I also thought it was fishy. This email came without any original article attached to it.
whereami
JoinedPosts by whereami
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17
Article by Morman Organization about JW'S
by whereami inwatchtower and awake!
' not so with the watchtower and awake!
the watchtower and awake!
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17
Article by Morman Organization about JW'S
by whereami inwatchtower and awake!
' not so with the watchtower and awake!
the watchtower and awake!
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whereami
Email going around in the JW world.
This really does make us appreciate it...especially when you see it from an outsider's point of view.
Very interesting article authored by the LDS (Mormons) - helps you to really appreciate what we have.
The World's Best Non-LDS Missionary Programs
Best Missionary Literature Printing and Distribution Program
Jehovah's Witnesses
The Jehovah's Witnesses distribute over 5,000 tons (10 million pounds) of religious literature in Russia alone each year! In contrast, the average LDS missionary worldwide distributes only one copy of the Book of Mormon every five days. Even the best and most spiritually prepared individuals can't accept a message unless they have an opportunity to hear it! In light of these facts, it can hardly come as a surprise that there are over 120,000 active Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia and similar numbers in Ukraine and Poland, compared to only about 4,000 active Latter-day Saints (out of 12,000 'on the rolls') in Russia, 2,500 active (out of 8,000 'on the rolls') in Ukraine, and 250 active out of 1100 'on the rolls' in Poland. Nor can it come as a surprise that there are over 13,000 active Witnesses in Kazakhstan and over 10,000 in Georgia, compared to only a handful of LDS members in both countries.
A comparison of statistics in many other Eastern European and Asian nations is similar (Slovakia-- 12,000 JWs to about 40 active LDS, Romania -- 30,000 JWs to under 500active LDS, et cetera.) Why are the Witnesses growing so rapidly in these countries with very few foreign missionaries, while Latter-day Saints are experiencing very slow growth in spite of a large contingent of full-time foreign missionaries? It isn't that JW commitments are easier - meeting schedules are comparable and JW members actually have to be attending church for much longer before they can be baptized. The answer lies in the Jehovah's Witnesses strategic planning and literature distribution to reach every soul and sound their message in every ear, often many times over.
The Apostle Paul asked, 'How will they believe in him of whom they have not heard?' Good question. And, judging by the statistics above, there are far, far more people who are having the opportunity to hear the Jehovah's Witness message, than the message of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. It isn't that people are hard-hearted - it's that they aren't having enough exposures and opportunities to receive the Restored Gospel.
Best Member-Missionary Program
Jehovah's Witnesses
Of the more than six million active Jehovah's Witnesses, almost all spend a minimum of ten hours a month sharing their faith with others, and 850,000 - almost 15% - spend fifty or more hours a month. According to George Barna's study of religious practices by denomination published on of July 9, 2001, only 26% of U.S. Latter-day Saints make any attempt at all to share their faith with non-members over the course of an entire year. So Latter-day Saints aren't even in the running.
Best Proselyting Magazine
Jehovah's Witnesses
Watchtower and Awake! This one isn't even a close. The hands-down winner is the Jehovah's Witness organization for Watchtower and Awake! Watchtower has an average circulation of over 22 million -- the largest circulation of any religious magazine, while Awake! follows behind at 19 million. No other religious magazines even approach this distribution. The Watchtower is translated into 144 languages for simultaneous release, and so it escapes the English-language cultural stigma of many other religious magazines that are translated into other languages weeks or months after the English version. If you pick up a copy of Awake! or the Watchtower, you'll quickly see why these magazines are so successful.
Many religious magazines are directed primarily to existing members and use vocabulary and references that are not understandable to non-members who aren't 'in the know.' Not so with the Watchtower and Awake! Thumbing through one of the numerous of copies of Awake! in front of me, I see well-written articles on Louis Braille's invention of the Braille script, the volcanic creation of the Santorini Island, Chagas ' disease, Olympic facts, the life cycle of Beavers, a recent earthquake in Taiwan, Jehovah's Witnesses service projects, and much more - all masterfully tied into Bible themes.
One Jehovah's Witness friend of mine mentioned not long ago that he had never completed college, but that he felt t hat he had learned many college-level items by reading Awake! over the course of his life. The Watchtower contains more life-application type articles related to Biblical doctrines. While the articles definitely carry the Jehovah's Witness' theological slant, they are also full of interesting and relevant facts that one would be hard-pressed to find elsewhere. The authors have definitely done their homework, although I do not agree with many points of their theology.
The Jehovah's Witnesses do a wonderful job of making their publications engaging and relevant to both Witnesses and non-witnesses alike. Also, many religious magazines today are permeated with flowery blandishments with little substance. Some denominations filter religious media to present a glowing media image, while failing to confront or acknowledge significant real-world challenges. Inspirational stories of individuals --however moving -- get old after a while without more real-world content, and besides-- many types of inspirational stories are claimed by all denominations, and prove nothing. The Jehovah's Witnesses are pragmatic enough to acknowledge that living Christian ideals in the real world doesn't always make for neatly-packaged fairy-tale stories. No one could ever accuse Watchtower or Awake! of fostering complacency -- to the contrary, they generate a sense of awar eness that I have rarely encountered in other religious publications. The Watchtower and Awake! are refreshing in their factual-based, well-researched, relevant real-world content. Regardless of the tenuousness of Jehovah's Witness theology, it is no surprise that these magazines are so popular worldwide.
Best Convert Retention
Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh-day Adventists (LDS)
In contrast to 20-25% average LDS retention rates worldwide, both the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Adventists manage to retain the considerable majority of new converts. Short-term baptismal goals, hasty teaching with limited attempt to assess the true depth of the investigator's understanding and commitment, and 'baptize them quick while they feel the Spirit and hope that they decide to come to church again' approaches, have resulted in a 20-25% average LDS retention rates in Latin America and Asia. I have never known of anything good to come of converts being rushed to baptism. Indeed, while rushing baptisms may result in quick, temporary increases in statistics, it also ignites a long-burning fuse that results in serious member problems, or even in the eventual collapse of local branches. Perhaps in this we have a lesson to learn both from our own scriptures, from our current prophet (Gordon B. Hinckley: 'it is not necessary for us to lose any of those who are baptized') and from the Jehovah's Wi tnesses, who ta ke pre-baptismal preparation much more seriously than most Latter-day Saints.
Jehovah's Witnesses would never consider rushing an individual to baptism in two weeks or less: individuals must first prove their dedication to Jehovah and worthiness to serve as his spokesman. As a result, they achieve 80+% long-term retention, compared to an average 25-30% worldwide LDS retention rate. -
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Did the WTS actually get it right in 1942?
by Olin Moyles Ghost inrecently in the book study, we discussed revelation 17:8 which says, in part, "the wild beast that you saw was, but is not, and yet is about to ascend out of the abyss, and it is to go off into destruction.
" in chapter 34, paragraphs 4-5, the revelation climax book relates that in september 1942, knorr gave a talk called "peace--can it last?
" in that talk, knorr noted that the league was in the abyss at that time as a result of world war 2. he asked "will the league remain in the pit?
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whereami
WOW!! I was thinking about this last week at the book study. My wife said the same thing, "see they got this wright". I said, without knowing, that at the time the WTS knew no more than everyone else. So it would be easy to repeat what was being said allready. I just knew I was correct.
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whereami
I'm enjoying it. I think this might be big.
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Blondie's Comments You Will Not Hear at the 3-30-08 WT Study (God's ways)
by blondie incomments you will not hear at the march 30, 2008 wt study (february 15, 2008, pages 7-11) (walk gods ways).
review comments will be in red.
wt material from today's wt will be in black.
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whereami
Fantastic as usual Blondie.
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Torn between being Gay and the Truth.........
by ScoobySnax inis there anything worse than this?
sometimes it is ok, other times it sucks.
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whereami
This was an amazing video!!!!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3354468412843068366&hl=en -
Clergy Sex Abuse Payouts Nearly Double
by whereami inhttp://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-church-abuse-report,0,1350300.story?track=rss.
clergy sex abuse payouts nearly double.
by rachel zoll | ap religion writer .
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whereami
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-church-abuse-report,0,1350300.story?track=rss
By RACHEL ZOLL | AP Religion Writer
5:38 PM EST, March 7, 2008
Article tools
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Digg Del.icio.us Facebook Fark Google Newsvine Reddit Yahoo Print Reprints Text size: NEW YORK - The number of sex abuse claims against Roman Catholic clergy dropped for the third consecutive year, but total payouts to victims nearly doubled to reach their highest level ever, according to a new report for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Dioceses and religious orders received 691 new allegations last year, compared with 714 in 2006. The overwhelming majority of claims date back decades. Settlements with victims increased by 90 percent over the same period, to more than $526 million -- the largest amount for one year.
The findings, released Friday, are part of an annual review the American bishops commissioned in 2002 as the abuse crisis consumed the church. A companion audit of bishops' child safety policies found that nearly every diocese was following the plan.
Teresa Kettelkamp, executive director of the Office of Child and Youth Protection, said the sense of urgency surrounding the issue is easing as dioceses finish enacting the reforms and cope with the many other demands on their resources.
Auditors found that some lay-clergy review boards -- created in every diocese to help bishops respond to abuse -- hadn't met in more than a year because no new allegations had been made. Two archdioceses -- Denver and Anchorage -- hadn't reported abuse claims to civil authorities until after the lapse was discovered in the audit.
"Just because the number of victims has decreased, don't feel that there aren't more victims out there needing encouragement to come forward," Kettelkamp said.
The Denver archdiocese said in a statement that it did not initially report two cases last year because its child protection director concluded that no report was required for those claims under Colorado law. Neither allegation involved physical contact. When civil authorities were alerted, they declined to investigate, the archdiocese said.
The abuse crisis erupted with the case of one predator priest in the Archdiocese of Boston, then spread to dioceses nationwide and beyond. The bishops responded by enacting the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, which requires dioceses to conduct background checks on workers, provide safety training to children and reach out to victims.
Nearly 14,000 molestation claims have been filed against Catholic clergy since 1950, according to tallies released by the bishops' conference. Abuse-related costs have reached at least $2.3 billion in the same period.
Last year, total abuse-related costs, including settlements, legal fees, therapy for victims and support for offenders, surpassed $615 million for dioceses and religious orders.
Several dioceses reached massive agreements with victims in the past 12 months. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles had the biggest by far, pledging $660 million to about 500 people. But many of those settlements have yet to be fully paid. Insurance covers some of the cost.
Of the 691 new abuse claims, five cases involved alleged victims who were under age 18 last year. Some of the accused clergy in these cases were overseas priests working in the U.S.
American dioceses are relying increasingly on overseas priests as the number of U.S. clergy sharply declines. The National Review Board, the lay panel the bishops established to monitor their policies, said dioceses should improve background checks on priests from other countries and review standards of conduct with them.
The number of accused clergy overall rose by 10 percent to 491. Most of the new allegations were made by adults who said they had been abused about three decades ago. A large majority of the offenders were dead or missing, or had already been barred from public church work or defrocked because of other molestation cases.
About 40 percent of the clergy hadn't been accused before.
The survey of nearly all 195 U.S. dioceses and non-geographic districts called eparchies was conducted by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.
The accompanying audit was conducted by The Gavin Group, Inc., a consulting firm led by a former FBI official, which completed onsite reviews at 190 dioceses and eparchies nationwide. Four eparchies and the Diocese of Lincoln, Neb., did not participate.
The biggest compliance problem the auditors discovered was training children to protect themselves from abuse. Eleven dioceses had not fully completed the training.
Kettelkamp said it has been especially difficult to train children in after-school religious education classes, who often only attend for a short period. The Archdiocese of Boston was among those that failed to provide training in those courses.
Advocates for victims have criticized the annual reports because the auditors and researchers must rely on information provided by the dioceses and religious orders.
"It's tempting but irresponsible to assume progress has been made at this very premature stage," said David Clohessy of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. "There always has been and always will be a lag time in reporting abuse." -
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Elders refuse to Testify
by The Scotsman incame across this article - .
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the case goes to court today i think.. you will notice that the org + the local elders are only interested in protecting confidentiality and are refusing to testify.. the rights of the victims are lower on the priority scale.. makes me shudder.
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whereami
I literally get sick to my stomach with this crap. Is there a possibility to write to this newspaper showing the the hypocrisy of this religion? Show this newspaper what has been written in the wts literature regarding clergy priviledge, as shown per Blondie's research. Tell them that 99.99% of jdubs don't consider themselves clergy!! Does Barbera Anderson know of this? Come on people let's make a ruckus!!! This makes me sick.
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Zeitgeist - anyone for a discussion?
by Shawn10538 ini am starting a sort of campaign to get this movie distributed and have as many people as possible get exposed to it.
the documentary is in 3 parts.
part one deals with the pagan mythological origins of bible myths, part 2 is about 9/11 and supports the theory that the towers were demolitioned and part 3 deals with the federal reserve agressive take over in the 1920s by international bankers.
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whereami
Here is someone going point by point showing the inaccuracies of the movie. There are 3 parts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkxyGLERfqU