I suggest a slight modification to the scripture at Proverbs 27; 15,16 and add the JW organisation to the list of things which "never say enough". Although wealthier than kings they have an insatiable appetite for worldly riches.
Half banana
JoinedPosts by Half banana
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1 bilion property revenue since august 2016 and still they have not enough
by Gorbatchov inread in the new york business review that jw.org made 1 bilion property revenue since august 2016.. unbelievable, isn't it?
they are one of the richest religion organizations in cash flow, for sure.. the co asked us this morning to "overthink wat we can share, to support the work and make jehovah happy".. g..
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What would happen to the assets of the JW organisation if the cult went into meltdown?
by Half banana inwhat if the jw org became publicly exposed as a repressive and harmful cult working to the detriment of society, the membership dropped away and the gb woke up to reality and quit .
what would happen to the worldwide property and investments of the wtbts and allied companies?
where would the money go then?
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Half banana
What if the JW org became publicly exposed as a repressive and harmful cult working to the detriment of society, the membership dropped away and the GB woke up to reality and quit . . . What would happen to the worldwide property and investments of the WTBTS and allied companies? Where would the money go then?
Are there precedents for dissolving giant but solvent corporations? Or is the cash flow exclusively their lifeblood ?
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No updated Watctower's articles on Evolution
by opusdei1972 inas far as i know, the "creation" book is out of print ?, am i right?.
well, i was searching for new watchtower articles trying to debunk, for instance, human evolution.
so, i did my homework, for the first time, so as to read past and updated papers and books on human evolution.
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Half banana
The credibility of Jehovah’s Witnesses has been shot through because of their false expectations of the end of the world.
As hopelessly faulty interpreters of the Bible and non believers in the scientific method for determining truth, how could the Watchtower ever claim to be able to pronounce on Bible matters let alone scientific subjects such as evolution and the human pedigree?
They are resorting to the only thing they know; quote the Bible and believe with unjustified pride and wilful ignorance, that its contents are true.
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Jesus ransom or the sanctification of God's name the most important?
by Yesu Kristo Bwana Wangu insome time ago, during the mid-week meeting, the sanctification of god’s name was being discussed (chapter 4 in ‘god’s kingdom rules’).
in paragraph nine we read that in the early period the jw’s viewed jesus ransom sacrifice as the most important teaching of the bible.
then they said they gave overbalanced importance to jesus, and nowadays, they say the sanctification of god’s name is the most important thing in the bible.. .
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Half banana
JC bwana, firstly note how the most important words found in the WT book you referenced are not God or Jesus but the navel gazing publishers of the text who presumptuously call themselves "God's people". The literature quoted is about their constant changes of perception. The GB are always making a drama out of doing 180 degree turns as if it were a thing to brag about! A real god surely, would always give "His people" (if there ever was such a thing) the unchanging, immortal, irrevocable truth!
Secondly the argument as to what God's primary purpose is, is a complete red herring. The Bible is a story book from which you can pick out a thread of belief and create whatever teaching you want from it.
What sort of God is it who is so insecure that he has to make a case for the sanctity of his name? It is religious gobbledegook. Who on earth cares about which God does what? Everything the Watchtower says has NO MEANING outside of the demented closed cult thinking!
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Will Donald Trump Be Impeached Before His Term Ends?
by Brokeback Watchtower ini'm thinking his willful failure to be briefed by the cia about russian election tampering and not understanding diplomatic protocall.
making off handed statements without proper research about the mater.
he's an outsider when it comes to running the government that will make big mistakes at every turn because he seems clueless when it comes to running a government.. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/michael-moore-predicts-trump-impeach-resign_us_58261464e4b0c4b63b0c6dee.
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Half banana
As unlikely as this development will be, I think Trump’s election makes the prime case for a national and for that matter; an international vetting of heads of state as a mandatory arrangement . . . UN please take note!
Tests for understanding the world situation, a broad education to a high level, psychological profiling and very important; long experience of successful political leadership. Mrs May would come out well on this analysis.
Surely there must be at the very minimum a level of political experience in a prospective president as an essential requirement?
What qualities do a game show host or property developer or for that matter a religious leader as in the case of Muslim prime ministers have to do with the complex diplomatic, informed leadership required for such a demanding role on the world forum. Obama did have those qualifications as does Hillary Clinton.
Trump reminds me of the predicament of film characters such as those played by Norman Wisdom or Charlie Chaplin where the man in the street is suddenly and mistakenly elevated to a position of authority; they fail hilariously. Unfortunately Trump is a real person. He has advisers galore, a civil service and secret service to help him but surely they must be gagging at the public’s choice?
The relevant question is; can they steel themselves to help this ego on legs or will they give up and call for an end to the farce in an impeachment? Who can say?
Will people now realise that the job of president is a matter of a highly developed political nous not just being a TV personality and trashy demagogue? Will the American public tolerate a political system in future which permits an unqualified but popular ignoramus to lead them?
Or perhaps that what they really want?
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102 years of 'kingdumb rule'
by eyeuse2badub inhappy new year to all.
well here we are, 2017, and still no armageddon, no 'great' tribulation', no 'paradise earth'.
however, the "good news" is that we can now celebrate 102 years under 'kingdumb rule'.
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Half banana
Gall; second definition: brazen boldness coupled with impudent assurance and insolence.
The governing body wanted to celebrate 100 years of kingdom rule. It was a half hearted affair. They had the gall to promote the idea that the greatest biblical fulfilment of all time had taken place in 1914.
Let’s be frank, like every utterance which comes from the Watchtower it is useless and wrong information. However much you tell yourself or print it or tell others at an assembly of true believers, the idea that everything changed in 1914 as predicted by the Watchtower is worthless rubbish. “More evidence than for gravity”--- my foot!
Nothing happened in the heavens in 1914 because nothing ever does or ever did happen invisibly in heaven because 'heaven' is a religious fantasy, it’s a magician's distraction and a confidence trick to deceive gullible believers.
Wakey wakey Jehovah’s Witnesses! Think for yourselves! Your leaders live on Fantasy Island, don't make the same mistake as them.
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Hello
by midnight inhi i am posting for the first time although i've been looking for a few years , i was born into a witness family left when i was 12 with my parents went back at 22 pioneered became ms started to have major doubts around 2002 when there was a lot of talk about blood fractions etc have been hit and miss since i'm extremely mentally confused as to wether or not this really is jehovah's earthly organisation , i find life hard facing up to mortality etc not having the new system hope , what nailed your decision to leave ?
how did you cope with world problems on news etc ?
how did you fill the void ?
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Half banana
Hi Midnight and welcome to posting here!
Apart from children who were indoctrinated from birth who believed that they would live forever, the whole of humanity have individually had to come to terms with the worst thing in the world:- the fact that they will die.
So Midnight you are hardly alone! Religion clearly serves as a sandpit in which ostrich-like, we can bury our heads and forget reality. The consequence of waking up to the religious lie is that life, our life, is suddenly much more precious and not to be thrown away on unprovable hopes of a fabled paradise, however alluring the thought is.
When I woke up, I found that planet Earth became infinitely more beautiful than I saw it as a JW. The JW beliefs create a jaded and misanthropic cast on everything and the contrast comes about by understanding that the physical world evolved, it could not be magically created by some invisible spirit who had to be even more powerful than the cosmos he or it created.
Do start with the JW Facts website and read Crisis of Conscience, then you can start learning about real life outside of the cult mentality. I recommend taking higher education courses as a serious antidote to Watchtower indoctrination.
All the best as you escape their clutches and look forward to a happier, more grounded reality.
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The ends of empires
by Half banana ini’ve been reading up on the last days of the roman empire.
the rule became a tetrarchy; by four regional emperors or caesars.
the emperors had these necessary concerns; they always gave first consideration to the security of their own positions followed by the annual extraction of taxes and their territorial authority.
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Half banana
I came to bury the GB, not praise them!
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The ends of empires
by Half banana ini’ve been reading up on the last days of the roman empire.
the rule became a tetrarchy; by four regional emperors or caesars.
the emperors had these necessary concerns; they always gave first consideration to the security of their own positions followed by the annual extraction of taxes and their territorial authority.
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Half banana
I’ve been reading up on the last days of the Roman Empire. The rule became a tetrarchy; by four regional emperors or Caesars. The emperors had these necessary concerns; they always gave first consideration to the security of their own positions followed by the annual extraction of taxes and their territorial authority. There were constant internal threats and attacks from without, for power is never relinquished without a fight.
Towards the end of Roman rule heavy city taxes were brutally enforced annually and then every four years on top, where previously citizens of Rome were not even taxed at all. Without the funds there would be no power and no empire. The threats from outside the Empire (non-Romans were collectively known as Celts) increased and the incursions of the Germanic tribes north-east of the Rhine; the Sueves, Alans, Vandals and the Visigoths had begun to make big made dents in the once undentable Roman power. When Alaric (a Visigoth from Thrace) finally sacked Rome in 410, the heart went out of the concept of empire as did the will of the emperors.
Romulus Augustulus the last emperor, son of the murdered general Orestes, by his resignation at the tender age of sixteen in the year 476, performed the act which no doubt kept his head attached to his shoulders but ended the long imperial history of the Western Roman Empire. The Eastern Empire continued at Constantinople until the Turkish Ottomans conquered in 1453.
The Watchtower has had big inroads into its authority and the main one is in caustic exposure of its practices, courtesy of freedom of information on the internet. But the attacks are not all from the outside. For seventy or so years the JW doctrine of “The generation of 1914” was believed with Biblical certainty, would they see the end of the “old system of things,” This Watchtower 'absolute' kept the flock with nose to the grindstone for several generations but like all Watchtower predictions and doctrines it became untenable, and then it failed completely.
Its denouement came in the pathetic apology, a risible fudge of an excuse called “overlapping generations” in an attempt to buy time and give them more rope to hang themselves with.
I think credibility has fled the Watchtower. They have tried to shore up the 1914 principal doctrine but it is too attenuated in explanation and so historically and Biblically wrong that it can never be successfully rehabilitated. Yet without 1914, Jehovah’s Witnesses are no different to any other religion or ‘cult-cum-social club’.
The heart has gone from the JW organisation.
Unlike Roman emperors they do not murder would be usurpers, however they did kill off threats to their authority by removing all of the Zone overseers and their Zone office as well.
Less and less in touch with the progressive and more compassionate society at large outside the tower, the GB make demands for more money to further the real source of their success: their property portfolio and investments. Like the Roman leaders and any business or power base, the dictum is “money first”. Without money the whole enterprise will dissolve and since the privileges of power will dissolve with the organisation, there is an inbuilt incentive for the GB to continue, however corrupt or stupid the far-fetched concept of ‘Watchtower truth’ proves to be.
At the end of the Roman Empire as Peter Brown, a leading academic on the period, said in his book Authority and the Sacred, the emperors had “a lifeboat mentality”. The imperial ship was sinking and they were looking for survival.
With KH sell offs, an unconscionable grab for money, a drop in contributions and a fundamental decline in interest in religious belief as a response and resolution to life’s anxieties; I feel that we are witnessing events at the helm of SS Watchtower which have a resonance with the decline of any authoritarian body such as Rome was.
Any thoughts?
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Noah a Preacher of Righteousness?
by Spoletta induring the watchtower study today, i browsed genesis and looked for evidence of noah ever preaching to anyone.
from what i could glean from the scriptures, it was a foregone conclusion that noah's family would be it on the ark.
(unless they towed some rafts behind) my wife says that building the ark could be considered a witness of his faith to the wicked world, but that seems kind of lame to me.. so, should i just assume that god decided not to give anyone else a chance for redemption?
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Half banana
I'm with you Giordano!
It is naive to believe that a universal flood happened in historical time. The flood is an almost universal myth based on the climate change events at the end of the last ice age which happened during the late Upper Palaeolithic period of human prehistory. (Late Old Stone Age)
Up until 14,000 years ago much of the atmospheric moisture was bound up in greatly enlarged polar ice-mass which made the weather much drier and colder than now, and much lower sea levels existed as a consequence. As the ice melted it freed up the water which conspicuously fell as heavy rain and the sea rose as much as 100 meters to modern levels. I think it very likely that these events gave birth to the flood myths including Noah's.
The Biblical take on things was clearly for the purpose of controlling people; to threaten those who would disobey god and praise and reward those who toe the line fearing to displease the tyrant God. Death or reward is a primitive inducement!
Noah, like Adam and Eve, never existed so the question of whether he preached or not is actually irrelevant to reality.
It’s a disastrous intellectual investment to imagine that was it says in the Bible is true.