have joined in the past month or two?.
i can't keep up there seems to be so many so i wanted to start a welcome thread for new newbies.. sorry if this was already done recently.. note: the in-built search system is currently being redeveloped so i am not able to check for this topic without looking through tons of pages.. anyway...say hello!.
plm.
Hey Plum,
I joined shortly after finding this forum on July 28th. Is that close enough?
Here was my first comment
metatron,exactly. That's what I say about the WTBTS. They are the Taliban without the weapons.
I guess I wasn't working on "tact" that day.
?use and shun?
wts=jehovah?s mouthpiece .
we didn?t know that either until you shunned your daughter!
Welcome!
Rock on! I like Restrangled. She's definately not afraid to say what she means.
Can I call you "Nightmare" for short?
does anyone have scans of the annual reports for the last 2 years?
i am going to be in california this weekend.
i will end up seeing my parents, who will tell me how "wonderful the growth is".
Thanks everyone for the comments and suggestions.
sspo, I agree with you, but apparently it is hard for the R&F to believe something other than what they want to believe, so they just go with what they have been saying for years and assume it is true.
almagothika, 508,525 bible studies and only 28,384 baptized? That just made me laugh! That's a lot of bible studies going nowhere!
bluesbrother, yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
fullofdoubtnow, well they've already sort of done that by continually lowering the requirements for publishers (to 15 minutes) and pioneers (now 70 hours). The totals don't mean what they used to. But, in some significant cases, they are staying flat or going down anyway.
AK Jeff, excellent suggestion. I did that and found the scans I was looking for. Thanks!
But ultimately, I guess garybuss has the right answer. It galls me when they spout these "pie in the sky" perceptions. I know that I can prove to them that what they are saying about "all the growth" and "inactive ones streaming back into the org", is not true, even according to their reports! But I also know that as soon as I am done doing that, they will try to find some way to spin it their way. I can hear it now... "well, it was prophesied that a 'testing and sifting' would take place". So as much as I would like to just take the statistics and whack them upside the head with them, I will try to be prepared to reason with them about what it all means.
Thanks again!
does anyone have scans of the annual reports for the last 2 years?
i am going to be in california this weekend.
i will end up seeing my parents, who will tell me how "wonderful the growth is".
Does anyone have scans of the annual reports for the last 2 years? I am going to be in California this weekend. I will end up seeing my parents, who will tell me how "wonderful the growth is". A friend of theirs told my wife last weekend that "inactive ones are streaming back into the org". I would like to show the numbers for countries that were flat or in decline, especially the U.S., to counteract the propaganda. Thanks!
i'll be honest; i'm mostly a curiosity seeker, though i do have some jw history.
my grandmother (my dad's mom) who just recently passed away at the age of 86 was a jehovah's witness; at her funeral i heard the jw story line about resurrection and eternal life on earth.
i was not unfamiliar with it.
Welcome!
I find the whole religion itself and its history weird and fascinating.
That's a good, concise description.
have you ever thought about the isrealites beginning to enter the promised land and how they then had to turn back and wander in the wilderness for 40 years?
have you ever wondered if there is a modern day parallel in our time?
perhaps 75 was our approach to that promised land that we then had to turn back from and "wander"... .
This whole explanation just doesn't work on so many levels. The whole time I was growing up, I was told that Jehovah had set the date for Armageddon thousands of years ago. Why else would the dates matter? Like 1914 and 1975. Those dates were based on calculations from dates thousands of years in the past. We were to "keep in expectation of it", because "it would not be late". So why now, all of the sudden, would He change the date by 40 years? Have the anointed been unfaithful? Did the GB exept for 1 or 2 members (like Joshua and Caleb) rebel? What are they trying to say? I don't think this will ever come out as an official explanation from the GB. I could see them letting it go without saying anything about it. I would guess that anything that helps the R&F to cling to this "end of the world very soon" belief would be considered a good thing. But I don't see how they could endorse it.
What about the meeting places being called Kingdom Halls? The explanation being that since God's Kingdom is a real government, these edifices are like "City Halls" for it?
I had not really thought about it before that explanation came out in an article, but I thought the idea was downright... corny.
so i just registered and i thought i should say something about myself instead of just lurking about.
i'm 21 years old and i left the the jw's when i was 18. i was born into the religion so it's been really hard getting use to things.
my story is pretty complicated and for some safety reasons i can't say to much.
the elder was a part of the knights templar and had connections everywhere, including my dad's lawyer......
I would like to welcome anyone that is sincerely having difficulties in leaving or since leaving the organization, but you make some pretty fantastic claims. Do you have anything to back them up?
oh, sorry. I misread your post.
chiddy said
its made up said by someone not in any publications
Oh come on. You're not going to make me find this, are you? I know it's there, but it would take hours to find it. It was in a study question. "What happifying experience...(something about the annointed)..."
