Can Gandalf beat Dumbledore?
I've had my fill of trying to predict the unpredictable. When something happens, I'll believe it.
Posts by JeffT
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10Babylon the Great and the last Pope
by mikeflood inwhat do you guys think of the evangelicals theory about babylon the great and the last pope...just starting this big book out of curiosity...like 500 pages...it seems there is a lot of different thinking from the borg.
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JeffT
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26
ARMAGEDDON
by Lost in the fog incan i ask please especially for all who are pomo?.
we've taken a decision similar to revelation 18:4 to get out of the watchtower and not share in its sins.. how many of you still believe that god will one day terminate the world's many systems by means of an armageddon?.
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JeffT
The universe will end in a few billion years. I'm more concerned with issues closer to home, than trying to pin a date on that, or any similar, event.
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27
Ron DeSantis: "We do not require assistance. The people of Florida will rebuild on our own"
by BettyHumpter inas if.no, of course he's already asking for federal aid.
it's the republican way.
florida needs the rest of the country to pitch in taxpayer dollars because it's different when it happens to me.
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JeffT
Civil rights are covered in the 13th,14th and 15th amendments, passed in 1865 and 1870. It took the bloodiest war in the history of the United States to get them passed. A century later we're still struggling over it. I never said it was perfect I'm saying that's how it supposed to work. The people of Mississippi are welcome to be poor if they want. If they think they'll be happier if their state looks like California, they can do that.
Should we have just marched on for all eternity as if Article 1 section 8 were handed down by god himself?
I never said that, don't put words in my mouth. There is a process for amending the constitution. If don't like it, start working on changing it. All I was saying was we don't need to split the country, I believe we should let people live the way they want to, not the way somebody no where near where I live should be able to tell me how to live. (provided I'm living peaceably)
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27
Ron DeSantis: "We do not require assistance. The people of Florida will rebuild on our own"
by BettyHumpter inas if.no, of course he's already asking for federal aid.
it's the republican way.
florida needs the rest of the country to pitch in taxpayer dollars because it's different when it happens to me.
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JeffT
No need to split the country in two. Just run it the way it's supposed to run. The federal government deals with things that effect the country as a whole. These are enumerated in Article one, section 8 of the Constitution:
To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;
To establish Post Offices and post Roads;
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;
To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;—And
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.Everything else is left to state and local governments. In this scenario New York and Mississippi can deal with their problems as they see fit. Unfortunately far too many people look past local government and demand action from Washington, DC, and one size does not fit all.
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30
Another congregation closed
by hoser in15 years ago there were 5 congregations now there is only one and it is still struggling.
congregations closing their doors doesn’t mean business is good.
it looks like this last one to fold had no young witnesses, they either left the religion or moved.
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JeffT
My first Kingdom Hall was the one in Pullman, Washington. Pullman is a small college town in the middle of a sea of grain fields. The next nearest Hall is in Moscow, Idaho eight miles away. In the summer of 1982 my wife began making plans to build an FHA (federal program) financed house in Albion, Washington which isn't really a town, it's a cluster of houses six miles from Pullman. The elders told us not to make the move because we'd never want to drive all that distance and we'd miss lots of meetings. It is true that the people living in Pullman look at all those wheat fields and think something five miles away is a long distance commute.
But now I see that they've apparently closed the Hall in Moscow which means they've told the people there they have to drive 8 miles to meetings. I wonder if they even asked anybody in the area what they thought of that idea.
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11530
It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars
by Newly Enlightened inoriginal reddit post (removed).
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JeffT
Gotta have quick access to that thing, eh?
Having something between me and the zipper is more important.
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11530
It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars
by Newly Enlightened inoriginal reddit post (removed).
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JeffT
I posted the following on the "Books from XJW" thread. I think the same thing applies here, just substitute "Activism" where I wrote books. Anybody who thinks they can make a living off being an XJW is probably deluding themselves. The target market just isn't big enough to support somebody full time. And at some point the information some one has will reach its "sell by" date. I stopped going to the Kingdom Hall in 1988. My personal experiences are now thirty or forty years old. If somebody wants information about the good old days I can supply that. I wouldn't expect to be able to sell it, any more than I can make a living selling stale bread.
Here's what I wrote on the other thread.
World wide there are not enough people that care about JW's for books to have any impact. I don't think I'm a bad writer, I looked back at my Amazon account, my alternate history trilogy has sold almost 4,000 copies in all formats. My mystery/suspense novel based loosely on my time as a JW ("Armageddon's Disciples") has sold three.
As witnesses we were taught that our religion was at the center of all human history. Like every thing else the Watchtower told us, that is wrong. I don't believe the Witnesses have had any impact on the rest of human society. The closest they've come so far is a few supreme court cases in the US, and even most Americans don't know much (if anything) about that. -
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Incredible News from History
by Simon inyou think you know things, then you come across something that makes you do a double-take.
how was it kept so qiet?.
for instance, how many were killed in the jones-town massacre?
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JeffT
They sent bombs in balloon via the jet-stream and caused almost no damage whatsoever.
Not entirely true. They killed a housewife and five kids. I think I read somewhere they were church members going on a picnic. Link below has some details about it.
I'm a history buff, military history is a focus for me. My family will tell you I'm a fountain of useless trivia.
Edited to add, we also dropped an H-Bomb on Spain.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/h-bomb-lost-in-spain
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11530
It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars
by Newly Enlightened inoriginal reddit post (removed).
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JeffT
When I was working as an accountant I did some work in both restaurants and hotels. Must of my work involved apartment buildings but all three (restaurants, hotels, and apartments) are similar in what it takes to run one. You think you're running the business, but the reality is they run your life.
Evans clearly has no idea what it takes to own a hotel/cafe.
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37
Avoiding Temptation As a Young Elder
by TMS init was the summer of '72.
i was 24 but had been the presiding overseer or congregation servant of a small congregation in the county seat of an arkansas county for about 3 years.. my regular pioneer wife of nearly four years was big and pregnant, with our attempts at birth control unsuccessful.. one of my wife's several bible studies was with a young woman named brenda whom my wife had encountered in door to door work.. brenda had two young children she could barely handle and was married to a very countryfied arkie named henry who worked as a chicken catcher, one of the most difficult jobs at the local chicken plant.. brenda eventually revealed that she'd been raised as a jw, but was never baptized, having left home to marry henry at age 14. she spoke of her family in texas, mentioning her mother and two older sisters, all jws she said.. one morning, just before the meeting for field service, we noticed a small car in kingdom hall parking lot.
my wife and i were parked to one side of the hall in our aluminum nashua house trailer.. two young women got out of the car and soon joined us for the meeting for service, identifying themselves as brenda's sisters from texas.. the two girls, ages 17 and 20, were distractingly beautiful, with the eldest decked out like a magnificent southern belle including hat and heels, her high-end clothing accentuating her very obvious curves.. with no one else showing up for field service, it ended up just the four of us in the car group with the two texas girls in the back seat.. starting our time at a not-at-home, the 20 year old asked if she could accompany me to "hear my presentation.
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JeffT
I had been in contact with a witness friend through my senior year in college. By late summer, 1973, I was well on my way to getting baptized (which happened in November). There was a young sister from another nearby congregation, I think she dropped out of school to pioneer. So she was about 16 or 17, I was 23. She decided I was the one for her and started finding all kinds of reasons to be around me. She told at least two other sisters that I was "the one."
She had a car, I didn't (what was I going to buy one with? I was working in a gas station owned by a brother as nobody wanted to hire a guy with a degree in English). So on a Friday afternoon she stopped by the station and asked me if I wanted to go to a drive in movie that night? Frankly, that kind of aggression scared the shit out of me, and would have done so even if I wasn't in the process of becoming a JW.
I said no, rather emphatically and managed to get her away from the station. I made sure I didn't get anywhere near alone with her. A few months later she moved back to her original congregation and I didn't see her again for about a year. When I did see her she was disfellowshipped, unmarried and was carrying an infant around the circuit assembly.
To this day I'm certain I dodged a bullet when I told her NO.