the recent boe letter announcing changes to the duration of circuit assemblies was warmly received by congregations the worldover.
it was as if the brothers and sisters were already in the new world for, upon hearing this news, there were no tears at all.
instead, it is a humble acknowledgement from the gb of the mind-numbing, yawn-inducing 2-day circuit assemblies.. .
I never really understood the point of them anyway. I mean, reprogramming is the obvious point, but it's basically just you, crammed into a seat for 8 hours of the same stuff you've been hearing at every meeting anyway, maybe presented in a different way. Except for the verbatim WT quotes cut and pasted into the talk outline, that is. I recognized quite a few of those over the years.
--sd-7
snarky's version is much more entertaining:.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqluxvfvalm.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu7030iiabu.
Also, if that's the Snarky Apologist, I rather like his videos, though I don't watch much ex-JW stuff on YouTube these days. He's a funny guy. I think I've commented on one of his threads at some point.
--sd-7
snarky's version is much more entertaining:.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqluxvfvalm.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu7030iiabu.
Marked. No, we can't just say "Marked", we have to give a talk that mentions this specific thread without mentioning any names, but only the situation, thus sending a signal to all who visit here to limit association with it.
"Some individuals believe the 'faithful slave' has failed in matters of Bible prophecy. They reason that the numbers don't add up. Perhaps they have been listening to some who think they are smarter than Jehovah and his organization. We would do well to turn away from such ones and continue trusting in and partaking in the fine spiritual food Jehovah has provided through the faithful and discreet slave."
There. Marked.
--sd-7
if one reads genesis from the first chapter through the end with an open mind, it is clear that not only is it not true, but that god is potrayed as a cruel, petty, childish micromanaging tyrant.
if one continues reading the ot this is just further solidified.
how do jws not see the obvious?
This is something I noticed long before I had any disagreements with the WT. Some of the OT accounts were just chilling to read, in my opinion. The images of men, women and children being slaughtered really stuck with me. I couldn't help thinking, so...no one could be spared? Some of the violence was pretty graphic. I just couldn't wrap my head around how God was not only okay with it, but actually commanded that it be done.
I figured, well, if God is okay with this sort of thing, then he's nothing more than a dictator in his own right. His ultimate goal seems to be to kill everyone who doesn't measure up. I thought of the 'new system' as a world where the slightest wrong thought would get you killed. And no one would even remember you were there, because God would wipe their memories. Didn't seem like a safe and happy place to me. Just a place where happiness would be a thin disguise for fear.
So...I didn't know this would become relevant to my future awakening, I just figured it was part of all the 'warning examples' and the warning was: Obey or Die. I assumed the end would be good, so maybe God was right in wiping out people who opposed him. I couldn't say how exactly. I just trusted it to be true. My mistake.
--sd-7
check out the new may wt.
" is nauseating.
http://www.jw.org/en/publications/magazines/w20140515/moving-ahead-jehovahs-organization/.
What I find amazing is that "THE CHANNEL OF TRUTH" cannot even fully quote it's own literature....
Right, LOL! You know it's bad when that's how it has to be! Truth Version 3.1!
--sd-7
i am searching for the materials showing the watchtower changing the original content like or examples of the following.. .
"the preaching work will be finished in the 20th century and never be repeated".
i heard they changed this gem, and many others, why are they so dishonest, their members are stuck in the mental mud, doubt they even read the new magazines so why are they going to the trouble of changing or revising their past magazines when the members wanting true christian freedom, practicing love and compassion will locate the revised materials?.
*** w66 10/15 p. 631 Rejoicing over “God’s Sons of Liberty” Spiritual Feast ***
‘Does it mean that Armageddon is going to be finished, with Satan bound, by 1975? It could! It could! All things are possible with God. Does it mean that Babylon the Great is going to go down by 1975? It could. Does it mean that the attack of Gog of Magog is going to be made on Jehovah’s witnesses to wipe them out, then Gog himself will be put out of action? It could. But we are not saying. All things are possible with God. But we are not saying. And don’t any of you be specific in saying anything that is going to happen between now and 1975. But the big point of it all is this, dear friends: Time is short. Time is running out, no question about that.
*** jv chap. 8 p. 104 Declaring the Good News Without Letup (1942-1975) ***
Brother Franz then referred to the many questions that had arisen as to whether the material in the new book meant that by 1975 Armageddon would be finished, and Satan would be bound. He stated, in essence: ‘It could. But we are not saying. All things are possible with God. But we are not saying. And don’t any of you be specific in saying anything that is going to happen between now and 1975. But the big point of it all is this, dear friends: Time is short. Time is running out, no question about that.’
Well...the same words are there, but the tone is vastly different in the Proclaimers book than in the 1966 WT article. They mean two entirely different things to the person living in 1966 and hearing that talk and the person in the '90s who wasn't there and is reading the Proclaimers book.
So...does this mean that history is being rewritten by the Watchtower? It could! It could! All things are possible with them. Does it mean that the Proclaimers book and the Faith in Action DVDs are revising the history of the org? It could. But we are not saying. And don't any of you be specific in saying anything that may have been revised between 1874 and now.
--sd-7
but i plan to buy her a gift and a blank card in a week or two to show appreciation to her as wife and mother in substitution for valentine's day and mother's day.
Good point, there. But you know...I've always hated this day. It usually brings back memories of the first girl who rejected me in high school.
I just don't feel a need to participate in these traditions anyhow. There's no rule that says I shouldn't and no rule that says I should. It's just stuff that people choose to do, still alien to me. I still can't get into it.
I guess I've just been too tired and probably depressed to be romantic. Was just thinking about the book of love songs I wrote for my wife and gave to her years ago, when we first got married. It was like, almost 50 of them. But she didn't want to read it.
I was reading some of them today and maybe I understand why. Mostly I wrote about how sad it was when she broke up with me back when we dated the first time, and how much I missed her. I guess reading them all might have made her feel sad about it or something. But hey, she had every right to leave and go her own way. I had no claim on her and wasn't able to judge her on her own merits free of JW interference back then. It's just sad that...well, never mind.
But yeah, that's about the only perk about being married to a JW.
--sd-7
back in 1985 my then-wife and i were having a lunchtime "gathering" at our place to show some support to the ones in our congregation who were full-time pioneers.
i had just recently received the vinyl collection of the songs featured in the song book "sing praises to jehovah" which had been released the previous year.. .
many of these melodies sounded depressing to me although i would have never admitted it at the time.
Great point. As a child, some of the songs actually made me cry because the music and lyrics were so sad. And we used to sing several songs before starting our Family Study. "Be Steadfast, Unmovable" was one that got me. And...was it "The Bible's Hope for Mankind"? That one that was all like "Dark days are here, man lives in fear" and so on. Goodness that was depressing.
"But the Bible tells us that soon there will be, resurrections that will not involve zombies. No it's not the same person, tech-ni-ca-lly, it's sort of like a clone with the same memories..."
--sd-7
as a little background - i was born-in to being a witness, back in '79, in detroit, in mostly black and poor congregations.
baptized when 10-ish, stayed around, was on the fast track to ms, but faded when i moved out at 24ish.. there was a combination of a few things that got me on the road to "freedom" from the cognitive dissonance that kept me "in the truth" for so long.
the main thing was, being an artist and studying marketing, my thinking was patterned to constantly question if i was doing something "correctly," as constant improvement and questioning is what facilitates artistic and mental growth.
So when we're talking 'pedo-stache' here, are we talking like the Ron Burgundy moustache, or just all moustaches in general? I guess I never knew the outside world's trends on that.
Since getting out, I've tried all kinds of different things with my facial hair--the well-trimmed beard, the standard goatee, the Tony Stark goatee (with varying degrees of success in replicating the look, but when I succeeded, man, it looked awesome). I have yet to try going totally clean-shaven, mostly because even just having the moustache reminds me of the cult years. I usually just let it grow kinda wild and random and shave it down to a goatee when I get tired of looking at it. Or just trim the beard.
I was actually sifting through some old '60s Watchtowers and there was an article about whether or not Jesus had a beard. I have to say, this has got to be the only religion that actually cares about stuff like this enough to write a detailed article on whether or not Jesus had a beard. I guess when the older 'anointed' got to heaven, they insisted Jesus shave his beard so he could look 'presentable'.
That could be one reason why we're seeing the number of 'anointed' going up....they talked too much smack to Jesus and got axed for it.
--sd-7
i know this has been rehashed, time and again, but i saw this interesting blip on jw.org last night, and did a little thinking about it.... jw.
org answers the important question that so many have... are jehovah's witnesses a cult?.
jehovah's witnesses do not look to any human as their leader.
we pattern our worship after that of the first-century Christians
Who you pattern your worship after has nothing to do with whether or not you are a cult. Many cults say they pattern their worship after Jesus--or indeed that they're the only ones who do.
Jehovah's Witnesses do not look to any human as their leader. Rather, we adhere to the standard that Jesus set for his followers when he stated: "Your Leader is one, the Christ."
I'll just use their own words to put the lie to this one.
9/15/10 WT, p.23
In this time of the end, Christ has committed “all his belongings”— all the earthly interests of the Kingdom—to his “faithful and discreet slave” and its representative Governing Body, a group of anointed Christian men. (Matt. 24:45-47) The anointed and their other sheep companions recognize that by following the lead of the modern-day Governing Body, they are in fact following their Leader, Christ.
*** w94 2/15 p. 4 Cults—What Are They? ***
Their devotion to a self-proclaimed human leader is likely to be unconditional and exclusive. Often these leaders boast of having been divinely chosen or even of being themselves divine in nature.
--sd-7
