Posts by neverendingjourney

20

Would you allow your kid to do a really dangerous sport?

by skeeter1 in

i'd like to get your thoughts.

we are torn parents.

having both been raised jws, we said that we'd allow our kids to do what they wanted to in sports.

neverendingjourney

Ariana reminds me of me when I was an active JW: parroting what the society says about everything without very much independent thought.

16

Is the 2008 version of the Watchtower really about saving money?

by neverendingjourney in

jw
friends

when i first heard of the new watchtower arrangement, i immediately thought it was another in a long line of cost-cutting moves.

i thought they were interested in cutting the overall number of magazines they print every month.

so if they printed 20 million copies every 15 days, they could now print seven or eight million out of one of the monthly editions and cut over 10 million of magazines a month.

neverendingjourney

Here's a link to the letter that was sent to the congregations about this:

http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/129876/1.ashx

16

Is the 2008 version of the Watchtower really about saving money?

by neverendingjourney in

jw
friends

when i first heard of the new watchtower arrangement, i immediately thought it was another in a long line of cost-cutting moves.

i thought they were interested in cutting the overall number of magazines they print every month.

so if they printed 20 million copies every 15 days, they could now print seven or eight million out of one of the monthly editions and cut over 10 million of magazines a month.

When I first heard of the new Watchtower arrangement, I immediately thought it was another in a long line of cost-cutting moves. I thought they were interested in cutting the overall number of magazines they print every month. So if they printed 20 million copies every 15 days, they could now print seven or eight million out of one of the monthly editions and cut over 10 million of magazines a month. However, I’ve been giving this some thought, and I’m not so sure that this is going to be the case. I’d like your input on this.

I stopped going to the meetings back when there were still two monthly issues of the Awake and the Watchtower. It was pretty standard for a pioneer to have a subscription of 15 of each. Therefore, they’d take out 60 magazines a month. When they changed over to the monthly Awake, did the pioneers simply keep their Awake subscription at 15, or did they double it to 30? I wasn’t around for the change. I would think that the pioneers would not want their statistics to drop. They would want to keep placing as close to 60 magazines a month as possible.

If the pioneers simply doubled their Awake subscriptions, wouldn’t they double their subscriptions to the public Watchtower as well? Keeping with the example of the old 15 Watchtower 15 Awake pioneers that I was familiar with, I’m thinking that they will simply have a subscription of 60 Awakes, 60 public Watchtowers, and how ever many versions of the kool-aid edition they might need for the family. If this is the case, the overall drop in the total number of magazines printed every month won’t be greatly reduced as I initially thought.

For those of you that are still on the inside, do you know what the “recommendation” is from the society on this? Are the pioneers and publishers going to be “encouraged” to decrease the overall number of magazines they get from the hall every month or are the majority of the publishers just going to adjust the subscription amounts to keep the overall amount of magazines they get every month about the same?

18

I must say that I am very curious

by Grins in

i am looking for information on the beliefs of jehovah's witness i do not know much and i am afraid that most of what i am finding is biased information one way or the other.

i did find a "fact sheet" and i am wondering if all of it is true or not.

i looked at the watchtower website for answers to a few of these and so far i am finding them to be true.

neverendingjourney

I'll try to be as impartial as possible.

#14 You are discouraged from attending college

True. Some witnesses go to college regardless. Kids are paraded on the stage during their assemblies (all day religious services), where they applauded for passing up college. Your commitment as a JW is put into question if you go to college and are generally viewed with suspicion by the congregation.

#16 All pastors are the "AntiChrist"

This is essentially true. Most Witnesses will object to the wording of this question, however. They believe that Jehovah's Witnesses are the one and only true religion. They also believe that all other religion is false and is being led by Satan. They now try to avoid negative PR by using loaded terms such as "anti christ" to refer to pastors.

#17 All churches are of Satan

True.

#19 You cannor read Christian literature from a Christian book store

True. Reading religious literature not printed by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society is considered religion-mixing. This is strictly prohibited.

#31 You cannot celebrate your birthday

True.

#32 You cannot run for or hold a political campaign

True

#33 You cannot vote in any political campaign

True. Recent information has been published to make it seem as if this might be a conscience matter, but it's not. It is prohibited and viewed as being part of the "world."

#34 You cannot serve on a jurt

False. This is a conscience decision. Most JWs I know prefer to cite a religious objection to jury duty, mostly because jury duty is a pain anyway.

#35 You are discouraged from giving to charity (except Watchtower causes)

True. Any gifts to charities with religious purposes are strictly prohibited. Donations to secular charities are discouraged. Leadership says that a better use of your money is to give to the JW worldwide work fund.

#72 You cannot support your country

Complicated. Many witnesses would object to the way this is worded. In short, JWs are supposed to be strictly neutral. You cannot salute the flag or serve in the military. This is the same reason why JWs cannot run for political office.

#95 You cannot participate in a school play

False, but complicated. This is mostly a conscience matter. If the school play does not deal with holidays or birthdays and is completely secular in nature, the child's participation is not strictly prohibited. However, JWs are strongly "encouraged" to keep their children's extracurricular activities to a minimum. They are told that allowing your child too much association with "worldly" people (non JWs) is prejudicial to the child's spiritual well-being. You won't see many JW children participating in plays. The more active and involved the JW family, the less likely that their child will participate in school plays.

Let me just add that the degree to which it is tolerated for a JW to go undergo a route other than the "suggested" route on conscience matters depends largely on how active of a JW he/she is. For instance, if a young JW is very active in the congregation, many congregations may tolerate his going to college because he's managing to keep up with what he's supposed to be doing for the religion. It also depends on the local culture. Some congregations may not pressure their members as much on so-called conscience matters, but others pressure their members to conform as much as possible. If a young JW goes to college but is not very active in the congregation, the fact that he is going to college is often cited as the reason for his "spiritual weakness." The internal dynamics of how the JW world operates are very complicated. Its' very difficult to sum up in a one word sentence, but I tried my best.

5

Dating Profile Religion

by frogit in

jw
friends

i fed up being alone and looking for that "special soul mate" so i have signed up to direct dating to help find her.

one of the profile headings is religion: so thought i had better check this quiz out just to be sure.

look what came last lol!!

neverendingjourney

My results are very similar:

1.	Unitarian Universalism(100%)
2.	Secular Humanism(99%)
3.	Liberal Quakers(87%)
4.	Neo-Pagan(81%)
5.	Theravada Buddhism(79%)
6.	Nontheist(73%)
7.	Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants(67%)
8.	Taoism(63%)
9.	New Age(60%)
10.	Mahayana Buddhism(57%)
11.	Bahá'í Faith(50%)
12.	Reform Judaism(50%)
13.	Jainism(49%)
14.	Hinduism(36%)
15.	Orthodox Quaker(36%)
16.	Sikhism(36%)
17.	New Thought(30%)
18.	Scientology(28%)
19.	Seventh Day Adventist(27%)
20.	Orthodox Judaism(26%)
21.	Eastern Orthodox(19%)
22.	Islam(19%)
23.	Roman Catholic(19%)
24.	Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist)(18%)
25.	Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant(16%)
26.	Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons)(14%)
27.	Jehovah's Witness(14%)

13

JW dad on my case.

by R.F. in

jw
friends

i've been sporadic with my meeting attendance lately.. i have actually been sick over the last couple of days.

however he talks to me today and asks me am i forgetting about jehovah.

he also said that i know i need to be at the meetings and that i'm letting other stuff get in the way.. i understand that why he came at me today but here's the clincher...... he is an active jw but he's on the "irregular" list.

neverendingjourney

Hang in there. My dad is the same way. He's been baptized for almost as long as I've been alive and he became inactive a few months after his baptism. He's hardly at any meetings. I don't ever remember him going out door to door except for one day when an elder kept pushing him into it about ten years ago. Nobody in my family, except for my dad, asks me about my meeting attendance. They all realize that I'm fading away, but they don't want to push the issue with me. Don't ask, don't tell. My dad, however, calls me every now and then and hounds me about meeting attendance. I understand him in a way because he's just doing what he thinks is right for me. The funny thing is that he's never really been a part of the congregation. He takes what he likes out of the teachings and applies it in his own way.

I imagine your dad probably sees things in the religion that he doesn't like. Why not try to use those things to help get him off of your back. Tell him that you haven't been going to the meetings because...then you insert whatever it is that bothers him about the religion. He might understand you, maybe even sympathize with you, and leave you alone. Just a thought.

46

GOD: GOING.....GOING...Going...going....GONE!

by Terry in

think about this.. go way back...far far back in history.. go back before the internet.

go back farther.. go back before newspapers, tv and radio.. go waaaaay back before there was public education.. return to a time when there were no universities or libraries.. go even farther back in time and return to when it was thousands of years before any modern era.. people got their ideas from their families and neighbors period!.

everything was rumor.

neverendingjourney

Atheist leaders have not been the best examples of peace and contiment

Neither have religious leaders - - I think the Crusades, the Inquisition, the extermination of American's native people's in the name of spreading Christianity. What's your point? How does that have anything to do with the origin of religion in our society? Human nature is human nature. Pointing out the horrors committed by Atheists does not undermine the validity of that philosophy any more than the validity of Christianity is undermined by pointing to Christians who have committed genocide and other atrocities.

46

New date for Armegeddon???

by DawnLS620 in

i must have missed this on my travels thru different x-dub sites, but i think i read something on here about their "new light" regarding the timing for armegeddon.

since its been over 30 years since 1975, how do they predict armegeddon now?

what do they tell new converts regarding the 1975 debacle?

neverendingjourney

You can't imagine the number of people who quit their good jobs, sold their homes, and did janitorial work so they could pioneer full time.

The sad thing is that, of the JWs that I talked to who didn't live through 1975, most attribute this to materialism. They say that these people were greedy and were not spiritually strong, so they took the Society's words out of context. They sold their homes and asked for loans to enjoy the last few years in the old system of things. After some research, it seems that most JWs that sold their homes, quit their jobs or dropped out of high school did so in order to pioneer. JWs control what their members can and cannot read. Therefore, they can rewrite history as they please.

46

New date for Armegeddon???

by DawnLS620 in

i must have missed this on my travels thru different x-dub sites, but i think i read something on here about their "new light" regarding the timing for armegeddon.

since its been over 30 years since 1975, how do they predict armegeddon now?

what do they tell new converts regarding the 1975 debacle?

neverendingjourney

I was on one of these sites and reading different posts (don't remember which one) but there were younger people stating that "the society never said Armegeddon was coming in 1975 - it was all witnesses who read that meaning into it".

That's exactly right. I was not around for the 1975 fiasco. In fact, I had no idea that anything significant had happened in 1975 until after I was baptized and became a regular pioneer.
A few people at the doors would ask me about it, so I asked some of the older witnesses. They all told me that a bunch of JWs had run ahead of Jehovah's chariot and went crazy selling off their homes and maxing out their credit cards (were there even credit cards back then?) because they thought the end was coming in 1975. I believed them. This is what I told anyone at the door that ever asked about it. It wasn't until after I began to have doubts that I went online and read what the society actually printed about 1975 and I then realized what really went on. The Watchtower came out with some publication after 1975 blaming the brothers for reading more into what they actually wrote. Since most Witnesses today were not around for 1975, they've accepted the official JW version of events. Anyone left from the 1975 days is very careful about contradicting anyone about 1975 for fear of being expelled. You might try searching this site for 1975 threads. I've seen some old ones with scans of pre and post 1975 literature related to the 1975 prediction.

46

New date for Armegeddon???

by DawnLS620 in

i must have missed this on my travels thru different x-dub sites, but i think i read something on here about their "new light" regarding the timing for armegeddon.

since its been over 30 years since 1975, how do they predict armegeddon now?

what do they tell new converts regarding the 1975 debacle?

neverendingjourney

There haven't been any new dates set that I'm aware of. This is how I remember it. They've relied on very strong "suggestions" of when the end might come. After 1975, the other major card they still had in their hand was the generation card. The teaching that people that were old enough to remember the events of 1914 would still be around during Armageddon morphed into the teaching that people that were simply alive during 1914 would be alive during Armageddon. They used a scripture that said that a generation is 70 to 80 years to lead people to believe that the end would not come much later than 1994 (80 years after 1914). Of course, they never specifically said that end will come before 1994, but any JW with half a brain could do the math themselves and figure it out. There was actually one magazine that actually said that the end would come before the end of the 20th century. They later changed that in the bound volume edition. Apparently, it was an "oversight" by the teaching committee.

Well, 1994 came and went and nothing new happened. The next year, 1995, they came out with "new light" remaking the generation teaching. They said that the generation that Jesus talked about in Matthew 24 was not one of these 70-to-80-year generations but rather a more generic generation that amounted to an era. They reinforced that the end was still very near, but we could no longer say that the end would happen 70 to 80 years after 1914 (duh, it was 1995 already). The generation teaching is virtually meaningless now and is seldom ever brought up in the publications anymore. I think this let the wind out of the sails of a lot of JWs that were paying attention. Many publishers didn't have any idea that that Watchtower study was really significant.

Ever since, the Watchtower has been reminding everyone of just how close the end really is. They publish articles that use other ways of "proving" that Armageddon is just around the corner. For instance, they'll say stuff like the book of Daniel lists 7 world powers and we're living in the last world power listed, so the end must be near. Daniel talks about the eighth king that would rise for a short time, which they interpret to be the UN, so the end must be near. What's lost on a lot of witnesses is that the Watchtower makes up the rules about how to interpret these prophecies, so they aren't really proof of anything. They could change the way they interpret them tomorrow to "prove" something entirely different. A lot of witnesses, in my opinion, began to sense that they were really in it for the long haul and began doing things like getting an education, saving for retirement, etc. In response, there have been a lot of talks vilifying higher education. There has also been a big push by public speakers at assemblies giving the impression that the end is just around the corner, days or weeks away. There was a Bethel speaker that put his notes down and said that he was going to have a heart to heart with the friends to tell them that he knew how the governing body felt and they felt that Matthew 24:14 had been fulfilled. These tactics are more effective because there's no embarrassing paper trail left when they turn out to be wrong. They can just blame some overzealous brother.

I hope that helps. That's my recollection of how things have unfolded.