Posts by easyreader1970

18

Did Jehovah really prove Satan wrong?

by easyreader1970 in

in the wbts publication "jehovah's day" on page 33 it says this: .

over the centuries, satan has tried to prove that if humans are given an incentive to do otherwise, they will not serve jehovah.

you know that satan has failed.

easyreader1970

In the WBTS publication "Jehovah's Day" on page 33 it says this:

Over the centuries, Satan has tried to prove that if humans are given an incentive to do otherwise, they will not serve Jehovah. You know that Satan has failed. Jesus Christ and many other servants of Jehovah have kept integrity to God and have shown that they serve him out of love.

My twisted thinking is this: Was Satan really shown to be wrong, at least according to Witness theology? Many people have continued to "serve Jehovah" but most people are continuing to choose to not serve Jehovah, whatever their incentive to not do so is supposed to be.

I say: New England Patriots fans only attend the games because the team is winning. If the team wasn't winning, people wouldn't go see them. They like the team because they win, not because they actually like the team for what it is.

You say: New England Patriots fans love the team and they would go even if the Patriots had a losing record every year.

What happens: The Patriots start losing. There are only two thousand people showing up for each game opposed to the sixty thousand that were there before.

You say: See I was right. People do love the Patriots.

I say: Wait, what?

16

THE REAL REASON JW'S HAVE GROWN OVER THE DECADES... WHAT DO YOU THINK.?

by ?me? in

jw
friends

i explained the other day to a friend of mine the real reason there are 7 million now as opposed to the 3 million or so in the 80's.

it goes back to the 50's 60's and 70' and continued into the 80's and 90's.

just think of all the families that are/were in your hall.

easyreader1970

I wonder when they the GB will realise the way to grow the religion is by encouraging the publishers to have more children

Sometimes I think this is part of the reason to discourage college. Sure, ostensibly it is to discourage independent thinking, and certainly that's a bonus. But people without college educations make more babies than people with them.

er

17

Challenges of apostasy: Attacking the Watchtower Beast

by easyreader1970 in

jw
friends

i am an "active" jehovah's witness in that i go to the meetings, smile and nod, and pretend to go along with everything happening around me.

this is not because i believe that the wbts has any redeeming value but because i am trying to keep my family from being shred to pieces.

because of my "independent thinking" and use of rational thought, i would clearly be labeled "apostate" and ousted from my current congregation.

easyreader1970

Thanks for the responses, everyone. It's pretty clear to me now that there isn't much hope of me breaking through to anybody who is hardwired. What has to happen is that the WBTS has to trip over itself and momentarily jar these people into thinking.

I really can't think of any one incident that led me down my own path. I have never fully had total faith in the Biblical text anyway, so it's been difficult to tie me down to Biblical or extra-Biblical doctrine. I did see at one time goodness in the Organization as a whole, though, with their high moral standards. I didn't really realize that they didn't own decency exclusively and, in spite of the "state of the world", there are plenty of decent people out there who are not all self-worshipping pawns of Satan.

What did encourage me to start investigating, though, was the behavior of many of the elders in the congregation I was in at the time. All of them did their own thing and none of them seemed to have anything to do with Jehovah in their personal lives. It was obvious to me that this group of elders could in no way be "spirit-appointed" unless the spirit had been smoking weed.

So I will be less antsy and more patient. It's painful for me to sit in those meetings but I do it for the sake of keeping my family in one piece. And at least, come January, there will be one less spiritually worthless meeting for me to sit through.

er

17

Challenges of apostasy: Attacking the Watchtower Beast

by easyreader1970 in

jw
friends

i am an "active" jehovah's witness in that i go to the meetings, smile and nod, and pretend to go along with everything happening around me.

this is not because i believe that the wbts has any redeeming value but because i am trying to keep my family from being shred to pieces.

because of my "independent thinking" and use of rational thought, i would clearly be labeled "apostate" and ousted from my current congregation.

easyreader1970

Just curious what percentage of congregants ages 20's to early 40's actually believe the FDS appointment in your KH.

I really don't know the answer to this and have no way to even guess. I don't talk to many people in there.

Oh, I am sure there are many doubters in the ranks and a few of those might just outright reject the idea. But I am never in small enough circles to discuss this sort of thing. On the few days out of the year that I do drag myself out into field service (mostly to keep the wife happy) I am working with my children so I don't talk to others in there very much other than to say hello.

er

17

Challenges of apostasy: Attacking the Watchtower Beast

by easyreader1970 in

jw
friends

i am an "active" jehovah's witness in that i go to the meetings, smile and nod, and pretend to go along with everything happening around me.

this is not because i believe that the wbts has any redeeming value but because i am trying to keep my family from being shred to pieces.

because of my "independent thinking" and use of rational thought, i would clearly be labeled "apostate" and ousted from my current congregation.

easyreader1970

it seems that the first step is to appeal to the misguided person's goals and memories before they were indoctrinated, so they get a sense of themselves as people, apart from being a cult member.

I have heard the same thing. For someone like my wife, whose indoctrination began at two years of age, being a Jehovah's Witness is all she knows. In fact, she once said to me that without the Organization she probably wouldn't have a reason to live in this horrible world and she would probably have either committed suicide or turned to drugs. I found that statement to be strange and unusual for someone who has never done drugs or anything. She has complete trust in the Organization. Any problems she says are the result of imperfect men but all the goodness comes from God. She can't see that the God that the WBTS have created doesn't even exist. She's doing obeisance to a group of men in Brooklyn. Many others fall into this same category.

er

17

Challenges of apostasy: Attacking the Watchtower Beast

by easyreader1970 in

jw
friends

i am an "active" jehovah's witness in that i go to the meetings, smile and nod, and pretend to go along with everything happening around me.

this is not because i believe that the wbts has any redeeming value but because i am trying to keep my family from being shred to pieces.

because of my "independent thinking" and use of rational thought, i would clearly be labeled "apostate" and ousted from my current congregation.

easyreader1970

I am an "active" Jehovah's Witness in that I go to the meetings, smile and nod, and pretend to go along with everything happening around me. This is not because I believe that the WBTS has any redeeming value but because I am trying to keep my family from being shred to pieces. Because of my "independent thinking" and use of rational thought, I would clearly be labeled "apostate" and ousted from my current congregation.

At first I thought that the WBTS was really no different than most other small religious organizations with their own fundamental belief systems. After a couple of years of fairly intense research into JW beliefs, I have come to my own conclusion (without suggestion or coercion from other "satanic" influences) that the WBTS deliberately lies and deceives its members. I have not determined through my research the purpose for this deceit. I don't know if it is for financial gain, power, control, or some combination of those. But I do know that it is an organization that thrives off of keeping its members ignorant and "sheeplike".

Because of the Watchtower mentality, most of what I have learned will not be considered by most serious students of the Jehovah's Witnesses. Therefore, you can't really bring them in on a rational discussion. This is a safeguard devised by the Watchtower itself to keep its members from seeing the truth. It may work for new students or some people who have always been on the fence. But for the fully indoctrinated and assimilated, evidences I might have will fall on deaf ears.

Is there another approach that we can take other than attacking contrived doctrine? I am not necessarily a believer that ANY of the Bible is the indisputable "word of God" so I don't need to explain why certain scriptures cannot be so. Witnesses have changed and twisted so much of the Bible to suit their own agenda, though, that I should be able to bring that up. But I can't.

Is there anything that the Organization is actively doing that I might be able to hip people to other than saying things like:

"Witnesses let their children die by taking the blood doctrine too literally" or "The Watchtower wants to keep their members in the dark by advising them against university"?

I want people to see what they are doing as an Organization. When the September 2007 Kingdom Ministry came out, the article about Bible study groups hit me like a brick, but passed over many others. I want for things like that to hit other people, too.

I don't want people to become like me (agnostic) or even to leave Christianity. I just want people to see that the "faithful discreet slave" is little more than a sham. It's some old white dudes (one of them is black now?) who are just voting on laws to make up and claiming that they are doing so with direction from Jesus Christ and that all should unquestioningly obey.

er

42

Has Golden Calf ever been found?

by cameo-d in

just wondering, is there any information as to how big it was?

how did desert wanders carry around so much gold?

wouldn't it have encumbered them?

easyreader1970

To me, the entire story doesn't make any sense. Here you have Aaron, spokesman for Yahweh and Moses' right hand man, who caves in to pressure by the Isrealite's (who themselves have only recently been miraculously delivered up, supposedly) to make a God idol to worship.

So he does and yet he isn't punished for it. But other people are? Further, Aaron's versions of events make it seem as though the calf was not molded or sculpted but rather formed itself in the heat of the fire, as though he had nothing to do with it. He just collected the gold, threw it into the fire, and whatever came out came out. It just happened to be a calf.

Three thousand people were killed by Moses for this violation (even though he asked Yahweh not to punish anybody) and Aaron got away scott free?

Make this story make sense to me.

This is one of those stories that seems to indicate that the Bible is fantasy literature used to make a point, not something to be taken literally.

er

40

Misquotes from the "Reasoning Book" re: Cross (scans included)

by AlphaOmega in

the "reasoning book" claims that the 1874 edition of the imperial bible dictionary verifies the idea that jesus was crucified on a stake.

however, when you check the reference with the imperial bible dictionary, you see that it acutally is not as clear cut as that.. as usual, the infamous "..." of the watchtower has been used to edit out any opposing ideas in the source that they cite.. i know that this may have been mentioned before, but the scans of the imperial bible dictionary that are floating around the internet are from later editions, hence the page numbers are not those cited in the reasoning book.. .

http://i36.tinypic.com/2ilc9cx.jpg.

easyreader1970

This is an excellent post and clear and indisputable evidence that the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society is a lying cult, forming the religion to meet their own exclusive ideas about God. I really wish I could show this to people without their trained minds screaming apostate!

You just can't convice people to look at things like this with a rational mind. That, to me, is the most frustrating part. My hardcore JW wife would completely ignore this and say that it is an attempt to undermine the authority of the FDS, even though this is clear cut proof that the FDS took these quotes way out of context to prove their own point.

It makes me so angry.

er

16

Don't lean upon your own understanding ...

by easyreader1970 in

the wbts keeps trying to cram proverbs 3:5,6 down the throats of its members lately.

i have no doubt that within the next couple of years it will be the year's text.

i noticed that in the september "public" watchtower, they equate higher education with the badness of illegal drugs, social websites, and fornication.

easyreader1970

Is there a scan available of the public September WT?

If nobody posts it during the day today, I will try to grab a scan tonight. You can also probably get the MP3 version from the official Watchtower site. I believe it is the article referencing The End Afterward or something like that. er

16

Don't lean upon your own understanding ...

by easyreader1970 in

the wbts keeps trying to cram proverbs 3:5,6 down the throats of its members lately.

i have no doubt that within the next couple of years it will be the year's text.

i noticed that in the september "public" watchtower, they equate higher education with the badness of illegal drugs, social websites, and fornication.

easyreader1970

The WBTS keeps trying to cram Proverbs 3:5,6 down the throats of its members lately. I have no doubt that within the next couple of years it will be the year's text.

I noticed that in the September "public" Watchtower, they equate higher education with the badness of illegal drugs, social websites, and fornication. There will be a negative end to higher education, this magazine stresses.

er