angel eyes: this is my answer to your question: Acts 15:28,29 : "It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements...". Does the GB follow this scriptural advice?
Posts by teel
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42shepherding visits.....were they?
by angel eyes inwe have friends who say that they have had some awful shepherdings,the things theyve been told in them were far from encouraging.. we havent ever had one so to be honest i cant comment...but would love to know if you had one?
were they regular and were they ever encouraging?
?.
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5 Euros... do i hear any other bids?
by highdose in5 euros thats how much old jw books are being sold for in my local second hand book shop.
they are pre 80's and 70's books, some have been underlined and srciptures wrtten in the margin in typical jw style.
i should point out that when i pulled them down off the bookcase they were topped with a generous amount of dust, so i imagine they have been there some time.. so what is the going rate for old jw books these days?.
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teel
Never saw any JW books in second hand shops. I think it wouldn't sell well, because anyone realizing it's a JW book would think "I could get a JW to bring me this or something similar for free."
I am from Romania btw, and I've seen someone from Germany. I think the membership is quite diverse here, even if most are from US and UK.
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42
shepherding visits.....were they?
by angel eyes inwe have friends who say that they have had some awful shepherdings,the things theyve been told in them were far from encouraging.. we havent ever had one so to be honest i cant comment...but would love to know if you had one?
were they regular and were they ever encouraging?
?.
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teel
We had several shepherding visits, because my marriage wasn't the standard "happy family" you always see in WT. Most of them went by the old pattern of "pray more, read Bible and literature more, go in FS more, go to every meetings". Not long ago our cong got a nice elder, who was by accident my teacher in high school, he is a really smart guy, I still have lots of respect for him. He was the first to break the old pattern, and I actually heard some really interresting stuff from him - none from the WT literature though. He is the kind I can imagine in Brooklyn writing for the magazines
isaasaustin: erm... just about every christian organization except WT is imagining Jesus with long hair
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Excerpts from '1984' by George Orwell--Part 1 (Warning to the impatient: DO NOT READ)
by sd-7 inyou folks play aggressively here, and i'm starting to understand why.
but let's not waste time.
life as one of jehovah's witnesses could accurately be described as an orwellian nightmare come to life.
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teel
1984 is one of my favourite book. What strike me most in similarity was the concept of doublethink: it's incredible how accurate the description is to what I was doing myself. My conscience was telling the facts to be otherwise, yet my mind "slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink".
I managed to read the story to my wife too - a JW to the bones - I used to read novels to her a while ago; she won't let me any more, I think 1984 was just the last book I read. She was saddened by the story, yet it was weird how those ideas went right past her, she found absolutely no connection to real life. And she's a pretty smart girl too.
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Governing Body: Why Do You Want The Disloyal?
by metatron ini address this question to the governing body, to their internet monitors or to any apologist who might want to speak for them.. why do you want disloyal people in your "clean" organization?.
it should be evident by now that an untold number of people in the organization do not really want to be jehovah's witnesses any longer.
specifically, they don't want to attend meetings, or to donate money to the worldwide work, or spend real time going door to door.
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teel
@besty: I totally aggree with you. The WT credo is built up in such way, that no matter what happens the "faithful" will spin it to see in a positive light. People leave? Jehovah cleaning the org. Numbers rise? Jehovah gives his blessings. Life is good for a DFd person? Satan is luring him to stay in his world. Life goes bad for a DFd person? It's clearly visible, that Jehovah has withdrawn his blessings. It's the same with absolutely everything, I stumbled across this problem too, it's so well rounded you can't grab a corner of it.
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92
Please nominate your favourite film and say why you rate it so highly.
by lifelong humanist ini've just watched all 3 parts of francis ford coppola's epic godfather once again.
it is a superb achievement on many levels.
each viewing reveals something new and fresh.. i recall, as a good jw at the time, not seeing it when released as it was not certified as 'suitable' given the content for jws.
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teel
Not my absolutely most favourite, but not long ago I found Memento at the supermarket's bargain bin, and shame on me, but I didn't know of it before. I found it brilliant (it's rated R, mind you), it draws you in and with the way of the storytelling (the story goes in reverse if you haven't seen it before) you understand perfectly the feelings of the main character, who suffers of anterograde amnesia.
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Is the world getting better or worse?
by Elsewhere in.
http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2725/27250901.jpg.
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teel
Just the other day I was checking about earthquakes, and here is the official explanation from the scientists: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learning/topics/increase_in_earthquakes.php
Although it may seem that we are having more earthquakes, earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 or greater have remained fairly constant.
A partial explanation may lie in the fact that in the last twenty years, we have definitely had an increase in the number of earthquakes we have been able to locate each year.
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Deleting private records
by teel ini just had a weird thought.
in my country there's a law (i think some similar exists in most countries) that any organization, society, entity can only keep record of private nature about a person / entity if he/she/it gives its explicit consent to do so, and that consent can be revoked at any time by the person.
so whenever i participate in a product related raffle for example, there is always a legalese text asking whether i give my consent that the data given by me to be stored by the company and used for further promotional offers - agreeing is not necessary for the participation in the raffle.
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teel
I just had a weird thought. In my country there's a law (I think some similar exists in most countries) that any organization, society, entity can only keep record of private nature about a person / entity if he/she/it gives its explicit consent to do so, and that consent can be revoked at any time by the person. So whenever I participate in a product related raffle for example, there is always a legalese text asking whether I give my consent that the data given by me to be stored by the company and used for further promotional offers - agreeing is not necessary for the participation in the raffle. (Here is an interresting point about how far WTS follows the law, we were taught how to code and keep records about people in field ministry, so that it can't be challenged before the law).
So to abide by this law every baptised JW has to sign a similar paper, allowing the WTS to store information about them. Now, according to law I can ask them at any time to stop keeping the record and destroy any available records. Of course, as pointed out above, they will simply find some loophole... However this should not be a DF offense (I don't remember the Bible saying that not giving your personal info to anyone is a sin), yet I wonder how would the elders react
Edit: On second thought I think the respons would simply be that I am breaking the legal bond between myself and the organization, and like with divorce, that breaking means I have just DAd myself. Oh wel... for a second I thought I had an idea to stir up trouble...
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What do non witnesses actually think about the evil practice of disfellowshipping?
by jambon1 inwhenever i have mentioned this practise to people who don't know much about the witnesses (although they should know about them due to the worldwide preaching activity .
to most right thinking people it is absolutely just not an option to have no contact with your immediate family.. one lady said to me "i'd rather rip my heart out".. what has been your experience when people find out that jw's carry out this evil practise?.
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teel
Yet sometimes you hear/read stories that are presented in such a way, to have JWs think the outsiders agree on the shunning. I remember a case when someone who got DFd sued the congregation for the way they treated him, and it seems the court aknowledged the right of the group to outcast anyone who does not fit in. Be that as it may, I believe the judge in his heart felt it was wrong, but there is no law to force others to like someone. This is a social behaviour, and cannot be removed with laws.
My story goes that my mother (non-JW) was very surprised when the sister of my mother-in-law (a JW) didn't come to my wedding. There were some minor excuses, but my mother could not believe those would stop anyone. I didn't dare to tell her that she's not coming because she's disfellowshipped, and others don't want her to come. When faced with the ugly truth of DF the vast majority of sensitive people would find it disgusting. Even being mostly conformant JW back then, I would not have stopped her from coming, she's close family.
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How much will Watchtower publish online?
by jonathanconway ini've noticed that they have a small selection of articles online.. however the majority of their stuff is only accessible through either the watchtower cdrom or dead trees.. has anyone yet asked them about putting their entire library online?.
if their aim is to "spead the good news", then what possible reason could there be for not making the content publicly accessible?.
since they already have it in electronic form (i believe the content is already in html format on the cd), the cost of doing this would be minimal, and it would probably make their website rank better in google.. of course, the flip-side is that this would allow others to link to their content and discuss it openly and, anonymously, which might expose them to much more criticism than they've ever experienced before.. but i'm wondering what their excuse would be if someone asked them "why not"?.
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teel
Well, you can find 6 month issues of all three magazines in audio format here: http://www.jw.org/ I think this is what he was referring to, to my knowledge it's the only official online version of the study magazine.