i reported the other night that we sat down to watch the new video, and while my wife was smiling and laughing while watching the first part, she stiffened and became quiet during part two.
it disturbed her deeply:.
"this is ridiculous.
Askduane: " I've been a proud Jehovah's Witness for a little over two years now, baptized."
And you already are visiting and participating in an apostate website. Nice!
Askduane: "Every door that's opened leads to another room, every room has something different in them."
And by joining this site, you just opened a door, entered a room, and you don't have a clue on where you stand right now.
i knew this party was too good to last, some inquiring mind is a troll (yes, here on jwn we have moles!
), i think we have a rat here!
i don't feel like "apostate material" and i am not the only one who is going down for this offense!
And to make it worse, by posting that the elders are after you, now you are not just one of the thousands of people at that assembly that day. You have singled yourself out.
does jehovah know what is going on, and does he help?.
(as told by bro.
spangenberg, c.o.
Jehovah focuses on "inconveniently located" trees in the parking lot and doesn't give a rat's ass about heathen children in Indonesia or Haiti. NICE!
Enough said!
this question is really for elders or ex-elders (or ministerial servants in the know).... did you find that some elders would tend to "white-wash" the true state of the congregation when they had their sit-down with the co every 6 months?.
did some elders feel pressure to hide certain things from a co for fear of being "removed" from the boe?.
(judging by the "fakeness" that some elders displayed during co visits, i have to wonder whether they were really worried about being removed for not seeking out inactives or encouraging more participation during the wt study, book study or fs...).
As InBetween said, CO's are pretty much mid-level managers. And every employee in the world tries his/her best when being directly observed by a supervisor. It's human. Nothing wrong with that.
And, yes there are true honest to god elders (as RayPublisher) trying their best, honestly. I don't think "white-washing' is a fair term for those cases. You just clean your house better when you have important visitors.
But there are way too many elders that will flat cross the fine line into being deceptive, tweaking the facts, and then flat out lying.
Too many times when visiting congregations I easily picked the mismatch between hard facts and what elders were telling me. I once found a sister reporting One hour, consitently every month for over a year. Long story short: she had died 6 months before at a nursing home. Boy did I let that Secretary have it!
And anyone can tell when they lie about shepherding.
this question is really for elders or ex-elders (or ministerial servants in the know).... did you find that some elders would tend to "white-wash" the true state of the congregation when they had their sit-down with the co every 6 months?.
did some elders feel pressure to hide certain things from a co for fear of being "removed" from the boe?.
(judging by the "fakeness" that some elders displayed during co visits, i have to wonder whether they were really worried about being removed for not seeking out inactives or encouraging more participation during the wt study, book study or fs...).
Elders don't "tend" to white-wash" things; they make a conscious and deliberate effort.You will see them collecting missing service reports so there are no irregulars, and even putting down an hour or two for sister x who didn't turn in a report "but I know she did go out that month". Most Secretaries don't have cards and files updated, then rush every six months. Ditto for the accounting.
Most of them will flat out lie when pressured by CO. "How's shepherding?" Oh, great. "Are you visiting all of the publishers?" Well of course. "Any problem lately?" No, nothing we can think of.
the announcement of the reduced number of pages in the watchtower & awake will be made after the watchtower study following the "special talk" on april 8.. theoretically, that's when there will be more visitors and "outsiders" than usual.
even the talk itself has 1/2 of its content directed at inactive jws.. obviously this reduction in pages has been in the works for several weeks if not months.
why pick that date to announce it?
Obviously this reduction in pages has been in the works for several weeks if not months.
Reducing magazines from 4 to 2 has been considered by the GB at least since the 90's.
Why pick that date to announce it?
Maybe they want to make it sound 'special', give it a positive twist. That date (special talk) is a spiritual high for many; they will take the aanouncement as exciting news, a sign of the end being near. I can almost hear them saying "See how the GB is simplifying because the end is so near, yada yada yada"
apostates undercover elders (i know there are some professed elders on here) have you ever handled a jc envoling a publisher viewing sites like jwn or others and who question the gb etc.. and if not what if you were assigned a jc involving apostacy?.
i would think this would be almost, if not an impossible situation.. kensho.
but any real involvement in the religion is simply hypocrisy.
MigMac, you shoud have started with "Evidenty..."; that way you fit much better the judgmental approach of the WTS and that you despise so much.
this is my first post here.
i've been a lurker for awhile but had no particular desire to join until the other day.. anyways, do you think that if wt decided to face the fact that 607-1914 is an indefensible pile of crap that has been artificially kept steaming for way too long, would it really kick off a mass exodus or anything?
in the short term the fds/gb might lose some authority, but they are hemorrhaging people anyways keeping it around (607 started me on the road to this place).. if wt stopped talking about 1914 for awhile then later killed it, blaming it on "further research" or something, and acknowledged some uncertainty in 607/587, i really doubt that very many of the r&f would think much about it.
OutSmartTheSystem: They will never, ever COMPLETELY dissolve the 1914 teaching as that would be impossible for them to explain. But they ARE slowly but surely moving away from focusing on it. Decades ago it dominated.
You nailed it!
1914 is becoming les and less relevant to the 'everyday operation' of the organization. Is more of a historical milestone: "The year the end started". But for a while they have stop talking about it as a tie reference for the end. In another post someone asked about the current understanding of "this generation" and I commented most Jw's couldn't even explain in their own words what it is. I think WT is leting it fade, cecoming secondary.
The emphasis is being put -as someone already said- on obedience, rules and authority. After decades of obsessing with chronology, they tell us is not appropriate to be looking for "the date and the time", that we should be focusing on what's really important.
No, they won't dump 1914. They don't need to.
in 1823, john aquila brown (a man who is not mentioned in any wt publication) came up with a bizarre mathematical calculation which totalled 2,520 years (in an unauthorized attempt to predict the end of the gentile times).... several religions recycled this bizarre calculation, including the adventists and the bible students... when armageddon didn't come on the variety of early 20th century dates predicted by several "dooms-day" religions of that time (including charles taze russell's bible students who predicted that the big a would start in 1914), they all finally realized that this 2,520-year calculation was nothing more than arbitrary mathematical speculation derived from erratic biblical extrapolation.... except for the bible students who continued to move up the date for armageddon 2 more times (1918, 1925) and then decided to use wwi as the starting point for the "last days".. all the while, one thing that seems to remain intact is the october 2, 1914 date.
oddly, for the watchtower bible & tract publishing cult, this particular date still marks the end of the 2,520-year period (that john aquila brown referred to in his bizarre 1823 book "the even tide")... again, no mention of this in any watchtower publication.
but, for jws, that date still remains the starting point for the period of time often referred to as the "last days" or even "the generation that shall not pass".. because of this, the governing body has been forced to change the definition of "the generation that shall not pass" countless times since the early 1970's.
Just like there's a lot of buzz about the Titanic these days, just because it's been 100 years, 2014 will be a reminder of 1914. Most JW's don't actively think of 1914. If you ask 10 regular JW's the current understanding of "this generation", at least half will blank. Geez, I remember the current understanding thanks to this forum.
I do observe they mention 1914 less and less, but of course won't drop the whole thing. I guess "1914" has become that embarrasing relative you keep in your family but don't talk a lot about, in hopes people won't notice and will eventually forget.
i was reading a book and read the following quote:.
"one of the most tragic things i know about human nature is.
that all of us tend to put off living.
Excellent post.
A few days ago I posted something related:
"...the inabilty to see beyond a few years. Where do I want to be in 10 or 20 years. We were not prepared for that (the end would come in 75, right?). So all was about short term goals (prefereably pionnering goals). We were not prepared to see parents get old and die; we were not prepared to plan, age, retire."
