Funniest thread I've seen in a long time. This is priceless.
MrMonroe
JoinedPosts by MrMonroe
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KM Jan 2011 Family Worship
by dozy inthere is a big insert in the jan kingdom ministry about the family worship night (which has evolved new capital letters - like governing body.).
some helpful suggestions include the head of the household putting an agenda on the fridge door a few days ahead for the family to "build excitement and anticipation" (i kid you not.
) the provision is compared to the sabbath arrangement as a gift from god.
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shunning is love - Feb 15 2011 Watchtower
by jj123jj123 in18 if you face a similar situation, please remember that jehovah sympathizes with you.
by cutting off contact with the disfellowshipped or disassociated one, you are showing that you hate the attitudes and actions that led to that outcome.
however, you are also showing that you love the wrongdoer enough to do what is best for him or her.
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MrMonroe
I always say "the Watchtower says" or "the organization says". Once a Circuit Overseer called me over after a meeting and said that I should not do that. That the organization wants us to personalize our comments and that I should say "I believe" or "I think that". I listened to him but I sill answer my way and I will continue to do so until someone makes a real issue of it.
Gary, I did the same thing for many, many months. It reached the point in the Revelation Book study where I couldn't answer some paragraphs because I had zero conviction that what they supplied as an answer was true, it was obvious propaganda. Full marks to you for staying true to yourself.
The next step for me was to read Ray Franz's Crisis of Conscience and recognize that the WTS claim to represent God (and the corollary that loyalty to WTS = loyalty to God) was baseless, that 1914 was no more a marked year than any other year in history and that the GB is an entirely human group with very human failings. Later research showed me that the current JW concept of Armageddon was knitted together entirely by JF Rutherford, using a range of scriptures that had little application to one another. The bottom line was that I realised I had nothing to fear by leaving that organization, I wasn't abandoning God's protection because that whole notion was a fiction built up piece by piece over the years to keep Witnesses within the fold. I don't think that notion was done deliberately to deceive; it was the consequence of an overarching concept within the organization that feeds on itself.
So I left. And the relief it brought me was immense. I agree with another poster here that you are helping people's lives by remaining a rogue elder and promoting leniency and reason. You may want to consider your own life and future however. Best regards.
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taken from daily text for today
by therevealer inmonday, november 22. youhadnohope.-eph.2:12.. jehovah's witnesses accept medical help and various forms of treatment.
our journal awake!
often contains articles on health matters.
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MrMonroe
One congregation I was in, half them had chronic fatigue, the others were racing off to another city to have their mercury fillings removed because they were convinced they were killing them. An elder in our last congregation banned the use of a microwave to heat babies' milk bottles because he thought it would be irradiating the milk.
As to the negative comments about outsiders: I spent a couple of eye-opening nights at the Australian Bethel a few years back and was blown away by the smug comments oozing everywhere at the breakfast discussion of the daily text. They were all talking about what drivers were like "out there" as if life in the Bethel Bubble somehow granted them superior driving skills.
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When a friend tells you things you don't hear at the KH
by Nobleheart ina close friend of mine enlightened me a couple of weeks ago by telling me so many things about the wt.
that's how i first heard about the involvement with the un, russell's pyramidology (freemason symbols), dates, etc.
this friend also used terms like 'mind control' and 'rank and file', which i'd never heard before in this context.
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MrMonroe
And of course the superb http://www.jwfacts.com/ and a bit of a newie, http://www.jwstruggle.com/.
For a good roundup, also see the candid Wikipedia articles on Jehovah's Witnesses at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jehovah%27s_Witnesses and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Jehovah%27s_Witnesses.
For a discussion of the Governing Body, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governing_Body_of_Jehovah%27s_Witnesses.
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Latest apostate warning in Feb 15 2011 Watchtower
by dozy inandre, who had served jehovah for years, had the bitter experience of being led astray.
by apostate thinking.
he felt that having a quick look at an apostate web site would not be dangerous.he recalls: initially, i was attracted to the so-called truths that the.
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MrMonroe
" I became aware of how crafty the false teachers were."
Who the hell speaks like that apart from the Watchtower?
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Latest apostate warning in Feb 15 2011 Watchtower
by dozy inandre, who had served jehovah for years, had the bitter experience of being led astray.
by apostate thinking.
he felt that having a quick look at an apostate web site would not be dangerous.he recalls: initially, i was attracted to the so-called truths that the.
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MrMonroe
The whole "experience" stinks to high heaven.
1. Who were the "apostates" he gained his information from? There are certainly some low-value books out there by evangelical Christians attacking JWs, but are they apostates if they've never been JWs? There are also some pretty strident anti-JW books by former Witnesses, but no one with brains would take obviously polemical literature as the final word on the anti-JW side of the debate. The fact is there are plenty of quality books out there examining the JW beliefs and practices, starting with Franz and Penton. Beckford, Holden, Rogerson and Gruss also spend much time discussing the control methods of the GB.
2.Where does one "research" "apostate" claims? In other "apostate" books? Or does one rely on the confident WTS statement that they have already done all the hard yards in thoroughly researching apostate claims, so all you need to do is read their statements?
3. No intelligent person who saw through the WTS bullshit and began reading books attacking the Witnesses would willingly return to the Kingdom Hall and submit to the tyrannical, autocratic, "tough love" rule of the GB. If it did indeed happen as described, "Andre" would be a very unusual experience. He would clearly be a braindead individual, but also very easily led. If he is so easily persuaded, who knows which way he will swing next?
4. Amen to the other suggestions that he returned because he wanted to recommence contact with his family and pulled the wool over the elders' eyes with his oh-so-humble confession, giving the elders the rare satisfaction of getting one over the apostate "enemy".
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QFR feb 15th 2010 - lets be honest , we haven't got a clue...
by dozy inthe questions from readers feb 15th 2011 raises the (no doubt burning in many jws minds) question about why moses became angry with aarons 2 sons after the death of their brothers.. the wtbts undertakes to answer this question but really doesn't seem unsure of themselves (perhaps the channel of communication was suffering some interference that day.
) notice the numerous ways that the wtbts in a short (half page) article hedges its bets.
it reminded me of a schoolboy cooking up a story when he was caught with his hands in the cookie jar , vacillating & hedging as he tries to think up an acceptable answer.. it appears that , the surviving priests had evidently acted , aaron may have wondered , perhaps he felt , aaron mayespecially have reasoned , aaron may have thought , moses seems to have accepted , evidently, jehovah too was satisfied.. .
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MrMonroe
It's like telling a lie to cover a lie. They have insisted they alone have the truth, so therefore they MUST know the answer to every question. That always stuck in my craw that they would attempt to make dogmatic statements about things they clearly would have new more knowledge than anyone else:
Will resurrected people marry?
How long was it after God created Adam did he create Eve?
What will lions eat in the new system if they don't hunt zebras?
How will Armageddon survivors get over the trauma of seeing mass annihilation of billions of people before their eyes?
What happens if someone suffers a serious accident in the new system that you'd expect would be fatal?
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Jan Awake, stating JW's are only true religion
by lostsheep82 ini haven't posted in a long time.
most trying to recover and still get my head straight, this religion when you find it's not the 'truth' is hard to move on sometimes.
my mom urgently needed to speak to me about a magazine that just came out.
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MrMonroe
Though to be fair, I've also found another Encyclopedia of Religion, http://www.gale.cengage.com/pdf/facts/EncyReligion.pdf, a 15-volume tome, that the Awake may be quoting. Among all the encyclopedias that include JWs, they've finally found one that says what they want. If it does.
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Jan Awake, stating JW's are only true religion
by lostsheep82 ini haven't posted in a long time.
most trying to recover and still get my head straight, this religion when you find it's not the 'truth' is hard to move on sometimes.
my mom urgently needed to speak to me about a magazine that just came out.
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MrMonroe
If the link at http://www.encyclopedia.com/article-1G2-3424501597/jehovah-witnesses.html is the article they're quoting from (and the online article is sourced to The Encyclopedia of Religion), it contains the following statements:
- Like other sectarian Protestant groups founded in the later nineteenth century, they claim to restore Christianity to its original doctrines and practices.
- In matters of faith and practice, Jehovah's Witnesses submit to the theocratic authority of the Watchtower Society.
- Russell's personal life was marked by controversies. He based some of his biblical interpretations on analyses of the Great Pyramid ...
The WTS is very skilled at plucking convenient quotes from published literature to give the impression of an official endorsement.
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Gay "Knocking" director Joel Engardio writes again on shunning by JW family members
by MrMonroe ina previous thread http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/200592/2/joel-p-engardios-article-on-jws-washington-post has covered an earlier story joel engardio wrote on gays and witnesses.. in the washington post (nov 7, 2010) he writes again of how his jw mother grieved for him "as if i had died" when she learned he was gay.
engardio notes:.
"among jehovah's witnesses there is no easy exit for the adolescent who skillfully parrots theology at age 10 or 12 and decides in his late teens or early twenties that the religion isn't for him.
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MrMonroe
A further point: Engardio's mother is apparently comfortable maintaining a relationship with her gay son because he chose not to get baptised as a teen. Just more example of the talmudic application of rigid, pharisaic rules: if he had been baptised, she would presumably have been happy to never speak to him again. God's will, of course.
As the Watchtower (Feb 1, 2009) so accurately put it:
MANY religious people treasure their own beliefs and traditions. But what happens if these teachings are not in harmony with what is found in God’s Word, the Bible? Jesus showed the danger of following man-made traditions when he said to the religious leaders of his day: “You have made the word of God invalid because of your tradition.” He then went on to quote these words of God: “This people honors me with their lips, yet their heart is far removed from me. It is in vain that they keep worshiping me, because they teach commands of men as doctrines.”