I know of an instance where a CO wanted the BOE to alert a sister in our hall about someone she was seeing from another congregation. The BOE refused stating its none of their business who she chooses to date. She wasn't some 18 year old. This woman is in her mid 40s. Later, one of the older Elders with experience in life, told me why they didn't alert this sister. He goes," These CO's like Elders to do their dirty work. So if we alert the sister about this brother and she gets upset, who will she be upset with? Us, and guess where the CO will be? At his new assignment never to be seen again. If he wants this sister warned about this brother, he needs to do it himself."
miseryloveselders
JoinedPosts by miseryloveselders
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30
Did you ever have the Elders check out a prospective marriage mate 4U?
by Open mind inor, to your knowledge, did anyone ever make any inquiries of your local elders as to your "spiritual health" and suitability for courtship?.
how'd that work out for you?.
om.
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What Beliefs/ Practices of Jehovah's Witnesses do you Disagree With Most?
by flipper inmost of us either when exiting the witnesses or after exiting have certain beliefs/practices that bothered us so much we could not suport this organization anymore.
what were your breaking points ?
here were a few of mine :.
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miseryloveselders
1. Jesus' Faithful & Discreet Slave illustration being turned into a prophetic doctrine thats been manipulated so they can control everyone.
2. Babylon the Great being the worldwide empire of false religion. The more I research this I'm convinved this was Jerusalem as she was referred to as prostituting herself in handful of scriptures on the Hebrew side of the Bible. When Peter wrote stating he was located in Babylon, I believe he was really talking about Jerusalem in code. When John of Patmos wrote of the Beast turning on the harlot, he was talking about Rome attacking Jerusalem. The Beast also has seven heads, incidently Rome was known to have seven major hills. Another thing was 666, which would be the roman initials for Emporor Nero who was hard on Christians.
3. Disfellowshipping. Three imperfect men taking one person in a room and making this decision. The Bible indicates the whole congretion should have input on the accused, not three imperfect, untrained men representing the congregation.
4. Apostacy. One cannot agree to disagree with the WT on anything. The WT even went a step further by discouraging ones from secretly holding on to beliefs contrary to what the WT believes. Its unreasonable to be that unyielding. Carl Jonnson and Ray Franz might still be JWs if the WT Heavys weren't so Stalinish. If one seeks to go to another Christian faith, or any other faith, they will be disfellowshipped. Or they'll be announced as having disassociated by their actions according the The Flock Book.
5. Higher Education. Nothing in the scriptures forbids this. Yet, 3 summers ago at the disctrict convention, the drama was about Timothy facing pressure from his father to seek higher education as opposed to reaching out in the Christian congregation. The WT is hypocritical with this position they've taken on higher education too. How may times have we seen a brother who's well off materially become a JW, and he gets appointed either as a MS, or Elder quicker than the uneducated in the KH? How many interviews at assemblies and conventions have shown well off ones with educations being used as examples for the audience to show they may be able to Pioneer? Some years ago at a district convention, they had a sister on stage being interviewed about her decision to stop putting so much time in at her profession, so she could pioneer. Here's the part that made me shake my head. This woman was a born-in. Not only was she raised in the truth, but she has a college education. Guess what she did for a living? She was a sports agent. I can't recall what her husband did, but he choose to work full time, so that she can work part time and pioneer. Every convention and circuit assemblies, they interview ones who are well off with business or educated enough so they can support themselves and pioneer. Those interviews are discouraging to those of who were born in. Especially if our JW parents were hardline enough to state to us as young adults that higher education was forbidden. That Higher Education shows a lack of faith. etc.
5. The Blood doctrine. Knowing that the scriptures regarding the pouring out of the blood to the ground, and Israelites being forbidden to eat meat with blood in it, indicates this law was for dietary reasons. In 2010, people don't really eat blood with the exception of Blood pudding, and Blood sausages. Both of which I disagree with personally. But if a person needs and chooses to get a blood transplant, that should be up to the individual Christian's conscious. It's none of the Elder body's business what a person chooses to do for treatment. The fact that the WT is ok with Blood Fractions, says volumes about their internal conflict on this situation. It probably has a lot more to do with the schizme between the LEgal Department in Bethel, and the GB/Writing Department. By the way, what kind of conscious person would seek an investigative committee to confirm whether or not a
6. The smug, arrogant attitudes toward non JWs. The writing department loves words like "destroyed" and "exterminate". Their literature with these terms and similar have the rank & file anticipating with the glee, when God will destroy all nonJWs. Doesn't matter how much good a person has done on behalf of mankind, or if one allows the Bible to influence his/her decisions in life. If those ones don't become JWs, they're going to be destroyed, and eradicated with all the other wicked nonJWs on this planet.
7. Endless meetings and Field Service. Every midweek meeting is exactly the same as the week before. I'm convinced that if I missed meetings for an entire year, it would nothing for me to step back into a KH and pick up on the routine fairly easy. Especially when the WT Study is about meetings. We're the only religion that has meetings about meeting. It's laugable.
Field Service is ridiculous when your preaching other Christian groups. So JWs have doctrines similar and different than Catholics, Protestants, and Baptists. Why are we preaching to them? They're already Christian. They'll get judged eventually, just like you and I. It'd be one thing to preach to Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, etc.. But to waste all your time in the same neighborhoods preaching to other Christians is nonsensible.
8. No Facial HAir. There is absolutely no scripture evidence to support this policy. None. Zilch. Yet I see plenty of African Amercian brothers at assemblies with unsightly ingrown hairs otherwise known as razor bumps. The funniest thing to me, is when you see pictures in some of our literature showing what it will be like in paradise. They show Christians from our modern era conversing with resurected ones from the Biblicle era. The modern ones are all clean shaven, with khakis and polo shirts tucked in. The resurected one are wearing their tradition robes, and a full beard. When I picture myself in a paradise, the last thing I'll be wearing is dockers with a tucked in Polo shirt. I'd probably have on jeans and tennis shoes, and a plain tee shirt. I couldn't imagine the sisters in paradise wearing floral dresses with shoulder pads, and stockings. Those illustrations in the literture indicate to me how retarded they are in Bethel.
9. Jerusalem being destroyed in 607 BCE by the Babylonians. Meanwhile you won't find any Encylopedia, or any Jewish scholar, or any program on PBS or the History Channel supporting 607. The brothers at Bethel aren't humble enough to acknowledge their mistake. They aren't will to risk being wrong on yet another date, this time being 1914, and subsequently 1918/1919 as the time frame that Jesus/Jehovah supposedly chose the Bible Students as His exclusive organization.
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Have your JW Relatives Explained about Generation/Overlap Change to You ?
by flipper inafter reading on the way out's thread about his mom explaining the generation overlap to him it kicked this idea into my head to make this thread .
i thought it would be helpful to see if anybody here has had jw relatives or friends try to explain this " generation overlap " theory to you as a faded or inactive witness and what happened in the conversations.
so please feel free to post your experiences.
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miseryloveselders
Man Essan its strange, I'll admit that. Very strange and awkward at times. I've found that there's enough in WT land that I still agree with that I don't have to promote the nonsense I don't agree with. My father is an Elder, old school Elder too, die hard. Every now and then he lets out criticism of the powers that be in New York. I believe there's a whole bunch of people who have hidden thoughts regarding this organization. Some of the articles I've seen come through the literature indicate to me that even in the Writing Department there are ones who are "aware." There's a poster on here named Winston Churchil who I believe is a CO if I'm not mistaken. There's potential for a schizm in this organization. The question is whats going to spark it? Will it be another Ray Franz, or possibly several of them? Will it be a bad decision regarding a key doctrine that doesn't go over well with the average congregation publisher? Or will it be the slow bleed of young ones leaving and long time members getting increasingly apathetic? Time will tell Essan. I'm glad your on here though. I like reading your posts.
I'm gonna get ready to hit the sack. I have to lead the group tommorrow. Everybody have a good night.
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Have your JW Relatives Explained about Generation/Overlap Change to You ?
by flipper inafter reading on the way out's thread about his mom explaining the generation overlap to him it kicked this idea into my head to make this thread .
i thought it would be helpful to see if anybody here has had jw relatives or friends try to explain this " generation overlap " theory to you as a faded or inactive witness and what happened in the conversations.
so please feel free to post your experiences.
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miseryloveselders
Hey Flipper, my convention was last weekend. I was doing the attendant thing. At one point I got tired of sitting in my section, so I went to a different level of the facility, and was standing behind a section for disabled and elderly people. It was during the final talk, you know the big generation explanation citation. Well when the speaker mentioned this generation, this one older cat in what appeared to be his 80's tapped this old woman in front of him with a sense of urgency. He did it in a manner where you could tell it was something both he and the woman he was tapping, were awaiting this part. So they readied their notepads. You would think they were anticipating Medicare making an announcement that they're covering Viagra free of charge or something. It was fascinating looking at all in the audience eating it up. I couldn't help but think how many of us "conscious" ones were in attendance.
Later on, during the drive home, my Grandmother mentioned it to my folks. Then the conversation started. They were all especially happy that they finally understood it. I was thinking to myself, "I explained it to you the night before the WT Study when you didn't understand it!" I had to explain it again when my father called me earlier this week! I'm probably going to have to explain it again in another month or so!!!
This Generation thing is right up there with the "domestics" of the anointed, the seven trumpet blasts, the king of the north and all the other horse manure those old farts in New York have come up with. I swear half those clowns on the GB should be tested for Alzheimer's.
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WHO ARE THE FALSE PROPHETS TODAY?
by Dogpatch inwho are the false prophets today.
by barbara anderson.
in 1991, one of the watch tower societys senior writers, colin quackenbush, told me in the privacy of his office about letters which the society had received from prominent and credible elders, not apostates (thats exactly what he said), who were concerned about the increase in accusations saying that jehovahs witnesses were false prophets.
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miseryloveselders
Upon one of Jehovah's Witnesses or even all of them being informed of your sentiment, should they all disband and reorganize under a different name? Or better yet, abandon Jehovah and stop teaching others about what the future holds? In a quest for answers, the fact that the early Bible students were guided by sound principles and maintained high standards of evidence in their endeavors is revealed by their earliest literature. If you do find a problem in a study aid to Bible understanding you believe is a sin, there's no reason to incriminate others if they demonstrate godly repentance.
There's many unrepentant persons in society. The Bible clearly outlines works that befit repentance. The men and women you're indicting displayed works that befit repentance up to the end of their earthly course. If they did make a mistake, they were repentant. Going off on a kamikaze course of indicting others who display works that befit repentance is a common but a rather cheap defense mechanism from persons that are unrepentant.
You're still avoiding the point Consfearacy. Essan does a find job articulating his points and doesn't need any assistance from anyone on here. However I personally find it frustrating that you purposely avoided dealing with Essan's primary concerns with this organization. That being the WT promotes themselves as being the exclusive sole channel for communication and reconciliation with God. You do the same thing other WT apologists do on here, with maybe the exception of Renaia and to a lesser extent her new alias Debator. At first I was hoping you missed what Essan was relaying to you. Then I realized, you didn't miss it, you purposely avoided it. I'm guessing your reasons are you're either aware that Essan's argument has you cornered, or you're really that delusional and goat headed to see the point. Nobody has a problem with anyone on this planet being zealous for truth, or having a emotional stake in how prophecy is to be interpreted for our times. Heck, I was curious as to what team Lebron was going to go to, but I didn't threaten anybody for not believing as I did that he was going to the Bulls. The problem is when those zealous ones, aka the Celebrated WT Scholars and Clergy aka the Governing Body, promote themselves as God's exclusive sole channel for dispensing truth, or one might label it current truth. Then, when their truthis replaced with a newer truth, and their followers are stumbled, they blame the followers. Not only do they blame the followers, but they emotionally blackmail their followers with the devestating consequences of shunning, otherwise known as disfellowshipping. Why punish the followers? Because they had the audacity to question whether their Clergy and Scholars should be held to the same standerd that the GB and WT use to label all other religions as false, aka Babylon the Great. "Get out of her my people!"
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Did you really want to live forever?
by serenitynow! ineven when i was a kid i thought that forever was too long.
i thought it may get boring.
especially when they said we'd stop eating meat.
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miseryloveselders
That right there would make me commit suicide!
I rock polo shirts and khakis often enough for work, and even out and about. I'm too old to wear dickies, timbs and oversized white tee shirts. Beside you won't have to worry about that Serenity! You'll be forced to wear oversized floral dresses with shoulder pads, and stockings. We'll all be too busy gardening and attending bible studies and congregation picnics to ever be concerned about clothing choices.
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Did you really want to live forever?
by serenitynow! ineven when i was a kid i thought that forever was too long.
i thought it may get boring.
especially when they said we'd stop eating meat.
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miseryloveselders
When you think about it, the thousand year reign according to WT doctrine will have a significant portion of time set aside for bible studies. I've heard in Service Meeting parts, people make comments like, "just think!! We won't have to reason with people to get a bible study started with them!!" I would hear this, and even before developing apostate leanings I would think to myself thats not exactly something to look forward to. By the way, this meeting is going overtime. After the Big A, we have to clean up the mess thats been left behind after 2000 years of human progress. Then we have to start a massive worldwide gardening campaign. Between cleaning up the rubble and the gardening campaign, we'll have more time for meetings and bible studies with all the resurrected ones. Then upon reaching perfection, the Devil will be let loose, and we'll start all over again, but it won't be as long as several thousand years. Possibly only a few hundred years which supposedly will be nothing to us since we'll have been alive for a 1000 years. Then afterwards we'll garden and have congregation picnics forever with mandatory khakis and polo shirts.
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Science Channel program on "Lost Gospels" - did anyone else see it?
by JWoods ini watched an interesting program last night on science channel called mysteries of the bible - this episode was about the lost gospels.. they include one by peter, another by mary magdelene, and one by judas.
the most interesting part of the show, to me, was how they debunked the notion (shared by the wtbts) that constantine's council was somehow inspired and picked out the correct four gospels by divine means.. the pictured constantine as a practically non-religious person except in the sense that he saw a centrally organized system of christianity as a source of political power for himself.
much was made of how he disliked the independent spirit of the gnostics, and therefore viewed mathew, mark, luke, and john as the least politically dangerous of the numerous gospel writings available in his time.. and, of course, again i was reminded of just how uncertain we really are about the writings preserved in the present-day new testament: they were written at least decades after their events took place, and were the result of verbal traditions told from one person to another.
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miseryloveselders
I missed that one, but the Science Channel repeats programs often enough that I'll be able to catch it. I love both the Science Channel and the History Channel's programs on Biblicle matters. The material on those programs make much more sense than everything I've been spoonfed since my birth. PBS Online has a really good section dedicated to Apocalyptic teachings, mainly John's Revelation.
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I am Getting Married To A Lovely 'Sister' In December!
by african GB Member inpls, wish me luck in my marriage, and give me some advice on how to make it a success..
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miseryloveselders
Is she overweight? It's probably not a good thing to marry someone overweight, because chances are after the honeymoon, she's going to gain more weight. It will be dang near impossible for her to lose the post-marriage weight. If she's reasonable overweight, you can look at her mother and get a better inkling as to what your wife will look like a decade or so down the road. If her mother has kankles, get rid of her immediately. You'll end up spending a fortune on lotion trying to moisturize her kankles. Not to mention the small fortune you'll spend on toilet paper. You do know that women go through several rolls of toilet paper a week? This could potentially cut into your retirement and pension. Another thing to consider is, since you plan on surviving armageddon, and living forever in the new system, if she's fat now, she'll be perfectly fat in the new system. Do you really want to spend the rest of your life with a woman who is perfectly obese? Food for thought, no pun intended.
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miseryloveselders
So Palmtree lets talk about how bad you've been wanting me ever since I started posting........