how prevalent was this in your area?
jw man in good standing, elders, ministerial servants, all levels, i have seen them trade off their old wife and marry a younger woman.
they might get df'd for a year or so but eventually return and get all their priveleges back , only difference is they have a new woman on their arm.. the old wife usually has to move to another kingdom hall or accept the new couple being in her face all the time.
If an appointed man does "behave treacherously with the wife of his youth", as they say, it is highly unlikely he will regain his "privileges" for a very long time. We'll have to wait and see if the theory is actually practised.
With the current shortage of men who even want to be a MS or elder, that "very long time" seems likely to get shorter and shorter.
hey folks, i made this series of videos a couple of days ago and someone sent me a private message to post it here.
there's a commenter on my videos (specifically the introduction one, you can look at it, he's still going at it) that i've posted his comments, my responses but more importantly every single logical fallacy and cult tactic that the poster used in his comments.
alot of people have said it's really helpful and they're going to use the videos to identify and call out other jws when they use them.
I don't know if I need to get my hearing checked, so someone else confirm this please: the cartoon dude is very hard for me to understand. Anyone else have to turn up the volume for the cartoon dude and down for Tim and up and down and up and down throughout the video? Or do I need a hearing aid?
probably been seen before but i thought i'd share!.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hugbxonxp5s.
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Are any of the people who were interviewed in the video posters here at JWN?
I think an updated version that includes the ludicrous 2000 blood fraction noo lite and the continuing generation scam would be great, Nephilim. Also, some information about the mind-control psychology behind the borg's practices (Asch, Milgram, Zimbardo, Lifton, Hassan, etc.) would add some punch. I think there already is a part about the pyramid near the beginning, though. Make it approximately 90 minutes and a TV channel could air it in a 2-hour time slot.
Even though this particular video is dated, it's useful to show not only how corrupt the borg is but how LONG they've been running their scam.
...and i think it's starting to show.. i started a thread the other day about being hounded after several years of having successfully(?
) faded.
i've been taken aback a bit the recent developments but i'm making a new strategy...one that depends more on sticking to my guns and laying the cards on the table.
The 'dead weight' is becoming overwhelming. They're practically begging anyone with male anatomy to 'reach out' now, while more and more are taking the opposite move and stepping down. Even if the 'dead weight' guys do step up, they're generally barely qualified to work the CD player and mic amplifier, let alone keep track of the thousands of policies an elder has to enforce.
No.
Russell predicted a restoration of Israel but so did a lot of people and nobody knew when it was going to happen. Zionism was already a movement. So that isn't really a correct prediction any more than saying something like The Steelers are going to win another Super Bowl at some point. It's bound to happen some day, just like in Russell's time it was feasible to expect a restoration of Israel at some point.
the door to door work is a sham.. the central activity of the watchtower bible and tract society is not spreading their so-called "message" about the kingdom of jehovah established in the heavens in 1914.. that's a load of propaganda.. the door to door activity is feckless in producing converts.
in fact, it is an immense failure of mammoth proportions!.
but, it is a diversion.
So where does the money go?
There was a poster here a few weeks ago who works for some financial firm that sets up trusts for big businesses (like the WT) on foreign soil, basically hiding the money and protecting it from taxation. Seems likely that at least some of the money is going there.
But what about the rest? I don't see anyone visibly living in luxury. Other than the upper eschelon's travel perks, there doesn't seem to be any great graft being taken anywhere. Could the lawyers be getting it all?
It's a great question with some solid reasoning behind it but it doesn't lead to any answers.
when addressing the first-century christian congregation in ephesus, jesus spoke of the love you had at first.
the ephesians had many good qualities, yet the love they once manifested for jehovah had waned.
hence, jesus told them: i know your deeds, and your labor and endurance, and that you cannot bear bad men, and that you put those to the test who say they are apostles .
" The Ephesians had many good qualities, yet the love they once manifested for Jehovah had waned."
Yet, it is possible that even now some Christians may lose “the love [they] had at first” for Jehovah and for Christian truth.
The bolded parts above are a baseless and unsupported interpretation of Christ's words. Much more likely, based upon all the other writings of John and the example and words of Jesus, is that he was speaking about Christian love toward one another and especially toward the lowly and needy.
Why then would the WT interpret it this way?
Because both "Jehovah" and "truth" are loaded words with specific meanings to Jehovah's Witnesses. While these words exist outside of Dub-world, the JWs give them unique meanings, forming a special reality that is different from the real world.
To a Dub: Jehovah = Our God whom we alone worship. Nobody else on earth worships this God, not even those few who know His name. truth = Our faith, our religion, our beliefs which are ours alone. Nobody else has "the truth" just as they don't worship Jehovah.
To a normal person: Jehovah = An English version of the name of the Hebrew God of the Old Testament. truth = information that is true This reinforces the "us-versus-them" mentality, supporting the phobia that Dubs have of becoming 'worldly' or worse, 'leaving the truth' and becoming 'apostate.' There aren't millions of different types of people on this planet to a Dub. There are only a small handful of types of people: Strong Dubs, Weak Dubs, Ex-Dub Apostates, Worldly People Who Haven't Ever Been Dubs, and three out of those four types of people are to be feared. Those fears are constantly reinforced in the literature and from the platform. (Note: apologies for the wacky formatting. This board software isn't very user-friendly.)
the "prophetic" books of the bible contain lots of wild imagery and vague predictions.
for example, daniel describes various periods of 1260, 1290, 1335, and 2300 days.
revelation contains discussions of a variety of wild beasts, trumpet blasts, etc.
Maninthemiddle has it, I think. Uniformity is just a buzzword for conformity. Conformity is about control via peer pressure (Google the Asch conformity experiments). Control over the 'belongings' is the ultimate goal of almost all WT policies. They control via authority (the "God's channel" angle exploits the findings of Stanley Milgram...peopletend to go along with authority even when experiencing doubts) and they control via conformity.
Putting both of these together, along with effectively isolating the members from outside ('worldly' or 'apostate') influence, makes it so that only the truly independent thinkers leave the borg. Many do leave but the majority stay in because of the psychological mind-control the borg exercises over its members.
was this an invisible god?.
any opinion on who wrote the big ten?.
(i got a sneakin' suspicion it was moses father-in-law).
I feel like God, such as It is, wrote the song long ago and has let the universe play it out ever since.
Did he reach down with his finger and carve out some Hebrew sentences on three, er, oops, two tablets of stone? No.
i've started drinking again.
i stopped for a month but i gave in again.
sorry i'm writing it here but who else am i going to tell?
Good advice on this thread so far, Paul. Please listen to it.
Indeed, life = pain. Life also equals beauty, love, peace, anger, excitement, and anything and everything else one could think of. But what YOUR life equals is entirely up to you, and it begins NOW. Your past is, in economic terms, a sunk cost, and has absolutely nothing to do with how you can feel and acheive in the future.
Guilt is based on looking backward. It is almost wholly nonproductive. Once you have learned not to make the same mistake again, it is time to move on, not make the mistake again, and live a life of fulfillment. Jesus said, "stop judging" and he didn't qualify it exclusively to OTHER people. Stop judging yourself, too, Paul. That you have a good heart is evident in your posts. Past actions are past. You learn and you move on.
You're ok. Really you are.
