it might just be me imagining things.. i hear things from my jw spies.. from all that's being said, it seems to me that the rank and file(tm), are either waking up to the scam and fading/leaving.
they are going full on 'cult mode' and acting like 'spiritual police'.. is it just me and my imagination?
have others noticed this?.
I like Cha ching's point that they leave it up to the next generation of gb to clean up the mess left by the earlier incumbents and find their own excuses and spin as to why Big A has not yet come.
The poisoned chalice is handed down to a new set of leaders who keep the lie of paradise on the move like a Chinese juggler keeps his plates spinning on a stick.
It must appear like a game at the top of the JW (dis)organisation.
time to take a break from debating religion.
take in a breath of fresh air and be healed by the wonders of nature around you.. how many of you have a garden?
how many have a nice flower patch to go with your vegetable garden?
My Collins Guide to the Insects indicates you have a Magpie Moth.
Until this week southern Britain has had a damp dull early summer, hardly saw the sun in June (which is our sunniest month of the year!) hence as you say Xanthippe, very few butterflies...just a succession of Red admirals...always welcome, the odd Brimstone and a few Great whites or cabbage whites as I've always known them.
The real show is when the Tortoiseshell butterflies arrive in September and swarm on the Buddleia
How about you people in far flung places, what butterflies do you see ?
i have seen the witnessing carts pop up around our city.
there were no such carts when i left the jw's in the 1980's.
since leaving the organization i have survived (and thrived) by: .
Well done Happy Gal! I love confronting JWs on their trolleys here in England but recently they have become hard to find. Come to think of it I don't see them calling on the doors in my area either.
what were/are your speculations about the great tribulation.
unless those days were cut short no flesh would be saved?.
Footnote on Josephus' exaggeration of Jerusalem's population. Have you seen a city of one million? It would not have fitted into the space which Jerusalem then offered. The population of the empire's capital city Rome at that time was only about 800,000!
Jerusalem, a provincial town, from a Roman perspective; probably had something like 50,000 residents with some estimates as low as 20,000.
Jerusalem's population today is only 800,000+ and only 500,000 of them are Jews. You cannot believe everything you read...investigate first methinks.
what were/are your speculations about the great tribulation.
unless those days were cut short no flesh would be saved?.
Ignore the lot of it! It's all a complete waste of time and effort.
You will be none the wiser for believing in 'holy' writings which were only propaganda in the first place.
Once you leave the JW cult you never again need to speculate on the meaning of the Bible...it is a whole lot better to learn about useful things instead.
And Vanderhoven, don't believe Eusebius either...he was a lying toad with everything to gain by writing a revisionist history of Christianity to favour his patrons.
However I agree that the words put into Jesus' mouth refer only to those days with no sense of it being an antitype, but as a prophetic marvel, a commentary used by the early Jesus-cult writers wishing appear authoritative. After all Jerusalem's fall was bound to happen.
The words foretell that the stars will fall from the skies...now there's hyperbole if you like or crass ignorance would be another way of putting it! But since prayer will apparently avert the disaster from happening in winter (Mar13:18,19) it doesn't sound as if the writers really know what they are talking about........like most of the Bible.
it struck me that while the society and witnesses in general use the expression "the truth" for being a witness, it opens a can of worms..... i mean, when did the society become "the truth"?
after all, as we well know (and feel free to list examples please), the doctrines and teachings, and procedures have changed so much since the organisation started, that what was once "truth" is no longer so and vice versa..... maybe the conversation between jesus and pilate was correct : "what is truth?
".
Stuck, we here are not apostate... we simply have "future truth".
it struck me that while the society and witnesses in general use the expression "the truth" for being a witness, it opens a can of worms..... i mean, when did the society become "the truth"?
after all, as we well know (and feel free to list examples please), the doctrines and teachings, and procedures have changed so much since the organisation started, that what was once "truth" is no longer so and vice versa..... maybe the conversation between jesus and pilate was correct : "what is truth?
".
The truth was that Jesus arrived in heavenly glory in 1874. He did, he did! and by 1914 paradise was to cover planet Earth. Ok, that didn't work so instead, let's say that 1914 was the end of the Gentile times and that the generation who saw 1914 would also see Armageddon, most certainly by 1975. Without a shadow of doubt! Ok then, some people just got a bit too enthusiastic (in particular the leaders) so let's all speculate: it has to come within a hundred years of 1914! No wait a mo, Jesus must have got it wrong; when he said "The generation that sees these signs" (his own contemporaries) he actually meant to say some overlapping generations as specified by the Watchtower Bible and Trap Society way off in the distant future.
Truth in the Watchtower is rarer than hen's teeth.
according to the watchtower's insight encyclopedia : .
the catastrophic destruction of men and animals by an overwhelming flood in the days of noah, 2370 b.c.e.
this greatest cataclysm in all human history was sent by jehovah because wicked men had filled the earth with violence.
Jehovah's Witnesses all live happily together at a teddy bear's picnic on fantasy island.
well it's been 18 months since i left the witnesses.
my goodness what can i say?
well let's start from the beginning.... 1) i am happy, yes i am (i know im not meant to be as the jw's would like to believe).
Well said Burstbubble!
it might just be me imagining things.. i hear things from my jw spies.. from all that's being said, it seems to me that the rank and file(tm), are either waking up to the scam and fading/leaving.
they are going full on 'cult mode' and acting like 'spiritual police'.. is it just me and my imagination?
have others noticed this?.
Hard to tell isn't it? Whatever happens, a doomsday cult is always tightening the screws, cranking up the paranoia since the prophesied doom can never come. So it has to keep taking new measures such as snitching on friends to keep the faithful in a state of sufficient fear to remain dependent on the leaders and afraid to leave.
My JW son and DIL are for a change happy to speak with me and even invited me and my partner round to their house...the first time in their six years of marriage. I wonder if the assembly next week will alter their new-found friendliness?
My hope is that the day will come when the management realise that the congos are full of non believers who just outwardly appear like JWs. At that point they might as well give up the whole religion business...but perhaps that is what they are already recognising... and they want to clear out the 'dead wood'?
