Is this change supposed to be effective immediately or beginning in January 2009?
easyreader1970
JoinedPosts by easyreader1970
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31
RE-CONFIRMED So- Name suggestions for Book Study amalgamated with the TMS
by outofthebox inthere is no doubt about it folks.
the book study and the tms will be one meeting.
i talked today with the po and he was surprised and later upset i knew about it.
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What are your thoughts on the Documentary Hypothesis?
by easyreader1970 ini recently picked up who wrote the bible?
from my local library.
it's subject is the documentary hypothesis.
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easyreader1970
I recently picked up Who Wrote the Bible? from my local library. It's subject is the Documentary Hypothesis. What that is, in a nutshell, is a theory that more than Moses wrote the first five books of the Old Testament and perhaps Moses didn't write any of it. It suggests that there are four independent and distinct sources of the ancient text.
Some of it seems like it is reaching but many of the texts discussed, after considering them, give this theory some serious believability. Of course I can't discuss my findings with any Witnesses that I know unless I want to be hauled in front of a judicial committee meeting for apostasy (if they only knew).
I was just wondering if anyone else had considered this theory or had read this particular book.
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Why the WT Society is DOOMED!
by Gill inyesterday morning i was listening to 'thought for the day', on radio 4 bbc.. a rabbi was discussing why the jewish faith had survived for thousands of years.. he pointed out that the centre of the faith was the children.
because the children were put first they wanted to stay in the faith as the faith respected them and so they respected the faith in return.. the problem with the wt society is that it puts itself first and the children are just a nuisance to be sat silent in meetings, disciplined for wriggling, talking, and just being children.
the leaders of the wt despise children and only love themselves, giving only lip service to the care children should receive and more importantly the respect children should receive.. therefore, with offspring of jws leaving the wt at the rate of only 1 in every 8 children remaining, the writing is on the wall of the watchtower society.
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easyreader1970
I think that the retention of youngsters is a tremendous problem for the organization, especially when it comes to the replacement of elders and ministerial servants. In fact, if you still attend meetings you can begin to see it already.
In my congregation, the average age of the ministerial servrants is about 48. Many years ago, speaking of just my congregation, it was about ten to fifteen years less than that. Most of those servants have gone on to be elders, in that congregation or another, but no young people are replacing them. Our youngest ministerial servant is 40. Others of those servants have left the truth entirely or are doing nothing in the truth but just going and smiling and nodding (people like me).
I should add that there is a pretty decent pool of young blood males there that they could choose from, but these ones aren't reaching out. They're in the 20-30 range. A few of them carry the microphones every now and then, but that is about it. We have one that is actually reaching out who is about 30 but he has recently been reinstated. He was making out with an elder's daughter. At the time he was about 24. The elder's daughter was 13. Needless to say, that particular elder and his family are no longer in the congregation.
Yeah.
But I digress.
The point I am trying to make is this: You have to have male leadership for this form of society to continue to function. It's easy to replace Governing Body members with younger men. Give the rank-and-file publisher some lame duck story about the calling not ending in 1935. That'll plug that leak.
But in local congregations it is not done so easily. Many congregations have to conscript elders from other congregations because there just are not enough brothers to do all the work.
My wife is always onto me because even she sees the sharp decline in capable brothers. "You should be doing more," she says. I did five years in the big house as a ministerial servant between the ages of 20 and 25 and I am done. You would not believe the craziness that went on in those closed door servant/elders meetings. Well, some of you would because many of you were in them.
I'm digressing again. Fast forward ten years from now. Some of the now 50 or 60+ elders will either be dead or incapable of handling their already overloaded elder duties well. Current ministerial servants who are 40-50 years old will fill the shoes but there is nobody behind them.
The Organization knows this. I don't know what their plans are. They seem to be cursing and denouncing children here in the literature lately, even so far as encouraging people not to have them because of all the trouble they cause! In reality, the mass exodus reflects badly upon the organization. That is a no-no.
Don't be surprised of they reinterpret scripture again and start allowing females to have teaching abilities (which was always a rather dumb exclusive rule to me anyway). Can you imagine a sister conducting the Watchtower study wearing a head scarf?
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easyreader1970
we have confirmation that something will be announced 4/27. We then have new posters who are claiming it is on the merging of the weeknight meetings. We then have a somewhat new poster claiming it if on the hotel problem regarding lodging for conventions. If this is what it is I would like that person to post the letter and put an end to this speculation.
So the only thing that is semi-solid is that something is coming next week. Of course, repeating the same commandments about the District Convention wouldn't necessary qualify as a huge announcement in my book. That's just more of the same. I will not be surprised if they edit in the Bible the laws that Yahweh gave Moses on the mountain to include District Convention accomodation rules. I'd be more inclined to believe the meeting change rumor except that we haven't seen any secretly scanned documentation. Where are our secret documentation scanners?! er
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easyreader1970
Does anyone actually have any hard evidence that this "announcement" is the dissolving of the separate congregation book study arrangement? Or are we all jumping on the hopeful rumor bandwagon? I've seen several topics suggesting that the rumor is true but nothing really more than hearsay.
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A Major Announcement next weekend
by JWRESEARCH ina huge announcement will be made in the end of watchtower study next weekend.
we may post here the main issue soon.
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easyreader1970
what will happen with the book study overseer's duties? I always thought that the WTS wanted to have a closer eye on these mini-groups in order to keep them in line and whip them into shape.
I too thought that the main purpose for this arrangement was to keep an eye on individuals, which can't really be done in larger settings. Of course the reasons for this on the surface are that this will help to encourage ones, strengthen them spiritually, and also to be able to keep in touch with members in the event of an emergency, disaster or, quite possibly, Armageddon proper.
On the flip side, I have noticed that lately thinking ones in the book study are starting to investigate things that they don't understand in the book study using outside sources, perhaps like Wikipedia. For instance, this past week someone looked up historical information on a subject in the Revelation book and made a fairly lengthy comment about it. As innocent as that may have been, information is more readily available now on the internet now. Back in the 1980's you had to take the Watchtower's word for it. Nobody was going to go spend an entire Saturday in the library trying to look up tidbits of information. In the small book study arrangement, people might feel more confident about revealing something that they discovered while studying.
er
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A Major Announcement next weekend
by JWRESEARCH ina huge announcement will be made in the end of watchtower study next weekend.
we may post here the main issue soon.
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easyreader1970
Part of me thinks that the Society is trying hard to attract more people. One of the harsher criticisms of the Witnesses is that they are too strict and demand too much time. By getting rid of the restriction placed on being one of the "anointed" and doing away with trying to call a time for Armageddon to begin, they are slowly getting a mainstream feel. At least on the surface.
If the rumor is true about the dissolving of the separate congregation book study arrangement and they now include it with the theocratic ministry school and service meeting, they've given adherents one more free night, ostensibly, of course, for more time in the service.
Then again, sometimes I think they are going hard the other way towards becoming more exclusionist with their public and private versions of the Watchtower.
Either way, they are definitely up to something. I just can't figure out what that is exactly.
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How did the new light go down in your hall?
by Mickey mouse injust curious.
will share my experience later..
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easyreader1970
I just returned from my meeting. It was a snoozefest full of people reading answers directly from the paragraph and making their own personal analogies in order for the "new light" to make sense.
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The Whining on this Site
by easyreader1970 inthis is sort of a response to lex talonis' message but i thought it warranted a separate topic.
i am both offended and encouraged by his suggestion that most of us here are just whiners.
i think it is encouraging that he wants the watchtower society's mentally damaging message stopped.
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easyreader1970
Sorry about the poorly formatted posting. I have edited the original post to include carriage returns! Thanks for the tip!
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The Whining on this Site
by easyreader1970 inthis is sort of a response to lex talonis' message but i thought it warranted a separate topic.
i am both offended and encouraged by his suggestion that most of us here are just whiners.
i think it is encouraging that he wants the watchtower society's mentally damaging message stopped.
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easyreader1970
This is sort of a response to Lex Talonis' message but I thought it warranted a separate topic.
I am both offended and encouraged by his suggestion that most of us here are just whiners. I think it is encouraging that he wants the Watchtower Society's mentally damaging message stopped. At the same time, I think that he has to understand that many people are extremely limited in what they are able to do. In addition, as someone mentioned, some people are fortunate enough to escape the insanity and they are so involved with their new found freedom that they don't even think about the Witnesses anymore and the people they left behind.
My situation is this: I have been a witness since I was a pre-teen. That is when my family became Witnesses. I am now almost 40. I no longer believe that the Witnesses have the Truth and there were only a few times during my life with them that I believed that they did. I am married with three children. My wife is your typical JW soldier. She is seriously indoctrinated. She is highly intelligent but when it comes to anything to do with messages from the Watchtower, she is obedient and takes her thinking cap off, as she has been instructed. It doesn't have to make sense. "Do as you are told," as the Watchtower likes to repeat over and over.
Therefore I can't share my beliefs or opinions with her. Believe me, she would have me in front of the elders in record time. So what I can I do? Not a whole lot if I don't want my family destroyed. It's easier for a single person to stop going than it is for a person with a family. Maybe if my kids were approaching adulthood I could live, even if I am shunned, knowing that I raised them. If I left now, and my wife separated from me I would be very limited in the raising of my children.
So when I come on these message boards "whining", it is not because I am a coward who is sitting idly by. There really isn't anything I can do right now. My wife is already constantly upset with me because I don't have the "gung ho" attitude that she has or what the Watchtower says I should have. But that's as far as I am willing to go in revealing my true self. A true revelation would be destructive.
I am sure there are many people here, perhaps some silent lurkers, who are in similar situations.
Does the Watchtower Society need to be stopped? Sure. Chipping away at congregation members on a small level won't do anything, though. You might convince one out of five hundred to actually use their brains a little bit, but for the large part the Organization will keep moving on, crushing souls and independence. Something must be done, yes.
Who should do it? I don't know. I am hoping for a major slip up by the Governing Body themselves. One that they can't smooth over. But that may be just wishful thinking.