Posts by Quendi

46

reading a life time of WT literatrash = College education

by Free!! in

or at least that's what my super jw ex-roommate told me when i try to have an adult discussion w her about the importance of a higher education... according to her (a girl that never finished hs because it was not necessary) she has a better education than any college graduate because the jehovah has used the borg literatrash to teach her many many important things.... she says her knowledge of the "truth" is the equivalent of my 4 years of college education..... .

.

is there a cure for stupid???!!

Quendi

I double-majored in Geography and Mathematics. I was told that I was the first such double-major at the University of Colorado. I absolutely loved it! I would love to return to school and double-major again. This time it would be metallurgy (something I studied at the Univeristy of Alabama in my salad days) and geology. We have an excellent university for both of these in the Colorado School of Mines in Golden. I'm still toying with the idea of simply auditing courses there. Since I am now 55, I can do so absolutely free which makes the idea all the more tempting.

But I also have a host of other interests I want to study and pursue. Literature is definitely one of them. Music is another. I also have a lifelong fascination with history, astronomy, and planetary science. My problem is too many interests and not enough time. But reading, studying, and interacting with other minds keeps me young at heart and in mind.

It is indeed most unfortunate that the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society has campaigned tirelessly against higher education. That has harmed many Witnesses, who are leading unsatisfying and unfulfilled lives as a result. If the Society really had the love for the brotherhood that it professes, it would be encouraging its members to absorb as much education as they can. Instead, it gives them crumbs, bones, and table scraps via the superficial articles that appear in its magazines. I'm glad I finally had the sense to rub the sleep out of my eyes, return to college, and earn my degrees.

Quendi

26

What imaginary places would you visit if you could?

by rebel8 in

jw
friends

risa [star trek].

several of the places in the old james bond movies.

willie wonka factory.

Quendi

Good thread! My choices:

Middle-earth

The Land

Perelandra

Oz

Pellucidar

The Nautilus of Captain Nemo

U.S.S. Voyager of Katherine Janeway

Quendi

27

Things are heating up again!

by TimothyT in

this evening my dad came into my room and told me that this week he is going to disassociate himself.

he is totaly fed up with the organisation.. recently a brother in our hall snitched on my brother and i for supposed wrongdoings (myself for being gay), and the elders have been badgering our family for a few weeks now.

we are all tired of it.

Quendi

I'm very happy to see your Dad take this important step. Now he can start living on his own.

Quendi

62

DON'T SPEND TIME WITH PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES.

by Hairyhegoat in

these comments and the references to the old publications are a true find.

have a read of this and you will never become one of the jw's!.

don't associate with outsiders (non-jehovah's witnesses).

Quendi

Don't be too hard on yourself, HappyOutsideTheBox, for believing WTS ideology. Recall what your life and its circumstances were like when you were first contacted by Jehovah's Witnesses or if you were born into the religion. If you were contacted, then you likely had some very deep concerns about your life and how the world situation could affect it. The message the Witnesses brought sounded so optimistic and wonderful: a paradise earth filled with peace-loving people who had been rescued from a wicked world. Human governments and their agents were obviously failing to improve conditions on the planet. (That is something I still firmly believe, by the way.) Only God could make things better.

The price for that rescue didn't seem to be very high: join Jehovah's Witnesses and begin to 'make your mind over' by conforming to the rules the Society put forward. And those rules weren't unreasonable, were they? So we were taught. After all, these were the rules the Kingdom was going to impose in the New Order, so we might as well start conforming to them now, right? As for regarding "worldly people" as worse than offal, well, since they had refused to submit to God and were going to be turned into bird food and manure anyway after Armageddon struck, there was no real need to have any compassion, fellow-feeling, or concern for them anyway, was there? If we were born into this religion, we never heard anything else.

Our minds and hearts were being poisoned, but we didn't know it. In a previous post on this thread, I said that I was undergoing "detoxification". I think that can be said of many of us now on this board. And when we detoxify, we start feeling things physically that we had not felt in a long time. Feeling the poisons being drained from our bodies and ourselves healing has a most powerful effect. It is likewise with leaving the WTS. We are undergoing a spiritual, mental, and emotional purging. We are now able to look back on our former condition and say, "Wow! Was I really that sick?"

The important thing now is that we stay on the road to health. We don't want to return to the abusive and poisonous culture the WTS is lest we wind up in even worse shape. I'm glad that I am now out. I know you are too. So don't berate yourself for the past, but stretch forward to a better future.

Quendi

38

a SIMPLE answer re: 607 please

by RayPublisher in

i know it's a complicated topic, and i've spent gobs and gobs of hours studying it and realizing that 586/587 is the most likely date.

so anyway, here's my question:.

how could jerusalem's fall be 587 but still be in line with the scriptures about 70 years of desolation that the wto uses to push 607 so strongly?

Quendi

I also have no wish to debate with you, paulnotsaul. That was never my intention. But it seems to me that the problem was your going off-topic. The topic is the WTS chronology. I have no interest in your personal take on anything else. My contribution to this thread was to say that the chronology is wrong for various reasons. It would seem we might agree on that point if nothing else.

As for having the "org" still in me, you have entirely missed the point. I have nothng to do with it; but that doesn't mean that I don't want to do a real analysis of an issue when I address it. That seems to give you problems, and I am sorry for that. Perhaps you should have raised the issue of how people should feel about where they are in the stream of time elsewhere. Instead, you introduced it into a thread on WTS chronology, then took umbrage when you were taken to task for it. Finally you decide to say that I'm engaging in sophistry with you. That is unfortunate, but not unexpected.

I strongly suggest that you make your contributions relevant to the point under discussion. That way, you can avoid 'chessplayers' like me. Otherwise, you will get similar responses to your posts from other thinkers on this board. You are new here as your avatar shows you have made less than ten postings so far. Feel free to discuss anything you want. That is why this forum exists. But be aware that fatuous responses that have little to do with the topic, such as you made in this thread, do little to facilitate the discussion. I think you will find that many here will agree with me on this point. Think about that the next time you get on the keyboard.

Quendi

38

a SIMPLE answer re: 607 please

by RayPublisher in

i know it's a complicated topic, and i've spent gobs and gobs of hours studying it and realizing that 586/587 is the most likely date.

so anyway, here's my question:.

how could jerusalem's fall be 587 but still be in line with the scriptures about 70 years of desolation that the wto uses to push 607 so strongly?

Quendi

The answer is simple. The apostles weren't to know the 'day or hour' when the kingdom would come. For that matter, Jesus himself didn't know as you can see from Matthew 24:36 and Mark 13:32. If Jesus didn't know, then why should the apostles think they were entitled to that information? However, they were to be aware of the times and seasons they were in as Romans 13:11 makes perfectly clear. No "new light" is required to understand that, just plain common sense. That common sense is something the WTS has abandoned. But being spiritually awake and aware is somthing all Christians must be.

Quendi

29

Was there a clique in your congregation?

by Chemical Emotions in

jw
friends

there is in mine.

.

Quendi

I agree that every congregation has cliques because that is simple human nature. As someone else has said, we tend to gravitate toward people with whom we share interests. However, it is one thing to have friends in the congregation, it is quite another to deliberately shut others out. One problem I see in this regard is the great divide that exists between married people and singles. When I lived in the Deep South, that divide was especially pronounced. In many congregations, married couples couldn't tolerate single people, and went out of their way to either exclude them from gatherings and other association or, even worse, tried to "fix them up" with someone in the hopes the couple would eventually marry.

The WTS doesn't help matters with its distorted view of what family life should be and how singleness is to be enjoyed. For the WTS, single people are cannon fodder to be employed in the full time preaching work or serving in the various Bethel outlets around the world. I am still single, and I remember dreading the talks, meeting parts, book studies, and other things that focused on "family life". District conventions and circuit assemblies were the worst for this.

When I moved to Colorado, I noticed that married people were more tolerant of singles than the Witnesses I knew in Alabama had been. Still, they tended to associate among themselves more, and single people were often left out. While I never felt hated, I didn't entirely feel wanted, either. I learned that if I were to enjoy my life, I was going to have to be proactive about seeking that joy. The congregation had very limited resources in that respect.

Quendi

62

DON'T SPEND TIME WITH PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES.

by Hairyhegoat in

these comments and the references to the old publications are a true find.

have a read of this and you will never become one of the jw's!.

don't associate with outsiders (non-jehovah's witnesses).

Quendi

Like Band on the Run, I also was active when many of those articles were written and discussed. The gist of their content which HairyHeGoat has shared in this thread is essentially correct. We were encouraged to cultivate a cold, callous attitude toward "worldlings", their activities, and their institutions and have as little to do with them as possible. Competitive games and sports were not just frowned upon but condemned in the harshest terms. I remember the article about chess that appeared in 1973. At that time the game was enjoying a tremendous surge in popularity in the United States due to Bobby Fischer winning the world chess championship in the summer of 1972. Many Witnesses wanted to learn how to play the game (I myself am a chess player and fan), but the Awake! article put the kibosh on that. I remember how it quoted chess master Shelby Lyman about the nature of the game. While I'm sure that Lyman used military analogies to explain the many nuances of chess, he certainly didn't mean that players would become blood-thirsty barbarians if they took it up. But Awake! made the reader think that was Lyman's belief.

I was disturbed by Desirous of Change's reaction to this thread because HairyHeGoat provided references for everything he cited. If someone didn't want to believe his assertions, all he had to do was look up the material. How hard is that to do? And certainly HairyHeGoat did much better in his posting that the WTS ever has in providing references and sources. How many WTS publications cite or quote material and people while never providing a reference? Or how many times is a person's identity made anonymous or a pseudonym given in place of a real name? How honest is that? Yet despite the obvious impropriety of this, the WTS has adopted it as standard operating procedure.

Thanks for posting this. It is a potent reminder for me that I never want to go back. I'm still unshackling myself from the WTS cult and clearing my mind. But I am much better off today than I was for the more than thirty-five years I associated with Jehovah's Witnesses. I consider myself going through a detoxification process now and I realize that will take some time. Still, I can tell the difference in my mental and emotional health, and I am grateful for that. Threads like this enable me to see just how far I have come.

Quendi

38

a SIMPLE answer re: 607 please

by RayPublisher in

i know it's a complicated topic, and i've spent gobs and gobs of hours studying it and realizing that 586/587 is the most likely date.

so anyway, here's my question:.

how could jerusalem's fall be 587 but still be in line with the scriptures about 70 years of desolation that the wto uses to push 607 so strongly?

Quendi

AnnOMaly, many thanks for your research. The references you quote are indeed the ones I had in mind. I will also check out the hyperlinks you have given with gratitude.

As for looking into Henry Rawlinson's work, I want to do so. I don't want to make the same mistakes the WTS has and only cite material that will support an assertion or opinion that I like. When I first read the translation of Neb's inscription, I was flabbergasted. But however it may be rendered, in no way would it support the WTS's contention that the "seven times" are seven lunar years. If the rendering of the text is uncertain, then we must look elsewhere. It may be that we won't find any other corroborating testimony on this.

As for you, paulnotsaul, I am in complete disagreement with your thinking. What do you mean that Christians are not to be concerned with the passage of time? Believers in the first century certainly were. A careful reading of the New Testament shows that they expected to see the fulfillment of Jesus great Olivet prophecy (Matthew 24, 25; Mark 13; Luke 21) in their lifetime. So in keeping with Jesus' warning, they were on a constant lookout. Besides that, the fact of the matter is the Creator himself is a great timekeeper and he has given his human creation the ability to measure time as well. The clockwork of the Universe which is visible in our atmosphere shows that. --Genesis 1:14

Besides, the entire point of this discussion is the WTS's errors in calculating how long the "Gentile Times" were supposed to last and when the "last days" would begin. Millions of people have set their hopes and dreams on its interpretation. If it is wrong, then that must be pointed out. The evidence found so far shows clearly that the WTS is completely out of whack with its interpretation and understanding of Daniel chapter 4. The Governing Body refuses to accept this finding because it would mean the end of the religion it has built.

Quendi

38

a SIMPLE answer re: 607 please

by RayPublisher in

i know it's a complicated topic, and i've spent gobs and gobs of hours studying it and realizing that 586/587 is the most likely date.

so anyway, here's my question:.

how could jerusalem's fall be 587 but still be in line with the scriptures about 70 years of desolation that the wto uses to push 607 so strongly?

Quendi

My notes are in complete disarray, AnnOMaly, so I will have trouble finding the exact references, but I will diligently search for them. Most of my library is in storage and not accessible. Some of my material is on a laptop computer which no longer functions. But if I recall correctly, I do not believe the Prayer of Nabonidus was the source I was referring to, but I can't be sure. However, I'll leave no stone unturned to check my sources.

Quendi