elections have been held per the us constitution during many difficult times; us civil war, ww i, ww ii, whatever.
i just put on the pro-trump fox news and even they are saying ... oooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.. this is really scary.
are we headed towards a dictatorship?
"Has any previous president failed his big test as thoroughly as Trump has these past few months?"
James Buchanann, James Madison, Woodrow Wilson (to be fair he'd had a stroke and his wife was running the show from their bedroom). Herbert Hoover. These are all in the running, a final accounting can't happen until Trump is out of office and we can examine the whole thing.
I do think that future historians will study this presidency to understand how not to do things.
dear brothers, july 27, 2020. in 1919, the president of the watchtower society made a bold prediction, “millions now living will never die”.
that quotation was constantly repeated by the organization till the year 2000 when they realized that everyone in attendance at that assembly, who listened to j.r. rutherford repeat those words, are dead.. that teaching has guided my life.
statements were repeatedly made at assemblies, conventions and in print that there was no career in “this system of things” so you don’t need a job with benefits or retirement, your fulltime job is to “preach the good news”!
My wife and I stopped going to meetings in early 1988 and sent a letter of disassociation in March, 1989. I'd do it the same way again.
i was six, not given any choice.
i remember being in the old kh, and my dad told me the brothers wanted to talk to me in the back...i was terrified.
i actually thought they knew i didn’t want to be a dub, my dad told them to just add me as a publisher, so no back room meeting.
22. I was a convert.
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/jehovahs-witnesses-sue-faithleaks-owners-over-convention-videos .
https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/05/01/jehovahs-witnesses-sue-owners-of-faithleaks-for-posting-74-convention-movies/.
the watch tower bible and tract society of pennsylvania, which oversees the jehovah’s witnesses, is suing the truth and transparency foundation and its founders ryan c. mcknight and ethan g. dodge alleging copyright infringement..
I was about to post something on copyright, and Simon beat me to it.
Now that I'm a published and paid (well sort of) novelist, copyright has become very important to me. Copyright is not some arcane legal theory that can be stretched to fit different circumtances. It is proof of ownership. You can no more take someone's copyrighted material than you can take their car. An organization calling itself Truth and Transparency should know this and follow the rules.
so what the heck are they brainwashing today in the meeting or what ever.
she is in full on cult mode talking about the end of the world.
she asked me to listen to a couple of talks and i respectfully declined.
Threads like this make me really really really really really glad my wife and I made it out at the same time.
this is not a jw-bashing thing, but it always seemed odd to me that the "excuse" when things go wrong is that "we have to wait and see how the prophesy is fulfilled" or some other wording.. my question has always been, then what is the purpose of the prophesy if you don't understand it until after the fact?
isn't that like having a weather forecast but being told that we don't really know what the weather will be until the next day?.
i'm sure some of the intelligent people here can guide me but in all honesty, i never understood that..
I think some parts of the Bible are there to make us think about the questions, not to provide the answers.
For example:
2 Peter 3:4-- "They will say, 'Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.' "
Would people be saying this if some crazy preacher didn't plant the idea of a specific date (say 1844 or 1997 - JW's aren't the only ones that make nutjob predictions) in their minds.
at what time would you say that the watch tower schema lost the spirit?.
like the ancient nation of israel which struggled maintaining divine blessing due to a long series of grave errors that eventually culminated in definitive loss... how and when did watch tower lose the spirit?.
can we pinpoint a time or event?.
This question rests on a premise that Watch Tower may have, at one time in the past, actually had the spirit, which is one reason that many of us may have initially followed the Watch Tower religion.
Your premise is wrong, therefore the inquiry is not valid.
I converted at age 22, which puts me into the second part of your comment quoted above. I joined the JW's becaus I THOUGHT they taught the truth of the Bible. When I found out it wasn't I left. If you want to, you can think that I was following "a" spirit, I prefer to think I was at a low spot in my life and they got me when I was vulnerable. In my case what changed was something in me, not the Watchtower.
the latest instructions from the kingdom hall trust here in the u.k are very revealing, and current j.w elders need to beware !
i will get to that in a minute.
maybe in the usa and other countries too ?.
I don't know how a trust works in the UK, I have some experience with them in the US. (I'm a retired accountant).
I think this may be a smart move on their part. In the US a Trust is an entirely separate entity from the beneficiaries of the trust. That means it is very difficult to hold the trust financially responible for damages incurred by the beneficiaries (elders). In the event of a lawsuit the KHT's defense will be "they didn't do what we told them to do," And "We only handle funds for the building."
This would shield the WTBS from judgements. They may have the effect of stopping lawsuits, because the lawyers can't get at the Society's money and the elders typically don't have any. Situations like that leave lawyers explaining to their clients that, while they may have a good case, there's nothing to get if they win.
If I was an elder and knew all this I'd quit on the spot, I have no desire to be hung out to dry.
i’ve been here a long time.
i saw this site jwd/jwn.
i thought it was very lively and interesting.
I joined around 2000-2001 I'd been out about 12 years by that time. I may have found it through Randy's website, or a google search, I can't remember.
the point of the letter was how many are feeling disappointed these days.. no circuit assembly, convention, how we can't fellowship at the k.h.
disappointed we might have had a love one die, etc etc.
he then goes on to write about how disappointed jehovah must have felt when his first human creation rebelled.
I remember a circuit assembly part sometime in the late seventies (think). It was one of those dumb little demonstration/dramas they diid from time to time. A group of brothers (I think they were supposed to be locked up or something. One guy heard it must be close to the big A because the D2D work had stopped. Another one pulls out his Bible and reads a bunch of scriptures (I don't remember which ones- unfortunately) that PROVED that the door-to-door would NEVER stop. If you heard it was, that message was not from Jehovah.
I guess that is just one more thing they got wrong.
