teel

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Posts by teel

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  8

  Anyone ever really read this?

  by EndofMysteries in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  2 peter 2:18-19 - "for they utter swelling expressions of no profit, and by the desires of the flesh and by loose habits they entice those who are just escaping from people who conduct themselves in error.

  while they are promising them freedom, they themselves are existing as slaves to corruption.

  for whoever is overcome by anotehr is enslaved by this one.

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  teel

  Very true. One barely escaping a cult can be very vulnerable, and can be easily sucked into an other cult, because they offer the comfort of familiarity, or misguided by the apparent total freedom of the outside world, after years of shackles.
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  10

  Favoritism within the WT

  by garyneal in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  though my wife does not really see it and i myself am only beginning to actually see it, it appears that there is a lot of 'favoritism' going on in the wts.

  now maybe i should not judge especially since, in my case, i do not have all of the facts.. therefore, i will just let this passage of scripture stand on its own and allow people to comment on what they see as favoritism within the society.. .

  james 2.

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  teel

  Gary if I recall correctly you only visited the KH a couple of times for your wife's sake. If you want to observe the favoritism toward social status, a good time to go is when the CO visits. The witnesses go out of their way to please him. Everyone looks their finest, all meeting's attendance is very high, and the talks and answers are much more thought out than ever. The CO and wife is crowded after the meeting, everyone wanting to shake his hand, congratulate him on the talk, etc.

  Also, this has not happened in my remote congregation, but if a GB member visits, I can imagine the witnesses would simply faint. They're the rock idols of JWs; witnesses go hundreds or thousands of miles just to catch a glimpse of him. Funny thing is, when the pope visited my country, JWs looked down on christians, saying "what's the big deal, travelling hundreds of miles just to see him, he's just a man..."
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  11

  Would Jesus Today be a Democrat or a Republican?

  by Confucious in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  just a thought.... and if this thread has been done?

  i appologize in advance.. and it's real easy to say, "neither.".

  but with how we in america traditionally view dems and republicans.. debate....

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  teel

  http://www.politicalcompass.org - try to answer the questions as Jesus would. Here's my results, it may be heavily skewed, nevertheless for fun: Left wing -5.62 (out of 10), Libertarian -1.54. So that's Democrat I guess.
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  6

  sales and marketing meetings

  by Aussie Oz in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i just read another thread http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/beliefs/186235/1/this-one-is-a-doozie about changing words.

  that has some comments on sales meetings starting and thought it (hope it is) worthy of its own thread.

  so let em rip!.

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  teel

  I can only talk of what I read in books (fortunately JW was the only cult I was in) - Hassan describes four type of cults in Combatting Cult Mind Control: religious, political, psychotherapy-educational, and commercial. These mainly differ of the core teachings, but the methods used are strikingly similar. My mother in law was also in Amway for a while, and I can confirm that the similarities are not because the members were JW.
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  11

  WT article on propaganda

  by greenie in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  does anyone want to tackle the hypocrisy in this article?

  here's the link and the text is below.

  also, can any former dubs explain how a jw could read or write this and not see how it applies to themselves?

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  teel

  That piece of article is one of the best written in the WT literatures. It sums up the WT so well, that even an apostate could have written it (except a couple of sentences here and there).

  Let's see:

  Lies, lies! - peacedog summed it up quite well in this thread - the Watchtower published several times that Russel & co. looked forward to 1914 as the beginning of Christs's presence - when in fact they actually looked at that date as the end of this system of things. Also, there's plenty of misleading statements, which can be worse than lies, because they're easier to believe.

  Making generalizations - worldly people are sex crazed, evil, with no true love or friendship. 'Nuff said.

  Name calling - 'worldly', 'apostate', 'fleshly thinking', 'spiritually weak', etc.

  Playing on emotions - fear of the big A and being shunned is the main tool, they also use love bombing, and hatred against anything non-JW, pride because of their 'superior' Bible knowledge and 'superior' morales, overall being part of God's chosen people.

  Slogans and symbols - the JWs use an exceptionally loaded language, to the point where an outsider is completely lost when listening to them. As for symbols, the ever present tie and service bag comes to my mind. No spiritual person is without them...
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  9

  OBEY. a doozie from the 50s WT

  by Aussie Oz in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  5/1 1959 wt.

  taking pauls illustration of the organization as a human body with its great variety of functions, it can readily be appreciated that the head does not do everything, but it does direct.

  it employs the members of the body to do its bidding.

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  teel

  I see the history of the WTS as a great example of meme evolution. By trial and error the Society has perfected the teaching style so as to have the cake and eat it too. Back in those days they were much more upfront with the teaching, but some people caught up with "don't be followers of men". It got refined much, now you don't see such bold statements; the underlying message is the same, but they dance around the issue saying "follow God, who gives his guidance through His slave", so a JW can say he actually follows God, when in fact it's the commands of men he's following.
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  26

  Community Service - why looked down on when it was so encouraged by Jesus

  by insearchoftruth in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  my wife yesterday was talking about how useless it really is to feed the hungry and provide cold weather shelters since the problem will not go away until the 'new system of things'.. i know that at one time jesus does state that there will be poor always, but a key aspect of his ministry on earth was helping the less fortunate.

  how does the wts justify the discouragement of its rank and file from performing acts of community service, when the 'greatest man who ever lived' was so active in it?.

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  teel

  All the while ignoring the clear Biblical message:

  15Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? ( James 2:15-16 )

  But then again, they're not "brothers or sisters", they're just bird food, so why bother? Of course the same applies most of the times to those who they do consider brothers or sisters, I witnessed one occasion too.
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  15

  JWs thinking 'Satan is out to get me!'

  by KingAgag in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i met a jw who said he hated driving to the kh because satan always changed the traffic lights to red so that he'd be late.

  this is so absurd, showing how paranoid some of them are.

  what similar, equally retarded, reasoning have you come across?

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  teel

  Satan as scapegoat is a great way of shifting responsability, a JW is not guilty of anything, it's always Satan. It was his fault turning the lights red, not my lazy ass to start off to KH too late and depending on a rolling series of green light to arrive in time.
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  221

  What JW catch phrase DRIVES YOU NUTS!!!!

  by megaflower in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  "we should be mindful".

  grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

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  teel

  "It is not our business to tell how to live your life" - then they tell me how to live my life.
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  20

  Is the Door to Door Preaching Obsolete?

  by lepermessiah in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i wanted to get some opinions on this.. the last few years i was active as a jw, i thought that the door-to-door preaching work was the biggest waste of time.

  you rarely got anyone home, those you did get home were rarely interested, and it seemed like a huge waste of resources.. in line with that thought, i was speaking with a gentleman at work the other day - he is a very active pastor in the community, and him and i have gotten to be pretty good friends - we have had a ton of interesting conversations.he recently moved his church to a bigger location due to past and expected future growth.. he was telling me that one of his big concerns was the fall-off of church attendance in our area.

  he had a company actually come in and do a study for him with census information, demographics, etc.

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  teel

  I try hard to remember, but I can't recall anyone baptized in the last 10 years because of the door-to-door service. It happened before, but these days they're all either children of JWs or close friends, relatives of JWs.

  As pointed out several times in this forum, if you ask complete outsiders what's the message the JWs want to share with people, they hardly know it. These things are in line with that study. Door to door is obsolete and ineffective.

  Yet it will never go away, a cult needs to keep members busy.