Posts by teel

20

Everything feels broken

by Sapphy in

jw
friends

hi all - beware, long post comming up!.

i've always been a person who 'needed to know'.

as a born in i felt incredibly lucky that my parents and grandparents had found 'the truth' - no need to struggle to 'break free from babylon's bondage' for me!

Indeed you are not alone, I am in a somewhat similar situation, except I don't go through the motions any more, but I feel your loneliness. I like EmptyInside's advice, probably my biggest help was this board, to know that I'm not alone at all, even though hundreds of miles might separate us, but there's a big group of people who know that the JW's are plain wrong. It gives a comfort of mind that it's not you who's lost your mind, it's them.

The best were if you find a friend outside, even better if it's also a still JW doubting one. Keep your eyes open, you can never know if that 'brother/sister' you're on field service with has also serious doubts.

55

New BOE letter on inactive ones

by JWFreak in

jw
friends

again..please do not ask for a pdf scan as the only copies i have are the interbranch electronic copies from the us branch to our local branch.. .

november 3, 2009 .

to all bodies of elders .

teel

So I guess this letter might be the reason for the elder's visit on friday night? Hm... I just shut the door in their nose. Was I too rude? Here we have a saying: the uninvited guest's place is behind the door (loosely translated).

4

Care to step up watchtower?

by zarco in

jw
friends

the watchtower demonizes the commercial enterprises of the world.

the commercial enterprises of the world not all, but many give back so much to the health, education and welfare of people of the world.

below is an part of the gates foundation mission.

teel

Oh, but Bill & Melinda never did donate to the WTS did they? Only a demonized person would not support God's organization when they have the means. See, they're evil I tell you!

75

Just write something completely goofy!

by awildflower in

jw
friends

so this is inspired by my favorite poet edgar allen john doe!

sometimes we just need to say something completely goofy to relieve tension and have fun.

the pineapple king, with a feather in his hat and a spring in his step, finally helped the chicken cross the road!.

teel

The dead prophet invented Linux, that is white, but works when cooked.

This was the result when I tried a dictation software for the first time with my very poor english spelling (I very rarely speak english).

10

Did you ever clean parks as a JW?

by JimmyPage in

jw
friends

i remember several brothers who did this and sometimes when they went out of town our family would do their route.

they would bid on public parks to clean and as you might guess the job involved picking up the trash and cleaning the bathrooms.

the pickup would get pretty smelly from all the trash bags in the bed and the day would end at the dump.

teel

Not sure what was the question about. If it's a paid job, JWs are perfect for it, they should have the necesarry skill. It's just a job like any other.

Now, if it was a free service to the community, it's a commendable thing. I used to do that a few times in my pre-JW era, but then the WTS looked down on that sort of thing, so I stopped, and started pioneering instead. You have one guess as to what was more beneficial to the community

30

"Letting Spiritual Light Shine Online" - Watcthower.org gets 70,000 hits a day!

by slimboyfat in

jw
friends

i am reading the new 2010 yearbook at the moment.

on page 13 it says www.watchtower.org gets 70,000 hits a day, and that 24 million people visited the web site last year, a 33% increase since 2007. .

simon, how does that compare with this site?

teel

Alexa tells us some interresting info too: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/watchtower.org

The site is visited by 0.0079% of the global internet users, on average a user spends 4 minutes, and 47% of the users view one single page.

For some reason http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/jehovahs-witness.net has only 1 month old data, but here: it's viewed by 0.00135% of the global internet users (1/7 of watchtower.org, I think that's pretty impressive), a user spends 6 minutes, and only about 29% view one single page.

12

The Henrietta Riley fund - Watchtower hypocrisy at its best

by teel in

thanks to mary's excellent guide i just found out about the henrietta m. riley trust fund.

there was a heated discussion several years ago, here's the thread: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/11/54708/1.ashx.

basically it is an investment fund whose sole beneficiary is the watchtower society.

teel

What nugget said. It's my fault that I didn't put in my OP the fact that the fund is indeed in a third party's hand (although I don't find it impossible that it's a WTS puppet company).

The issue is very similar to the UN debacle. It's not about whether it is ok in itself what they do, it's that they enforce rules on the R&F that they purposely neglect.

I'm not well versed in the US law, being half a planet away, but I imagine they have at least one option available: refuse the donation.

For the record, here's the mentioned 1 Cor 10:25,26: 25Eat anything sold in the meat market without raising questions of conscience, 26 for, "The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it." Now try to tell this to the elders when they question you why you're eating blood pudding Or more on topic, buy stocks in a tobacco company, and wave 1 Cor 10:25,26 to the elders.

12

The Henrietta Riley fund - Watchtower hypocrisy at its best

by teel in

thanks to mary's excellent guide i just found out about the henrietta m. riley trust fund.

there was a heated discussion several years ago, here's the thread: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/11/54708/1.ashx.

basically it is an investment fund whose sole beneficiary is the watchtower society.

teel

Thanks to Mary's excellent guide I just found out about the Henrietta M. Riley Trust Fund. There was a heated discussion several years ago, here's the thread: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/11/54708/1.ashx. Basically it is an investment fund whose sole beneficiary is the Watchtower society. The discussion was that this fund had investments in Phillip Morris tobacco company.

I'm bringing this back to top to spread the knowledge, because it was just unbelivably hypocritical, so much as I went to search for the fund. http://www2.guidestar.org has them listed, and if you sign up for free on the site, you can check the IRS Form 990s for the last 3 years. I couldn't find Phillip Morris on their portofolio any more, and I didn't wanted a background check on all the unknown companies, but one name stand out: Armor Holdings. Sure enough, it's a weapon manufacturer. http://www.armorholdings.com

The JW defense would be of course that it's a fund, and they can't control the flow of the money. Funny thing though that the WTS expects this from their loyal followers:

*** g00 10/8 pp. 25-27 Is It Wise to Invest in the Stock Market? ***

By considering the background of a company, an investor can also ensure that his money will not be used to support an unethical enterprise.—See Awake!, February 8, 1962, pages 21-3.

Can you say hypocrisy?

22

My JW Friend's Justification for the WT Being God's Chosen Organisation

by maputo95 in

below is my jw friend's "proof" that the wt is god's only organisation and mouthpiece on earth.

he has yet to reinforce his strange story by biblical text or the church fathers or any historical evidence.. please, suggest how i may respond to his assertion.

i believe that this is the fundamental doctrine of the 'borg' and the one on which wt credibility rests.. thank you.. .

teel

This "prophecy" relies on setting the year 1914 as Christ's second invisible coming. 1914 is based on a historically inaccurate date of Jerusalem's destruction in 607 BC by the babylonians. If (and that's a big IF) you can prove him that 607 is incorrect, then 1914 is incorrect, 1919 is incorrect, and the whole religion is nothing more than a group of power hungry men leading blind people.

Ask him to prove from outside the Watchtower that 607 was indeed the time when Jerusalem was destroyed. There are absolutely no historians (except dodgy JW ones) that would have a doubt that Jerusalem was destroyed in 587/586 BC. Your friend's main line of reasoning will be that the history is inaccurate, the Bible prophesised that Jerusalem will be destroyed for 70 years, and from historical records (yep, I'm sure you already picked up the weirdness of all) we know that the end of the jewish exile was in 539 BC when Darius freed them, and after 2 years in 537 BC they got home, ending the 70 years period the Bible foretold, so it must have started in 607.

The most obvious error in this is that the exact same sources that say 539 BC also say 587 BC as Jerusalem's destruction, so you can not just say one of the date is not reliable, and the other is. JW's have no problem with that anyway...

This is a major issue for us, ex-JW, so you can find a huge amount of resources on the net, including explanation how the 70 years prophesised doesn't conflict with the historical records.

22

How would hoah had fared in an IQ test?

by badboy in

jw
friends

any takers?.

teel

Wuz, do you have brain damage or something? Because last time I checked my brain was fully functioning, and I'd rather not have 90% of it scooped out on account of being redundant anyway. http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/tenper.html

PSac: the IQ tests have different distribution scales. It's probable that those two tests used different scales, and both were right.