the cycle continues.... two weeks ago a loving and fragile sister passed away due to her age and chronic health, she only had one son and 2 grandsons.
(she was the only jw in her family)when my wife gave me the sad news we immediately went over to the hospital to give some words of comfort to the grieving family.. .
what happened next was another cruel example of works for salvation vs. good deeds from love.
"Elder pioneer: Brother (such and such) I am behind in my hours and on Saturdays I need to put in my time. I can't go!"
He just didn't want to go. As an Elduh 'ministering' to the worldly family of a Sister, he could have counted his time at the hospital.
do witnesses really want to go to the meetings?
or do they just go because they feel they must to get into the new world.
or is it just peer pressure or pressure of elders?
Maybe ardent true believers or elderly ones like the meetings.
Normal witnessess and hostages-to-family strongly dislike them. Just think about the rejoycing heard in the land whenever a sunday speaker didn't turn up & no overzealous elder volunteered to stand in. Or how happy everyone is with their free evening when the school & service meeting is cancelled because it's circuit assembly at the weekend.
Conversely, theres a noticable lack of enthusiasm for the circuit vist tuesday and thursday meeting.
TL:DR Very few actually like the meetings, most would be happy if they were "simplified" further.
i read a post on this site that said that there is a double standard for elders as opposed to regular r&f publishers.
can't seem to find it now, but i believe it was in the elders manual stating this....... thinking back, i can vividly remember one instance: the po's (a superstar in the district) daughter was getting married.
she was marrying a "brother" who was only baptized but 3 months, yet the were able to use the hall for their wedding.. another brother in our hall (about 2 years later) was planning on getting married, he asked for permission to use the hall for his wedding and was told that his service hours were too low (he was averaging about 3-5 hours a month) i asked him later why he was so pissed at the elders and he said this was the reason.. has anyone else ever noticed this "double-standard"?.
I believe the double standard is that if an Elder admits to serious wrongdoing, such as an affair, but the wrongdoing happened some time ago, no-one found out about it, and he continued to recieve Jehovahs blessing, he doesn't even have to step down as an elder.
A publisher would potentially still merit a private reproof, as I understand it.
several years ago, whenever i got a talk slip i would get really nervous but accept it and work on it almost immediately.
of course that was way back when i still believed it all.. now they gave me a #3 talk out of the blue about a month ago and i had forgotten all about it till the meeting night.
i really thought about not showing up at all but at the last minute, i decided to go.. so when i got there the meeting had already started and so i just stayed in the back looked at the info, found 2 scriptures and then without any notes i went up and gave the stupid talk!.
As little time as possible. Even when I was a true believer I found it excruiating when paired with a sister who would insist on rehursing it again & again and again and again etc
my mother-in-law has a strange obsession with calendars, and orders the society's calendar each year.
this year's calendar is especially weird.
it features images depicting future events - in particular, the society's vision of the new world order.. i've taken the opportunity to scan some of the images for you all to check out.. please note - there are captions for each of the images, but i don't have the english language version of the calendar so i'd rather just quote the scripture used so as not to reveal which country i'm in.. .
Love it, even fish get a ressurection! Nemo has been found & he and his father (bottom right) are swimming to be reunited with Nemo's mother (bottom left). Of course silly forgettful Dory perished at Armageddon, due to being a gay lesbian fish.
i mean no disrespect to sd-7 or his fine thread on which this picture has already featured, but i think it is just so ridiculous that it deserves a thread all of its own.. lurkers and apologists, this is how your precious organization views itself.... behold the madness.... .
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cedars.
I think it's a funny picture & depicts the hierarchy really well.
At the top you've got some faceless, nebulous god magic, then in reality you've got:
The governing body, brown suits, presidents chairs.
The branch committees, blue suits, directors chairs
Elders, men in grey suits with plastic chairs.
They could not have shown their own Pope / Cardinal / Bishop / Priest structure more clearly.
Also, it definitely shows where women are; sitting demurely being lectured at, or one step behind their husband.
do some of the gb consciously know the truth about the truth and they just can't say it?
or are they all still under the spell?.
how about cos or dos?
Remember these men are governing body 2.0 They all believed they were 'annointed' before they changed the 1935 doctrine a few years ago.
So at some point they were either 1) true believers who believed they were 'replacement annointed' OR 2) Liars who wanted to get to the top of the JW tree.
Personally I belive they are all true believers who are masters in the art of self justification and delusion. I would also guess that many of them don't actually believe in 1914 but are scared any major changes would 'stumble' some of the brothers & lead to a decrease. They will avoid a decrease in numbers at any cost.
TL:DR It's all about the numbers
all i can do is cry.... .
in loving memory of bekkah mejia barnum fb: http://www.facebook.com/xjwbex.
she was a dear friend....
So sorry
i am surprised i have not noticed this before, particularly since this is one of the most important statistics, and so have just added the new graphs to watchtower publisher statistics.. the number of bible studies generally trends roughly with the number of publishers on a one to one basis.
however, the number of baptisms has not been rising.
this has resulted in a rapidly falling conversion rate.
It is interesting in the JW figures that one person can pop up in several of the stats.
A 'progressive' bible study could be a publisher for 6-12 months before being baptised, or if a child, for several years.
So the bible study would be counted in peak & ave pubs for the year, as well as a Bible study
this first post will be a letter from my friend who hasn't spoken to me since i told him nearly a year ago i was no longer a witness.
name not included.
again sorry its so long.
dazed - If this was one of my JW friends I'd have hope. He's basically admited he doesn't like the ministry, wants to smoke weed, get tattoed & work more to make more money. What he's really saying is the JW lifestyle is a total grind & he only does it cos he thinks it's true.
But his reasons to believe it's true are noticably absent! & the '8 million JWs can't be wrong' is him just pleading with himself...
A copy of the Atheists Handbook & a couple of years for it to brew & he'll be posting on here.
