this just went up on freeminds regarding the jw elders in southern california, who have so far been stonewalling about their private conversations with accused jw child molester gilbert simental... the judge in the case has issued an order for them to testify:.
(the judge) said... "it was more like a third-party investigation into immoral conduct."...
the judge said, the elders' duty was to determine guilt and to protect the congregation, not to keep the communications under wraps.
I thought this battle was fought and lost last year in Napa.
In 2005, to be exact, yes it was. It was one of the lawsuits that was settled in exchange for a gag agreement from the victims. The Murieta case is a whole new thing. I got a feeling we'll soon be seeing even more industrial real estate for sale in Brooklyn.
this just went up on freeminds regarding the jw elders in southern california, who have so far been stonewalling about their private conversations with accused jw child molester gilbert simental... the judge in the case has issued an order for them to testify:.
(the judge) said... "it was more like a third-party investigation into immoral conduct."...
the judge said, the elders' duty was to determine guilt and to protect the congregation, not to keep the communications under wraps.
This just went up on freeminds regarding the JW elders in Southern California, who have so far been stonewalling about their private conversations with accused JW child molester Gilbert Simental... The judge in the case has issued an order for them to testify:
(The judge) said... "It was more like a third-party investigation into immoral conduct."... the judge said, the elders' duty was to determine guilt and to protect the congregation, not to keep the communications under wraps.
"It's an investigative, fact-finding body without regard for confidentiality," he said. "This was a tribunal designed to protect the congregation."
Naturally, the faithful and discreet slave who brings you the truth that leads to eternal life has decided to appeal this ruling.
Link to the news article: http://www.pe.com/localnews/rivcounty/stories/PE_News_Local_H_faith26.4193557.html
so i'm in the process of ditching my jw friends and one of them tells me that i'm starting to sound like an apostate why??
because i'm going to yet another congregation and she feels that i should stay in one cogo to get established.
first of all i'm about to go into a foreign language congo wherein i speak half the language and want to be fluent in that language, but my real reason is....i don't want friends and family finding out about my fade so they won't start calling me and bugging me.
Well I dissolved our friendship because she said I have independant thinking that apostates have when they start out.. I'm so offended and can't be her friend anymore.
Never been offended by someone complimenting you for having independent thinking. It's the greatest thing in the world. (Pun not intended.)
i think most people are ignorant of what being a satanist is.
this questions for the christians, what do you think it is?
i'm just curious and am not looking for a heated debate, just curious if people even know what it means.
I would also think it would put off any would be preachers. Simply saying that you are a Satanist would conjure all sorts of images, and they would turn heel and run!
That actually happened to me once in the field service when I was a kid. We approached this guy who was putting a red bible-looking thing in his trunk. He said, "I'm sorry, we're not interested. We serve Satan."
He was very pleasant about it. It didn't strike me for several years that he may have been trying to be ironic.
i think most people are ignorant of what being a satanist is.
this questions for the christians, what do you think it is?
i'm just curious and am not looking for a heated debate, just curious if people even know what it means.
when i was more into dubby-nation i thought satanists are those who actively worship satan and of course they know we have the truth and they hate us for having it, because they know they will die soon.
Actually, when I was being raised as a JW, we were taught that everybody who wasn't a JW was by definition Satan-influenced. Made things much simpler, I bet.
i think most people are ignorant of what being a satanist is.
this questions for the christians, what do you think it is?
i'm just curious and am not looking for a heated debate, just curious if people even know what it means.
i think most people are ignorant of what being a satanist is. this questions for the christians, what do you THINK it is? i'm just curious and am not looking for a heated debate, just curious if people even know what it means. AVE SATANAS!!!!!!!!!
Lemme try: The Church of Satan doesn't actually believe in Satan. It was set up as a confrontational refutation of the hypocritical mores and restrictiveness of certain strains of Christianity. They co-opted the image of Satan to be provocative. But they don't actually believe in him; their form of worship is more a rejection of denial and the embrace of pleasure.
"Satan worshippers," those who would sacrifice goats and virgins, are not the same as the Church of Satan. "Satan worshippers" are the product of too much Cheez Whiz and overbearing schoolmasters and are kind of a joke. I had the occasion a few years ago to talk to a COS officer; he was extremely cordial. He accepted my interpretation that the COS was a really well-constructed practical joke on the rest of the world. He probably didn't agree, but he accepted my interpretation for what it was. It's not personally for me, but the COS is not the boogey man. That was Judge Rutherford after he'd several glasses of Jesus Juice, if you know what I mean.
we are having a live phone conference on friday march 28 from 9p.m.
and rick and i were wondering if you could please give the information to your contacts.
it is for jehovah's witnesses and former witnesses as well as anyone else who is interested in knowing about the witnesses.
"Motivational speaker"? I got out of the JW's expressly because I wanted to avoid "motivational speakers."
i've been a faded jw for 10 years i left because of my failed first marriage, i'm no hypocrite and realised i had left completely so i embraced the world and dived in, only christmas and birthdays i could not get into, they were too foreign to me having never celebrated them, like if i suddenly tried to do ramadan or something like that.. 1/ all the criticisms of the people in the truth you say on here, i've found in the world, warts and all only in the world nothing holds them back from being utterly horrible to you.. 2/ i got stabbed by a worldly boyfriend, i got married 2 times of my own choosing to men outside the truth, the first smoked and was an alcoholic, the second gambled every penny we had and defrauded me out of money after we separated, 2 divorces later i am currently pregnant and a single mum since current boyfriend decided kids was to much of a responsibility and he needed his freedom and i was 'too selfish to expect him to give up his life'.. 3/ parents-in-law!
i have been shunned by them as equal to anything you accuse witness families of and for the silliest of reasons, i had a disabled son and his grandparents said they wanted nothing to do with him because they didn't want to become attached in case he died.. 4/ i miss the honest friendships of the truth, i had friends of all ages from 14 to 80 years old and they genuinely cared for me, many trying to keep me in the faith a long time after i left but i was determined to fade so moved away completely, but i find friendships in the world so shallow in comparison and very hard to sustain :( i've never been a drinker and sometimes thats what friendship means you being a companion for them to goto pub with.. 5/ my recent boyfriend was in a christian religion, i thought why not find out about it, harvest churches if you ever heard of them, unfortunately it still hasn't stop him leaving me pregnant and alone and when i said to him how does he clear that with god, he replies "as long as i repent it doesn't matter" it's like he has a "get out of jail free card" for any wrong-doing in the bible, this is so alien to me and my witness trained conscience.. 6/ i recently out of frustration tried looking into atheism and joined their forums, it wasn't fun, they are as bombastic and arrogant as their religious counterparts can be from any religion, they make a religion out of not believing in god, it's very weird they talk of saving people from believing in god and offer nothing to replace it.
they said to me "be happy you are in reality now and enjoy it" and i thought "well if this is reality i've had enough of it".
After I'd been out of the JW's for 10 years, I got married to a self-professed born again Christian. Three years and countless affairs for which she'd been "forgiven," it was over. Many of my relationships from that point had moments of unsettling abuse. I drank quite a bit. I hated myself. And my mother, of course, tried to tell me that there were plenty of suitable partners for me back in "the truth." Only it wasn't the truth. You know it's not the truth either.
The thing is, I stuck it out just a little bit longer. I made more careful choices. I did a lot more introspection, sometimes with therapy, sometimes with friends. I had to build my own support network, because nobody else was going to do it for me, and I was far too stubborn to fall back into a decision I knew was wrong.
Eventually it worked. I struggled and built friendships from the ground up. Those friends multiplied into other friends. At the end of it all, I got into a happy marriage with two beautiful children, and (this is the kicker) an actual career with people who respect me as I do them.
Plenty of people return to cults because they're all they've ever known. I understand the world's been tough on you. I'd just ask you to tough it out a little bit more, to look at some options you might've rejected because they seemed too hard or too involved. There is a lot more support than you've come across. I guarantee it.
At the end, you have to ask yourself: Are you willing to defend Jehovah's Witnesses as we've come to know them? The pedophilia scandals, the blood scandals, the recently changed (again) New Light, the isolation from the rest of the world, the division, the moral turpitude of Bethel? Because if you go back in, you'll have to defend every single one of those aspects of Jehovah's Witnesses, or they just won't let you back in all the way.
That's not the love you're seeking.
Please take care.
--P
i participated in several discussions on this forum regarding the self reported statistics of jehovah's witnesses and the deep fundamental flaws in their methods.
after arguing with my jw family about these issues, i encountered today a new independant religious survey from the pew forum on religion and public life.
this survey was huge in scope of test group when compared with other similar surveys, including more than 35,000 u.s. adults.
Slight correction to your math: It should be 63% of JW's leaving the truth. 100 minus 37 is 63.
okay everybody, grab your barf bag because i just got a steaming shovel full of craptastic notes from gerrit's zone visit to the land down under !!.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ read at your own risk ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~puke.
zone overseer was losch and his side kick was a big black guy, quite a scolar, cant remember his name though.
11. The scripture in Zechariah 14:12 COULD be literal, to quote direct " Jehovah could use radiation"
Oh, right on! This could form the basis for a whole new JW ban on microwave ovens, like blood. More Hot Pockets for us!
