i am curious as to whether the final gut deciding factor to leave was inappropriate doctrine or the overly intrusive control of the wt.
reading the bible normally opened my eyes.
i was born-in and never suspected that they were skewing the bible in such a ridiculous manner or misquoting secular sources.
The thing that made me stop preaching was realising that the 1914 doctrine was total bullscrap.
The thing that made me leave was the Governing Bodies demands for "loyalty" etc which amount to worship of them.
After I left and deconstucted it all I became much more aware of the mind control techniques they use.
hi to all here i post some photos of the russell era: http://bibliotecajw.blogspot.com/2011/11/fotos-de-la-era-russell.html.
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Thanks for posting, it underlines how far back in history those events were,look at the clothes , so 19th Century, mind you the JW's are still stuck in the 19th century, and a good number of them still dress like it.
My favorite photo of a later era,Rutherford's time,is of the Bethel Christmas Party, can someone post that again ? so funny when you think how apeshit they go about celebrating it today.
ok, so every other religion in the world's baptism is invalid according to jw's, and theirs is the only true baptism.
that's the story i get.
i have a few questions about that:.
If your baptism was invalid because it was performed by another denomination, is it invalid for that reason, or because of the words used ?
Why do converts need to get baptised again if the words of their original are totally scriptural ? (I think Fred Franz was one that never got baptised by JW's?)
If the only baptism that is valid is the one they have now, then mine, 1962, was invalid.
Who decides what is a valid Baptism, Jehovah or the WT?
If the latter, who gave them the right, the simple baptisms of the 1st Century were acceptable to Jehovah without an organization being mentioned or even involved since there wasn't one.
As with all WT doctrine and practise, the whole thing is a mucking fuddle.
i am looking for confirmation on the following:.
jws are now being individually assigned to smaller territories, and they are told to consistently work that same territory over & over again.
the reason is that the watchtower wants the jws to build relationships with the people in that area.
It could well backfire, I can see HHolders saying bugger off much more readily to the same person they already told they were not interested.
We need the leaflet/tract/sticker that we talked of producing to alert the public to the Do Not Call system.
Then we can assign ourselves some territory,and do some un-witnessing, when the JW has to hand his map back in with 90% DNC's on they may have to look for a new idea.
this incident is past but reading a thread concerning someone wanting to invite her jw mom to her son's birthday party brought this memory back, how i handled the incident then, and how i would've handled it today knowing what i now know.. my wife and i had a family reunion a few years ago (at least 3, probably more) and it happened on my aunt's birthday.
my mom, being who she is, brought a birthday cake to the party and wanted to surprise her sister with it.
upon talking to my mother-in-law (a very devout jw) about it, as soon as my mom mentioned birthday she walks away.
Good thread Gary, and may I say to Scully, you rock! I love your no nonsense approach to everything.
I try to live by the Golden Rule, like you mentioned, but I do not see that as incompatible with possibly "giving offense" to JW's or any other person who is ridiculously sensitive about how I wish to live and act.
If someone is "offended" they do not die, they are "offended", so what ???? Did Jesus worry about those that got offended as he sat and ate with sinners ?
If I am in the situation you describe and a JW relative is rude by removing themselves I would tell them what I thought, but that may not be for you or others, that is just me.
But we cannot spend our lives, and waste our freedom of conscience, by always making room for their crazy beliefs.
As long as we are not brash and uncaring about it, we must take back the right to give offense.
mickey mouse, our very own treasured poster, not the cartoon character, thinks that religious belief is both rational and intelligent.. do you ?.
This thread has ranged over a number of subjects, and the comments have been great, and enlightening too. My motive for starting it was not to get at dear Mickey, but to challenge the concept of "Fundamental" or "Militant" atheists.
I am sure that some exist, those who say that it is 100% sure that there is no "god" of any kind, no realm beyond the physical universe. This position has been called "Strong" atheist by some, and I think that is to be preferred.
I have never met a "strong" atheist.(atheist bigot) All the atheists I have met or spoken to, are open-minded enough to say that some sort of evidence for something outside of our universe may come along in the future.
But, we require satisfactory ,testable, evidential facts, the kind that would stand up in court and the kind that would satsify the most sceptical scientific experts,to accept anything less is to leave oneself open to believing the kind of nonsense JW's do.
To mangle both J.B.S Haldane and Shakespeare, we atheists usually follow the dictum "There are more things in heaven and earth than can even be dreamed of in our philosophy"
i think it was for me.. i knew a lot of the history of the bible students, russell, rutherford and the "old light".
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once i could see all of the overwhelming evidence right in front of my eyes, there was no ignoring the reality..
Without the Internet my journey to where I am today, a very happy place, would not have been completed, I think I would simply have floundered around, feeling lost and dissatisfied, and not a little sad too.
I discoverd this site about 7 or 8 months after I had decided that 1914 was nonsense, and therefore everything else was questionable to say the least, I spent a long time looking at old threads and new, and then I went elsewhere on the net, I decided that after 58 years of "Theocratic Education" I knew two things, not much and sod-all.
I was then guided to get hold of many books on subjects I needed to research to supplement the net as far as education goes.
But to mentally leave the Borg, all I needed was this wonderful site, I physically left about 3 months later, again this site gave me the impetus and courage to execute a fade.
So, HUGE THANK YOU to all who contribute to JWN and to those wonderful posters of the past too, THANK YOU ALL !!!!
...that there is a literature invoice the congregation has to pay every month in order to recieve literature?
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All I ever heard of, and this may have been gossip, was one Congo. near me that was always in the red, donations were very small, lots of old people and single mums etc I was told they were informed by HQ/London that their "contribution" was not large enough.
Could this be true ?
the wts sometimes turns the "stumbling" concept into a manipulative weapon.. the biblical concept of "stumbling" is that if you know someone else has a weakness you shouldn't do something that will cause him to cave in to that weakness.
for example, if you have a friend who is trying to fight alcohol addiction you shouldn't invite him to go somewhere where everyone else will be imbibing.. i think it's perfectly legitimate for a friend to tell you that he has a drinking problem and that he'd really appreciate it if you would refrain from serving alcohol while he's over.
but i think it crosses a line if the friend tries to manipulate you into swearing off alcohol altogether because the mere thought of you drinking booze will stumble him.. but some jws try to get others to refrain from doing things "so you don't stumble me.
None of us, the biblical metaphor is being stumbled on the road to life, if you were ever in any way associated with the GB and JW's, you were not on the road to life !
Good point though 00Dad. The funny thing about these ones who were so easily offended was, they were often the ones giving the most offense in many ways,a wise old guy once said to me "they cannot expect perfection from you if they are not perfect themselves"
just checked out the 4/15 1909 where it says that the acts 15:29 decree was just a recommendation to prevent stumbling.. does anyone know how long the wt held to this belief about the apostolic decree.
when did the wt start saying it was a command?.
If this was so important to Jehovah, why did he not make this clear until 1945 ? Surely he should have told his FDS this at least by 1919 so that none of the Bible Students accepted a BT from then on?
Of course the whole silly Rutherfordian and Knorr inspired killer doctrines are based on the idea that a BT is "feeding" which is utter nonsense, so none of the dietary laws in the Bible from Noah to Acts 15, have any relevance to the use of blood to save life as a medical procedure.
There is not one scripture, or even vague "Bible principle" so beloved of the WT, that has a bearing on this matter.
Yet they still insist on taking the life of JW's by their erroneous teaching, the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses are Blood-guilty murderers.
