Ruby456 - You are a lost cause. And Cedars needs a proof-reader? Pot calling the kettle...
Juan Viejo2
JoinedPosts by Juan Viejo2
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83
if you had the slightest of doubt about leaving leaving the watchtower org. go to to jwsurvey.org NOW!
by nowwhat? inand we are suposed to trust these guys with our lives?
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if you had the slightest of doubt about leaving leaving the watchtower org. go to to jwsurvey.org NOW!
by nowwhat? inand we are suposed to trust these guys with our lives?
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Juan Viejo2
Ruby,
John Cedars (Lloyd Evans) is the founder and Senior Editor of JWSurvey.org. "John Redwood" is an associate editor and reporter for the website. They are not one and the same. I can assure you that the article that appears on JWsurvey.org is an accurate representation of the Watchtower's purchasing the awards mentioned and then its promotion of those awards as being something they "won" as recognition of their production quality and video presentation.
Many years ago when I was in the Real Estate mortgage business in California, there was a similar scam going on that was finally stifled. Newly licensed real estate salesmen would often buy certificates and trophies touting their history of sales - even though some had never actually brokered a property sale or refinance. There were companies selling these as promotional items to be used as office decorations so that when potential clients would come in they would be impressed and get the impression that they were dealing with successful business persons. Although I am no longer in that business, I believe that both the State licensing bureau and the local Realtor Associations finally put a stop to those kinds of self-promotional gimmicks.
Maybe the Watchtower leaders do deserve some awards. There were some great acting and script-reading performances by Watchtower elders and officers during the Australian Commission hearings.
JV
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Bonnie Boyd Heath's JW Movie Star List
by Kenneson incame across this list by bonnie boyd heath of movie stars who were jehovah's witnesses.
thought some of you might find it interesting.. http://www.watchtowerdocuments.com/downloads/1940s-jw_movie_stars_by_bonnie_boyd_heath.pdf .
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Juan Viejo2
I have no idea why this popped up at the top when I logged in, but I notice that no one had commented on this for seven years.
In any case, I've found that there were actually many other JW celebrities who were known during the 30s-60s. Some were in and well-known. Others were only rumored to be JWs.
Bonnie's list included a couple that I was aware of, but had forgotten about over the years.
We all know about Mickey Spillane becoming a JW, but the strains on his career and the constant criticism of his profession as a murder mystery paperback writer made it tough for him to function. It didn't help that as he was getting deeper into the JW religion - at the same time his books became more popular and both TV and motion pictures were buying his books and making them into popular series. He fought through the criticism from both sides for quite a while, but finally fell out for a few years and was reportedly disfellowshipped. However, it was also reported that he "repented" a few years before his death and died "faithful."
One that was not mentioned in Bonnie's list was "Our Miss Brooks" - Eve Arden. Very popular TV actress in the 1950s, she was reportedly seen attending several circuit and district assemblies in the Los Angeles area. My mother reported that she saw and spoke to Ms. Arden while using the ladies room during a convention and found her very friendly and open - and funny. But she would not do autographs during assemblies.
However, after I added her to one of my celebrity lists on Ex-JW.com ( http://ex-jw.com/celebrities-jws-2 ), her son wrote me and took issue with the reports of Ms. Arden ever being a JW. His position was that she was Christian Scientist and always had been. However, Jim Penton also included her name in his first "Apocalypse Delayed" book - so there must have been something going on with her at the time.
One name that Bonnie included was "Pioneer" Wally Ruth. No one remembers him anymore. However, back in the late 1940s and early 1950s, he was the most popular member of Spade Cooley's western band that was first on TV in Southern California and later nationwide. There were several unique characters that were a part of that show, but Wally could play any instrument and could sing both funny hee-haw songs and beautiful ballads. However, he was best known as "Lottie/Lotta Chatter." He would put on an old baggy and shapeless house dress and a wild wig with a hat full of pins. He'd come out and tell a few jokes or pull a prank on the guest star or Spade Cooley himself. His schtick was to take over another person's sentence and turn it completely around or into a joke. According to Bonnie's account he brought in a lot of converts. He is all but forgotten now - as is Spade Cooley - once the most popular musical show and TV celebrity until Liberace came along.
I'm sure that there were many more among the thousands of movie extras, stage hands, writers and production staff. My mother told me a story about a somewhat famous JW (name escapes me) who was a supporting actor. He turned down many of the roles that were available at the time for guy actors like him during the early 1940s - soldiers, sailors, preachers, priests, gangsters, bad cowboys. Supposedly he had appeared in uncredited rolls in "Mutiny on the Bounty" and "Gone With the Wind." But his career was over and he supposedly became a JW missionary to Mexico or South America.
Slightly off-topic: What is little known but was mentioned a few times in my Kingdom Hall during the 1950s was the problems facing many JW male converts after WW2.
Many USA soldiers became JWs after the end of WW2 after serving their country during the war. However, some were called back into service during the Korean War and faced imprisonment for being conscientious objectors and refusing to answer the call back.
I only knew of one personally. He had served as a Marine combat photographer and had been through many battles in the Pacific just before the end of the war. He worked for the movie studios and for local LA TV stations as a cameraman. In 1950, he was called back into military service and was ordered to report to El Toro Marine Base. He refused and explained that he was now a JW "minister." They turned down his excuse - pointing out that he was actually a photographer and the Marines would need combat photographers for the Korean War. He stood his ground. They were going to arrest him and throw him in the base brig. Fortunately, in his case he had a child after the war, so they finally gave him a differment for that reason, not because of his new "ministerial exemption" - but he could have faced up to 4 years in prison in spite of his previous service.
JV
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Bonnie Boyd Heath's JW Movie Star List
by Kenneson incame across this list by bonnie boyd heath of movie stars who were jehovah's witnesses.
thought some of you might find it interesting.. http://www.watchtowerdocuments.com/downloads/1940s-jw_movie_stars_by_bonnie_boyd_heath.pdf .
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Juan Viejo2
Here is a later link to the original Bonnie Heath list of movie stars. Barbara's website has been updated during the past two years, so some of the original links have been modified.
http://watchtowerdocuments.org/documents/1940s-JW_Movie_Stars_by_Bonnie_Boyd_Heath.pdf
and here for those of you who use Google Docs:
JV
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JWs the kings of plagiarism
by Hecce inthe wt used to be rich for the quality of their public speakers, at the top of the ladder were the dos motivating the brothers on a weekly basis.
some of them used very folksy experiences related to the brothers as motivational tools, when you left the convention those experiences were the talk of the town.
i remember one very well qualified brother serving as do that was constantly using those sort of experiences as part of his arsenal, at one time he related one about a sister that new that she was going to die soon and while meeting with the family and brothers for final preparations she requested to be buried with a fork in her hand.
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Juan Viejo2
Plagiarism? Oh yeah!
A few years ago I was looking for a reference in the Watchtower about an incident that happened in the 1970s that I had read in a bound volume from the 1980s. I'm not sure why, but I decided to plug that into Google search just to see if I could find it in Wikipedia or somewhere on the Internet Machine.
I am getting old and can not remember details anymore. So please forgive me for not coming up with the actual item. But the bottom line was that I soon found that the incident that supposedly happened to JWs was actually a rework of several similar stories referenced in at least ten other non-JW related places. In each case the incident had a different time and place, but the wording was almost the same.
In another case, I remember reading a Questions from Readers in the Watchtower (1950s/60s) and thinking that it sounded very familiar. I was maybe 16 or 17 at the time. I mentioned it to my mother and asked her if she noticed the Q-from-R and if she thought it sounded familiar. In those days we did not have the Internet to look up anything like that. But Mom piped right up with, "Yes. I read that same story a few months ago in the 'Ask Ann Lander's' newspaper column."
It was only much later after Ms. Landers passed away that I found out that she too would present stories that originally appeared in other sources and rewrite them and credit them to some anonymous person who "wrote" her.
"Advice" columns apparently have rewritten and repeated these types of stories almost since their beginning in the 1890s. Ann Landers and her sister Abigail VanBuren - and yes, the Watchtower's writing department - have all followed in that tradition.
Maybe Barbara Anderson is more familiar with this subject since she worked within the Writing Department at Bethel for some time. But another contact of mine who served time in Bethel in the Translation Group told me that Qs from Rs were often "manufactured in house" to deal with a particular issue that the WT wanted to address - so many were just made up on the fly and then presented as actual questions from WT readers. When I flip through the back of old WT bound volumes and read some of the Qs from Rs I see that pattern definitely seems to exist with the timing and the focus of the question addressing some particular issue.
Maybe it is the Holy Spirit who is asking these questions???
JV
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BBC Radio 4. 14th February 2016. ''Sunday'' program with article on Witnesses and child abuse.
by ThomasCovenant inthe sunday programme investigates allegations that the jehovah's witness ordered the destruction of documents that could be used during the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse.
was this in contravention of section 21 of the inquiries act 2005 which is punishable by imprisonment?.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0709v34.
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Juan Viejo2
Barbara forgot to mention that there is an edited version of the BBC4 audio that eliminate the unrelated elements of the show. All that was included is the brief introduction and then the actual JW story portion.
Located at the bottom of the article. Player provided. About 11 minutes long.
http://watchtowerdocuments.org/bbc-reports-did-jws-destroy-evidence/
JV
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Trey Bundy: One Year of Reporting JW Child Abuse - Your comments please!
by AndersonsInfo inhttp://watchtowerdocuments.org/trey-bundy-one-year-of-reporting-jw-child-abuse/.
trey bundy: one year of reporting jw child abuse.
it’s been one year since trey bundy first reported the watchtower’s child abuse problems.. twelve months ago the center for investigative reporting (cir) began publishing information about jehovah’s witnesses and their cover-up of child sexual abuse on their website, reveal.
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Juan Viejo2
Trey Bundy's style of journalism is comparable to HBO's Vice and many of the PBS news and documentary programs. No hype, no over-the-top emphasis on every little point. Well researched and presented in a straight-forward manner. That is why Trey is so credible and the details of his reports are easy to digest.
While it's true that documentaries should be presented in ways that keep the audience interest most of the time, the art is well-developed. Watch NOVA and Frontline on PBS and many of the documentaries that show up on HBO and Showtime cable channels. They are, for me at least, far more interesting and entertaining than any of the "reality shows" (that are usually far from reality) presented on other cable channels. Trey and Reveal seem to have that same talent of good presentation - on point all the time.
We are especially fortunate to have Trey reporting on the JW child abuse problems. For years only Barbara and a few others were staying on top of all the stories all the time. You can see from just the homepage of her website at WatchtowerDocuments.org that half of the most recent articles appearing on her homepage are about JW child abuse and half of those are pointing directly to the work of Trey Bundy and Reveal.
Check out Reveal - there are many attention-grabbing new stories every week - and, of course, Trey Bundy lives there.
JV
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Music Video: Would Jesus Wear a Rolex on JW Broadcasting? - PARODY
by cappytan inthis took quite a while this evening.
so worth it though.
hope you enjoy!
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Juan Viejo2
Yes, Cappytan - it's a classic!
May there be more!!!
JV
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Multilevel sales and CO !!
by sp74bb init seems that some co need much more $$ and in some countries they started to promote multilevel sales among their contact network.
have you been involved in any offer of such nature?
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Juan Viejo2
Barrold,
I disagree. Getting involved with MLMs would only ensure their poverty. My JW family and friends have all been involved with Herbalife, Amway, Shaklee and a dozen others. They get sucked into them for the same reasons that they got sucked into and stay with the JWs. They are all convinced that their negative incomes from MLM are due to their not investing enough in the business. They need to convert their den or garage into storage areas for more products.
My brother (not a JW) managed to talk my JW mom, my JW sister and dozens of others into the Amway scan. Not because he was a bad guy - just the opposite - he wanted them to use their door-to-door preaching talents into door-to-door soap sales. In spite of having a downline of 20 + gullible friends that really liked and trusted him, not one of them ever made a dime and neither did he.
An amazing fact is that Amway and their clones hold conventions that are almost exactly like JW versions. Talks to encourage, talks to train and convince, and "successful" new salespeople (pioneers) who tell wonderful tales of how they managed to gain great rewards while building their business (all fluff, no facts).
I also had a couple of very close friends who tried to recruit me into the MonaVie scam - and then the long distance telephone scam. When I pointed out that MonaVie had been tested and found to be mostly made of the juices of apple, blueberry, and other seasonal berries - and little or no Brazilian or South American juices - they ended their relationship with me because of my "negativity."
You win some and lose some over time. I count their loss as my gain.
From Wikipedia:
"MonaVie manufactured and distributed products made from blended fruit and vegetable juice concentrates, powders and purées through a multi-level marketing(MLM) business model. The company had been the subject of several controversies, such as the health claims for its products had not been scientifically confirmed or approved by regulatory authorities, its chairman was previously involved in false health claims concerning another beverage company. According to Forbes, its business plan resembles a pyramid scheme. In 2015, the company defaulted on $182 million loan and went into foreclosure."
There was a website many years ago that was dedicated to many of the losers who got involved in Herbalife and Shaklee. Many JWs were into those programs and were always trying to recruit new downliners while out in service and after KH meetings. The website showed hundreds of telephone poles in Central California that were covered with "Call me about the benefits of being a Herbalife business owner."
"As of April 2008, a series of commercials featuring a large red animated fox advertising home-based business opportunities has been running on American television. The advertisements typically feature testimonials from actors playing individuals who have made sums of money between US$5,000 and US$15,000 per month as a result of participating in an undescribed business program. The advertisements direct viewers to a website that allows them to purchase a "success kit". The kit also provides no information about how the business opportunity works. These advertisements have been found to be run by independent Herbalife distributors, as a method of recruiting new downline distributors. While it is not illegal, critics of this type of advertising prefer advertisers to be up-front about their company associations." (Wikipedia)
Even now, after all these years, it is very likely that you could go into almost any Kingdom Hall and ask around to see if anyone knows someone there who sells Amway, Herbalife, or some other multi-level product. The odds are that you would.
Many years ago there was an article in a major news magazine or paper that quoted one of the original members of Nutrilite or Amway about their origins in the 1930s. I can not remember if A (JWs) saw the success of B (Amway and Hoover Vacuum Sales) or vice versa. But apparently Jay Van Andel or one of his associates took note of JWs going door to door and recruiting new members - and then getting those new members to go door-to-door with little or no effort. They were offering people hope and a better future - and coming out of the financial depression of the 1930s - Amway could do the same thing - offer hope - as long as new recruits were convinced that immediate rewards were not important - it was the long term hope of future benefits.
Yep, "millions now living will never die" as long as they keep knocking on doors and getting new recruits. It worked for JWs since the 1930s - and that same hope ("someday you will have your own business and get rich") still exists in every single person who continues to work the Amway and other MLM circuits - including the JWs who got suckered twice by both organizations.
JV
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JW's Funerals, Forget About The Person! Let's Preach.
by new boy ingod forbid you would talk about the dead person at his funeral.
so what do most people get after living 70-80 years?.
a 5-10 minutes eulogy.
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Juan Viejo2
A few years ago, Paul Grundy contributed an article about his father's funeral - perfect description of what other posters have stated in this thread.
http://insidethewatchtower.com/doctrine/attending-my-father%E2%80%99s-funeral/
In my own case I sat through the funerals of my mother, my stepmother and father - and was so angry after each one that I truly wanted to do harm to the elders who gave the talks.
In the case of my father's funeral, I even prepared, with the help of my JW sister, a short biography that mentioned his love of sports, his service in the US Army during WW2 and some other accomplishments. I also mentioned that as a "shade tree mechanic" he often helped other JWs who could not afford to pay for car repairs to get their autos running again.
When I presented the additional remarks to the brother who was going to give the funeral talk, he never put up a fight and just agreed to add them to the biographical segment. I thought everything was OK and all bases covered.
When my brother and my daughters and I went to the funeral talk at the local Kingdom Hall, I was confident that no rules had been broken, that every base was covered and for once I would not leave angry as I had after my mother's funeral.
I can almost repeat word for word what was mentioned about my father:
"Brother 'Viejo' was born in April 1915 in Oklahoma. He married Sister 'Viejo' in 1942. They had two sons and one daughter. He had 8 grandchildren and 6 step-grandchildren. He and Sister Viejo became Jehovah's Witnesses in 1951 and served faithfully for 55 years. He was appointed an elder several times and he and his family moved to 'where the need was greater' in 1963, serving in two different mid-western states. He died faithful to Jehovah after a short illness."
After that one minute biography, the speaker just picked up from there and went back to the canned funeral talk, almost reading it word for word from the outline in front of him.
Needless to say, I am still mad about that whole affair years later. Later I found out what my sister and her family did with his remains. Maybe, since I was the first child and oldest son, I should have taken a more aggressive role - but that would not have been appreciated by my late father as he was a true JW kool-aide drinker.
When I share that store with my non-witness friends they are shocked and state that they would have come back to the funeral "packing heat."
Let's face it, JW funerals are ridiculous and have only one intent - and that is to try to convert the few non-JW family and friends that show up. Fat chance!