Hi Nicola, it's good that you escaped the Watchtower stranglehold but by golly! you are still in there believing unsupportable fairy tale teachings and wrangling with the devil. I’m glad that you at least feel good about this! (Be prepared to find out the TTATBible as well).
Half banana
JoinedPosts by Half banana
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33
Thank God For Disfellowshipping!
by Nicola.threeangelsmessage ini had the misfortune of being born into the jw faith.
however, i thank god every day that i was disfellowshipped otherwise i would never have found the truth.
good riddance to the watchtower bible track societys false publications, especially that book they claim contains the holy scriptures it is deceitful and full of darkness, and gets darker with every revision!
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Dream agenda
by Half banana inwe have probably all made comparisons of the theocracies of islam and jehovahs witnesses.
they both have a dream agenda; the former has an islamic world caliphate and jws the earthly paradise.
the distinction between the two is that paradise for jws is an idea which permanently remains in the future and moves forward like the proverbial donkeys dangling carrot does, being attached to the animal, which is a most apt metaphor for the way the jw org functions.
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Half banana
We have probably all made comparisons of the theocracies of Islam and Jehovah’s Witnesses. They both have a dream agenda; the former has an Islamic world caliphate and JWs the earthly paradise.
The distinction between the two is that paradise for JWs is an idea which permanently remains in the future and moves forward like the proverbial donkey’s dangling carrot does, being attached to the animal, which is a most apt metaphor for the way the JW org functions. The caliphate on the other hand is of this world and of human making.
Both ideas oppress the human spirit and as evidence of this the destruction of the archaeological site of Nimrud in Syria by explosives and the looting of museums all in the name of Allah, is sickening to anyone with the slightest sensitivity to the whole picture of human needs, culture and creativity.
Fundamentalist Islam tells the world that all who do not sympathise with them will be killed just as JWs foolishly teach.
What is the best way to counter this grotesque streak in human nature?
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Who REALLY believed in the idea of living forever on earth??
by stuckinarut2 inseriously.....even when you were 100% in "the truth", did you really believe in living forever?
?
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Half banana
That was the lure: not dying. It was unrealistic, as was the idea of resurrecting masses of the dead. Yet I believed it.
It suddenly struck me... how could I live forever under the thumb of the WTBTS? It could not be paradise with these guys in the role of ‘princes’ forever breathing down your neck. That was the clincher for me.
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Jehovah's Witnesses ... Proclaimers of "soon, very soon" since 1879
by jwleaks inthe first edition of the watchtower magazine, july 1879, made the following comment on page 5 regarding how "soon" the end of this system will come:.
exactly 136 years later the latest edition of the watchtower magazine, july 2015, (paragraph 3) made the following comment on page 15 regarding how "soon" the end of this system will come:.
jehovah's witnesses ... proclaimers of "soon, very soon" since 1879.. .
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Half banana
Will somebody please once and for all; turn of that damned kingdom alarm bell ...it's been ringing now for two thousand years! -
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My first "disagreement" with standard JW thinking
by TTATT_Paladin inabout two years after i was baptized, i had this incident.
i looked at it as an isolated incident at the time, but now realize it would have had basically the same result with 99.99% of any jws not members here.. i will keep it short.
i was talking with a person who was raised in the religion.
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Half banana
You could ask the JW who thinks that they will go back to speaking ancient Hebrew; will they also restore the original bovine headed idol Yahweh, his consort Ashera and the Canaanite pantheon as well?
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What is BELIEF ?
by EdenOne instemming from the 'absentheism' thread, an old question came to my mind.
what exactly is "belief"?.
is it the same to ask: "do you believe in god?
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Half banana
Belief is a necessary mental component of being human. It directs our personal responses to situations and directs our actions.
There are useful beliefs and there are harmful beliefs. The key to useful belief is that it is based on evidence.
Many people hold on to ideas they proudly claim are their religious beliefs. They invest their emotional attachment to these beliefs for existential comfort even though they are based on unprovable fictions such as claiming that the source of the beliefs are invisible spirits.
“Jesus loves me” is an unprovable belief, it is also an un-disprovable one and therefore one which cannot logically be built upon, philosophically it is therefore irrelevant.
Gravity, although invisible, has measurable properties which extend beyond the Earth, this is both provable and potentially disprovable which makes the belief a useful proposition from which further constructs can be made.
If something is believed to be beyond the five senses...why waste time on it? If you give your life to something which is not recognised by the five senses or cannot be measured; then you have wasted your life.
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I'm confused about the Memorial? Great crowd?
by thedepressedsoul inthis was my first memorial thinking outside of the box.
last year i was starting to have questions but this is the first year i noticed a lot of bs.
can anyone clarify a few things for me?.
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Half banana
It must be worthwhile understanding how these things relating to the rituals of the spring equinox are all of pagan origin. By pagan is meant that of the villagers, from the peasant culture as opposed to those who saw themselves educated and above the common herd.
Jewish paganism was apparent in the sacrifice of the lamb. It was the spring celebration for the sheep and goat pastoralists for the purpose of warding off evil by ritually killing and eating the young animal. The matzo element (pronounced motza by Jews who I have heard) comes from the spring celebration of the arable farmers of early Israel who gratefully celebrated the early barley harvest with the unleavened flat-bread.
The whole idea of these rituals taking place at the equinox was because the time was considered to be the moment when the Sun God annually sacrificed his life and returned to his solar father which rustic myth explained in the greatly increased sunlight at this time in the northern hemisphere.
The symbols of bread and wine had been in common use in the popular Mithraic cult which had been favoured by the Romans although coming from Persia and with Indian influences. The Mithraic symbols were almost exactly the same as Jesus Christianity adopted, bread (or cakes) and wine, symbolic of the saviour Mithras’ body and blood, partaken once a year in remembrance. These origins ultimately are drawn from cannibalistic ritual. Catholic Christianity borrowed wholesale from Mithraism and to such an extent that they rendered the latter religion deflated and in terminal decline.
I suggest that to quote what Jesus is supposed to have said as ‘gospel’ is a mistaken authority. His words were never recorded; they are the writings of the cult protagonists whose words were sanctified by the inclusion into the first Bible made by the Roman Catholic selection of texts in the fourth century. As exemplified by the Catholic Church back then, triumphant in crystallising and syncretising the Christ-cult on their own terms and in favour of Roman imperialism; the truth of any religious matter is a distant second to political control over the worshippers. A lesson well understood by the GB.
The rituals are now so irrelevant to the point of being obsolete except for those who take this hocus-pocus literally.
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This Year's Memorial
by TD inperhaps i'm just getting older and crankier, but it really seems to me that the jw faith is deteriorating at an accelerated rate.. case in point: this year's memorial talk.
it was one of the most incoherent messes i've ever heard.
(and i've heard a lot of memorial talks over the last 50 years....).
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Half banana
I agree fukitol.
TD, I find your post quite uplifting. The memorial for JWs has always been a hollow and meaningless experience. Eating people and drinking their blood does not press buttons for most people these days.
Especially now when the concept of heavenly life seems remote for most in the Borg and those who wish to take the Bible literally are confused by the apparent command to partake of the symbols. I think it’s evidence of what we might call an identity crisis going on both within the WTBTS administration and for the literalists within the org.
Let’s hope the GB spend more and more time looking at the moon whilst the membership quietly slip out the back door. -
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A Subtle Factor That Keeps Witnesses Silenced
by freemindfade inhad an interesting thought this morning.
when a witness is 'in' they think everyone else is following and trying there best all in unity.
i believe the reality is there are a lot of us 'in' who know different.
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Half banana
FMF, I have to be controversial, it is of course true there are a great crowd (to borrow a phrase) of JWs who are non believers. But what evidence is there that HQ are aware? They have always droned on about the spiritually weak, is there a significant change now?
I feel the GB members are earnest in their delusions, I think they would be horrified to know the reality. The response to finding this out would be a big witch hunt to denounce and chastise the “dead wood” within their ranks. If we see such in the WT then we’ll know they have learned.
One of my closest friends is outwardly a JW, but hates the religion, it sickens him, and he feels he has wasted his life in the cult but remains for the sake of family peace.
So I have asked him about others in his situation and he knows others in the same boat but here’s the problem: to speak to others is to cross a line and open the can of worms which leads to disfellowshipping, which would be worse than the status quo.
I would be very interested if there are other non-believing JWs who can openly speak to fellow non-believers or doubters in their own or other congregations. If they can do so, it would be possible to develop an underground network leading to a rebellion and mass exodus that could be the beginning of the end of the organisation.
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The art of being "Self referential" JW style....
by stuckinarut2 inhave you noticed how everything from the gb or witnesses in general is "self referential"?.
by this i mean that they adopt the method of using their own quotes, facts, statistics, teachings, events etc....to "prove" the new points made!.
so for example, a teaching point or doctrinal reference is brought out, and in order to "prove" it, the gb will use their own self referential past points to back it up!.
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Half banana
@oubliette, yes “evidently” is the signature Watchtower weasel word used by Russell, Rutherford and Fred Franz. When put in conjunction with the “overlapping generation” doctrine as you have recorded, it is truly stretched beyond all reason. Categorically and specifically it is absolutely NOT evident that the text meant "overlapping".