Fencing

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Posts by Fencing

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  3

  Have the DO changes been announced in the congregations yet?

  by Fencing in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i believe the renaming of the district conventions has already been officially announced, correct?

  how about this latest change regarding dos?.

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  Fencing

  I believe the renaming of the District Conventions has already been officially announced, correct? How about this latest change regarding DOs?
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  28

  What happened to Lars58 and many other Bible Scholars?

  by RottenRiley in

  1. jw
  2. friends

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  i miss seeing lars postings and his bible interpretations, did he get re-instated?.

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  Fencing

  The problem with Lars is that it was impossible to have a good, valuable thread going here about 607 BCE without him immediately jumping in and posting 30,000 word replies filled with insane rantings and nonsense, which would throw the whole discussion off into fantasy land because some people just couldn't resist treating his arguments as serious and engaging with him. Which would spawn additional 30,000 word replies of nonsense and render the thread unreadable. And this literally happened with EVERY THREAD that dealt with WT dates and discussions thereof.
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  19

  What's the next big organizational change you predict could happen?

  by Island Man in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  yadda yadda 2 predicted a change in the bookstudy arrangement.

  what future changes do you predict could/would happen?.

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  Fencing

  The 144,000 will be changed to a symbolic number. They've already manuvered all the pieces into place to make this change. The "sealing" was no longer completed in 1935 and they've removed any trace of the day-to-day anointed being anywhere in the chain of command of the WTB&TS. Give it a few years, and they can finally put to rest one of the more bizarre and weak doctrines (12 symbolic Israelite tribes of 12,000 symbolic Israelites somehow equals 144,000 literal people?) that the Bible Students came up with.
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  47

  The most disturbing Watchtower quote in 2013.

  by never a jw in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i am trying to put together the worst of 2013. the first quote that comes to mind is possibly your "favorite" too.

  do you have any other disturbing quotes from the publications in the wt?.

  elders who are reading this article can draw some useful conclusions from the account we have just considered: (1) the most practical step that we can take to prepare for the coming attack of the assyrian is that of strengthening our faith in god and helping our brothers to do the same.

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  Fencing

  Is it just me, or is WTWizard going more and more off the rails as time passes?
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  33

  33 percent of Americans reject evolution

  by Simon in

  1. social
  2. current

  http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57616373-71/33-percent-of-americans-reject-evolution/.

  that seems to be a disturbingly high number for a western / educated / developed nation.. does this have anything at all to do with america slipping behind in the sciences?

  it seems hard to imagine they could not not be linked somehow.. no surprise that the jesus party (republicans) reject evolution the most.

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  Fencing

  According to a book on American theocracy, fundamentalistism has been a strong feature of American belief since Plymouth Rock. I had to read the book quickly but America has always had its high share of relgious crazies. A lot depends on where you live. Fundamentalists religions are growing in America. He had figures contrasting America with Western Europe.

  America was literally founded and populated by religious crazies. Public schools in the US don't teach the whole story behind the Puritan migration to the US. They always frame it as this poor, opressed group fleeing religious persecution in England and wanting to a create a land with true religious freedom. And they end the story there, where it picks up sometime around the revolution.

  As rebel8 said, Puritans wanted all kinds of freedom of religion, but only for Puritans. And not even for all Puritans. There were Seperatist Puritans, who wanted a clean break with the Church of England, and the non-seperating Puritans who rejected a lot about the Church of England but still wanted to officially be part of it. And they didn't like each other, at all. Rhode Island was founded because the non-seperating Puritans banished a Seperatist Puritan, who was preaching a little too much religious tolerance, from Massachusetts.

  Then you had the Quakers, who the Puritans essentially outlawed in their colonies, and even went so far as to hang them for the crime of being a Quaker in Boston. England actually had to intervene, eventually revoking the Massachusetts colonial chater, and sending in their own governor to lay the law down and force compliance with the Toleration Act, which decriminalized being a non-Anglican Protestant.

  Yes, England had to force the Puritans to stop persecuting other religions. It's quite the opposite of the story we were told in school.
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  58

  The truth about Hispanic JWs in the United States

  by Hecce in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

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  i will like to share some facts about the spanish congregations in usa.

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  Fencing

  Every young brother I knew who decided to learn Spanish to "help" with the Spanish congregations did it because there were some FINE looking young sisters over there. And about 90% of them quit after about a year and came back to the English hall, without a new wife.
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  12

  Has anyone heard about Elders latest instructions re: Child abuse?

  by Newly Enlightened in

  1. watchtower
  2. child-abuse

  ok, we got an email thru facebook from a viewer of ours and he said that he had heard, that it is not even going out in a boe letter, the elders have to sign into their secure https://www.jw.org/apps/e_hfrsfvtrhc1.

  page to get firmer instructions on how to handle any child abuse accusations and they are being told not to call the police..

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  Fencing

  They're already not supposed to call the police unless instructed to by the Legal Department. The first call for child abuse cases is ALWAYS to Mother, not the authorities.
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  46

  If they changed their blood ban…would their be a floodgate of lawsuits?

  by Londo111 in

  1. watchtower
  2. medical

  i know nothing about legal matters, but there are those here who are quite keen at these things.. if they changed the no blood teaching, would this open the watchtower society up to litigation?.

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  Fencing

  In the US, lawsuits probably wouldn't fly. The 1st amendment tends to get interpreted very liberally at all levels of the Judicial branch, often protecting groups that are doing serious harm to people, all because they cloak themselves in religion. It's extremely hard to hold a religion in the US accountable for doctrines that hurt people.

  But in other countries? I could see them getting into serious legal trouble somewhere like France.
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  70

  New Study Exposes Acupuncture As Pseudoscience

  by alecholmesthedetective in

  1. social
  2. current

  besides it being pseudoscience, what interests me about this is that even though it's something to do with the "qi" energy flowing in our bodies, that wasn't a problem for some members of my family or a special pioneer i knew.. new study exposes acupuncture as pseudoscience.

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  Fencing

  I seem to recall acupuncture being "strongly discouraged" as spiritisim many years ago. It was only when the Society started trying to make inroads into China and the Chinese community in the US when it suddenly became permitted.
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  93

  Rolf Furuli's accusation about VAT 4956 being tampered with?

  by possiblepineapple in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  i'm sorry but can someone here explain what this is about.

  i saw someone on here called scholar on here saying that it somehow destroyed both coj and hermann hunger but how?

  how does rolf furuli know that it was tampered with?

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  Fencing

  Furuli's entire purpose is just to be the Society's pet "scholar" whom they can point to whenever needed, to say, "See! There's a bonified book-learned person out there who agrees with us!" He provides a facade of there being "disagreement" in the archaeological world. In reality the only disagreement comes from Furuli himself, but the Society doesn't mention him by name, so they can just cite "some scholars" and make the R&F think there's this serious rift in the academic community about the date of Babylon's destruction.

  It's such a laughable sham.