Conscientious Christians would want to heed the example of the Bible - no one good in the Bible ever celebrated the New Year, therefore it would be wrong. After all, it's like celebrating a birthday - the birthday of a new year.
You would celebrate the New Year like you celebrate a birthday - further showing how wrong it is.
it was announced at the meeting last night that next week all should be in attendance at the service meeting as a special important letter will be read.
this is in addition to the letter about the district convention.
any idea what it's about?
Armageddon came - invisibly - in 1975
light - we can't see it or touch it; we can't hear it, taste it or smell it.
parts of light appear as different colours - all electomagnetic forces yet still the colour is mere perception, dependent on whether the light rays are absorbed or reflected by the object they fall upon.
white may indeed be black and black be white - perceptions!
AM...
Om...!
just wanted to share with all a very nice article letter written in my moms newspaper:.
church of santa.
assassinations.
"...if you keep your eyes on the toyz...!"
I think that was song # 119?
i don't know if there is a god.
if i knew for certain, this piece of knowledge could serve as a foundation for my world view.
some people are confident they know the answer (both theists and atheists) and their world view is based on this faith.
Welcome back to Nvr! Some folks around here had a funeral and everything...
i don't know if there is a god.
if i knew for certain, this piece of knowledge could serve as a foundation for my world view.
some people are confident they know the answer (both theists and atheists) and their world view is based on this faith.
Thank you DT, and QC in particular.
"Everyone is special, everyone is ordinary."
I think there is value in defining "consciousness". Consciousness to me is not just our thoughts and other mental activity. Consciousness is related to our awareness of existing, related to a felt sense, an experience of existing in the present eternal "now". Mental activity takes place in the past or in the future, but thoughts (as I conceive of them) do not happen in the real world nor are they connected to the present instant.
I conclude I existed while I slept - I have memories of dreams. When meditating, where have I gone? Perhaps my "ordinary conscious mind" has switched off for a while, but a part of me has continued to observe the experience.
Is a horse conscious? An amoeba? One of the cells in our body? Does each cell in my body have "consciousness", each cell its own "soul"?
I have posed the question without an answer in the past: what roles is "God" supposed to fulfill? Is he a creator? A teacher? A ruler? What if "God" is really no more (and no less) than the "ground of consciousness" of us all? "That which perceives existence"?
What if our individual consciousnesses all spring from a single source? This is what I experience when I meditate. Perhaps it's a nothing more than a wish fulfillment. If true, we are all highly related - we would share the same "soul".
here it is guys.
this is what darth frosty was talking about in his post the other day (http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/149460/1.ashx).
this is a collection of confidential letters from the watchtower society that were sent to the bodies of elders in the years 1981 through 2006. these are the letters that you were never meant to see or read.. there's all sorts of information in them ranging from the boring and mundian to instructions about how to handle child molesters.. many thanks to darth frosty and others (who i'm not sure can be named) who worked very hard and took risks to collect and scan the information.
On July 1, 2006 they tell elders to send a letter to congregations where child molesters are moving to - but only when that person's privileges are still restricted. I guess if you get back into their good graces, you can move on to pounce again with out warning!
Also, they tell elders to not forward any correspondence on child molesters that they have received from the branch office they SHOULD NOT (emphasis theirs) send that or any copies of it to the new congregation. CYA, anyone?
pat robertsons doom and gloom forecast for 08 (his 07 forecast that the us would be hit by a major terrorist attack was incorrect).
reminded me so much of the watchtower's constant doom messages: definitely rule by fear.
if you do this you will be destroyed, so will your kids.. if you do this you will be disfellowshipped and lose all your friends and family.. if you don't go out in service you will be marked as bad association.. and of course every natural or man made disaster meant the end was coming soon soon soon.. it takes a lot of effort to overcome the fear paralysis instilled in us by the watchtower.. and it doesn't just go away and stay away, conquering fear is not a one time event, it is instead.
It takes practice for some of us (like me) to exercise the "I'm OK" muscle instead of giving in to the habitual "I am unworthy and about to be smacked" posture. Eventually, my body calmed down to the point where it felt good to focus on what it felt like just to breathe and exist...
i haven't been on this forum for several years, nothing personal.
the reason i am here is that i have been told that this forum is very active, and that is what i am looking for.. there was a case in the news here in washington state about a 14 year old boy that died due to his decision to refuse a blood transfusion.
this of course was the wishes of his aunt that gained guardianship over him due to his parents drug problems four years earlier.
I have never come across JWs sanctioning visual imagery and similar "new age" customs before. I am rather surprised there isn't a JC convened since they are obviously getting wrapped up in Pagan thoughts and behaviors.
The WTS has so muddied the water on what is ok and not ok regarding blood - I wonder if all the possible options were explored, or whether it was just a blanket dogmatic "no blood (or fractions thereof, even though it might be ok)" attitude that prevailed.
Poor kid...
received email from a friend- enjoy it- the end is always around the corner.
a man is in the mountains, it's night time, he wanders off the road and .
falls off a cliff.
I recently picked up on a news story about a woman I worked with for 11 years. This is that story put into the form of those cutesy email messages:
A woman is on her way to work, it's early morning, she drives through the mountain pass as she does every week day and comes around a bend. There's a semi in her lane, coming straight towards her! She grabs on to her steering wheel in a death grip and holds on for dear
life. She hangs on for perhaps 3 seconds, each moment seeming like eternity, and she grabs on tighter, her life hangs in the balance.
Her muscles ache and finally she feels the car disintegrate around her, the semi plowing into her head-on, her grip finally loosening in an instant as her car and her body are
thrown in pieces along a quarter mile of roadway. Then the sun rises. - SHE WAS OBLITERATED IN AN INSTANT WITHOUT A CHANCE TO DO ANYTHING BUT REALIZE HER PENDING DEMISE.Isn't it wonderful. The point being - we are right on the brink of
Armageddon and just when we feel we cannot hold on another minute in
this terrible world - we could be utterly destroyed before making contact with a Jehovah's Witness, therefore allowing God to judge us on our heart condition instead of our ability to stay in a crazy organization with changing demands and rules.
