Posts by neverendingjourney

43

Skeleton's Come Tumbling out of Bethel's Closet - Ray Franz- Book ISOCF

by flipper in

jw
friends

my wife and i are towards the end ( finally ) of reading " in search of christian freedom " by ray franz .

( long book 728 pgs.

on pg.

neverendingjourney

Thank you, snowbird.

I am perfectly happy to wait to see what the eternal destiny of people will be according to God’s disposition, and I feel we are wise not to pretend to be so certain that we know all there is to know on the subject.

This makes perfect sense and is in line with the generally non-dogmatic characteristic of his two books.

Some mainstream churches teach that upon death, the person will go to Heaven for a time, but that at some point, they will get a fleshly body and live in Paradise-like conditions. The WT will never tell you that.

Right. I remember encountering Pentecostal/Evangelical types out in field service who expressed variations of this idea.

In all honesty, it made a lot more sense than what the WT was teaching. The doubts began to crystallize as we studied the Revelation book. The study book interpreted the passage describing the tree of life being in the paradise of God to mean heaven. Well if the Bible used the term "paradise" in conjunction with heaven, then why couldn't the petting-lions-in-paradise Scriptures have their fulfillment in heaven?

For the first year or so of my wholehearted involvement with this religion, I would actively engage these people believing I had the truth. After that, deep down inside I knew my positions were untenable, but cognitive dissonance took over. From about the second year forward I would simply avoid these people in field service. If it was clear they were knowledgeable of the Bible and could back up their positions, I would simply excuse myself and move on to the next door

43

Skeleton's Come Tumbling out of Bethel's Closet - Ray Franz- Book ISOCF

by flipper in

jw
friends

my wife and i are towards the end ( finally ) of reading " in search of christian freedom " by ray franz .

( long book 728 pgs.

on pg.

neverendingjourney

I've read Coc but didn't feel the need for ISoCF. So, is it really worth reading?

Iv'e read both of Ray's books and I never got the answer to one of the questions I was most interested in having answered: Did Ray Franz hold on to the teaching that people would live in a paradise earth or did he adopt the more orthodox view that all Christians go to heaven?

Does anyone know the anwer to this?

30

Why do JW's downplay older WT articles?

by mamalove in

i was looking at brotherdan's thread about the two articles that really point out in the wtbs's own words that we must follow this organization, blah blah, and they are indeed a cult from reading those articles.

it made me think that i would love to show my mom and sister that, but i know the response would be "so what, that is a 40 year old magazine," it was dated 1969, and 1983 was the other article i believe.. are the jw's i know the only ones who poo poo older articles and say that thinking isn't up to date anymore, that new thinking has superceded those new articles?

even though we know that the overall thinking is the same.

neverendingjourney

Catholic Inquisition = proof that it's a false religion

Failed JW predictions = proof that the light gets brighter

Are the JW's I know the only ones who poo poo older articles and say that thinking isn't up to date anymore, that new thinking has superceded those new articles?

It's called cognitive dissonance. From a psychological viewpoint, we must align our thoughts with our actions. Therefore, we either change our ways when we realize our thoughts are not in harmony with our actions or we explain them away or, in extreme cases, outright deny that the conflict exists.

For instance, let's say I'm a wealthy warehouse owner and I get an offer to purchase my plant. I know that if I sell, I could make a nice sum of money, but the new owner intends to shut the plant down and lay off all the workers. At the same time, I consider myself to be a good-hearted righteous Christian. So there are basically two routes I could take: (1) I refuse to sell the plant and save my employee's jobs or (2) sell the plant and justify my behavior, perhaps by saying that I have to act in the best interests of the business or something along those lines. The conflict between my own perception of myself and my actions that are out of harmony with that perception need to be remedied somehow.

That's what happens with Witnesses. Upon presenting evidence that their thoughts about themselves with respect to being followers of the one, true religions are incorrect, they will try to explain away the evidence so that they can hold on to their views. The mind wants to harmonize beliefs and the evidence you're presented with. So JWs will often minimize the importance of some piece of evidence that demonstrates that the Watchtower does not teach the truth, or in some cases, they will outright lie and say dismiss the evidence as being fabricated (evil apostates!).

It's just how the mind works. It's like the guy who always wanted a stable family life, but deep down knows his wife is cheating on him, yet refuses to believe it. When his best friend confronts him with hard evidence of this, the guy punches his buddy in his face instead of accepting the truth of the matter. Eventually, he will either have to change his thoughts (accept that he's married a two-timer) or continue to dismiss all evidence that points to this conclusion.

8

William Malenfant- "Learn From Me" MP3 Trinidad 2010 Zone Talk

by yknot in

i was sent this talk by a brother awhile back...... it is from the trinidad zone (2010).

william malenfant (vp of wt penn).

all in all it ain't a 'bad' talk...... lots of jesus until all of a sudden malenfant goes into high-creature worship of gb toward the end.. like almost all speakers in the wts (from lowly tms 9 year old boy to gb) he too is supremely better than tony morris....... http://www.sendspace.com/file/feag6d.

neverendingjourney

My old PO used to have a major hard on for Malenfant. Apparently he met him back in the late 70s or early 80s and maybe went out to field service with him or something. It's been a while. Anyhow, his eyes would light up and he'd talk about him as if he were royalty.

I want to say there were/are two bigwig Malenfant brothers, but I might be getting my stories mixed up.

20

Why Did God Commission Russell to Preach to People Who Would All Die Before Armageddon?

by neverendingjourney in

i've posted this thought before, but i've yet to get a lot of feedback.

it's also not a point i see brought up very much on jwd, but it seems like a very simple, logical way of disproving witness doctrine/eschatology.. witnesses believe that the parable of the wheat and the weeds is having its fulfillment in our time.

that's to say that jehovah began to gather his people in these last days so that those rightly-disposed can survive armageddon.

neverendingjourney

sir82:

What's of real interest to me is how the Watchtower will handle the holes in their doctrine going forward. Will they develop a new doctrinal framework to make their beliefs internally consistent or will they stop teaching them and bank on the rank and file forgetting and/or not paying attention to them.

My money's on the latter. There has been an obvious "dumbing down" of their literature since the beginning of my involvement with this group in the mid 80s. As I pointed out earlier, a precedent was set with the whole Adam/Eve, 6000 year creative days, 1975 nonsense. The Watchtower initially tried to explain the 1975 failure by saying that a gap existed between the creation of Adam and Eve and that this gap explained why the 6,000 years didn't run out in 1975. Then the WT simply dropped the issue completely. They stopped teaching it. I never knew this was an official WT teaching while I was in and I doubt that more than 5% of Witnesses I associated with had any idea this was the case. Most had become Witnesses after 1975.

But it could go either way. All that's needed is some smarty-pants know-it-all on the GB who believes Jehovah has appointed him to be the new Fred Franz, a chief theologian, and a whole host of new, crazy doctrinal interpretations could be in the works. Time will tell.

77

What if JWs are right?!?

by brotherdan in

i know this is a pointless question, but what if this happened:.

you came home from work one day, sat down, and turned on the tv.

there is a sudden announcement that the un has banned all religion.

neverendingjourney

There is a sudden announcement that the UN has banned all religion.

We might as well ask: "What if the YMCA suddenly announced it had banned religion?" Or Goodwill, or the Daughters of the American Revolution, for that matter. The UN simply does not have the authority to enforce any such ban. It's preposterous. There is no single, global government capable of enforcing such a prohibition.

20

Why Did God Commission Russell to Preach to People Who Would All Die Before Armageddon?

by neverendingjourney in

i've posted this thought before, but i've yet to get a lot of feedback.

it's also not a point i see brought up very much on jwd, but it seems like a very simple, logical way of disproving witness doctrine/eschatology.. witnesses believe that the parable of the wheat and the weeds is having its fulfillment in our time.

that's to say that jehovah began to gather his people in these last days so that those rightly-disposed can survive armageddon.

neverendingjourney

When I put that to a dub relative though, the answer that I got was that if God could foresee wanting to save upwards of 7 million people then he had to start early to allow enough time for the Organization to grow that big ....

The real problem here, of course, is that a fully-indoctrinated JW can talk himself into anything. That's how mind-control works.

In Russell's time they believed that the end was coming in 1914, not over a hundred years in the future.

That's part of the problem right there. Further to your and BluesBrother's comments, this religion was founded on a premise that the Armageddon would come very, very soon. As the years have passed (131 years since the first Watchtower was published), JWs have simply failed to explain this simple, yet gaping, hole in their doctrine. I suppose JW leadership doesn't notice it or hopes their followers won't (I know I never picked up on this while I was still in).

A corollary to this point, and a subject that has previously been explored on this board, is that the great crowd that was "identified" in 1935 is supposed to make it through Armageddon alive. If those individuals identified by Rutherford as the great crowd (multitude) all die off, as they most certainly will soon if they haven't already, then they were never really the great crowd to begin with. Rutherford would have necessarily made an error in his identification.

This second point, however, is probably more confusing to your run-of-the-mill, rank-and-file Witness. I doubt more than a quarter of active Witnesses know that the great crowd was supposedly identified in 1935. The first argument I made initially seems to me to be easier for an indoctrinated Witness to understand. Cognitive dissonance may require that they explain it away like BluesBrother's relative did, but you never know what might begin the independent thought process in an indoctrinated Witness. I know that after many confrontations with religious people in the door-to-door work I finally began to see that Witness arguments were not as strong as I thought.

Going forward, the interesting feature will be whether the Watchtower bothers redefining their doctrine to cover up some of these inconsistencies or whether they will simply stop teaching a lot of this and hope people forget (in the 1975, Eve was created after Adam mold).

20

Why Did God Commission Russell to Preach to People Who Would All Die Before Armageddon?

by neverendingjourney in

i've posted this thought before, but i've yet to get a lot of feedback.

it's also not a point i see brought up very much on jwd, but it seems like a very simple, logical way of disproving witness doctrine/eschatology.. witnesses believe that the parable of the wheat and the weeds is having its fulfillment in our time.

that's to say that jehovah began to gather his people in these last days so that those rightly-disposed can survive armageddon.

neverendingjourney

Did he start this warning in 33 CE?

Although I'm not a believer, I think this is a better interpretation of the Scriptures. Ray Franz makes this argument in his books quoting from Acts to show that Old Testament prophecies that JWs believe are having a modern-day fulfillment today were actually applied by Christ's disciples to the immediate post-Pentecost era, such as those prophecies pertaining to the pouring of the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues.

This in not, however, how the Watchtower interprets things. They believe their religious group (specifically, the faithful and discreet slave "class") was selected to warn mankind about God's impending wrath. Presumably, this warning-work began back in Russell's time or else their interpretation begins to fall apart. If the preaching work didn't begin in Russell's time, then was Russell not God's chosen messenger? And if it did begin in Russell's time, why would God "warn" a bunch of people who would all, without exception, die before Armageddon? What purpose did the warning serve?

For instance, what good would it do me if someone warned me that my house would burn down...50 years after I die? According to Watchtower doctrine, the preaching work is supposed to serve the purpose of separating the wheat from the weeds in the last days in fulfillment of Jesus’ parable.

20

Why Did God Commission Russell to Preach to People Who Would All Die Before Armageddon?

by neverendingjourney in

i've posted this thought before, but i've yet to get a lot of feedback.

it's also not a point i see brought up very much on jwd, but it seems like a very simple, logical way of disproving witness doctrine/eschatology.. witnesses believe that the parable of the wheat and the weeds is having its fulfillment in our time.

that's to say that jehovah began to gather his people in these last days so that those rightly-disposed can survive armageddon.

neverendingjourney

I've posted this thought before, but I've yet to get a lot of feedback. It's also not a point I see brought up very much on JWD, but it seems like a very simple, logical way of disproving Witness doctrine/eschatology.

Witnesses believe that the parable of the wheat and the weeds is having its fulfillment in our time. That's to say that Jehovah began to gather his people in these last days so that those rightly-disposed can survive Armageddon. They like to cite Matthew 24's talk of Noah and pre-flood conditions as evidence that Noah carried out a preaching work to warn people before the flood came and wiped them all away. There is supposedly a modern fulfillment being carried out today where Witnesses warn people of Armageddon's imminence.

But all this begs the questions: Why would God BEGIN warning people of the upcoming destruction of the world in 1879 when the Watchtower magazine was first printed. That was over 130 years ago. No human being alive in 1879 roams the earth today. They have all, without fail, died.

It seems to me that this very simple point makes the whole JW house of cards come crumbling down. So which is it: Did God miscalculate things and begin warning people too early or was Russell simply not God's designated Noah-like messenger?

Thoughts?

11

REASON for new magazine arrangement.

by hamsterbait in

jw
friends

as you know the way the rags are distributed to the congo has changed.. people just collect what they need at the kingdumb hell... this means that some who are not fast enough will not be able to get a copy.. more and more will start downloading the koolaid edition.

when enough people are doing this, the slave will decree that it is no longer necessary for this to be printed and shipped, brothers may "avail themselves" of the opportunity to download their own copies.. this will save on printing, ink paper and shipping.

will all that extra cash go to provide pensions and medical care for elderly bethhellites?.

neverendingjourney

My dad's been inactive pretty much since right after his baptism in the mid 80s. Every now and then, maybe every two years, he all of a sudden gets on a "spiritual" kick and goes back to the meetings a few times until he tires out and goes back to his old habits.

Over the weekend he told me that the Kingdom Hall was out of magazines and somehow this was a sign of how near the end is. I told him the distribution method had changed and he didn't get any magazines because he didn't show up to claim them on time. He then went on to recite some urban legend that some brother said he'd heard a circuit overseer say about a Bethelite genius who gave up millions in order to remain at Bethel. I just politely nodded and changed the subject after he finished.