Education the Watchtower way:- first have your beliefs then find some facts and make them fit round your beliefs then say they must be true because God cannot lie. (and Jehovah's Witnesses are not capable of a critical evaluation of WT statements)
Half banana
JoinedPosts by Half banana
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9
Film showing the pyramid beliefs of early JWs and the end coming in 1925
by Crazyguy2 inhttps://youtu.be/s2snv8syqvu.
apparently the jws were still using russell’s pyramid measurements to push the end for 1925 too.
here is the film anyone know it they used pyramidolgy to push the other previous dates like 1918?
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21
Is this how you saw your Armageddon? I sure did :(
by Diogenesister ini think most of our imaginations of the new world was probably nothing like the watchtower reality.
after all, we jws are very good at avoiding uncomfortable truths!
you can tell micheal jackson was a certain type of jehovahs witness.
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Half banana
I confess that at the time of being a witness I didn't really dwell on the nuts and bolts of how Armageddon might take place. I was probably thinking that if Big J was going to do it then he would manage it OK for the faithful. Just writing this makes me feel an idiot, fancy believing such childish nonsense of Armageddon and paradise in the first place.
The trend now is that the GB are no longer allowing for an easy passage into the "new world".
The governing body have introduced a new and sinister element namely a fear of secular authority coming for them with all the force it has.This scenario seems to be based on a drama of aliens (JWs) being sought after and hunted down during wartime. This is creating a raised anxiety level which the GB are milking in their favour, demanding the flock listen even more carefully to what they call "God's organisation".
As the JW religion declines in influence, as with all failing cults they have to ramp up the fear and loyalty to compensate.
And in the meantime its back to the doctors for another anti-depressant............
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22
This Is It...
by JW_Rogue injust finished watching the talk by tony morris on john cedars channel.
sounded to me that he was hedging his bets.
on the one hand he says "this is it" and out of the other he says prophecies are best understood after they are fulfilled.
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Half banana
Bible prophecy is completely useless-- and I stress completely. Since when has it ever helped individuals?
But GB interpretation of useless Bible prophecy is worse than useless, it actually harms people and wastes their lives.
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10
JW trolleys - London
by HB inthought you might like to know that during a visit to london yesterday, the jw's were conspicuous by their complete absence.
admittedly it was a tuesday in february, but myself and my ex jw friend thought we would see at least one or two trolleys in their usual haunts, but nothing.
we checked out the area around westminster station where we have talked to jws before, but there was no sign.
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Half banana
Yes HB, I noticed that the West End of London no longer has a trolley presence like it did about four years ago.
I used to enjoy what I call witness baiting and had some useful discussions not always revealing that I had been a JW. At the start of the trolley business perhaps the org wasn't so aware of the 'danger' of apostate interest in them.
One problem which demonstrates how ineffective they are is from the fact that where they have been standing, it has been my experience that they are usually talking to other passing JWs who have stopped to socialise, preventing either a spread of JW gloom or our apostate enlightenment.
I think this also emphasises as Redvip alludes, that a key element of jwism is membership of an exclusive but deluded social club--and people feel very safe in their own club.
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20
Life as a Perfect Human in the New System of Things
by RubaDub ini have always wondered how basic things that we do to ourselves will be handled as "perfect" human beings.. i recall someone here had a quote from an old wt that said that if we fall off a roof or something that there will be some "force" to soften the fall and we will not be injured.. but, as a perfect human, if we travel to mexico and drink water from the tap, will we get the squirts, flying shits, montezuma's revenge, or whatever you wish to call it?
maybe we will be protected as perfect human beings and have colons that also are perfect.
but who knows.. just pondering these common things that we take for granted.. rub a dub.
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Half banana
The idea of perfection is a strictly religious notion, only religious people consider the possibility. The average common sense thinking intelligent individual knows that there is no such thing as perfection. The more it is talked about the sillier it seems.
Life is unpredictable, we can't know our own future and we are all susceptible to accident and sickness. Religious hope is the only escape but it never delivers. Better to enjoy what we have and appreciate the that the life we have now is precious.
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Awake 1990 "I'm Afraid I'll Get Disfellowshipped.
by Fabian inagain cleaning/organizing my huge collection of jws books, i happened to go now pick up the 1990 awake and stumbled on this march 22, 1990 page 27. .
it is true that one cannot back out of a dedication to god.
(compare ecclesiastes 5:4.
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Half banana
Yes it's a common event among JWs, you dedicate yourself to God but later you realise that God is a fiction.
I reckon that cancels the dedication and means you can be yourself again.
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32
Great Announcement
by Tiana inam a newcomer.
had a starnge metting in local news last night.. check it out.
actual info starts at 50;12. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plxdjs13l0k.
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Half banana
Well some of them look like they have been eating as if there is no tomorrow.......
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Part II: it's time
by Gorbatchov inearlier i posted about the call from close family about that the end is expected in very short time.. today i had the opportunity to speak in person.. this is what is told to me:.
- the gb speaks to us personality through broadcasting;.
- the annual meeting was a very clear message from the gb;.
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Half banana
Thank the gods for Novocaine!
For me one of the best improvements over the last century has been the great increase in life expectancy. In the nineteenth century you could expect a life of say 18 years as a youngster and 30 or so years as an adult if you were lucky-- and didn't get consumption or some other incurable ailment. Today most people in the western world reach 65 and if you do there is also a statistical likelihood that you will reach your late seventies or eighties which is now the average age for death.
That means that we have doubled our adult life span since 1914, i.e.18+60 years. Longevity is by no means the only improvement, the quality of life has vastly altered much of it through improvements in medicine and technology. Not forgetting the dramatic drop in numbers of death by infectious diseases, child mortality rates dropping, education becoming universal, number of deaths from wars and murder also having declined and extreme poverty now speedily being eradicated worldwide.
OK its not paradise, there is a dark shadow on the horizon namely by threats from Muslim fanatics who sacrifice themselves for their Islamic theocracy and refuse to see life from a human perspective.
Overall, it has to be reckoned that the world is nevertheless a far happier and healthier and a more equitable place than in the past and JW curmudgeons have their twisted "theocratic" reasons why they refuse to recognise it.
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Part II: it's time
by Gorbatchov inearlier i posted about the call from close family about that the end is expected in very short time.. today i had the opportunity to speak in person.. this is what is told to me:.
- the gb speaks to us personality through broadcasting;.
- the annual meeting was a very clear message from the gb;.
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Half banana
Jehovah's Witnesses live in a paranoid bubble. The end is always imminent for JWs-- that's how the scam works.
After each successive end-time failure the GB shift focus and now: (bugle blast) it's persecution time folks!
A sense of persecution is the significant marker for paranoia. Paranoia is characterised by an intense mistrust of others, (which in the JW case this means the whole world), a sense of being persecuted, being fearful and angry-- and there is no complete cure. It's no wonder so many JWs are on medication.
After 140 years of failure what have the GB got left to play with? They have one big trick-- they hold all the cards in the propaganda game with their captive following who are trained through guilt to remain loyal.
So they are just left with spin, warnings, hype and hope for the imminent end. "Prophecies are being fulfilled" they announce as if they never said it before for an earlier non event. They must be joking! The GB are reduced to cynically using worn out stratagems which have helped, them in the past.
As we on this site know, their promises haven't a snowball's chance in Gehenna of coming true (but for that matter the R+F should have realised it too) so what will happen after a handful more years when the latest white-hot hype fails? I think a big exodus should take place.
HQ will eventually lose all credibility except by the aberrant few uneducated dreamers who actually enjoy the security of a life in a straight jacket.
JWs are already on the bottom rung of the income and education ladder, how much lower can they get?
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Halls closing
by iknowthetruth inin my city philadelphia they closed many kingdom halls.
my hall was desolved and most of the publishers were added to a congregation that only had 50 publishers.
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Half banana
I think they are doing a fine job of killing off their religion!
True eyeused, but as Slimboy said they don't have much choice.
Firstly the GB have never shown any true humanity to the flock, all they were ever interested in were having obedient and loyal followers. They always felt that if you did what they told you to do, you would be blissfully happy and problem free so forget the welfare thing, that's what worldly organisations do. More to the point they have demonstrated historically that they do not care for the well-being of individuals.
Donations are down, I think because JWs are disappointed about everything in the JW org except their friends, they are reacting by not contributing. So all the GB accountants can now do is harvest the capital from KHs to pay their debts and mounting court cases.
Let it be remembered that the KHs used to belong to the individual congregations otherwise they could not rail against those sects called "organised religions" that is religions described as having a centralised control over everything. However with the increasing membership numbers in third quarter of the 20th century things changed. Independent congregations could start to think independently and use their congregation assets as they wished. Cult religions hate heresy above all things because it takes away their authority and therefore the money.
So the Watchtower, reversing long held principles, became an "organised religion" around 1990(?) which meant that they took control world wide of all the KHs and later skimmed off (date anyone?) each congregation's surplus finances. Had they remained with congregation finances operating at the local level, it would have been the "servant body" of the local congregation which would have been financially responsible for child sexual abuse cases and not HQ.
The WT became very wealthy by the 1990s and had confidence to smooth the path of their future growth in politically resistant countries by joining their favourite Aunt Sally the UN. Again treacherously reversing a long held viewpoint.
A lot of Watchtower success rode on the hope of the "1914 generation", like all JW promises it failed miserably. The whole organisation accordingly is failing, intellectually, morally and financially, whatever spin they put on it.
It's come-uppance time for the governing body of JWs.