The WTS doesn't usually apply prophesy until long after the fact. If the great tribulation did happen, they wouldn't know it until years later.
bluecanary
JoinedPosts by bluecanary
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37
How will anyone know when the "Great Tribulation" begins?
by foolsparadise inwill there be an announcment on the world news saying " a great tribulation has begun in the world" or will the gb send a letter to all the kh's to scare the piss out of everybody saying "we the gb being gods chosen channel of communication have decided that the world's situation seems dire and are pleased to tell you that the great tribulation has started!".
obviously the world has been in a great tribulation since the time of jesus.
great tribulation does not mean some event that has to happen all at once all of a sudden.
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42
Messages for the bethal watchers...
by highdose insince we have had it recently proved that we are indeed being watched and monitored by the suits at bethal, i thought it would be fun to start a thread just for sending messages to these people... we can be sure they will be read;).
i'll start... " ha!
i've escaped well and truly and theres no way anyone of you will ever find me again!
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bluecanary
Good one, Lisa.
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Messages for the bethal watchers...
by highdose insince we have had it recently proved that we are indeed being watched and monitored by the suits at bethal, i thought it would be fun to start a thread just for sending messages to these people... we can be sure they will be read;).
i'll start... " ha!
i've escaped well and truly and theres no way anyone of you will ever find me again!
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bluecanary
cantleave, what are you doing Saturday night?
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42
Messages for the bethal watchers...
by highdose insince we have had it recently proved that we are indeed being watched and monitored by the suits at bethal, i thought it would be fun to start a thread just for sending messages to these people... we can be sure they will be read;).
i'll start... " ha!
i've escaped well and truly and theres no way anyone of you will ever find me again!
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bluecanary
You know you want it.
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PRIVATE PROPERTY! KEEP OUT!
by highdose inhow many times have we all seen that sign in the minstry?
also " no salesman" , " no harkers" etc.
in my congo it was the policy to ignore these completly, the poor people who just wanted to be left alone never had a chance.. i on the otherhand used to use it as an exhuse to fast forward on to the next house and finish up the ministry quicker.... what was your experiance?.
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bluecanary
The rule changed depending on what CO we had at the time.
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Is ANYONE Listening???!!
by highdose inwhen i was still in the cult i reckon i spent 90% of the meetings/assemblys mentaly asleep.
at one time i did try to concentrate on the talks, but just kept drifting away.
i even perfected the art of looking intently at the speaker while mentaly thinking up to-do lists, shopping lists and composing emails.. is it just me or not?
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bluecanary
In Combatting Cult Mind Control, Steve Hassan says that cults will purposefully speak hypnotically and put their listeners to sleep. It's an indoctrination technique and the WTS is as good at it as any high control group.
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Is there encouragement and hope for the disfellowshipped?
by Butterflyleia85 ini am 24 years old i was disfellowshipped at 21 and reinstated last year january then committed a sin and disfellowshipped again five months later.. i don't think i realized what i got into.
i tried hard to fend for myself and get back in, the pressure got to me and i fell out again.
but since i understood what it entailed i fought hard to stay in.
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bluecanary
Welcome Butterflyleia85!
I'm sorry to hear about the heartache you're going through right now. I've never been disfellowshipped, but I do empathize. I went through a lot of sorrow with the way I was treated by the elders and spent many years feeling a terrible weight of guilt and unworthiness.
It may not feel like it, but the place you are in right now is an ok place to be. After all, when you are at the bottom, there is no where to go but up, right? Now is the time for you to take your spirituality in your own hands. It's scary, but you can do this. Right now, the elders are no longer between you and Jehovah. It's just you and Him now, which is actually pretty cool.
It sounds like you were raised as a witness like I was. I was baptized at age 12. How old were you when you were baptized? I believed that everything the Watchtower Society printed was as infallible as the Bible, that it was the direct word of God coming through man. How do you feel about it?
After my final personal ordeal, I realized that the elders did NOT have God's holy spirit. They were just men, doing what they thought was best, but not in harmony with the Bible. Jesus gave the illustration of the shepherd that would leave the 99 sheep to go searching for the lost 1. Elders everywhere have shown that they do not care about the 1. They care only for the flock as a body and will do anything to preserve its reputation, even if they have to toss the 1 over the cliff. Has your experience been similar?
If you want to draw close to God, what's the best way to do that? Isn't it by reading the Bible? When is the last time you just read from the Bible, without jumping around from scripture to scripture and relying on watchtower sources to explain what it's talking about? Do you think God would be mad at you if you took some time to just read the Bible without diluting it with manmade reading materials?
It's so frustrating to know that you want the truth, you want whats right,
That's awesome. I feel the same way. I just want to know the TRUTH. Now is the time to really study and compare, to find out if the witnesses have the truth. Of course, they have always told you they do. Think about it: if you go to a car lot to purchase a car, isn't the salesperson going to tell you how great their particular model is? If you want to find out whether there's anything wrong with it, you take it to a mechanic to check it over independently, right?
Why not do the same with what the witnesses teach? If it's the truth, it will stand up to an independent investigation of the scriptures and you will feel confident that you've made the right decision in picking a religion. If it doesn't hold water, you will lose the oppression of guilt that you're shrouded in right now and be free to continue studying and reaching for the real truth. Either way, you win! The only way you'll lose is if you continue to blindly believe what the witnesses teach without researching it. You will be miserable for as long as you do. You will not be obeying John 17:3 to keep taking in knowledge.
It's ok to be like the noble-minded Bereans who checked everything they were learning with the Scriptures. If you want some things to think about, there is some good study material here.
If you want a friend, I've sent you my email in a private message. Just click on the little envelope at the top right corner of the screen.
May Jehovah bless you in your quest for truth and happiness.
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If your happy leaving the truth why continue.............
by angel eyes injust want to know why some of you,not all,please dont think im meaning all of you because that truly isnt the case,claim to be happy for leaving the truth,being df etc yet you continue to speak about jehovah or attack him or the organisation??
even for many years after.. this would show that your hurt by them df you.
when someone we love hurts us its natural to want to hurt them back because we have feelings for them.so im thinking that many have love for jehovah still??
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bluecanary
angel, if you want to reply to a bunch of people in one thread, you don't have to make a separate post for each one. Mr. Flipper is a master at this. He'll post replies to twelve different people and put their name in bold capital letters at the beginning of each reply. It's pretty effective. If you do this, I recommend typing it out in a word processing program first and saving so you don't lose all your material. Boy is that headache. When you paste from a word program, there's a little icon in the menu above the typing box. You'll see the icons for cut, copy, paste and a little folder with a "W" on it. Use that icon to paste from Word.
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"We All Lose Faith Sometimes...."
by AllTimeJeff inthose who leave jehovah's witnesses are often misunderstood for the choices that they make after their exit.
from the jehovah's witness (jw) point of view, those who leave are leaving a "spiritual paradise" where "the truth" exists.
those who leave thus put their everlasting life in jeopardy.
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bluecanary
PSacramento, I've seen Jeff have this kind of conversation with Stephen before, but I want to point it out to you now: Thank you for being able to have a conversation about faith and God with someone who believes very differently than you, in such a polite and respectful manner. You give believers a good name.
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Can someone help me?
by losthusband inhi - i'm new here so go easy on me!.
i've been lurking for a while trying to find out info on the jws.
some questions i have:.
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bluecanary
Welcome losthusband! Yes, you're going to get mostly anti-witness information here, but that's ok because if you want pro-witness information to compare it to, you can speak to the JWs who are calling on your family. Win.
My mother began studying with the witnesses when she was about 23 years old. Her big question in life was "Why does God allow suffering?" The witnesses offer an answer to this question. When you take this answer on its own, it can be satisfying and relieve the stress of trying to reconcile a loving God with a cruel world.
The trouble is, that when you examine EVERYTHING they teach, the answers do not add up. Witness teachings are like a house of cards. When you pull out the doctrines and beliefs that can be proven untrue, the rest of it comes tumbling down.
What I liked about being a witness as a teenager, (and what attracts many people to cults in general) is the feeling of having some great and special insight into the major issues of the universe. I pitied people who didn't know what I knew. I didn't have to worry about the future because there wasn't going to be a future in this world. Imagine how much stress that relieves for a teenager! When you don't have to be anxious over school and career and future family because you don't believe this world will go on long enough for those things to be an issue.
When someone begins studying with the witnesses, there is an initial period of friendship called "love bombing." She will be welcomed into the kingdom hall and treated like someone very special. What girl wouldn't be motivated by that? As time goes by and she either makes a commitment by getting baptized or stalls in her progression, the love will fade. If she commits and she's lucky enough to be the kind of popular, outgoing person that people are attracted to, she will have friends for as long as she remains loyal to the jws. If she doesn't make a commitment, she will find herself friendless. Either way, the specialness wears off.
Instruct your daughter in the skill of reasoning. Make sure she understands logical fallacies and how to recognize them. Make it a game (try offering a dollar for each one) to discover them in everything she reads.
Encourage her to become involved in activities with other non-JW teens. Sports, picnics, volunteer activities, book clubs--find fun and fulfilling things to occupy her mind. Make sure her life is filled with opportunities for education, friendship and fun. And offer emotional support for the anxiety she is no doubt facing on the cusp of adulthood. She has a lot of life-altering decisions ahead of her. Becoming a witness is a way of escaping from that. Help her to know that she doesn't have to escape because she's got you as a support for these major decisions.
Do not forbid her from studying. This will feed into the jw persecution complex AND natural teenage rebelliousness. Tell her you support her, and you want her to take in enough information to make a wise, informed decision.
As far as telling your partner she's nuts-don't! If you were looking into a new religion/career/hobby/long-distance carrier/etc would you want her to tell you there's something wrong with YOU for the choice you're considering? Make it clear that you respect her interest in this subject and her right to freely choose a form of worship that's right for her.
Go the opposite route and take an interest in it with her. Let her know that you're skeptical and want to be like the Bereans by "making sure of all things" from the Bible. Offer to do extracurricular research with her on the internet.
Remind her of purchases you've made in the past. Do you take the manufacturer's word that their product is the best? Do you compare it to products from other manufacturers? Do you read reviews from people who have purchased it? Do you read only the good reviews or do you read bad ones, too? Why is it useful to do this?
Never make it sound like you're attacking her or the individual JWs who are calling on her. In fact, don't even attack the beliefs. Just question. Say, "I find it odd that they JWs teach this, when the Bible says this. Why do you suppose there's a discrepancy? Which source do you think is more trustworthy?"
Here is a resource for questionable topics with JWs.
Do not draw away from your family or fight them as they take an interest in the JWs. The JWs are teaching them that this will happend because they have the truth and Satan is out to get them. Do the opposite and draw closer to your family and take an interest in what they're learning and what questions they have. Make sure they always know you are on your FAMILY's side rather than just on the opposite side of the witnesses.
Good luck and, again, welcome!