Posts by witnessgirl

18

If the WT ever turned on Booze like they did Cigarettes....?

by Open mind in

what percentage of jws would comply?

.

om

witnessgirl

Years ago, I used to be such a geek that I fantasized about being a Bethelite or a Gilead missionary one day. Recently, I've been able to sit down and read the stories of former Bethelites on the Internet (one of the first things that I looked into when I decided that I was finally at a point where I wanted to learn about the Org behind the scenes), and was horrified to learn about how much drinking goes on at Bethel. New boy on here put it best, I think:

They don't tolerate much at bethel.......but if they kicked everyone out of Bethel, for drinking to much, the place would have shut down years ago.......So I'm driving down the FDR drive one Sunday, taking an old timer back to Bethel, (been there about 40 years) after giving a talk at my hall............ he points over to the Schafer Brewery and says " Son,......if the ever shut down that factory ........ they would have to shut down..... that one too!"..........pointing to Bethel. LOL

Source: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/129460/1.ashx

5

Watchtower MP3

by scotsman in

just came across this.

www.jw.org.

just listening to the over enunciated contents gave me the dry boak..

witnessgirl

Actually, for most of the Org's history you could get the mags without ever seeing a JW by subscribing through the mail. Every year when your subscription was about to expire, you would get yellow and blue paper slips in the mail. If you wanted to keep getting the mags, you checked a box and returned the slips to the society and you kept getting your mailbox crammed full of Jehovah's Food ™ without having to have it served by Jehovah's Witnesses™.

Then sometime around 1991 they announced in letters to all congregations and letters to all bodies of elders that they weren't going to be offering subscriptions through the mail anymore. Then a month later, another letter came. Suprise! The fun-loving society was just kidding. Subscriptions would continue as normal.

Then sometime around 2000 they did away with subscriptions for real. Having been around for the earlier expected time of the end and having seen it come and go without anything be any different, I was skeptical. Unfortunately, Jehovah decided to punish me for questioning the society's predictions and killed subscriptions for real, just like Lot's wife. I am very sorry.

Fortunately, as you've noted, the new situation with online distribution (even of the Study edition) means that it doesn't matter anymore. The audio versions of the mags (I remember when they came on cassette tapes) were always harder to get anyway, making it even better.

12

JW's and weddings

by nana1957 in

i am sure this has been discussed before, would appreciate anything on this.

i was always under the assumption that a jw was not allowed to be an attendant in a 'worldly' wedding.

meaning that you would not be able to be a bridesmaid or groomsman if you were baptized.

witnessgirl

Like I mentioned in another thread, it's currently a conscience matter (WT 15Nov07p31), but it really does depend on the elders in your cong. Half-decent elders versus tough elders makes a big difference in a cong (I switched to a different hall in my town for this very reason, which probably isn't an activity that's thought highly of, but nobody said anything).

Now, if the wedding is at the Church of Satan or something, all bets are off....

5

Congregation Photos Online

by AlphaOmega in

http://www.thesyke.com/gallery/index.php?cat=5.

http://www.thesyke.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=7&page=2.

i know that the wtbts frown on this sort of thing, but it's obvious it still happens.. it just surprised me to see pics online of anything other than a district convention.. .

witnessgirl

In the Pioneer Service School graduation photo, the chick on the far right wearing the pink sari with gold trim covered in semiprecious stones is totally wearing something modest.

13

Hey, have any apostates done this?

by Lady Zombie in

jw
friends

i'm almost positive that someone(s) have done this, but since jws like to leave tracts in doors, waiting room tables, as tips .

man, i'd sure like to leave those kind of tracts all over the place!.

witnessgirl

I've seen a few anti-JW tracts, but most were not written by "apostates" but rather by people who had never been JWs and had no idea what sort of things might actually make a JW question their faith. I've actually seen entire books like this, and read them when I was in The Truth™ (because I knew that I was so Spiritually Strong™that I didn't have to worry about it), and they did nothing for me. I already knew about the jellyfish story and Miracle Wheat from the Witchtower Babble and Trick Society's own literature, and attacks on the character of C.T. Russell wouldn't make me change my whole life and leave The Truth™ and all my friends anyway.

EDIT: Here is one anti-JW tract written by people who were never JWs:
http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0026/0026_1.htm

18

Interested in seeing random papers, forms, and letters from Bethel?

by daniel-p in

jw
friends

while sorting through old papers and files in my closet getting ready for a move, i came across a bunch of papers and forms from bethel.

a lot of them are outlines and directions for the first few days and weeks while at bethel.

in addition, there are some typed notes from the 2002 annual meeting (the kind you're not supposed to post in the interwebz), a few letters from the gb to bethelites (mostly telling us how to dress and so forth), and some other random junk.

witnessgirl

I would definitely be interested!

Before you go to the trouble of scanning "Defending and Legally Establishing the Good News" you might want to poke around some--I'm almost certain that I've seen it available somewhere. If nothing less, I know that the Marley Cole book is out there, and it contains an early draft of "Defending and Legally Establishing..." as an appendix.

17

DO GB MEMBERS AND BETHEL EMPLOYEES EVER GO ON HOLIDAY?

by badboy in

jw
friends

any ideas?

witnessgirl

There was more stuff about it in Spanish than English, but there was a big flap a few years ago when Milton Henschel and his wife went on vacation in Malta and stayed at a 5-star hotel even though there were over 500 publishers in Malta he could have stayed with. When people asked Uncle Miltie and his wife what they were doing, the anointed couple blew them off. Decent article in English (although it bungles the name of the hotel):
http://www.freeminds.org/history/bonanno.htm

Here is the hotel where they stayed:
http://www.corinthiahotels.com/hotel.asp?h=10&l=1

14

Does "Drink the Kool-Aid" Lack Punch?

by compound complex in

hey dudes and dudettes,.

does the overuse of catchphrases make you want to throw something or someone under the bus?.

i'm on the bubble about i just threw up a little in my .... my bad!

witnessgirl

BTW, does anybody else remember the big piece that Awake! did on Jonestown shortly after the tragedy? It was better than their average quality articles. I still think that their best piece was their massive attack on the movie The Ten Commandments back when it came out in 1956, though. (I'm not old enough to have read this stuff when it was new, but have almost all the bound volumes. Awake! in the '50s was a lot more interesting.)

28

Post your Kingdom Hall Pics Thread

by mavie in

jw
friends

cold north idaho.

i served as a ministerial servant here for 3 years.

not my car...but that *is* my ex-wife.

witnessgirl

Okay, here's hoping I did this right. I may need to edit this post a few times.

First cong: Largo West, Florida. Sorry about the quality; this is from a video from my phone:

Information board:

Second cong - I did something that I think you're not supposed to do and started going to a different hall in the same town. I liked the people a lot better, also the BOE was smaller. So here is Baypines Cong., FL (also from cell phone vid):

Information board:

Later,

Heather.

18

Where does the governing body live?

by tiffy0212 in

just wondering if those guys live at bethel or do they have some fancy hide away mansion?

are any of them married?

also would like to know if anyone out there has any pictures of the pyramids that some say are on the top of the watchtower building.

witnessgirl

I read a really good piece of writing by a brother who had visited Bethel for a week to do some instruction in airbrushing to their graphic artists. He met a brother there who invited him up to his room, which really impressed the airbrush guy because it was so much bigger and more luxurious than any of the other rooms he had seen. Turned out that the Bethelite in question was (GB member) Leo Greenlees' lover and shared the room with him.

Ray Franz's Crisis of Conscience has a pic of his room at Bethel. It was pretty nice.