Posts by PublishingCult

14

How Does Prayer Actually Work?

by PublishingCult in

just how does prayer work, and how is prayer meant to get any kind of a result?.

How Does Prayer Actually Work?

by PublishingCult in

just how does prayer work, and how is prayer meant to get any kind of a result?.

PublishingCult

Just how does prayer work, and how is prayer meant to get any kind of a result?

152

i've been thinking alot over the past few days on what makes a christian a christian, and i'm coming to some different conclusions than i ever have.... the watchtower likes to use the term "true believers" or "true christians".

i'm at a loss here lately.

you are either an atheist or you are not.

PublishingCult

Thousands of years ago, the Israelites, who were actually polytheists and who worshipped Isis, Ra and El, embraced and rearranged the concepts of pagan religions and made up their own version in order to create a false distinction between them and other pagan god worshippers. Because they cut the foreskins off their penises, for example, and made up 600 other laws to enslave other men with, they were somehow true worshipers of the One True God. Simple as that. All religions have done the same thing throughout history and will continue to do so. Yes, Christians are simply those who are trying to imitate the Jews :)

IMHO, all Christians are TRUE Christians. All Christians are deluded and believe archaic mythos invented to explain the world around them, why we are here, why we die, and what happens afterward. They pretend to know something about an invisible realm that is unknowable. They cannot prove that realm exists, and neither do those supposed residing in that realm have the power to prove they themselves exist. It doesn't matter whether you believe in the Trinity or not, celebrate Xmas or not, whether you use the name Jevovah or not. Ultimately all Christians are obliged to prove the basis for their belief in an all-knowing all-powerful invisible deity. They cannot. They claim they just have faith, but having faith in something that cannot be proven to exist is not the same as having faith in something we know exists, can prove exists, have seen manifest, and therefore by such virtue have faith that it will always behave and manifest itself accordingly.

26

funny times growing up a witness

by strymeckirules in

i was raised from the age two as a witness by my new recruit parents in 1981. i was born in 79.. i didn't like being jw, and that didn't mean i was a saint.. and my parents were fanatical and still are.. i have an an older sister and a younger brother and we are all 2 years apart.. my brother and i were a riot.

mischeivious, rambuctious, hyperactive and not afraid of nothing.. we had games over the years.. like singing in british accents during the songs(and during bible reading at family study) and screwing with the word just loud enough for each other to hear.. we used to have armrest battles when we sat beside eachother.

pushing elbows until the other slipped and got in trouble.

PublishingCult

"pretend to try to comment all night but get missed cause you hesistate a moment too long to raise your hand. makes you look zealous."

LOL, yes, that was me.

As teenagers, my cousin and I would sit together during meetings and communicate by pointing to words in the Bible and the WT magazine to form sentences. We'd end up shaking like a couple of jello molds trying to stifle laughter. Oh, the looks we got from other JW's :P

81

Jehovah's Witnesses - Are they loving?

by brotherdan in

jw
friends

jehovah's witnesses love to claim that they are a true religion because they are the most loving people on earth.

they rant and rave about how they apply john 13:35 to themselves.. in a recent conversation with djeggnog, i was shocked at some of the hateful things that he was saying to me.

now i know that i have been in some pretty heated debates with others, but i try to never make it personal.

PublishingCult

wannabefree: "True brotherly love can't be dictated. This true love becomes so unnatural for JW's that many magazine articles have to be written to try and teach the flock how a loving person would act."

Or perhaps many magazine articles have to be written to propagate and justify the conditions of the WTBTS's kind of love . . . ?

81

Jehovah's Witnesses - Are they loving?

by brotherdan in

jw
friends

jehovah's witnesses love to claim that they are a true religion because they are the most loving people on earth.

they rant and rave about how they apply john 13:35 to themselves.. in a recent conversation with djeggnog, i was shocked at some of the hateful things that he was saying to me.

now i know that i have been in some pretty heated debates with others, but i try to never make it personal.

PublishingCult

"4 Love is long-suffering and kind. Love is not jealous, it does not brag, does not get puffed up, 5 does not behave indecently, does not look for its own interests, does not become provoked. It does not keep account of the injury. 6 It does not rejoice over unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never fails. . . . "

(1 Corinthians 13:4-8)

The thing that stands out most to me about these verses that are intended to define love, is that love is quite clearly expressed through actions, and is not an emotion we feel. Love can only be manifest by means of action.

Love is kind. Shunning lifelong friends and family members for simple thought crimes and other so-called errors is not a very kind. It is unloving in fact. Love does not keep account of the injury. Who was injured? You? Because your cousin smokes a cigarette? You're hurt because young brother Johnson is dating young sister Hudson; they fell in love and had safe premarital sex? How the hell is that any of your business, Sister Pioneer and Brother Literature Counter . . . ? You're going to walk right past them in the grocery store and pretend they are not there? Grow up.

Love does not brag. The GB and JW's boast incessantly about the WT peddling work they do, pretending as if placing a spiritual Happy Meal with an elderly woman waiting for the bus is somehow lifesaving. The brag that every single baptized member of the religion is an "Ordained Minister" by God himself simply because they spend an average of 10 hours per month peddling WT publications at every opportunity.

Love rejoices in truth. These "Ordained Ministers" are magazine salespeople. Yet, they brag that they are the ONLY ones doing the work Jesus commanded them to do. The WTBTS includes in their publications absurd false representations depicting First Century Christians going from house-to-house with scrolls, bound volumes, and even papyrus parchments about the size of WT magazines sharing them with householders, soldiers, and political leaders. They cling blindly to the lie that Jerusalem fell to Babylon in 607 when it actually did not, and they all rejoice in the promulgation of that lie . . . among other variations of truth they put forth proven to be utterly false by history and by their words.

I could go on and on pointing out how JW's do not express any real sort of love when held up to the standard of 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, but this should suffice.

26

"All generalizations are false, including this one."

by Mr. Falcon in

the above mark twain quote made me think about some of the comments i heard this weekend during the watchtower study.

several commentors alluded to the seeming ignorance of "wordly" people as regards bible knowledge.

comments such as "people who go to churches don't know the bible like we do, so they may go to church and afterwards say that was a very good sermon.

PublishingCult

Every kitchen table has a matching set of salt and pepper shakers. Sitting upon the table of spiritual fast food served up by the WTBTS is a matching set of Generalization and Propaganda shakers.

The art of propaganda and generalizations consists of establishing a world suited to compete with the real one. The WTBTS cannot survive without surpassing the elements of reality and verifiable experiences. The consistency of fiction and the austerity of the organization make it possible for the generalization to survive the explosion of more specific lies. Hitler created a false sense of superiority in the German masses, for example. The GB of JW’s does the same.

Interestingly enough, the official WT website currently has a series of articles about propaganda. Because the WTBTS is exposing these propaganda techniques in other religions and organizations, certainly they themselves could not be guilty of such manipulation.

“Another very successful tactic of propaganda is generalization. Generalizations tend to obscure important facts about the real issues in question, and they are frequently used to demean entire groups of people.

Some propagandists play on pride. Often we can spot appeals to pride by looking for such key phrases as: ‘Any intelligent person knows that . . .’ or, ‘A person with your education can't help but see that . . .’ A reverse appeal to pride plays on our fear of seeming stupid. Professionals in persuasion are well aware of that.”
http://www.watchtower.org/e/20000622/article_02.htm

168

If Armageddon came tomorrow, would Jehovah kill a billion children?

by just n from bethel in

jw
friends

i just looked up some population statistics.

i saw there are over a billion children under the age of 10 on the earth today.

(didn't research too hard - just googled it.

PublishingCult

"A billion children under the age of 10. They're going to all die because 1) they were born in the wrong part of the world and the JWs never got around to giving a tract to their parents, many of whom couldn't read anyway . . . "

Yes, that is correct, Justin from Bethel. The governing body will play a vital role in the destruction of said babies by personally kicking them into the street toward oncoming traffic.

20

Pay attention to yourself and your flock - secret elder book

by MOG in

have any of you got a hand on this book?

PublishingCult

Message me your email and I will send you both the Pay Attention to Yourselves and the Flock book and the newer elders manual, Shepherd the Flock of God 2010 in PDF.

23

Why do the JWs have such an aversion to philosophy?

by Darth Eowyn in

i mean, they seem to avoid it like the plague.

i know people will say that they only need the bible to guide them in life...etc...but i contend that you cannot simply read the bible by yourself; at least without knowing where the philosophical principles contained within the bible come from.

is this aversion of confusing philosophy with faith way over the head of most jws?

PublishingCult

Understanding and accepting basic philosophy means that when it comes to truth, you realize that ideas are not the same as verifiable fact. You no longer try to bend reality to fit the ideas and thoughts you have in your mind. Instead, your ideas give way to what can be imperically proven, and without contradicting the natural laws we know exist, i.e., the existence of an invisible god.

The 11/22/72 Awake! says of philosophy, "Knowledge was sought mainly to rid oneself of religious fears and superstitions. The two primary fears to be eliminated were fear of the gods and of death."

While the WTBTS wants you to reject all other forms of religion as false worship, they still desire you to believe in their version of a diety, peddle their publications at every opportunity, and spend your life in utter servitude to the publishing cult. Philosophy very effectively eliminates any possibility of God's existence through sound reasoning, and this is obviously a threat to the existence of the WTBTS.