These are called "Spoof Prices", they don't sell or reflect the true nature of the Market.
skepticSam
JoinedPosts by skepticSam
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Crisis of Consience market price (we are in a bull market)
by NewYork44M ini was considering getting another copy of one of ray's books and was shocked about the market value.
is ray's book worth $1,000?
perhaps, but it is a bit shocking.
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Do JW still drink like a fish in small gathering??
by James Mixon inin the 60's and 70's when i became a mindless cult follower there.
were gathering for the elite and they would get sh---t face, i mean down right.
drunk.
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skepticSam
Yes, we have elders pickling their livers to avoid thinking about their lot in life. If you were to see how much some can drink, they make Animal House, "The Hangover" look like rookies!
We have a local elder who was caught for shooting up heroine and kept these facts from the sheep, all kept hush-hush to avoid detection. JWs have no ideas their local leaders are not very stable inside, life is not easy!
Guess who gave a part on "Keeping your bodies clean before Jehovah" recently, strange group of hypocrites!
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Strange Moment During The 2015 Regional Convention
by JW_Rogue inhi, i'm new here but hadn't seen this mentioned anywhere yet.
during the "imitate jesus" rc there was a strange moment where they played a video of a brother trying to explain the 1914 teaching.
the brother quickly goes through all the scriptural "proofs" and the householder is dumbfounded.
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skepticSam
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stillin4 days ago
I was perplexed by that too. I wondered if is was only there to reinforce the cognitive dissonance that is needed to shrug off the whole chronology thing. Almost nobody can rattle off that sequence, anyhow"Thank you for mentioning that, often we forget the Watchtower is trying to distract intelligent people from learning the truth, that's why they are attacking the Web and ExJWs who learned the truth and share factually based information to anyone thinking about joining or desiring to walk away from this deceitful organization! Thank you for all the help from good people running all the websites, JWN, JWStruggle, JW Facts, and JWSurvey too, JWN has the most dynamic and robust topics, we can't thank Simon enough for all his hard work!
You only have two choices unless you fade, think about what it means to come face to face with the fact you've been lied to your entire life about this religion! By yielding to cognitive dissonance you don't have to, you can have ideas like 1914 told to entire audiences and nobody can have a intellectual discourse because if you don't accept these teachings, your among the "fallen", "prideful", "evil slave", "lack of humility", "Agents of Satan" all because you followed the examples of good in Bible times. Think about Jesus Christ, if he showed up here they would dis-fellowship the very being they claim to worship or obey.
1. Cut your losses and move with life or the next goal waiting ahead for us, the way professionals and honest scientist do when their game or project fails. You don't get paid being a loser and failed hypothesis don't turn in to theories, move on with life!
2. Admitting your wrong is too costly to people, that's why cognitive dissonance is scary to all of us here. To step away from the Cult costs all your family, friendships, acceptance you got fooled or deceived by a group of ignorant or willful liars. Cognitive D make's avoiding painful reflection possible, you don't have to lose family inside the Cult, you can still count all your "God Points" even though they don't count in the real Bible or Jesus teachings. C.D. allows all sorts of people the gift of avoiding the truth, this part they taught on 1914 is nothing more than telling people "God is giving us more time to warn the wicked and change their ways!" like the Watchtower has done since the start of their long line of false prophecies and stolen lives they took!
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2005 - The year the Society began its decline (without anyone noticing)!
by cedars ini've just finished an article for randy over on freeminds.org, which i've submitted to him for review.
hopefully it should be online soon, so please keep checking!.
the article discusses the fact that the watch tower society is already in decline, and suggests the year 2005 as the turning point.
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skepticSam
Do we have solid evidence the Organization is dropping off attendance wise vs just consolidating operations and eliminating redundancies(JW Missionaries, Bethel Workers, District Overseers) like all the Big Companies did after the Dot.com Implosion, Banking Meltdown and more "Right Sizing" efforts done by professional enterprises. The Watchtower is usually joining the paradigm as another one begins, that's how they operate!
What proof do we have to demonstrate their loosing their foothold, not just cutting costs and eliminating their free help, you know you have problems when your asking free labor to leave. They are not growing, in this Economy where signs of growth are taking place, they are downsizing and consolidating all their assets so the Old Men of Bethel have over $2 Billion in assets to enjoy the 21st Century with!
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Why Ravi Zacharias Never Became A Jehovah's Witness (Pre 1975 End Times Preaching). Famous Christian Apologist.
by skepticSam ini was shocked to learn dr. zacharias studied with the jws and why he never became a jw, it was the jws incompetence that lead to dr. zacharias leading a different path in life.
he's one of the best speakers and logicians in my opinion, he's got two phds and works with extraordinary men and women willing to speak at any university or mormon temple because the word he uses is based off the word.
how come the governing body are afraid to attend q/as at yale, cambridge, oxford, ucla, harvard, rutgers ect..??
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skepticSam
My ancient mother said "The elders said "the End is closer than before!" as opposed to "The End is farther than ever!" and she believe's this or try's to convince me its true so I won't leave the lie! Why don't more people see how inept the Dark Lords of the Governing Body are, if they had any common decency they would tell the JWs to get a good job, plan on getting a retirement account and behave in action as good neighbors, not hate filled bitter losers!
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To those who worked with the Public and had Co-workers, would your job have been easier without the Cult mind?
by skepticSam ini was thinking about the decades i worked with a team of people, around 40 give and take a few in this enterprise.
the watchtower made thing harder with all the guilt along with that push to convert anyone at any point of the day.
i thought life would have been so much easier if i was not part of this cult.
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skepticSam
I worked with agnostics and fundamental Christians, don't recall anyone being a strong atheists, most were pretty decent people. It was all the information the Meeting poured down our throats to make us feel superior and think "they need to convert to the teachings of the GB or their going to die!" This being in the 1984 time period with 1986 coming up(1986 was a local End Times Date set by a few members where I lived) I wanted to get them saved, 1986 came and went without me asking "how come we allow so many false dates and nobody challenges them?" The charity events, donating food for Xmas drive, donating blood, any methods to help the community were frowned upon because Jehovah's Witnesses are doing more than anyone else, we are sharing the Truth, not wasting time on issues only Jehovah can fix. How come we did not apply the rules we attacked other religions with, to ourselves? The Kingdom Hall attracted the most selfish and calloused people, can you recall having the friends help pay for "gas" for Field Service", willingly help with "Clean Ups", make meals for the sick witnesses without being prodded to or check up on their own sick members? I was in over a dozen Halls and these issues were tough because we claimed to follow the Master but our actions screamed "We are selfish! We don't care about anyone, no even our own Witness family!"
JW Facts has the perfect response
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To those who worked with the Public and had Co-workers, would your job have been easier without the Cult mind?
by skepticSam ini was thinking about the decades i worked with a team of people, around 40 give and take a few in this enterprise.
the watchtower made thing harder with all the guilt along with that push to convert anyone at any point of the day.
i thought life would have been so much easier if i was not part of this cult.
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skepticSam
I was thinking about the decades I worked with a team of people, around 40 give and take a few in this enterprise. The Watchtower made thing harder with all the guilt along with that push to convert anyone at any point of the day. I thought life would have been so much easier if I was not part of this Cult. The guilt, the two-faced publishers worse than most of the workers and making up reasons why I could not come over to their houses for dinner got old. Not using profanity and stealing are good qualities the Organization taught but those could be achieved through the Bible or some other moral book. How would your job and life experience have been different without all the teachings of the Cult, do you think your life was made easier at work with the Cult's indoctrination?
Did you use any opportunity as a way to preach and debate doctrines if you were speaking to a workmate that was a born-again Christian? Did you waste time debating the Trinity, Hell, 1914, Beth-Sarim, ect? Is it possible you could have gone high up in your company if the Cult had not infected your mind with guilt or making you feel greedy because you wanted to climb up the ranks?
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WHAT JESUS REALLY MEANT Vs the GOVERNING BODY'S VERSION OF THE BIBLE.
by skepticSam ini found these contrasts incredible, anyone who claims that following the watchtower's bizarre aloof teachings is a "insurance policy" needs to have their heads examined.
these people were once in line with the watchtower's leaders until they got tossed out of the organization during the great purging of anointed jws in 2012.. the more i am around the worldly people, the more i see how insane jws are and the lack of love they have.
their selfish, always wanting to mooch off each other, steal from their brothers and sisters, evade taxes, cheat and hate playing by the rules.
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skepticSam
What's your favorite Watchtower Twisted teaching? How come Jehovah's Witnesses don't give presentations like Charles Taze Russell did? Is that because their not educated enough or providing answers like "The Generation" would lead to more people leaving? -
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WT October 15, 2015 - Don't believe Apostate Lies
by Designer Stubble inthe last article in this new wt, shows me that the organization is dealing with much information that is damaging them.
i am sure that the many recent lawsuits are being noticed by the r&f.. here are some gems from that article, titled the naive person believes every word.
we must be very selective about what we consider worthy of our attention.
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skepticSam
Mother refuses to answer any questions posted in the Media, strange though they love to bring articles and good "write ups" when it's good, why not take the good and bad instead of hiding? -
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Why Ravi Zacharias Never Became A Jehovah's Witness (Pre 1975 End Times Preaching). Famous Christian Apologist.
by skepticSam ini was shocked to learn dr. zacharias studied with the jws and why he never became a jw, it was the jws incompetence that lead to dr. zacharias leading a different path in life.
he's one of the best speakers and logicians in my opinion, he's got two phds and works with extraordinary men and women willing to speak at any university or mormon temple because the word he uses is based off the word.
how come the governing body are afraid to attend q/as at yale, cambridge, oxford, ucla, harvard, rutgers ect..??
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skepticSam
I was shocked to learn Dr. Zacharias studied with the JWs and why he never became a JW, it was the JWs incompetence that lead to Dr. Zacharias leading a different path in life. He's one of the best speakers and logicians in my opinion, he's got two phDs and works with extraordinary men and women willing to speak at any University or Mormon Temple because the word he uses is based off the Word. How come the Governing Body are afraid to attend Q/As at Yale, Cambridge, Oxford, UCLA, Harvard, Rutgers ect..?? Why won't they teach their message and allow students in college chances to ask "Why" instead of cowardly hiding behind the choir like they always do!
"Sometimes we can convince ourselves that the answer to everything lies in economic well-being. Obviously, this is a very important facet of life. When you can afford a meal, a bed, a home for your family, you can be content. But it does not ultimately solve the deepest questions that haunt you. That is where religion is supposed to help, to offer answers.
Whether we like to admit it or not, many religions of the world are concocted to hold fear and control over people. Nobody likes to talk about this, but it’s the way it is. The human psyche is vulnerable because of its built-in fear of failure, and becomes an easy prey.
That’s the way I remember first experiencing religion—as something involving fear: A man rolling down the street, chanting the name of his god. Men and women with deep gashes in their faces. Tales of goats being sacrificed in temples to procure answers to prayers. Each time I asked my mother about these things, she explained, “They do it to worship their god.”
Worship? It was an empty word to me, steeped in some mysterious expression that didn’t make ordinary sense. It was a magic wand to ward off tragedy. The one thing I learned from observing such rituals was a palpable sense of fear. Everything had to follow a certain sequence. If you didn’t do it right, something bad was going to happen to you. If I didn’t make my offering, what would befall me? If I didn’t do this one thing correctly, what price would I have to pay to some sharp, implacable divine being? Was all that just superstition born out of fear, dressed up into a system, and embedded into a culture?
There was one wonderful aspect of the religious world I grew up in that held my fascination—and that was its stories. I loved the pictures; the mythologies; and the ideas of rescue, of winning wars, of magical potions, of how your mother could be saved by some god who came down and carried her away from harm. It was a bit of folklore here, a bit of drama there, a bit of religion, a bit of historical fact, all mixed together.
I used to go with my friends and their families to watch the religious plays at the festivals, and I became quite fond of them. To me, it wasn’t so much religious as that it was part of a family’s annual routine. Each year, when the Hindu god Ram’s birthday came around, I went with my friends to see the plays that reenacted stories about Ram. I loved these dramas, because my little brother Ramesh was named after Ram.
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My siblings and I got our first taste of Western religion when two Jehovah’s Witnesses came knocking on our door one day. A Mr. and Mrs. Smith appeared, telling my father they wanted to teach us children to read and to know the Bible. They assured our dad how very important this was.
So the Smiths came to our home once a week, and for the next year and a half they sat in our living room and taught us for an hour or two at a time. I remember reading the Witnesses’ book Let God Be True and the magazines The Watchtower and Awake. Most impressive, though, were the assemblies where they gathered groups and showed movies. One of these movies featured tens of thousands of people attending a Jehovah’s Witnesses rally at Yankee Stadium in New York City. When my siblings and I saw that spectacle, we couldn’t help being awed by it.
Yet, in retrospect, it shows how easily the human mind and heart can be manipulated. Ours was a small family with very little in comparison to most families in the West. And seeing that movie, with all those highly successful-looking people gathered in a magnificent stadium, my siblings’ hearts must have raced as my heart did. I’m sure they also thought, “This has to be true.” It made us want to be part of such a great event, in a great city like New York.
So we continued to study with the Smiths until the day Mr. Smith came to the chapter on heaven in the book of Revelation. He stopped there and told us that, according to Jehovah’s Witnesses’ teaching, only 144,000 people were going to make it to paradise.
That hit me like a ton of bricks. Here my siblings and I had thought we were becoming very spiritual. These Western missionaries had sat with us each week, giving us homework and encouraging our studies. But now I scratched my head over this news. I asked Mr. Smith, “Only 144,000?”
“That’s right,” he said.
“Sir, how many people are there in your organization?”
“Oh, we have many.”
“Do you have more than 144,000?”
“Oh yes.”
“So even all of your people aren’t going to make it to heaven?”
I thought of the Smiths’ constant praying, of all their efforts to reach more and more people—and yet even they had no way of knowing where they were going after death. So they certainly couldn’t assure me of where I might be going.
“Mr. Smith, before you came, I didn’t know where I was going after I died,” I said. “But now, after all this study, I still don’t know where I’m going after I die.”
They probably sensed they were up against something difficult at that point. Or perhaps my outright shock over this curious point of doctrine registered with them more deeply than normal. But not long afterward, the Smiths were succeeded by another couple, and when they sensed they were getting nowhere, they stopped coming to our house. Who knows, in another six or eight months, maybe we would have been convinced by them. But at that stage, I told myself, “I don’t much care for this. I’m done with Christianity.”
I didn’t know that it wasn’t Christianity I was rejecting, but I really had no idea how to distinguish one sect from another. At best, each of us was only thinking pragmatically, “What is it that’s going to work for me?”
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Like most of India, my mother was very spiritual and at the same time very superstitious. In our home hung a picture of Saint Philomena, a Catholic saint, because of a commitment my mom had made after my sister Shyamala (Sham to us) was diagnosed with polio at five days old. The doctor gave Sham no hope of surviving, and in desperation my mother decided to send a gift to the Saint Philomena shrine in South India. She pledged that if my sister would get through this, my mother would give money to the shrine faithfully.
Sham survived. In her younger years she wore a crude knee brace from just above the knee to her ankle and walked with a bit of a hop. (Today, after a surgery, she has only a slight limp that is virtually undetectable.) But what was most important to my mother was that her daughter’s life was spared. That is why, almost until the day Mom died, she faithfully sent money to the Saint Philomena shrine. It is also why my sister Sham was given the middle name Philomena.
After that ordeal, our family was brought to the brink again years later over our baby brother Ramesh. I especially was very close to him, so it struck me hard when little Ramesh, only six or seven years old, became ill with double pneumonia and typhoid. Very little could be done in those days for someone in his condition, and the doctors offered us no hope.
I remember the evening my parents decided to take us to the hospital to visit our brother in what we sensed might be our last time to see him. I was deeply shaken when I witnessed what had happened to Ramesh. He was shriveled down to a bag of bones. I barely recognized him; he looked like a picture of a starved child. After seeing him, we all expected that this would be the night he would die.
My mother stayed at the hospital with my brother while my dad took us home. We gathered for prayer in my parents’ bedroom around a picture of Jesus that hung on the wall beside the picture of Saint Philomena. I recall that night clearly, on our knees in that room, my father’s voice cracking as he prayed. I couldn’t believe we were losing him. My little brother was really dying.
One of the people my dad had called to come and pray with us was a certain Pentecostal minister. Mr. Dennis had come to our house occasionally on his motorbike to talk with my dad and pray with him. We used to make a lot of fun of Mr. Dennis and to joke behind his back because he always sang when he prayed. He simply broke out into song, and it sounded so odd to us. We were unkind because we had no clue what this was all about, and our Hindu servants in the house reprimanded us for making fun.
But now, with my brother dying, I prayed as I never had, alongside Mr. Dennis and the others in the room that night. In a voice of deep reverence, this man asked God for a touch of healing, for a miracle. There was nothing funny now. I was moved to tears as he called on the Lord to have mercy on my brother.
Meanwhile, the doctor had come to my mother soon after we left the hospital. He uttered to her the worst news of her life. “Sometime between midnight and 5:00 a.m.,” he said, “it will be over.”
My mother had not slept for several days. She had sat by Ramesh’s side the entire time. Now, as she faced the torturous hours ahead, she was overcome with exhaustion. She simply couldn’t keep her eyes open. As the night wore on, she fell sound asleep at my brother’s bedside.
Hours later, my mother suddenly shocked herself awake. When she realized what had happened, she feared the worst. The hour had long passed at which Ramesh was to have gone. Yet when she looked at my brother, she saw that he was still breathing. In fact, his chest now rose and fell with a stronger rhythm than before. Something had happened during the night.
When morning came, my mom sent a message to us that Ramesh was looking stronger and better. None of us were sure what this meant. But the same message came to us on the second day, then the third day, then the fourth. Our brother had made the turn, and his strength was restored.
In our family’s collective memory, this was one of our most defining moments. I don’t know to what degree Mr. Dennis’s prayer consciously played a role in this monumental episode of our history. But to me, there was something of God in it.
I don’t recall ever seeing Mr. Dennis again, though I have often thought of him. He was a missionary living on a meager salary, a living saint. Somebody must have supported him. Why did he pick our family to visit? Was this not God in the shadows, keeping watch over His own? I did not think of it then, but I see it now. I made an association with the life of prayer and calling in that man, and with the miracle we all had witnessed—my brother’s life had been spared.
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Being back here in my mother’s brother’s home brings me closer, I sense, to the reality of a sovereign God. I can never forget that sovereignty behind my life, and it brings to mind a great Indian custom.
If you travel to the north of India, you will see the most magnificent saris ever made, and Varanasi is where the wedding saris are handwoven. The gold, the silver, the reds, the blues—all the marvelous colors threaded together are spectacular. These saris are usually made by just two people—a father who sits on a platform and a son who sits two steps down from him. The father has all the spools of silk threads around him. As he begins to pull the threads together, he nods, and the son responds by moving the shuttle from one side to the other. Then the process begins again, with the dad nodding and the son responding. Everything is done with a simple nod from the father. It’s a long, tedious process to watch. But if you come back in two or three weeks, you’ll see a magnificent pattern emerging.
This is an image I always remind myself of: we may be moving the shuttle, but the design is in the mind of the Father. The son has no idea what pattern is emerging. He just responds to the father’s nod.
Back here in my homeland, I see the threads. My family, my home city, my spartan beginnings, a life having come out of nothing—I’m reminded again that the threads are all being pulled together.
This is the only explanation for the great irony in my being here now. You see, of all five siblings in my family, I had the unhappiest childhood. Yet I am the one who is most drawn to come back.
It’s unexplainable. All of my siblings are natural leaders, and all live in Toronto today. Each had the beginnings of his or her success and happiness sown here, in India. Ajit, the oldest, was an engineer with IBM in the 1970s who later went on to his own commercial success as an entrepreneur. You would think he’d want to come back to the place where his mind was shaped, where all his dreams and hopes and promises were formed. You would think the same of my younger brother, Ramesh, now a successful surgeon, and my two sisters, Sham and Prem. I have no doubt they have this desire, but not one shares the deep, soul-wrenching, unshakable tug that I feel. Ramesh does tell me, “I want to go back sometime. But I want to do it with you, Ravi.”
I’m the one who keeps coming back—and who wants to keep coming back. I have maintained the language and the contacts, mainly by walking these streets. When I return and see the buildings and the beauty and the people, I reminisce, “This is where my life was shaped. This is where my calling began. And this is where I very nearly ended it all, out of my own despair.”
The sound of a voice crying out to God, a voice that once spelled terror in my heart, is now the very cry to which I respond with a sense of privilege all over the world. Still, to me, coming back is a dip into an ocean too deep for me to fully fathom. The full story only the tapestry can explain.
Ravi Zacharias is founder and chairman of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries."