i thought this was pretty hysterical and something that i would have never noticed before i woke up.
in the jan 1 wt under the heading 'was the garden of eden a real place?
part of the reasoning they use as to why no one could find the garden of eden even though there are specifics in genesis identifying it's location is because "the flood of noah's day may have altered the topography in ways that we simply cannot know today".
I thought that watchower was great. They correctly identified that if you don't believe that the events of the garden of eden were literal, factual & actually happened, then the basis for christianity is diminished.
Of course any evidence that humans have been around for more than 6,000 years is completely avoided.
japan had incredible increases in the 80's and 90's of 20-30 thousand publishers a year until it collapsed in 1998....figure since then till 2011 have been going down.. 1998 -222,912 publishers -3,802 congregation.
9 years later.. 2006 -217,519 publishers -3,164 congregations {loss of 5,357 publishers closed 638 congregations} .
{note that japan publishers average 31 hours a month compared to world 15 hours}.
I would be very interested to find out what has caused the stagnation and decline in Japan over the past 12 years.
I have a memory of poster possible-san talking about it, but I havent seen him around here lately.
claustrophobic.
that's the simplest way for me to express how i feel in the wt org.
like many here, my eyes were slowly opened over the years as i did more earnest research, trying to reconcile some long standing spiritual quandaries.
Welcome Franklin! You lurked for two years before posting! I was also a long time lurker. It feels great to finally post & say thankyou to all the people on this site whose comments helped us think.
I'm sure the thousands of lurkers out there would like it too.
Waves hi to all the lurkers in the concious class out there!
if you are an elder or an ex-elder please add a comment.
i hope that the governing body will see this.
it is too bad it has to be on an anonymous forum.
4b: And before you say "we never claimed to be inspired" please ask yourselves what exactly is the difference between "spirit inspired" and "spirit directed" which you do claim to be.
12 The current doctrine on blood is not intellectually coherent. We can have all fractions of a blood component, but not the component itself. Who really could defend the 'logic' of this?
13 Repeatedly and increasingly conflating obeying the organisation with obeying God. Christians worship God not an organisation, a society, an association or a corporation.
...we've got borg emerging from warp and closing at full impulse.
shields up!
red alert!
Well, if you decide to go, may his holiness the flying spaghetti monster look kindly on your endeavours. May you be blessed by a touch of his noodly appendage, and may the sparkly rainbowish eminations of her majesty the invisible pink unicorn keep you unharmed.
Seriously, if you do go, just observe the absurdities and keep your sanity.
watch 1974 p.167 "by disobediently overindulging in food and making a glutton of himself, he fails to show love for jehovah...if in the presence of others does he selfishly ignore there needs and take more than his share?
is he grossly overwieght but shows no restraint at all as to food, habitually gorging himself?
does he feel un-comfortable, perhaps even sick because of eating too much ...glutton has no place in god's congregation...they will not inherit god's kingdom...".
I'd also like to see obese doctors/nurses/paramedics, all health care personnel, lose their jobs if they cannot maintain a healthy weight.
How about Police, Fire-fighters, School teachers, members of the Armed Forces? How about anyone who is in a public service jobs with their wages paid for by taxes? - They should all set a good example or lose their jobs right? And how about stopping benefits / social security to anyone obese until they get to a healthy weight (defined by our government overlords)? Poor people obviously don't need the money if they can afford to be fat.
What a slippery slope to facist social engineering.
elders please comment, when our hall was paid for and its a double hall the brothers at first wanted to wait a few months to inform the cong.
thats wrong since we paid for it and should know all of the finacials.
also the publisher rate was lower very little so that we contiue as if we have a morgage.
I would guess the publisher rate works like this = four congos sharing a hall, 3 english language with 110 publishers each and a smaller foreign lang congo with 70 publishers : Total upkeep and mortgage $1000 per month.
You could split it by four and ask for $250 per congo, but that wouldn't be fair on the smaller congo.
So you divide the runing costs by the total amount of publishers using the hall and come up with a publisher rate of $2.50 per peblisher per month. This means the three larger congos pay $275 per month and the smaller one pays $175
i feel confused, empty, alone, sad, sensitive, hurt and so on.
more and more it seems.... will i ever find my place, my home and be content and happy?
sometimes it feels impossible.
Sorry you're having a hard time of it Newborn. Growing and recovering is so painful sometimes.
Hugs.
anyone familiar with the awake!
magazine knows that "watching the world" often gives little news snippets with no further analysis or spin-doctoring from the writing dept.
this is because for the jws reading it, they can do their own spin-doctoring and for any potential converts, it makes them think the awake!
Yep, I agree with Kudra. We're meant to 'think' "wow science has proved that the flood killed someone in siberia and the flood waters deposited them in Greenland"
hypothetical scenario.
you are a city manager in a major metropolitan city with a population of 3,000,000.. .
if the governing body was truly convinced themselves of the impending disaster and the fact that the end is imminent would they not focus their efforts in spreading the message through effective means such as telephone, television, internet, social networks etc?
They did an item in my hall a while ago about the importance of informal witnessing. Everyone had to put their hands up to show how they came in the troof. About 40% were born in, 40% came in through 'informal contact' & only 20% through door2door.
Formal preaching is IMO now just busywork for witnesses. It serves the purposes of; constant reinforcement of your belief system through trying to foist it on others, self satisfaction in varying amounts as to how many hours you put in & a method to make yourself visable to elders for promotion/reaching out purposes. It also allows single by circumstances or choice people to catch up on gossip in a self righteous manner & it's the only method by which single women can gain any status within the organisation. - They even make sisters wear headcoverings when sign-language translating these days.
