncovered are sometimes poor quality, but that they found them at all is amazing.

  The problem is they’re considering shutting down their project. It’s not in anyone’s interest to have that happen. If you’re at all interested in a really good, solidly researched, professionally written history of the Watchtower, please go to their public blog and tell them so:

  http://truthhistory.blogspot.com/

  Their book considers the years from Russell’s childhood to about 1887. It documents the development of Zion’s Watch Tower readers into a separate religious identity. But, unlike Zygmunt and others, does so from a historian’s perspective, rather than from a sociologist’s view. A chapter on the early “study group” dissects their doctrinal development. The authors connect what Russell wrote about it to the books he read, the controversies of the day and tells the sources of their early beliefs. It was for me a myth-busting read.

  There is a section on Russell’s business ventures. Interestingly, part of it is taken from the Ross libel trial. I’ve looked for decades for a fragment of that and never found it. They trash what some have written about Russell's businesses, noting in footnotes and text (with supporting documentation) what really happened.

  They are occasionally snippy over what others have written. A recent book by Zydeck is trashed in some detail. Things Witness writers have said are found to be untrue. They smack some anti-Witness writers for bad research.

  They take up the widely held belief that Russell was primarily influenced by Adventists. This turns out to be a distortion. In chapters two and three they take us back through the pages of The Restitution, the Bible Examiner and other papers and show us just who these people were and with whom they affiliated. They present things I’d never seen and I’ve researched this subject since the 1950s.

  One thing that impresses me is their willingness to understand religious foible and to still present events bluntly. If the Watchtower Society had done this years ago, instead of foisting off propaganda as history, some of us would have a better view of them. I would at least.

  I can’t praise them enough, as you can see. If you value this kind of research, go to their blog and tell them so. I do not want this project to die, and personally, I would like them to publish volume one as soon as possible. Will you help?
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  34

  A handy CHRONOLOGY of the life and times of Charles and Maria Russell

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  1852 charles taze russell was born in(february 16) in pittsburgh, pennsylvania.

  he was raised in a strict presbyterian home.. 1868 (age 16) in an encounter with a non-believer he became disillusioned over the subject of whether god as a heavenly father would burn his children in hell.

  side note: 1869 (joseph franklin rutherford was born and raised a baptist).

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  Old Goat

  Keith wasn't a Second Adventist. He was a resident of Dannsville, New York, who heard Barbour in 1867 and was persuaded. The Keith's were Presbyterians first, then Methodists. Several writers have suggested that Keith was active in the Millerite movement. This is improbable, unless he was a very precocious three year old.
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  34

  A handy CHRONOLOGY of the life and times of Charles and Maria Russell

  by Terry in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  1852 charles taze russell was born in(february 16) in pittsburgh, pennsylvania.

  he was raised in a strict presbyterian home.. 1868 (age 16) in an encounter with a non-believer he became disillusioned over the subject of whether god as a heavenly father would burn his children in hell.

  side note: 1869 (joseph franklin rutherford was born and raised a baptist).

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  Old Goat

  The idea put forward as Keith's was of a two-stage, partially invisible presence. This can be traced back to the 1600's and was an issue among aglican expositors in the 1700s who distinguished between a "real" and a "virtual" parousia. When Keith undertook the study, Shimeall, a presbyterian minister, had just published a book that advocated the idea. Keith points to Liddell and Scotts Lexicon, the Emphatic Diaglott and D. D. Wheadon's commentary. (Wheadon was a methodist). Most of what Keith suggested comes from the pages of Wheadon's commentary on Luke. (See Schulz and de Vienne: Nelson Barbour: The Millennium's forgotten prophet. This book is on Barns and Noble as an ebook, on lulu.com as paperback. Well worth the money.)

  The problem here is that some are willing to make sweeping statements without having done the research. Our arguments become weak when they're based on imagination. The strongest arguments are based on provable fact. An oft repeated mistake is still a mistake. Senic's statement is an example. Russell did discern an invisible return. The problem isn't with what the proclaimer's book said, but with what it did not say. He discerned it because he got it from others. In this case, he believed it before meeting Barbour and Keith. He tells us in To Readers of the Herald of the Morning, that he got it from Seiss's Last Times.

  Russell didn't believe in a totally invisible presence until about 1880. The shift in doctrine was quietly argued among Watch Tower writers; the discussion being prompted by an article by Lizzie A. Allen.

  It puzzles me that some are willing to make strong assertions without proof or in disregard to the actual meaning of words. If you want to make a strong argument, you should be accurate. If you just want to rant, then, I suppose, it does not matter.