$o what were they u$ing the$e hou$e$ for, exactly? Were they at one time printing facilitie$? That'$ a lot of ca$h. Tax-free. Keeping your eye $imple never looked $o good, huh?
sd-7
Posts by sd-7
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13Watchtower Sells Yet Another Heights Property
by iamwhoiam inhttp://www.brownstoner.com/blog/2012/11/the-watchtower-sells-yet-another-heights-property/.
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22
WOW, just WOW!!! Mrs. Bibiyan Called JWs a CULT!!!
by Yan Bibiyan infolks, i am beside myself!.
mrs. called the jws a cult!
i, for certain, couldnt believe my ears at first.. quick background info first: mrs. is a second generation successfully faded jw.
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sd-7
"You've really started something here. Cults scared, hope on the streets. But what about escalation? We start posting on the Internet, they make e-pubs. We start pointing out old history, they just change their beliefs!"
But that's great. Good to know there's hope. I just wish I'd know the way forward if I ever heard the Mrs. say something like that. I suppose I wouldn't. But, this isn't about me. Glad to hear it, bro. Good luck on wherever it goes from here.
--sd-7
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11
"Never receive him into your homes"
by sd-7 ini was just thinking about that scripture, 2 john 9-11, if i remember correctly.
jehovah's witnesses use it to justify their shunning of members who have been expelled.
a thought just occurred to me about it.
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sd-7
I was just thinking about that scripture, 2 John 9-11, if I remember correctly. Jehovah's Witnesses use it to justify their shunning of members who have been expelled. A thought just occurred to me about it. "Never receive him into your homes," is what verse 10 says. But wait--at that time, there were no religious buildings for Christians--no churches, and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but everything I can recall reading indicated that Christians were meeting in people's homes. So if such a person was never to be received into "your homes", then doesn't that mean he or she would be barred from all meetings? Not sure if there's any proof that it worked that way in the first century, but then, just like Jon Snow, I know nothing.
Take from it what you will, I may be wrong here. But if I am right in how I understand this, then how can the JW policy on reinstatement be the correct one, when they do not, in fact, bar expelled persons from their meetings? Do I think they should? In my case, it's more a matter of why I would care one way or the other really; I don't care. It certainly would be less shameful if you didn't have to look upon the people who were shunning you twice every week for at least a year. But then there'd be no exposure to the information at meetings. (And less of the emotional control that manipulates people to return, the constant guilt and maybe even talks jabbing at you personally whether intended or not [and usually it is].) Really, that's all it's about. It's not like they can monitor your behavior once you leave the Kingdom Hall parking lot, so meeting attendance isn't really proof of anything about your character; after all, you could well have been attending regularly before the expulsion occurred, right?
Maybe one of you has researched this issue better than I have and can point to WTS statements on that particular problem or relevant historical data. Not planning to use this info to convince JWs of anything, just batting the issue around out of mere curiosity.
--sd-7
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34
Trailer: 'The Hobbit'
by leavingwt in.
the hobbit official trailer #1 - lord of the rings movie (2012) hd.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtsod4bbcjc.
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sd-7
Entertainment Weekly has a great cover with a young Gollum on it. It scared the crap of me last night, but I love it. Great article in there too. Looking forward to a Hobbit trilogy. Just barely started reading 'The Return of the King' last night. I've read 'Hobbit', maybe earlier this year. One of the best fantasy tales I've ever read. Very thrilled to see a movie being made.
I'll have to wait till the Mrs. is at a circuit assembly to go see it, though; hopefully she'll have one at the usual time, and I'm sure 'Hobbit' will still be screening somewhere in early February. At least I already know the plot, so...if I get really desperate I can just read the book again.
--sd-7
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47
Did you ever have to walk out of/shut off a movie when watching with JWs?
by keyser soze ini can only recall one occasion.
it was when my brother and future wife were dating.
they had dinner at my parents' house, along with her uber-zealous/borderline psychotic parents.
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sd-7
Chris Rock's movie "I Think I Love My Wife" which is raunchier than the 40 year old virgin movie and my father watched the whole thing!
Really? I guess I'll have to see '40 Year Old Virgin' to compare the two. I felt like Chris Rock took notes on my life for 'I Think I Love My Wife', though...it was creepy just how identical Kerry Washington's character was to my ex-girlfriend...not that those actual events happened in my life after I got married, though. But let me not derail the thread on that...I can just imagine the shock of a JW hearing Chris Rock saying, "I'm bored out of my fff***ing mind." Ha ha!
--sd-7
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47
Did you ever have to walk out of/shut off a movie when watching with JWs?
by keyser soze ini can only recall one occasion.
it was when my brother and future wife were dating.
they had dinner at my parents' house, along with her uber-zealous/borderline psychotic parents.
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sd-7
Oh yeah. I think when I was a kid, we walked out of an old comedy, 'Uncle Buck'. Haven't watched the whole thing to this day, I suppose. On my own, I did walk out of 'Chronicles of Narnia', I think it was the second film, was that 'Prince Caspian'? I forget. And also I walked out of 'Be Cool', which I really had no interest in seeing at all, save that Christina Milian was in it and I have a major crush on her, though nobody else even knows who she is, it seems... My mom definitely wanted to walk out of 'Fellowship of the Ring', but I didn't, and she probably hated that I could find anything good in a movie with a lot of creepy wizardry and ugly creatures.
Since marrying a JW, I've had some real pain-in-the-ah moments on this issue. 'Avatar' was the big one, and that animated movie '9', and I'm trying to figure out if there was at least one more. I can't remember. Oh. Well, some episodes of 'Star Wars: The Clone Wars', the ones with the Nightsisters of Dathomir. It was all rather strange to me, since the Mrs. could watch 'The Tudors' or other stuff that would surely be forbidden. I guess it's a matter of which day it is, and how strong the JW pull is on the content involved.
I'm glad that at least I no longer feel a need to worry about that for myself. But she always wonders why I don't want to watch movies with her, and that's part of the reason. Nobody feels like getting committed to the plot and then having to turn it off on account of her. Well, that, and she often manages to blurt out important plot points just before they happen, just because she happened to figure it out in advance. But that's another story.
Thankfully, I've more than made up for all that on my own. It's nice to be able to watch stuff and laugh at what would be forbidden to laugh at if I was watching it with a JW. I need to watch something by myself again soon. Still got my eyes on 'Fellowship of the Ring' Extended Edition. Haven't bought it yet...
--sd-7
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64
Have You Changed Since Getting On To This Site?
by minimus inare you the same poster/person now?
i have seen many posters mature here.
some still act like jws but others have shown recovery and progress from the witness mentality..
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sd-7
I have evolved into a door mat, and learned, laughed, not quite cried, and became infuriated...it's been a great ride.
--sd-7
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47
So, I had a thought about wicked spirits lately...
by sd-7 inthe whole reason i even got dragged into this jw stuff, and we didn't just become somebody's return visit they never came back on, is because my mom claimed that the demons were talking to her.
they told her that the jws knew the truth about them, so she called the local kingdom hall.
bible study was started, and that was that.
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sd-7
Thanks. I also wanted to add, about the pioneers and elders--the reason I suggested, hey why wouldn't wicked spirits just take them out. It wouldn't be about them, it would be about what they could do--a pioneer could potentially create 5, 10, 30 more JWs. Because they're out there recruiting harder than most. Taking them out might, in theory, prevent those 30 people from joining up (or with an elder, maybe he can save 5 people from leaving who sin or get discouraged, for example). Often people are drawn to the pioneer's personality/specialized training and that helps the recruitment process. Just like a smash-mouth football game with no rules--you want to take out the person who puts the most points on the board, and that puts the other team at a disadvantage. But of course, that would be assuming that no personal protection for them existed, which, as you established, does exist (and doesn't exist, depending on which article you read).
But I'll stop there. It sounds like we had a nice go of it, though. No harm done, Apognophos.
--sd-7
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47
So, I had a thought about wicked spirits lately...
by sd-7 inthe whole reason i even got dragged into this jw stuff, and we didn't just become somebody's return visit they never came back on, is because my mom claimed that the demons were talking to her.
they told her that the jws knew the truth about them, so she called the local kingdom hall.
bible study was started, and that was that.
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sd-7
I think I should add, too, that I'm not necessarily against the notion of there being a God or even Christianity. I'm still exploring the ideas and haven't really stepped away from any one concept. Admittedly I haven't prayed in a very long time and maybe that's the atheist/agnostic side shining through. There's clearly something real and good that can come from religious belief, and I doubt I'll part with that entirely in my lifetime, at least not with such a constant JW presence at home... No offense, Mrs. sd-7. Not that you're reading this.
I was just thinking. Not really desperate to disprove God or the Devil, kind of ambivalent on it.
--sd-7
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47
So, I had a thought about wicked spirits lately...
by sd-7 inthe whole reason i even got dragged into this jw stuff, and we didn't just become somebody's return visit they never came back on, is because my mom claimed that the demons were talking to her.
they told her that the jws knew the truth about them, so she called the local kingdom hall.
bible study was started, and that was that.
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sd-7
I won't continue my devil's advocacy past this point, as I sense that I have annoyed you, sd-7, and that was not my intention; perhaps you're not a big fan of Bro. Olson. I was only attempting to have a level-headed dialectical exchange, since none of your points would be convincing to a long-time Witness, and I wanted to help.
Well, okay, maybe you did annoy me, but that's not always a bad thing, depends on the day, plus I don't seem to have thick enough skin for JWN most of the time if the spotlight's on my actual thoughts. At least I see where you're coming from a little better, though.
Actually, I was trying to correct you on the "Witness viewpoint". Witnesses often refer to the likelihood that we do benefit from individual, physical angelic protection.
A valid point there--I think the problem is that the literature sort of does the typical speaking-out-of-both-sides-of-mouth thing on this issue. Sorry I was only presenting the one side, man, my argumentation sux, badly, but I usually try actually reviewing stuff before posting it.
Nor does a decline in belief in God demonstrably lead to a more rational world.
Well, human nature is such that probably such a world isn't very likely anyway--most people are pretty content not asking the big questions. Good point, there. I did realize that my point in this regard also sucked just before I clicked Submit. So...maybe this thread is kind of a downer, at this point. I usually try not to have so many holes in the logic.
Did not God tell them that they were not to eat from the tree or they would die? What more did they need to know?
I think it was only fair that God explain that he was going to curse the ground so it wouldn't produce much and that Eve was going to have pains during childbirth. Neither of those things was mentioned during the issuing of the command. It makes it look like it was tacked on arbitrarily as a punishment. The ground didn't sin, Adam did, so why curse the ground? If this is about justice, the punishment was supposed to be death, though apparently that was just a general statement, and oh by the way, it'll be a slow and painful death and your life will suck from now on, Dad who has to feed the human race on thorns and thistles and Mom who has to push out 500 babies in incredible pain.
But of course, I wasn't trying to present this argument to a JW. I can't even honestly make a real assertion that these invisible spirits don't exist. It's an unprovable idea, as they're invisible, and there are a number of potential possibilities that may or may not include invisible spirits existing. I do see your points, though. I wouldn't dare try to argue that God or Satan doesn't exist to a JW. That'd be a fool's errand. I mean, I'm a door mat, so...being a fool would actually be a step up. So I can see why you'd take the ball and run with it on this thread. Better to be a door mat, by far. At least there's less laughter involved than in being a fool.
But thanks for putting those thoughts out there. I guess I was just thinking out loud without a fact/logic-checker in place. I'm too tired to worry about it anyway. We're all going to die regardless, so...it's sort of a silly thing to argue about, in the end. We'll get to meet all the gods and demons we want on that day. I'll have to remember to attach an invisible postcard to me so I can write you from hell one of these days.
Oh, and about the naked woman dream thing...well, maybe I exaggerated a bit. It was just some pretty standard sex with her on top, in the dream. Didn't have wings, either. It was probably just an erotic dream. Man, I miss having those. They used to happen so much more when I was younger. It truly is better not to have sex at all, because at least you won't want it nearly as much...as I do now....but this thread isn't about that, so time to shut up.
--sd-7