hi simon, sorry to disturb, but i would appreciate it very much if you could kindly change my username for me - from just kidding to divergent.
i've decided to change my username because i'm not the same person i was when i first joined this site.
back then, a part of me still believed, and i thought that if my doubts were wrong and the religion actually turns out to be true and i posted negative stuff here... hey, i was only just kidding!!!.
I suppose he can't do it for everyone and you asked so nicely.
I am not the same person as when I joined. I won't start my own thread, but I would not be upset if my name went to "Out" instead of "OnTheWayOut." Hint hint, hoping for the big change. Thanks in advance.
ok, i didnt think anything about it.
but last night some friends from across the city called me up and said that the co was visiting their hall and in his talk he said that the society is getting geared up for a massive kingdom hall and assembly hall construction project worldwide next year.
they told the publishers; "get ready".
Yes, the stoppage will not / cannot be permanent. But it probably will not be "massive" in the eyes of members if they could ever see what's actually going on.
I foresee more assembly halls in the United States and other lands if the project was already underway and they can cram a bunch of JW's in there to make enough money off the project vs. renting facilities.
I foresee some Kingdom Halls being built where they can sell other Kingdom Halls and come out even or ahead.
presidential hopeful ben carson of course.
this isn't another gun control debate, i just thought it might be fun to have a topic where we can dump all the hysterical quotes from the candidates.. it's a deep and plentiful mine folks!
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I am not going to bother with Trump quotes. Someone else can have fun with those.
Mike Huckabee is an ordained Southern Baptist minister. On “The Daily Show,” he said that Beyonce is basically a stripper. He also compared Roe v. Wade to the Holocaust, saying that abortion is worse.
Jeb Bush is watching his mouth pretty good so far, but old quotes of Romney were used to destroy him, so all is fair: During his 1994 campaign for governor of Florida, Jeb Bush said that women on welfare “should be able to get their lives together and find a husband,” and suggested that we’d have fewer unwed mothers if people would only resume publicly shaming people who have kids without being married.
Rand Paul said on Meet the Press, ”I’m scratching my head because if there was a war on women, I think they won. You know, the women in my family are incredibly successful. I have a niece at Cornell vet school, and 85% of the young people there are women. In law school, 60% are women; in med school, 55%. My younger sister’s an ob-gyn with six kids and doing great. You know, I don’t see so much that women are downtrodden; I see women rising up and doing great things.”
Women, if you are not related to Rand Paul or are not among those that go to Cornell or law school, somehow Rand forgot about you.
thoughts triggered from a comment cappytan made on a different thread:.
cappytan the newest guy in the gang, mark sanderson, is no exception [to being a gb helper at some point].
- w2013 7/15 p.26 a new member of the governing body"in september 2010, [mark sanderson] was invited to return to the united states, where he served as a helper to the service committee of the governing body.".
Every JW (and ex-JW) that cares to think about these things absolutely know that the overlap will be extended to include anointed that were merely born before the first part of the overlap was all dead. They use Freddy Franz and 1992 as their benchmark, so that gets them easily 45 to 50 years past that date (so as late as 2042) before they have to look back at all the proof in their own Watchtowers (that they have planted in the years leading up to 2042) that the overlap did not have to be active "contemporaries" of the first part of the generation.
So knowing they will eventually go there, no JW's are even thinking about how the current FDS are really not contemporaries at all of Freddy, the symbolic end of the first part of the generation.
just got done watching parts of the october episode at jdub.broadcasting and it looks like the definition of "sacred service" is getting an update.
construction work, helping out fellow dubs, even helping out non-beliebers and opposers will soon be adding up to record progress for publishers... gett ready for a huge increase in hours being reported.... can you hear it now??
my how jw.org provides.... pbrow.
So many pioneers and others are so used to saying, "Sorry, I can't help you move" or "Sorry, I can't take an elderly sister to her medical appointment" with the excuse: "....because I have to get my time in."
I know Ray Franz tried to indicate that sacred service included good works toward others and it was shot down because Watchtower was still building a massive printing empire and didn't want members to skip selling magazines to do something more important.
I would say that literature give-aways are becoming such a burden now, with the dubs not really donating for them much, that the cart witnessing without bothering people still isn't enough. They actually do not want too many magazines/books to go out the door. So allowing other things to "count time" on will further reduce the efforts to give away Watchtower mags.
I think that maybe the only reason they don't stop literature distribution is that it is the main method they use to control the members' activities- make them "publishers" and "pioneers." Taking that away would just be too radical a change for the members to swallow.
I see this as another sign that they are in true money trouble, not just pretending. But I also consider that part of their money problem might have included moving massive amounts to offshore accounts as a golden parachute for the lawyers, accountants, Governing Body members.
the number of pyramids in the world just keep going up and up.
an egyptoligist thinks using satellite scanning technology he has found the remnants of another 17 pyramids in the egypt.
in central and south american they keep finding more pyramids and in java a couple of years ago they surmised that the riuns their was actually a step pyramid possible the oldest in the world.
Pyramids in different parts of the world differ from each other but generally have 4 (or 3) sides and have a wide base and a peak in the middle. Regardless of what ancient alien astronaut theorists (actual term) say, I think we will find that this style of building was easier for ancient people to go higher with.
Early skyscrapers were made of massive concrete bases. They didn't appear massive because the building did not get narrow significantly as it went up, but the base was thick, doorways would reveal several feet in the wall. As time went by, the use of steel allowed the base to be no thicker than the rest of the building. But in ancient times, the same heavy material was used all the way up, so all they really knew was to start with a huge base and to get smaller the higher up they went.
because i haven't put in a single dime for over a year now in the box at the kh.
the usual custom is to put money in there right after the meetings.
but heck, i already spend so much in car fuel just to attend - i don't care really if the gb starves and dies.. oops.. anyway, do the elders take note who's donating and who's not?.
its been a little over 2 years since i left the watchtower.
in that time the magazines have been cut, the birth of jwtv, jw-org.
carts for preaching, removed district overseers, cut assemblies, demand all the money from the congregations, stop construction and layoff bethelites, change the format of the tmschool .
what is a cult and what is a religion?
its open to debate.
who has the authority to say for certain what is a cult and what is a religion?
While I tend to agree with the likes of Dawkins or Hitchens that all religion is damaging and potentially dangerous, your question leads us to modern terms. In modern society, whether they know it or not, the people want their religion to make them feel good while they do what they want. Sit in a pew on Sunday and whatever you did on Friday and Saturday night is forgotten. Confess something serious to the priest and do your "Hail Mary's."
In modern society, the higher the control your group has on you, the more it would be defined as a cult. Mary Kay can be defined as a sales cult and may be worse for members than Jehovah's Witnesses (but I doubt that last part). Fundy groups and meditation groups and even exercise groups can be cults. Some of it is good- Alcoholics Anonymous is very cult-like, but in most of these non-religious groups, the members are free to take just parts of it and leave the rest. Not so in JW's and not so in some other religions. But the average Christian or Muslim can think for himself and reject the extremes of their group.
So it isn't an easy question. Who is a cult, and who is not? To be safe, I would assume all religion is cult and proceed with caution.
who do you believe jesus is?
is he superior to micheal the angel?
bible verses.
Jesus is a fictional character along the lines of Mithra or Zoroaster or Dionysus. Having such a character as a minor god or son-of-god was all the rage in the first and second century. It is highly possible that Jesus was known to be fictional but was a figurehead of hope and change that Paul and James preached in their efforts to make a living and to spread hope to the hopeless.
Sometime after Paul had passed on, Jesus may have seemed like a good example of passiveness so the Romans may have pushed for adopting Jesus as "real" instead of "fictional" in order to cause people to be less aggressive toward Roman rule. The stories about Jesus were written and set in the past before the fall of the temple, making it easy for him to prophesy about that fall of the temple.
