AllTimeJeff and Awakened At Gilead. Anyone who can go through the heavy indoctrination of Gilead, sacrafice so much by going to a dangerous country, and still overcome cognative dissonance enough to get out must be a fascinating person to talk to.
Fencing
JoinedPosts by Fencing
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126
Who On This Site Would You Like To Meet?
by minimus inthere are a lot of interesting people that frequent this site.. sometimes, we get an idea of what the posters are really like in "real life".
and i'm sure i could be easily surprised by some that you think might be strong personalities because of their board presence, and in reality, they might be shy in a face to face setting.. i would enjoy meeting simon.
simon used to be terribly annoyed by my posting and now i think he's accepted with tolerance my being here.. farkel seems like a grouchy cantankerous fellow but i think he'd be very interesting company!.
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14
Conti Case and the WT's Pedophile Registry
by Euphemism injust made it through the register of actions posted on the court's website for the conti case.
i found an interesting couple of briefs regarding the society's database of known child abusers:.
plaintiff (conti): http://apps.alameda.courts.ca.gov/domainweb/service?servicename=domainwebservice&pagename=itree&action=27402662.
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Fencing
Wouldn't this mean Shuster comitted perjury in the deposition? I thought it was pretty well known Bethel keeps a sex offender registry. It came out in one of the other cases they settled. Could swear that a Bethel PR person even admitted it, he just objected to the number of people that were said to be listed in that database.
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5
The Bombshell Memo
by Celestial inhttp://wcfcourier.com/news/national/calif-jury-awards-m-in-jehovah-s-sex-abuse-case/article_e0667684-7053-573c-a597-fec48ae78bfd.html.
"conti also claimed in her suit that the religion's national leaders formed a policy in 1989 that instructed the religion's elders to keep child sex abuse accusations secret.
congregation elders followed that policy when kendrick was convicted in 1994 of misdemeanor child molestation in alameda county, according to simons.".
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Fencing
They neglect to mention the letter to the BOE which clarifed the term "known to have been a child molester" to mean "known to the local congregation or community", not just the local BOE. So if a molestor moves into a new congregation where no one knows who he is, he can be re-appointed.
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Fistfights for seats at DC?
by Blind_Of_Lies in[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng /> </o:officedocumentsettings> </xml><!
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Fencing
Never personally witnessed any fist fights, but I will tell you having spent many a convention opening the doors in the mornings, these supposedly unified, loving, "happiest people on earth" turn into rabid animals the second those doors open.
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20
30-minute Public Talk = More association ???
by Alfred init's been nearly 5 years since the letter was read at the end of the service meeting.
the society would lovingly decrease the public talk to a brief 30 minutes, eliminating the 15-minute doom-and-gloom introduction and thereby resulting in lower heating and air-conditioning costs allowing for more "association" after the meeting.... for those who still go to meetings... do you find that there is any more association with the 30-min public talk when compared to the former 45-min public talk?.
please share your observations.. thanks!.
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Fencing
Public talk length shortening was more about being able to cram more congregations into the same hall, IMO. Same with the elimination of the bookstudy. Opens up more nights for congregations to use the hall during the week, since before then every congregation was supposed to maintain at least one bookstudy at the hall for DFd people. Now, you could theoretically have 4 congregations in one hall pretty easily, and maybe 5 if one was willing to meet on Saturday.
I think you're going to see more hall consolidations in the coming few years, ala Menlo Park, as the Society seeks to increase their cash-on-hand.
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112
2005 - The year the Society began its decline (without anyone noticing)!
by cedars ini've just finished an article for randy over on freeminds.org, which i've submitted to him for review.
hopefully it should be online soon, so please keep checking!.
the article discusses the fact that the watch tower society is already in decline, and suggests the year 2005 as the turning point.
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Fencing
I somewhat agree with Billy about 2001, though I would argue the mental decline actually started right around '96 with the change to the generation doctrine, and solidified at the turn of the century. It took a few more years for that reality to fully set in, as people realized that the "end" was basically open-ended now, there was no immediate goal to look to on the horizon, and the zeal was all but sapped out of the WTS.
If you look at the growth numbers, it backs that up. Growth in the early 90s was always between 4.5-6%, with the trend line slowly dropping as you approach 1994 (80 years from 1914, i.e., the lifespan of a humany being "80 years in case of special mightiness" that a lot of people were clinging on). Bit of an uptick in '95, but before the generation change comes into play. Then the generation change happens. 1996 growth drops by one whole point which was the biggest single year drop in a while. It goes into freefall after that, with a huge 1.6 point drop between 98 and 99, which happens to correspond to when the internet started getting mainstream.
It finally hits 1.7% in 2001. Another uptick in 2002 to 2.8%, which is most likely because of 9/11 getting some formerly inactive JW's (and the public at large's) fears up. 2005, cedar's year in question, was a new low at 1.3%.
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42
Is there ANY JW belief/doctrine that has remained the same from start to now?
by journey-on ini was trying to think of one teaching or doctrine that has remained consistent from the society's inception to now, and couldn't.
.
can you give me one?.
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Fencing
And I would argue that 1914 shouldn't really be included on that list. What Russell and the early Bible Students believed about 1914 is completely different from what Witnesses believe today. In fact, the only thing about 1914 that stayed the same was calling it "The End of the Gentile Times", but what that meant to Russell wouldn't even be recognized by a modern JW.
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I've been away, need an Anointed update
by UnConfused inhow have the numbers of the anointed been doing - staying steady or finally declining?
that was always a puzzle to me how that could stay so steady..
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Fencing
The change in the sealing from being in 1935 to being wide open again was in the May 1st, 2007 WT.
Here's a load of info on it: http://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/memorial-partakers.php
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12
I've been away, need an Anointed update
by UnConfused inhow have the numbers of the anointed been doing - staying steady or finally declining?
that was always a puzzle to me how that could stay so steady..
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Fencing
Going up, actually. It was steady for a number of years through the 90s and 2000s, and then they decided that the "sealing" wasn't actually over yet in 2006/2007, and the numbers have been steadily rising ever since. It's up to over 12,000 now.
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20
Scriptural Grounds for divorce.....
by stuckinamovement ini was watching a dumb show with my dear wife.
in the program a wife tried unsuccessfully to kill her husband.
i remarked to my wife "if you ever did that i would divorce you!
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Fencing
If you really want to take Jesus' words in Matthew literally, as the WT seems inclined to do, technically women have no rights to divocrce their husbands at all. Jesus only mentions men leaving their wives. Which would fit with the first century (and earlier) world, where women had no rights of their own and were not much more than property to be accquired.
So how come we never hear about that?