the non-profit organization behind the jehovah's witnesses in kraainem, belgium has been convicted of inciting discrimination and hatred or violence against former members who chose to leave the community.
the court in ghent has fined jehovah's witnesses eur 12,000 but due to the indexation adjustment, the actual payout to the victim will be (at this point) 8 times higher.
the multiplier seems weird to us, for those familiar with us law, the eur 12,000 is the statutory fine, taking into account the devaluation of currency, the court system sets an indexed multiplier for fines, currently at 8 - similar to how fines in the us were set in the 1800's at $100 would now be several thousands of dollars.. it is likely that the jehovah's witnesses will pursue this case to the european court.. according to the prosecutor, this case is therefore mainly about recognizing the malpractices within the community, not so much about sanctions: “in our opinion, this is a blatant violation of the discrimination law.
That is great news. Yippie skippie!
People should get out of Watchtower the Great before its towers come tumbling down and before its walls collapse in upon all who dwell within its confines.
Bowls of litigation and wrath are being poured upon it from on high.
please forgive if my english is a bit crooked :-) at least i understand quite well and i thank everyone here in the forum very much!
you were a big help for me within the last months.
i'm a born-in from germany, mid50, was 20 years elder, woke up a few years ago.
The key thing to remember about NDE is the "N" - for "Near". They are called "Near Death Experiences" - not "After Death Experiences". Though many of the people were clinically dead for a period of time, it has not been proven (at least not to my satisfaction) that any of them were completely brain dead before reporting their experiences.
Hey Sea Breeze, another thing similar to the WT religion and atheistic naturalism is that when the WT writes about whether miracles (of a supernaturally caused nature, rather than being merely an amazingly rare happy event) happen in our time they usually (or maybe always??) say they do not happen in our time. At least, regarding gifts of the holy spirit they say that no longer takes place - including healing miracles. But the WT does say that demonic activity happens in our time. Now isn't that odd?
jehovah's witnesses were raped and tortured by the thousands in malawi because they obeyed the watchtower society's rules, and they broke caesar's law and refused to purchase a political card in a country that only had one polictical party.
now (since 1999), jehovah's witnesses are allowed to vote in political elections!
i would love to hear everyone's comments.
Where I live all political voting has been by "vote by mail" only - and that has been the case for several years. Thus, where I live JWs and faded ex-JWs living alone can vote without any other JW ever knowing, provided the person voting is cautious. However there is one caveat. Anyone can obtain a copy of the voter registration list for where I live - including political party affiliation/membership (if any), though not including who and/or what the persons cast their votes for (since the ballots are private). It does however cost money to obtain the voter list.
a number of states are allowing people to not wear a mask.
some think this is disastrous!
what’s your view?.
Anony Mous, you asked good questions to me when you said "why should people who are immune have to continue to wear masks? Don’t you believe that the vaccines work?"
In making my earlier post about masks I hadn't given thought specifically to whether ones who were fully vaccinated should wear masks. Based upon what I have read and heard on the news the various Covid-19 vaccines work to various degrees of effectiveness. Furthermore there are new strains/variants of the virus and for some of those the vaccines don't seem to provide nearly as much protection. One concern that I have is that if someone in a store or on public transportation is not wearing a mask, what proof do I and others have that the person is vaccinated and/or immune to Covid-19. Unless the person provides documentation of having been vaccinated how can any of us really know the person is vaccinated and/or immune?
It seems to me that the guidance stated at https://www.nbcnews.com/shopping/wellness/cdc-guidelines-face-masks-n1260911 is worth considering.
Regarding whether the current Covid-19 vaccines are safe, I haven't yet made up my mind on that subject. I lean towards thinking they are safe, due to the medical community saying they are safe, but in researching how they are made I notice that most of them are mRNA type of vaccines. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/different-vaccines/mrna.html says the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines cause the human body cells to make a harmless protein piece and later to display it on the surface of the cells. The article says "Our immune systems recognize that the protein doesn’t belong there and begin building an immune response and making antibodies, like what happens in natural infection against COVID-19." My worry is that the immune systems of some of those receiving the vaccine might do more than attack the Covid-19 protein pieces, namely that they might also attack all of the body cells of some people which have the protein pieces on their surfaces - causing an autoimmune disease.
The article says "mRNA vaccines have been held to the same rigorous safety and effectiveness standards [332 KB, 24 pages]external icon as all other types of vaccines in the United States. The only COVID-19 vaccines the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will make available for use in the United States (by approval or emergency use authorization) are those that meet these standards." But, I am still concerned.
behold, the days come, saith the lord god, that i will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the lord .
amos 8: 11. .
most of us who have been raised as jehovahs witnesses since at least the 1960s were occasionally reminded of the scholarship of fred franz and his command of eight or more languages, including the biblical languages of hebrew and greek.
I read online (I think it was somewhere on jehovahs-witness.com) that a non-JW critic of the NWT said the NWT was made as a revision of Rotherham's Emphasized Bible into smoother flowing contemporary English. If that is primarily the way the NWT was made, then I think that the NWT rests on a sound foundation and in a sense can be called a literal translation. That is because Rotherham's Emphasized Bible is a very literal translation of the Bible from critical texts. It even says Yahweh in the OT text instead of "the LORD" and it uses typography to distinguish when God/god is translated from Elohim, Eloah, and El. Thus using Rotherham's Emphasized Bible as a base, along with comparison with other translations and with various critical texts and with Hebrew-Aramaic-Greek lexicons, to make the NWT, could result in an excellent Bible that is worthy of being called a translation from ancient manuscripts of the Bible. Rotherham's Emphasized Bible also uses the word "presence" as a translation of "parousia" instead of "coming" and in one of the appendices of the Bible he states his reasons for doing such. Rotherham read Russell's "The Divine Plan of the Ages" and wrote a review on it. See http://www.biblestudentarchives.com/documents/RotherhamAppendix.pdf . Wikipedia says Rotherham was a "scholar and minister of the Churches of Christ".
I compared a number of verses of the OT of the NWT with that of the OT of Rotherham's Emphasized Bible and noticed that in those verses the NWT rendering does look much like an updating of the rendering of the Rotherham's Emphasized Bible into smoother flowing contemporary English. In those OT verses I examined the NWT wording was closer to that of Rotherham's Emphasized Bible than to that of the American Standard Version Bible.
It is also case that the NWT NT used some renderings from the Emphatic Diaglott's interlinear literal translation and it 'modern' English translation.
i have been giving a lot of thought to the young people who are leaving the watchtower organization in recent years.
last night, i was reading the thread posted by jwfacts a while back in which he provided some statistics and graphs showing the rapidly declining growth in the watchtower.
one factor that was discussed at length was the high number of young people who do not stay in the organization.
A big part of the reason why I ended up avoiding literature critical of the WT's teachings and of the Bible while a teen and thus getting baptized, was that I placed too much credence on the idea of being obedient to what the Bible says, including obeying one's parents and avoiding apostate teachings. Obedience in many matters is important, but obedience is over rated. If I was less obedient (to what the WT said about the Bible), while living in my parent's house I would gone to the library to study pro evolution books and pro atheism books (if I could find the latter) to see if the WT religion (and even Christianity as a whole and even the Bible) is mostly false. It is unlikely I could have found any ex-JW literature back then in the libraries or elsewhere, but I could have at least tested the claims of the Bible. I did some research back then on evolution, the concept of Bible prophecies having been fulfilled, the existence of Jesus Christ as a historical person, and the correctness of WT interpretations of the Bible, but I only used WT sources for my study (other than a few science articles that commented on evolution; and what I read in my school's biology book while in the classroom [the biology teacher said students couldn't take the biology book home]). I didn't look up the quotes the WT made from secular sources; if I had, at least on the topic of evolution, it would have made a huge difference!
I was extremely bored attending the KH meetings and going out in FS but I did those activities (including while as an adult living on my own for several years) because I thought that was required of me by Jehovah God. I thus did what I thought was my duty, though I otherwise didn't want to do it.
i have been giving a lot of thought to the young people who are leaving the watchtower organization in recent years.
last night, i was reading the thread posted by jwfacts a while back in which he provided some statistics and graphs showing the rapidly declining growth in the watchtower.
one factor that was discussed at length was the high number of young people who do not stay in the organization.
Jay Elle, I wish that when I was 10 - 13 years old that I had access to such information that your teen daughter had! When I was 13 years old there was no internet accessible to the general public - the Apple IIe computer and the IBM PC hadn't even been invented yet! [I didn't buy my first computer (it was an 8-bit computer) and modem card (for connection to other computers by telnet - there was no internet browser and world wide web back then) until the latter half of my time in college.] If I had the information readily available back then (when I was younger than age 14) that people have today I very probably would never have become baptized as a JW!
People like daughter (when you made you post 6 years ago) are what we need in the KHs today educating the other unbaptized youth in the KH so they don't ever get baptized into the JW religion!
can a person resign from being one of jehovah’s witnesses?.
frequently asked questions.
a person can resign from our organization in two ways:.
I think there is a benefit if a person leaves the JW by disassociation rather than by disfellowshipping. That is, in the mind (the figurative "eyes") of those who never were JWs, if they now that the person voluntarily quit (such as by disassociating) instead of being involuntarily kicked out (such as by disfellowshipping), they will have more respect for that ex-JW person. Likewise I think if the ex-JW left by disassociation the ex-JW will have more influence with non-JWs if they write a pro atheism book and/or anti-JW religion book, than if they were disfellowshipped.
behold, the days come, saith the lord god, that i will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the lord .
amos 8: 11. .
most of us who have been raised as jehovahs witnesses since at least the 1960s were occasionally reminded of the scholarship of fred franz and his command of eight or more languages, including the biblical languages of hebrew and greek.
Rivergang, the modern language nature of the NWT is also what I like about that Bible. It is what I like most about it. I also appreciate that it uses a personal name in the OT in place of the expression "the LORD". Furthermore I appreciate that its NT is based upon a critical Greek text compiled primarily form the oldest extant Greek NT manuscripts.
Though there were some English Bibles in 1964 which were in modern language (for the most part), such as the RSV, they still included thee, thou, and thine in some verses. I read that the English Bible was slow to abandon archaic language due to the use of quotes from the KJV (and probably the Douay) including the archaic language in liturgical books (including prayer books) and in pronouncements in church settings.
behold, the days come, saith the lord god, that i will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the lord .
amos 8: 11. .
most of us who have been raised as jehovahs witnesses since at least the 1960s were occasionally reminded of the scholarship of fred franz and his command of eight or more languages, including the biblical languages of hebrew and greek.
Hi Bobcat. I visited those web pages but they didn't help me. The ones which claimed to have a link for PDFs of the Greber NT were ones in which the links don't work any more. Anyway, I once owned a copy of the Greber NT and thus I know how spiritualistic sounding its wording is. What I am looking for is the part of his book which includes his "Explanation". Every online source I have found which is selling his NT in English lacks his "Explanation" section, even in those copies in which the words "and Explanation" are included in the title of the book. I now wonder if maybe all of the English translations of his German translation of his NT exclude the "Explanation" section. Unfortunately I don't know German so obtaining a German edition with his "Explanation" section (if I can find one) won't help me.
