Posts by zarco

You are right, one must stand away from those who stand against the very power of god by teaching false doctrines, standing where Christ should stand, incurring bloodguilt for flawed doctrines. Most on this board have followed such admonition and have stepped away from this apostate organization.

The spirit is indeed acting within the "sons of disobedience" and those "SODs" are not us they are them.

zarco

37

Ex-Elders Outnumber Elders In My KH; what does that suggest to you?

by Room 215 in

jw
friends

right now, the number of ex- elders (either resigned, pushed out or df'd) outnumber the present elders; what does this suggest to you?

.

zarco

treadnh20 - it is interesting that most elders are failures in secular matters. If the smart ones continue to step aside, the WTS will be left with a bunch of folks who serve because it is the only authority they will ever have. That is really a dangerous situation, stupid and power hungry is not the best of combinations.

ATJ - I forgot how little the WTS values elders. AlanF told me that one time - when i was a little full of myself - and it was hard for me to accept, but it is certainly true. I know you spent more than your fair share in the field service and in your assignment you probably had some "success", but as you note in the western world, door to door service is probably counterproductive.

32

Other Points From the Annual Meeting

by jabberwock in

jw
friends

i realize that the latest clarification of the generation teaching has been discussed quite a bit on this thread.. but i think that there are at least two other important points from the annual meeting that have been, for the most part, overlooked:.

1. the weeds of matthew 13 are not the churches of christendom, but apostates.. 2. showing love to our neighbors involves more than just the preaching work.

(thanks for mentioning this rubadub).

zarco

I think that the application of Matthew 13 will change depending on the point that the WTS wants to emphasize. Afterall, in their view Christendom is apostate as are those no longer in the "truth". At the last elders school they made the point that an apostate is not just one who stands against the "truth", rather one who is no longer in the "truth".

Regarding showing love, it seems that some on the GB are trying to emphasize doing good works. Someday soon, the tax-exempt status of the WTS will be called into question and it will be important that the WTS have a record of doing good works that benefit the community to support its charitable and tax-exempt status.

Thanks for emphasizing some of the subtle points.

zarco

37

Ex-Elders Outnumber Elders In My KH; what does that suggest to you?

by Room 215 in

jw
friends

right now, the number of ex- elders (either resigned, pushed out or df'd) outnumber the present elders; what does this suggest to you?

.

zarco

I think that most of the good elders end up realizing that they do not have the training, skills, deep bible knowledge to be spiritual leaders. They are not provided training on how to provide real assistance to depressed ones, in cases of severe depression they do not have qualified professionals that they can recommend and rely upon. They are not trained to show real love by feeding the hungry, comforting the sick, helping with life skills and leading thinking on caring for the environment and their communities. Rather, they are hampered by the lack of training from the WT – both spiritual training and social/life training to do anything meaningful. The only training they get is how to follow flawed procedures.

Would you stick with such a job?

52

Comments from an elder judt returning from Elders' School

by Room 215 in

jw
friends

a good friend and long-time elder just back from patterson, asked me what i thought is he most prevalent problem elders are facing today....told him i had no idea.... he said "pornography" by far the most vexing problem for them... hard to believe, no?.

zarco

This is typical of the WT to treat a symptom and not address the real problem. Why is it that elders might be using porn? That is the question that they should answer. In my opinion, people with well balanced, meaningful lives usually do not rely upon short cuts to satisfaction – pornography, alcohol, gambling, etc. The WT system does not produce well balanced people with meaningful work and lives. There are some who achieve this through their own efforts without any help from the WT. Since the WT system produces such people, almost all communication from them will be symptom focused. Stop this, do that, without any regard to the root causes of the behaviors.

39

Did you get drunk/take drugs as a witness?

by wouldacouldashoulda in

jw
friends

smoked.

got drunk.

taken drugs (non medicinal).

zarco

While a Witness, no smkoing, no drugs and sipped a little bit of wine. As a turbo-fader, no smkoing, no drugs and sip a little bit of wine.

51

Everything About Being An Elder is Weird (my misc rambling memories of being an elder)

by AllTimeJeff in

for any brother who is a jehovah's witness, the goal is put before them to reach out for the privilege of being an elder.

i can only speak for myself, but being born into the religion, i wanted to be an elder since i was 5. i would have much rather wanted to be a doctor or engineer, but those are the breaks..... i'll skip the part about what it takes to reach out, all the crap you have to put up with as a ministerial servant to get appointed, and go straight to the reality.. i know many elders who sincerely just wanted to be shepherds.

i did want the spotlight.

zarco

ATJ -

Well written, thanks for describing what it is really like to "serve". Your post brings back strong memories. Like you, I read as much as I could about mental illness and how to help. Another elder and I ended up as the go to guys for mental illness and neither of us were qualified to really help. I did handle a pretty egregious child abuse case and did DF the father without two witnesses - he did not appeal. We also encouraged the victim to go to the police and she did so. So at least with my limited training, I have a clear conscience that I did my best to protect those who needed it.

Sadly, it was also important to me to climb the corporate ladder and I was rewarded for it - if you can call it that - with disctrict level assignments and temporarary assignments at the big house. I was a young person in 1975 and never believed it to be the truth since then. For a long time though, I was of the opinion that it was God's organization that just turned apostate, so I stuck with it for many years. Since we did not completely believe, we hedged our bets and pushed the limits (education, business, travel) and enjoyed life along the way.

Being an elder certainly is not in the best interests of children or for a marriage. Trying to stick with something that you know is false or apostate is tough on the soul. I did finally step aside and it is one of my best decisions ever. I fear losing friendships since we are in turbo fade. We have not lost the few friends that we want to keep..... yet.

zarco

15

The keister bomb is the newest terror threat

by zarco in

jw
friends

al-qaidas new method of delivering a deadly payload in effect a plastic explosive suppository would make security experts nervous, you might think.. it is not easily spotted by conventional detectors.. but it does have some who know their explosives busting a gut.. a month ago in saudi arabia, a terrorist named abdullah hassan tali al-asiri reportedly walked past palace checkpoints with a small bomb inserted in a body cavity.

judging by the al-qaida video featuring him proudly holding a device before committing the deed, it was about 3 inches long.. he wanted to blow up a saudi prince but succeeded only in blowing off his own bottom half and destroying the floor, killing himself in the process.. his intended target, prince mohammed bin nayef, and others in the room were largely unharmed.

a saudi news service quoted the prince saying, understatedly, he surprised me by blowing himself up.. suffice to say al-asiris technique has given rise to the term keister bomb online.. it sounds almost like drunk logic, where an idea sounds great until the next morning and youre sober, going, noooo, that wont work, said paul worsey.

zarco

Al-Qaida’s new method of delivering a deadly payload — in effect a plastic explosive suppository — would make security experts nervous, you might think.

It is not easily spotted by conventional detectors.

But it does have some who know their explosives busting a gut.

A month ago in Saudi Arabia, a terrorist named Abdullah Hassan Tali’ al-Asiri reportedly walked past palace checkpoints with a small bomb inserted in a body cavity. Judging by the al-Qaida video featuring him proudly holding a device before committing the deed, it was about 3 inches long.

He wanted to blow up a Saudi prince but succeeded only in blowing off his own bottom half and destroying the floor, killing himself in the process.

His intended target, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, and others in the room were largely unharmed. A Saudi news service quoted the prince saying, understatedly, “He surprised me by blowing himself up.”

Suffice to say al-Asiri’s technique has given rise to the term “keister bomb” online.

“It sounds almost like drunk logic, where an idea sounds great until the next morning and you’re sober, going, ‘Noooo, that won’t work,’ ” said Paul Worsey. “Unless you’re actually hugging somebody, nobody’s going to get badly hurt.”

Worsey can explain the physics, if he must, to quell any fears that this brand of terror will take off, making our trips to the airport ever more onerous.

“The force of such an explosion would be in the direction of the easiest exit,” said the Missouri University of Science and Technology researcher and inventor of explosives, who more or less laughed off the threat.

“The rest of the body would work like a sandbag against the blast… though it would be a mess.”

Public reaction to the news posted this week on CBS.com included disgust, dark humor and a vague sense of creepiness about the stranger next to you on the plane, fidgeting to get comfortable in his seat.

Not to panic.

“We are aware,” said Andrea McCauley, at the federal Transportation Security Administration, a branch of the Department of Homeland Security, in Dallas. “We have a lot of different layers of security in place.”

Among the myriad ways to screen airline passengers for explosives, McCauley noted: “Our behavior detection officers have been trained to recognize anomalies in someone exhibiting signs of stress or deception.”

While these signs may be evident in one hiding an improvised explosive device where the sun doesn’t shine, Sandy Straus of the Florida-based Explosives Academy said today’s checkpoints may need radical revamping to catch butt-bombers of tomorrow.

Straus, chief engineer at the online school for blasting contractors, said: “There are strip searches, but there also would be outrage if people were searched this way.”

True, but as Missouri S&T’s Worsey stressed, nobody can just walk into a place and detonate their behinds without the proper equipment. Al-Asiri’s plot required a cell phone that a co-conspirator outside the palace had to ring.

“You could just collect all the cell phones” before a plane takes off, Worsey said.

Straus, on the other hand, said that’s not enough: “The implications here are enormous. If we see more of these attacks, this ultimately will cost society a huge legal, financial and emotional expense.”

Lewis Page, a science writer for the British online journal The Register, called for calm.

“With the deceased buttock-bomb operative the only casualty” in Saudi Arabia, Page told Web readers this was “nothing to get anyone’s bowels in an uproar.

“Move along: nothing you even want to see here.”

75

Why Do people think they need A GOD to be good people?

by LucyA in

i decided after much study and soul searching that i dont believe in god.

ive noticed recently (not on the forum but others) some people seem to think that if i dont believe in a god that im obviously morally bankrupt.

i dont feel this way as i give a portion of my income to charity and i have never set out to harm anyone else.

zarco

Ken Burns produced a wonderful documentary on the US National Parks. Burns spends significant time describing the spiritual affect that Yosemite had on John Muir. In follow-up interviews, Burns expresses the affect that Yosemite had on him. If you have spent time there, it is indeed a spiritual – not in a religious sense - place.

Muir spent his early life memorizing the Bible under threat from his father and was a deeply spiritual man. He seems to conclude that being at one with nature is preferable to being in a church or reading the bible. He loved nature and did much to preserve the Parks for our enjoyment.

The reason that I bring this up is that Muir is one man that seems to qualify as “good”. He probably did more to advance early environmentalism and conservation as any other. I think he was motivated by his love of nature not god.

It seems to me that one needs to realize that life is bigger than them to be a good person. One can use God, nature, a community, knowledge and a world to facilitate that belief. It takes that belief to combat selfishness.

zarco