Posts by humbled

535

AAWA is here!! (The Association of Anti-Watchtower Activists)

by cedars in

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcic4g5tulw.

http://www.jwactivists.org.

facebook the association of anti-watchtower activists.

humbled

Just donated--

Looking at logo designs, mission statements and the kind of reservations about the name--Maybe insert one word and change a lot yet not change a lot:

The Association of Anti-Slavery Watchtower Activists

13

My friend from 40 Years ago

by Lady Lee in

jw
friends

when i was a young jw and all the other young jws were avoiding me because i was from "that family" i had one young girlfriend who didn't care.

we were both not well liked so we hung out together.

she was my maid of honor when i got married but we lost touch because soon after the wedding we moved to "where the need was great" to help set up another cong in our hall.

How Many Here Have Ever Smoked Pot or Tobacco?

by minimus in

jw
friends

am i the only one who has done neither?.

I smoked for @ 4 years when I was young. Smoked 35 years later around the time we buried my dad and didn't stop for a year and a half. I like roll-your-own smokes. I wish it were not bad for health. I would like one occassionally--but that is a slippery slope for me.

Pot --I tried it a few times back in the day but never got real interested in it. Lots of reasons.

44

A personal message to you lurking Jehovah's Witnesses out there

by Terry in

while you were sitting in that uncomfortable folding chair the other night.... listening to something you've heard already a thousand times before.... do you know what was happening at the same time?.

somebody somewhere else was studying a real textbook.

somebody was cramming for a college exam.

humbled

Absolutely true, Terry. We were flogged so hard with twisted FDS doctrine that we often spend a lot of time flogging one another on the board with the broken bits of it later.

It is the truth that they take people in their relative innocence, spiritually speaking, and screw them over and hang them out to dry.

Maeve

24

Do WT Bible NWT pick and choose word meanings to suit their agenda?

by *lost* in

can anyone offer thoughts on this.

any examples.

i just discovered this.. nwt v kjb isaaiah 14;12. kjv - uses lucifer.

humbled

I love this conversation.

I was racked over the coals for seeking the allowance to read a problematic chapter of the bible without the WT interpretation laid over the account. For conscience sake I refused to do it for myself and would no longer repeat their version to others. That drew the fire. I knew I had the scholarly grounds for it even as Bethel eventually, grudgingly allowed --but nevertheless they refused me the moral grounds to diverge from their version.

As I thought about the creepy way they dealt with me and the fear my local elders had of discussing the bible freely, I realized that faith cannot be gained or sustained by the parsing out of bible texts. But that goes farther afield than this thread....

Anyhow

Here's my vote for a super-rotten corruption of translation the NWT uses to it own selfish ends:

"This means everlasting life, their taking in knowledge of you the only true God, and the one whom you sent forth, Jesus Christ." NWT,

Virtually all other translations( including the DIAGLOTT that the WTS allowed us to read) translates it differently. From Benjamin Wilson's DIAGLOTT:

"And this is the aionian life, that they may know thee,the only true God, and him who thou didst send, Jesus Christ."

In my view the NWT gives John 17:3 the most egregious and self-serving distortion of Jesus' teachings. An utter betrayal of his way of knowing the Father. But how wonderfully it tied in --their version did--with the idea of "accurate knowledge"-epi-knosis that they always flogged us with.

Just think! If we studied with the WT publications, we would have the accurate knowledge of God that no one else had. The implication was powerfully tied to their campaign for us to always be "taking in of knowledge" for salvation via the agency of the FDS.

At John 5:38-40 Jesus refutes the NWT distortion of John 17:3:

"And his word(logos) you have not remaining in you; because you believe not him whom he sent. You search the scriptures(graphicos), because you think by them to obtain aionian life and they are those testifying of me; and yet you are not willing to come to me that you may obtain life."

Anyhow--that's my 2cent's worth.

maeve

v

535

AAWA is here!! (The Association of Anti-Watchtower Activists)

by cedars in

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcic4g5tulw.

http://www.jwactivists.org.

facebook the association of anti-watchtower activists.

humbled

ps. Great video

535

AAWA is here!! (The Association of Anti-Watchtower Activists)

by cedars in

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcic4g5tulw.

http://www.jwactivists.org.

facebook the association of anti-watchtower activists.

humbled

Wonderful!!

Cedars, I remember your comments on a thread @2 weeks back. We all were a-stew about how to stop the toxic shun. You were on the verge of this thing hatching out and couldn't say anything yet.

Now here it is.

Thank you all, Maeve

42

Witnessing =Dirty Householders/bible studies yuck remember??

by Witness 007 in

we had a bible study women who collected all the qaurter left bottles of coke and would "recycle" them into one bottle.

a couple we studied with would give us coffee with lipstick on the cup after removing the cigrette buts and a quick rinse!

a study gave me a glass of water which was brownish looking....tasted awful.

humbled

Maybe you don't know it but this thread is bound to be hurting some people--Not me, I have proper reasons for some of the bad circumstances I lived in with my family. And there are plenty of times I wondered--how can I live like this. It is easy to find yourself living like a refugee.

Brace up for a bit of a ramble...

A good thing to remember about animals and filth is illustrated by that little dog in the shit-filled dog run: an animal raised in such away often maintains its tolerance of disorder in its physical surroundings. On the otherhand, sometimes a creature is overwhelmed by circumstances.

Hogs, for instance, are as clean as they can be, given half a chance. They will have their dumping grounds far from where they make their beds. And they do make their beds. They love to bath in fresh water--when they can!

Poor creatures--any one whose lives are so poor and wretched so as to stink and live in filth!

Well, cleanliness is next to godliness.

Maybe if we as JWs had earnestly preached the good news to the poor and dirty we could have turned the Borg on its immaculate and very deaf ear. There were so many of the dirty poor.

Just think. The FDS would have a cow! what would they have done with them? Send them out two by two? I am being facetious.

My bible teacher waited until I was well into the book before she arrived on Saturday with a gallon of bleach and a box of black garbage bags.I was overwhelmed by the work I had to do before she brought meetings and books into my life --and now study too!

When the witnesses came door to door they brought a sense of orderliness and organization that they projected right down to the molecular level. Salvation through hygienic living and taking good notes.The JWs in my hall had it in for brothers who wore white socks--even if they were clean!

One of my favorite quotes from the gospels comes when John the Baptist through his disciples sends the question to his cousin:"Are you the One or should we wait for another." Jesus just says "The blind see, the lame walk, the dead are raised up and the good news is preached to the poor. And blessed is he who is not stumbled in me."

Any of us so privileged as to be spared the squalor of this kind of poverty(Please let me not hear my mother's tsk-tsk:soap is cheap, soap is cheap!) don't realize it is knit into so much depression, sickness, hopelessness and, yes, habit that it does create a class distinction. It traps people and marks them.

It is little wonder that the rawest and happiest forms of christianity I ever see is around the poor--in their boot-strap church gatherings that peculiarly lack organization. They are so not troubled with epiknosis, by how many days it took to make the earth, they don't know the intricacies of chronology. They have great stories to tell of healings and helps from god.

Me thinks it's just as well we left them alone.

Love y'all,

Maeve

42

I'm new here

by WrongweektostopsniffingGlue in

jw
friends

i haven't got much of a story.

i'm in my late teens, grew up in it, and got out of the society's regime by the skin of my teeth.

nearly go baptized because i firmly did believe it was the "truth" but because of a gut feeling that held me back, that i almost ignored, i didn't sign my blood to big brother.

humbled

Welcome on. Glad you didn't get dunked.

(Remember, if you ever about to get married and have that same funny feeling--don't do that either. You got good gut-sense.)

Maeve

5

YOU MEAN NOTHING to them--but, by God--they better mean EVERYTHING to you!

by Terry in

matthew 7: 17-19: 17 likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.

matthew 24:50 the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of.

51he will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.. .

humbled

My children were more perceptive about the sly arguments the WT had for doing no good for others from the heart. I had taught them about Jesus and we always had an open door for a needy person--Damn, if anyone asked for our help, they sure were in need. Then the JWs seduced me--I still had problems with their policy on a personal level. I wasn't a perfect JW.

Yes, cold-blooded those policies were. They caused the heart to cramp--not open in love at all.