According to the OT, and as quoted in a recent WT study farticle, the legal bond of slavery was prioritized over the bond of marriage and the rights of a father toward his children with an enslaved wife. I couldn't bring myself to worship or even respect a god that puts crap like that into divine law.
Billy the Ex-Bethelite
JoinedPosts by Billy the Ex-Bethelite
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16
Has the WT ever said slavery is wrong? Last Sundays WT seems to say no.
by BU2B inin last sundays wt there was a paragraph talking about how the 1st century christian congregation was united despite differences.
rich and poor, jew and gentile, and get this.. slave and slave owner!
the wt has admitted that not only slaves were a part of the congregation, but that slave owners were as well, with no sanction on their behavior.
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Breyers is not allowed to call it's product "ice cream" anymore by the FDA!
by EndofMysteries inmany other so called ice cream at grocery stores as well.
have you noticed how it seems to be different than from a couple years ago?
that it doesn't melt, it just warms up and becomes like a whipped cream texture?
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Billy the Ex-Bethelite
Could this be a sign that we really are living in the Last Days?
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Breyers is not allowed to call it's product "ice cream" anymore by the FDA!
by EndofMysteries inmany other so called ice cream at grocery stores as well.
have you noticed how it seems to be different than from a couple years ago?
that it doesn't melt, it just warms up and becomes like a whipped cream texture?
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Billy the Ex-Bethelite
I'd assume the propylene glycol is added so that the "frozen dairy dessert" doesn't freeze as hard as real ice cream does. Personally, I'd rather use my serious ice cream scoup and some muscle to get real ice cream out of a small container, rather than be able to spoon out the frozen glop they're selling in buckets.
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To Active JWs: Your January 3, 2014 Daily Text Contains an Error
by PelicanBeach into active jws: your january 3, 2014 daily text contains an error.
friday, january 3. .
under what circumstances might a christian wife actually depart?
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Billy the Ex-Bethelite
Oh for the good old days when the wife could catch her husband having sex with a man and not have "scriptural grounds" for seperation or divorce:
http://www.quotes-watchtower.co.uk/homosexual_adultery_.html
Yet if a married couple admitted to practicing oral sex, they could be DFd (WT 1972):
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I got my money back
by Faithful Witness ini posted a question here after i sent packages to my jw niece and nephew in december.
i wasn't sure what the response would be.
yesterday, i got an email that the packages were "undeliverable," and my money was refunded.
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Billy the Ex-Bethelite
The deserve to sent stockings full of coal. Nah, coal is actually worth something. Send them stockings full of dog poop.
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Who are the real WT puppet masters ?
by cookiemaster ina few days ago i posted my estimations about how much the wt actually makes a year.
you guys were all really helpful and provided a lot of useful info.
a good estimate would be 2-3 billion dollars a year.
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Billy the Ex-Bethelite
I haven't read all the posts yet, but I wanted to chime in on an observation before I forget it.
During my time in Bethel during the 90s, I thought the GB were pulling the strings. There were other heavies, and some of the GB had more power than others. And I was under the impression that as the money came in, it went to printing and construction. For years the yearbooks had pictures and stories of expansive and expensive construction projects throughout the world. And this was mostly after everything had gone to the donation arrangement. The Iron Curtain fell and "da troof" started to spread throughout Eastern Europe, also an expensive endeavor. With this material abundance in the organization, it was one of the ways I was blinded to TTATT. "This has to be Gawd's organization."
I can't recall exactly when it would have been, but things changed. GB 1.0 was getting older and maybe only Losch had been added. There was talk of expansion in Brooklyn, Patterson, and development of property upstate. But only Wallkill expanded, in their patchwork of here-and-there buildings with no cohesive design. Repair projects on foreign branches continued, but nothing new after the flurry of previous construction. I'm thinking it was around the time that WT rolled out a bunch of other corporate entities to reduce their liability that something really changed.
Talk increased of the need to downsize to save money. Seemed strange to me that Gawd was suddenly having a hard time paying the bills. Cuts began. Projects cancelled. One Awake cut per month. And still the need for more cuts. It was really sounding strange to me. Then GB 2.0 outnumbers the few surviving GB 1.0. Massive layoff of Bethelites along with the extensive sale of properties. From where they were just 15 years ago, they should now be absolutely rolling in cash. The number of JWs has increased, WT expenses have decreased, hundreds of millions of dollars of property sold.
We can only speculate, because WT is certainly never going to open the books of their numerous corporations for anybody. Of GB 2.0, you've got a few nutters, several control freaks, none of them bright enough to pull off a "great caper." I would suspect that there is a huge amount of waste because most of the guys leading this cult aren't that bright, there's no accountability, and it isn't there money.
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A New Lightbulb
by wearewatchingyouman in"the truth" it seems to me like a lightbulb.. .
when i think of "new light", i don't think of the sun or the moon or the stars.
an ever present ray of light.
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Billy the Ex-Bethelite
Watchtower = 250,000 individual lights... none of which are powered.
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Closed WT Branches list.
by Hecce inone of the friends at extj forum provided this list of wt branches that have been closed so far, there is also a mention that two large ones are in the process of being dismantled, they are spain and argentina.
posted for informational purposes and it seems to be accurate.. thanks for reading.
1) alaska.
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Billy the Ex-Bethelite
Thanks for the list. I'd visited several of those branches. Some were quite small. But many were large, new, and very nice. I can only guess that the value of all that property is in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Add to that the fact that WT income is no longer spent on upkeep of all those beautiful properties, and there's an obvious question:
WHERE'S THE MONEY GOING?!?
Anybody that's been an MS realizes how congregations are required to keep careful financial records that are reported to the congregation, audited within the congregation, and checked at every CO visit. If the nickel-and-dime congregations are so carefully scrutanized, shouldn't every level of the organization be open to public audit and review? Is a late deposit of $25 in the account of Podunk congregation any big deal when hundreds of millions of dollars disappear into the secrecy of WT Corporation?
"Oh, such financial mismanagement would never happen in this organization!" ... Hmmm, every hear of a guy named Judas Iscariot?
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Generosity in the world
by DS211 inwell tonight my family and i went out to dinner.
we ate, had a good time...then the time came for the check.. the waitress announced some old couple would pay our tab.
total strangers picked up our bill.
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Billy the Ex-Bethelite
I've seen generosity among the JWs, and received generosity when I was a penniless bethelite. But of the JW generosity that I've seen and received, it was never anything spectacular, and it only happened toward other JWs or to "give a witness." I've seen far more impressive generosity among nonJWs, because there are no strings attached.
And as I pointed out in a recent conversation with my parents, the generosity I've received in federal, state, and university grants is beyond anything I imagined would come my way. I'm glad that after I left bethel with no money, no unemployment benefits, no insurance, and no job references, the government and the school has been there to help me when I've really needed it the most in my life!
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UFO's
by zeb ini have seen ufo's in broad daylight.. what is the party line of the wts on ufo's?please.
anyone else seen these things?.
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Billy the Ex-Bethelite
"anyone else seen these things?"
It's probably been 20 years ago, I was driving home through the country and saw in the evening sky what seemed to be a low flying commercial jet. That's the impression I got since it seemed to have spots of light on the outside and light coming out of a long series of windows. But we're nowhere near an airport where a passenger jet would be so low. And the lights and shape didn't seem to be quite right for any aircraft I'd seen. As I was driving along, it didn't seem to be moving in relation to the direction I perceived that the aircraft seemed to be pointing. It seemed to be hovering at a slight angle, nothing like anything I'd seen. But it was dark, and I needed to get home to my bible reading nonsense.
It was little more than enough to really catch my attention before I drove into a wooded section of the road and lost sight of whatever it was. The next day it was the talk of much of the county. Sighted in other areas and described very similar to what I'd seen. There was an article in the local podunk paper about this UFO, lots of speculation, nothing ever confirmed. The general conclusion, that I shared as a JW "aliens don't exist" thinker, was that it was some top secret military equipment. But as more time passes, if it was the military or government equipment, how is it that there has been no unveiling of any flight equipment that displays the hovering capability that I thought I saw that night? I dunno.