any takers?.
It is very boring.
The first of the month doesn't even have real people doing the demo items - you get shadow figures usually with sickly sugary accents and demeanours asking sickly sugary unrealistic questions receiving sickly sugary unrealistic answers.
And as mentioned above adding the revisionist history err ... book study at the end makes it seem as long as a watchtower study even though it is half the length.
Interminable crap, the lot of it.
i grew up in the org and never got baptised, however i was wondering recently about how much money my family and old friends are wasting in all that.
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i remember of course never talking in amounts, that it was important to give from what you can not what you have etc but i admit i have no clue how much the average witness gives (say in % of their income).. i'm sure it varies greatly, i'd love to hear what you guys have to say..
That is spot on Crazyguy.
We had a few older widows, often who outlived their unbelieving husbands who when alive unwittingly "kept" them able to go on the ministry, drive a little car, give them a pension from their jobs and then the ubm would die and the widow had complete control over the finances.
A few years later the widow would die and occasionally a bequest would go to the congregation or WT - even when there were surviving adult children and grandchildren alive. Such is the nature of dependency upon cults.
Most of these have shuffled off the mortal coil and the next group coming through (now in their sixties and seventies) won't be so financially independent.
i grew up in the org and never got baptised, however i was wondering recently about how much money my family and old friends are wasting in all that.
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i remember of course never talking in amounts, that it was important to give from what you can not what you have etc but i admit i have no clue how much the average witness gives (say in % of their income).. i'm sure it varies greatly, i'd love to hear what you guys have to say..
About five years ago i was asked to do the congregation audit and in the past way before that have been the Secretary and before that the Accounts bod.
In our hall, besides what went in the box at the back about a dozen folk had a monthly standing order so that tax on their donations could be reclaimed as per jean-luc picard's post above.
Their monthly amount ranged from £10 per month up to about £100 per month. The vast majority were in the £20 - £25 per month range.
The cash from the box amounted to low £100's and so about £600/£700 went to hall upkeep but only about £100/£200 went on literature although this must be dropping acutely.
Then there would be special drives for decorating or repairs and thousands would pour in. We never struggled financially but didn't seem to be awash with so much dough that we could send large sums off to "Mother".
Occasional bequests came through - usually in the low thousands but in our circuit I heard that an old brother owned an old Rolls-Royce (serviceable runner worth about £10K) and he left it to the congregation to be sold in his will for their benefit.
saw this on another exjw site and had a good laugh.. hope you get a kick out of it too ;).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bb2wzmfccdq&feature=youtu.be.
Absolutely hilarious!
That brought a little Shunshine into my life.
many of you don't know me or won't remember me.
i left the jw's and my husband and my home last september - forging a new life in a new town.
i haven't posted here for many months, but have been reading most days.
71 is the new 21! Congratulations.
round two of the australian royal commission into institutional child abuse has all the makings of a very damaging event for the organization, if what is going to happen to the catholic church is any indication.. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-03/royal-commission-most-catholic-archbishops-to-give-evidence/8240208.
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Having heard this (darkspilver's video of Archbishop Mark Coleridge) and the Salvation Army leader's video from some weeks back I now wonder what the Jehovah's Witnesses will put up in their video prior to their final hearing ...
Tumbleweeds ... ?
my wife found this 1/4 page ad on page 2 of yesterday's nj star-ledger, probably the biggest newspaper in nj.
pretty telling.. .
Richard Oliver, you think this will be a "tough mountain to climb"?
Looks like their are several parties of climbers making for the summit.
Perhaps you might phone all of these law firms to express your concerns to them? Such an undertaking would seem to be an increasingly uphill struggle too. Are you up to that challenge Richard?
Perhaps you might let us know how you get on?
there's a lot of criticism surrounding the jw's handling of chiild abuse within their ranks with a lot of it being well deserved.
but i'm interested to know how people on here think child abuse allegations should be handled.
there's a few scenarios below, the first couple are easy then it gets a bit more complex.
In the UK, you (a person who is aware of child abuse allegations) can always contact the social services and have a confidential conversation with them about your concerns.
I have done this when I believed there may have been child abuse (in one case possible serious neglect, in another two cases - involving allegations of child abuse). In the UK the Social Services will listen confidentially and they can act to get (in an emergency) even without prior police or court involvement.
Also if it is a case of possible sexual child abuse they will often discuss your options in a reasonable way. If what you tell them is serious enough in their opinion then they can go to the police and importantly they can get court orders, safeguard children, remove children without having a conviction in court which may never even happen.
I have sat with social services staff to provide information and ask advice on three separate occasions and I have been to the police in two of those cases after a discussion with them. One case I went to the police because I had evidence of child abuse available to "help them with an investigation". In another I had simply an opinion that someone (a jw) was being fitted up by a spouse (also a jw) eager for a more favourable divorce.
So I have never been afraid of the social services or the police and after a couple of dealings with the (anonymous idiot wankers - sorry was that unprofessional of me?) "brothers" on the service desk I simply ignored them as they hmmmmed and haaaaawed and tried to dissuade me from imparting information to the proper authorities.
something jehovah's witnesses do not talk about so much these days is the "north and south kings" of the book of daniel, and the reason is obvious.
this is one of many failed prophecies of the governing body.. they have not been able to present any new north king since the soviet collapse in december 1991, over 25 years ago now!
and this at a time when they are "so close to the end.
King of the North is and always has been Santa Claus.
what if fred franz had never existed?.
those of you who weren’t around in the days when he was the oracle of jwdom or who at least aren’t familiar with the deeper publications he was responsible for probably won’t be able to comprehend the significance of the question.
i believe he influenced jwdom greatly, and the whole feel of jwdom would have been different without him.. during the 60’s, 70’s, & 80’s (not sure about 50’s), he was considered to be almost superhuman by some (a lot?
The Nathan Knorr/Fred Franz tag team had luck on its side.
On the basis that for 50 years from the early forties to the mid-nineties Fred was in charge of doctrine and Knorr (until the mid-seventies) ran the business.
The current GB and indeed most of the previous GB were of this era.
The "luck" for them was that - even after 1975, certainly up to about the early '90's - "world conditions" could be made to fit JW prophecy. The 1914 time of the end/the generation/King of the North and South/Babylon's waters drying up, all fitted the rhetoric.
Time of the end: WW1/WW2 ever present threat of WW3 (Korea/Cuba/Vietnam)
The Generation: No need to explain this ...
King of South/North: USA/UK vs USSR
Babylon: Lessening interest in Christendom in the West and in the Communist block.
It all seemed to fit - those attracted to it (along with the whackjobs) were solid families/solid wives of unbelieving husbands. Then by the early nineties it all stopped fitting the rhetoric. And in the "west" any JW growth has been at snail's pace since.
The offspring of these families and these women are the CO's and elders who were running the congregations in the Western world from the 70's to the 2000's. Since then they are dying off and passing the mantle to their sons and to the whackjobs/easily deluded.
The stability is going and only the brainwashed remain - with no Armageddon or any new order in sight.
