OnTheWayOut

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Posts by OnTheWayOut

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  24

  A question the Chair (Mclellan) may want to ask G. Jackson

  by Indian Larry in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  mr. jackson, we have heard testimony from mr spinks and mr. obrien that women will never have leadership positions in the congregation.

  as i understand it mr. jackson, you interpret revelation 7 to mean that only 144,000 will go to heaven and that these 144,000 will rule the earth.

  i also understand that your organization teaches that women are part of this "remnant" of 144,000. can you explain why jesus christ is willing to put women in leadership over the entire earth but you are not willing to permit them to have anything to do with helping victims of pedophiles in your congregation?

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  OnTheWayOut

  This RC seems pretty well focused. I bet they stick with determining how the Governing Body has influence over past and present policy.
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  58

  Will his holiness Jehovha Jackson appear before the ARC?

  by punkofnice in

  1. watchtower
  2. child-abuse

  yes or no.......what say you?.

  i'll start - no!.

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  OnTheWayOut

  I would like to say NO. I would like to say that he will have lawyers drag this out and they will insist that he stay by his father's side 24 hours a day. I would like to say that this will be dragged out until the RC is concluded.

  I would like to say NO. But Australia and the RC are not at all like the United States where one could easily do just as described above. The RC is addressing a very serious issue and seems to be determined to arrive at proper answers. They may not even begin to allow for lawyers to interfere with Jackson's appearance. They may allow for live video feed or arrange for the absolute shortest time of interference with a sick family member. They may ask the doctors if the father is stable "right now" and able to live long enough for his son to return to him within 12 or 24 hours. My suspicions are that all my reasons to say NO are very much oriented to the slow justice system of the U.S. and they won't work in this case.

  My bet is that the RC forces the issue this week, Jackson appears and says as little as possible. Heck, they may even have his father fake a sudden turn-for-the-worse while the RC event is going on, in order to hasten Jackson's exit.
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  51

  Leaving the org and marriage possibly ending

  by atacrossroads in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i was raised a witness, baptized at 16, vacation pioneered, got married, etc.

  i was very much your typical witness and believed it was the truth until last summer.

  a very close relative of mine left the witnesses.

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  OnTheWayOut

  Oh, I made my response all about me. Sorry about that.

  You say you are living in limbo. That's just a situation with the congregation. It sounds like you are moving on with some difficulty in finding a workable situation. You say you and your husband "are spending time together again and he does not nag [you] about going in field service or to meetings."

  Nobody knows if it will work out, including you and your husband. But you have a better gauge of that than anyone else. Your husband either really means he has no plans to divorce you or feels he has to say that as a JW knowing that "Jehovah hates a divorcing" unless you cheat on him. Only you can decide whether to stay with him if that is the case. When the elders come after you, you will see some of your husband's true colors. And I don't mean whether he supports the elders' side of things, he probably will. I mean, you will be able to see if he supports you despite agreeing with them or wants to throw you under the bus and do more for them than just agree with them.

  If you want to stay in your marriage, you can work on it now before that judicial committee happens, then see how he handles that. Best of luck to you.
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  51

  Leaving the org and marriage possibly ending

  by atacrossroads in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i was raised a witness, baptized at 16, vacation pioneered, got married, etc.

  i was very much your typical witness and believed it was the truth until last summer.

  a very close relative of mine left the witnesses.

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  OnTheWayOut

  Has anyone here been able to sucessfully fade and keep your marriage intact with an active JW? Are both of you happy?

  My situation qualifies. But it is a bit different when the husband fades away instead of the wife. I was fully involved as an elder, and my wife was a good witness who didn't really follow the doctrine as tight as I did.

  Anyway, I kept seeing things that seemed wrong and finally researched Jehovah's Witnesses and went wherever Google took me. It didn't take long for me to see that I was not in "the truth." Rather than immediately share my revelations with my wife, I made plans to resign as an elder and figured we would be able to discuss these things better after my resignation.

  So I resigned and tried to help my wife see why I resigned, what was wrong with Watchtower. She would hear none of it. She literally put her fingers in her ears and shouted when I was talking, stating how she was getting a headache from all this.

  As months passed by, I finally totally stopped going to the Kingdom Hall. I did manage to have a discussion with my wife about that. I said that I had been reading materials that helped me to be an independent thinker. I told her that the repetitive nature of meetings at the Kingdom Hall interfered with my independent thinking and I would not be accompanying her anymore to the Hall. She took it rather well. I cannot say exactly what she was thinking, but I am pretty sure she recognized that we had a wonderful strong bond in our marriage and she was afraid to lose me. I think she decided to let me "fade" away from Jehovah's Witnesses in the hopes that I would continue to be a loving husband. She wanted to keep her husband AND her false hopes.

  When she asked if my decision to stop going to the Hall changed anything between us, I said that it didn't have to. Further, I asked one thing of her. I asked that she not be reporting anything about me to the elders. She agreed that my relationship with Jehovah was between me and Jehovah and she wouldn't try to report/spy for them.

  She honored that part of the agreement very well. Over the years that have passed, I have occasionally tried to tell her of some things I read about the Watchtower, but I have mostly tried to indirectly reach her to make her think independently of Watchtower teachings. While she has never shown signs of weakening her beliefs, she has been able to strengthen her ability to decide things for herself without automatically falling in line with Watchtower teachings.

  All I can say in a hopeful way here is that I would have divorced her had I thought that she would have been happier without me. My wife recognized our strong marriage and probably figured the financial security of staying together versus the alternative.

  Since I was free to be my authentic self in our marriage and put Jehovah's Witnesses aside for me, and since no children were involved, it has worked out okay. I put up threads about the occasional problems we have over religious issues, but we do pretty good considering.
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  22

  Who Really is ..... The Blood Washed Multitude (Great Crowd) ?

  by Perry in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  for jw's the issue has never been who the faithful and wise servant (f&ds) was.

  that is just misdirection and sleight of hand.

  it is plain from the context that this was obviously a rhetorical question meant for self introspection.

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  OnTheWayOut

  I have been washed clean in the sauce.

  
  
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  86

  Geoffrey Jackson. Seems he will be compelled to front up.

  by umbertoecho in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  pray for brother jackson of the governing body!.

  in todays news from australia it appears that, despite his previous declination to appear when invited, justice mcclellan from the australian royal commission on child sex abuse will officially summon brother geoffrey jackson to the stand after all.. ..... the commission was due to conclude its hearings into the jehovahs witnesses on wednesday but justice mcclellan said he will now call geoffrey jackson, a senior member of the churchs governing body in new york who is currently in australia, to appear next week.. .

  source.

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  OnTheWayOut

  Here's what wiki says about "The Right to Silence" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_silence)
  in Australia:

  Australia has no constitutional protection for the right to silence,[2] but it is broadly recognized by State and Federal Crimes Acts and Codes and is regarded by the courts as an important common law right. In general, criminal suspects in Australia have the right to refuse to answer questions posed to them by police before trial and to refuse to give evidence at trial. However a person must answer questions related to their name and place of residence if asked to by police. As a general rule judges cannot direct juries to drawadverse inferences from a defendant's silence (Petty v R) but there are exceptions to this rule, most notably in cases which rely entirely on circumstantial evidence which it is only possible for the defendant to testify about (Weissensteiner v R). The right does not apply to corporations (EPA v Caltex).
  There are numerous statutory abrogations of the right, particularly in the area of bankruptcy. It is also not available to witnesses testifying before a Royal Commission. There are also abrogations of the right in recent Federal anti-terrorism and Victorian organised crime Acts.[3] Each of these acts set up coercive questioning regimes which operate outside the normal criminal processes. Direct testimonial evidence gained from this coercive questioning cannot be used in any subsequent criminal trial of the person providing the evidence, however a witness who testifies in his defense at a subsequent criminal trial who provides a different testimony to that during the questioning may face prosecution for perjury.
  The state of New South Wales passed the Evidence Amendment (Evidence of Silence) Act 2013 [4] which allows the judiciary to direct the jury to draw unfavourable inferences against a defendant who omits a fact during police questioning that they later rely on in court in a bid to be found not guilty.[5] The law strictly applies to those over the age of 18 and who have an Australian legal practitioner physically present and available. The change is designed to reflect reforms made in the United Kingdom in 1994 and will apply to indictable offences that carry a penalty of five or more years imprisonment.
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  9

  bethel

  by Sabin in

  1. watchtower
  2. child-abuse

  mr vincent toole, he gets 3 meals a day his accommodation, daily exercise & a degree to be a lawyer.

  they are asking for kids ice-cream money so they can send their monkeys to uni to get them off child abuse cases, while telling the ones giving the money not to get a higher education.

  holy shit i never thought about that before.

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  OnTheWayOut

  Everything is mixed up about Jehovah's Witnesses. Good points on the "higher education" and the ice cream money.

  Other things all wrong:
  Members are called "publishers" yet they are only distributors of material from the publishing corporation.

  They claim no human leaders, but say that the elders, CO's, etc. right on up to the Governing Body "are the ones taking the lead." They want members to think they are the leaders but to say they are not.

  Governing Body members are not "inspired" but are "spirit-directed." All a member gets out of that is that it is the same thing as "inspired" but allows them to change things that become clearer- note that they never say something was "wrong." A definition of "inspire" is: To affect, guide, or arouse by divine influence. Sounds the same to me as their "spirit-directed."

  Members can be disfellowshipped for having contact with currently disfellowshipped or disassociated ones, but the organization tells the world that members decide on their own whether to have contact or to shun.

  It's an all-volunteer organization. Members do not have to be on the Theocratic Ministry School or do any time in the door-to-door work or really anything they don't want to do. But see what happens when members decide not to do things or do not turn in any recruitment time.

  They say that atheists are not content to "keep their views to themselves." Such irony really doesn't need to be further commented on. Just as the irony of naming a magazine AWAKE for these willfully ignorant people doesn't need further argument.

  Jehovah's Witnesses read in Acts of a man who asks "What prevents me from getting baptized?" But then they have something like 200 questions that must be answered before someone can be baptized. As sad as that is, they further say that baptism is the most important thing a person can do, so he/she must be a spiritual adult. Yet they allow people as young as 6 years old to get baptized, and then hold that against them if they try to leave the religion as a teen or young adult.

  
  
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  68

  My thoughts on Geoffrey Jackson

  by thedepressedsoul in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  first off, i don't think that dude is going to show face.

  he's most likely on a plane already.

  if he shows it's bad pr and if he doesn't show it's bad pr.

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  OnTheWayOut

  So I just watched the excerpts about G. Jackson, this one starting at 46:00
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BONW67c9SEw&feature=youtu.be&t=46m12s

  They read a letter on how G. Jackson wouldn't be of much help as he is not part of setting policies. Such bullcrap. And as the questions for the Branch representative go on, the RC determines that it's bullcrap. Good for them.

  I do believe that Watchtower is going to find themselves being ruled against in severe manners for their arrogance to misrepresent their roles to judges.

  Jump to the last few 3 or 4 minutes of the video to see that the RC is pissed at Jackson and his answers.
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  11

  Extremely difficult situation the .Org is in

  by Lemonp in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  as far as i can imagine, the .org is in a lose, lose, lose situation right now.

  if jackson shows to the rc, and policy chages, then bible interpretation was changed sans-holy spirit.

  policy change is an admission of guilt, not helpful in future civil court cases.

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  OnTheWayOut

  The .Org is in a Lose, Lose, Lose situation right now.

  That is true. But Australia is a small part of Watchtower. A GB member speaking to the RC can be spun and crafted so that it's not so terrible for Watchtower. It can even be spun so that the rest of the members that might hear of it feel that the GB was correct in what they did or at least has done no harm that wouldn't have happened anyway. Granted, it isn't true. But all that matters is survival in Australia and appearing good in the eyes of the worldwide membership.

  But yes, it is a Lose, Lose, Lose situation. Spin and survival and trying to look good to the members are all things they would rather have avoided.
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  11

  Crisis of Conscience

  by FreeGirl2006 in

  1. watchtower
  2. child-abuse

  do you think that any of the clueless, amnesiacs that appeared before the rc will have a crisis of conscience over the abuse situation?

  seriously, with the grilling they received from our new heroes, they would have to be sociopaths not to do some long hard thinking about the lack of empathy and compassion the borg displays as a top down policy towards abuse victims.

  i can understand these idiots not having an awakening within the confines of their daily lives since they stay cloistered in their belief system, but the rc forced them into the real world with their questions and one would hope, made them think.

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  OnTheWayOut

  Cult members are not mindless drones, despite what we joke about here. I think we tend to be over the top with jokes because most of us were once there, and we still have loved ones who are there. Changes and forced hard looks have made many of us wake up.

  Of course the odds are high that some elders will look at how they were grilled and how the lawyers and the public see what was done, and decide that something is wrong with Watchtower business as usual.

  I relate as one who woke up, not by rigorously defending Watchtower policy, but by tiring of that policy chipping away at my core. I can imagine someone slapped in the face by policy. While I know most will not wake up, it's hard for me to imagine an elder not taking a serious look at WTF he is defending.