The convention should be a runaway success with the memorable image of witnesses fleeing as fast as they can......................
Half banana
JoinedPosts by Half banana
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5
Divine Punishment???
by Saethydd ini was recently at a sunday watchtower, reading one of the novels i have on my ipad to help me get through the dreadfully boring event.
every once in awhile though i'll glance at the article just in case anyone is peeking at my screen, and in the article, i noticed these paragraphs.. 3. how did exile in babylon differ from the slavery the israelites had experienced in egypt?.
3 what the prophets had foretold came to pass.
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Half banana
The Israelites were never enslaved en masse in Egypt the first place, they lived next door and got work at Goshen just to the east of the Nile delta. Had they really been "captive" the Egyptian records would have told us. There was no exodus either!
We have to remember that the Bible is mainly a collection of magic yarns to entertain and frighten the peasants.
Golden hemorrhoids--what a joke!
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We deserve to die
by elfgoblin inat the meeting today, we were reading the watchtower and this elder apologetically said to such a degree in regards to romans 5:12 that "we humans are not worthy of any mercy from jehovah.
we shouldn't even have free will because we can't possibly do anything good enough to please jehovah.
we don't even deserve life because of sin.
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Half banana
If you are on the inside of an abusive cult, it is very hard to see the power play at work.
However the teaching that we are “good for nothing slaves” and that we deserve to die, is an expression of the leader’s quest to have totally compliant followers.
The Pauline Christianity of the NT led the way for the power-hungry cults that came afterwards to demean the followers and elevate the religious authorities.
The psychology of abuse leaves individuals affected without a sense of self worth, without a realistic view of the world and without having developed the necessary individual identity and sense of purpose in life, to flourish as a free human agent.
This abuse is performed on an industrial scale among JWs.
This repressive power from the leadership and denial of individuality for the followers is found in all high control cults. Abuse breeds abuse. The leaders abuse the adults and the adult JWs comply to the cult norm and abuse their offspring by getting them baptised into the cult before they have a chance to express their own feelings.
Ok everyone dies, nobody is exempt but death is not a punishment or a political tool, it's not a matter of "deserving it" it is just nature, if you were born; you also die.
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10
Hello and and introduction to Virtue Signaling
by WobblyVern inhi all - perhaps a brief intro from me would be appropriate..... i hail from essex, england.
a 2nd generation witness never knowing any other life and from a large and mostly devout family.
i was disfellowshipped in 1993 aged 21 and the worldly girl i met, got pregnant and married (in that order) is mother to my 3 grown children and grandmother to our beautiful baby granddaughter.
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Half banana
Hi Wobbly, welcome to the site! I'm also a Brit. So glad to see how you escaped the cult and have a proper united family. Well done!
Your comparison with Mormonism is apt, they are a nutty cult like JWs are. This matter of "signalling virtue" within the congregation is practised to a fine degree at the Kingdom Hell as well as in Mormon temples. The idea is to get other members to believe you are a gung-ho super zealous believer and that way you get to climb the hierarchy ladder. The higher you go the more respect you get!
The new dimension in Watchtowerland is total faith in the sacred mystery of the divine appointment of the JW org, not belief in the Bible or Big J or Jesus... what you need to do to get noticed is to agree with the decisions of the GB "Whether they make sense or not".
Mindless loyalty is all you have to show...........
Loved the Laura incident Pete Zahut!
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Watchtower No.3 2017 - The Four Horesmen
by pale.emperor inthis is the first time i've read through a watchtower magazine in about a year.
although i've been our only 8 months it really git me how crazy i must have sounded when i was a jw talking to non jws.. while other bible based religions talk about the 4 horsemen and back up their theories with other scriptures or historical evidence, the watchtower have taken so such steps.
1914 is thrown in there as if it's universally agreed that jesus started ruling since then.. even when i was a jw i never really understood why, if the pale horse represents jesus, why is he first?
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Half banana
Believe what the Watchtower says on this and you can believe anything. . .hocus pocus is far more entertaining than reality.
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Apparently, William Tyndale was an early J-Dub?
by My Name is of No Consequence inmy wife and son were watching the january broadcast and one of the segments was about william tyndale.
william tyndale was a bible translator in the early 16th century.
i always knew that the org held men like tyndale, john hus and john wycliffe in high regard.
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Half banana
It is dead easy to pick heroes and claim they “are one of us”.
Witnesses constantly crave evidence for connection with holiness and that's why Tyndale has been labelled a JW. No one other than a witness would make this connection!
Certainly Tyndale was sincere and paid for it with his life-- but he would shudder to be part of the JW cult.
It is he Watchtower organisation, even with internet communication, who still live in the Dark Ages.
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9
A little stock-taking on the JW org. 2017
by Half banana inthe governing body of jws claim without any justification that they alone are holders of a sacred key to divine knowledge and that their history indicates appointment by the almighty creator with the job of giving the world of their privileged information, especially on the time of the biblical “last days.” .
ok they use bible illustrations to explain this with the idea that the “master” has “domestics” who are fed by them but this is always a matter in contention.
they think the illustration is important but can never get a handle on who is who and when it is.
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Half banana
It’s true the SS Watchtower is not imminently sinking but it is old and needs a refit to stay afloat. Of course scrapping is an option but if a venture makes money to the tune of one $billion a year and has eight million devotees; why stop?
One very good reason that it should be dismantled is that the JW organisation is the things I have already called it including downright wrong, misleading and harmful.
But business is business, even if the governors, mainly for tax purposes, call it a religion. As the wise entrepreneur CT Russell knew; God’s Holy Spirit and blessing comes down in Dollar bills. The history of the WTBTS and its associated companies has only survived by being ‘blessed’ in this manner. The doctrines and mad prophecies are fluid, what the Watchtower offers is a ticket of hope for the hopeless, it’s all yours-- but it‘ll cost you! And what a price! You pay for it with your life and your soul. Don’t ask the wrong questions (you will learn what they are when you join). It is demanded of you to give your all to this organisation and it’s hard to believe it when you put into print but that does includes your conscience.
So if the org is not dying because it is very rich what is going to happen?
It is evolving already and we have the evidence in it changing from a publishing enterprise to becoming another TV evangelist voice. Like Bob Dylan: it has gone electric. It is using internet IT to spread its paranoid message.
After Russell’s time when the Watchtower brand was up for grabs there were breakaway members who drew upon the Adventist roots of Russell and tried fusing a more socially aware religion along with the eschatological imminence at hand (they still exist).
The Watchtower trustees however went along with the strict “organisation first and last” approach and forget the welfare of the punters. So if we compare the success of modern Adventists with JWs there is a good reason for the former to flourish and the latter to struggle. With JWs the subtext is “jam tomorrow” but with Adventists and Mormons for that matter, they have jam today.
They can have not only a community of like minded believers but a financial and social safety-net with an ethos of healthy and wholesome living to boot. Livin’ the dream hey? Mormon theology is patently contrived and Adventism is the same as the JW delusion which has permanently to move the goal posts forward.
My feeling is that JWism has had its day, the internet unlike the Watchtower, takes no hostages. If the organisation ever was, it isn’t sexy anymore; in fact its ugly side is being exposed to public glare. It will be forced to concede to modern ethical practice but this will emasculate it.
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Why so few XJWs online?
by StephaneLaliberte innot too long ago, i posted a topic where i pointed out that there are about 1 million xjws alive right now.
that number only represented the disfellowshipped ones... didn't account for those who had become publishers and left or anyone else who got hurt by that group by proxy.
so, why are there so few of them online?
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Half banana
When I left the org (I wasn't D/fd) I was glad to escape everything to do with JWs including ex JWs. I felt that way for about ten years but realizing that I was being shunned as if I was disfellowshipped, I looked on the net.
Funnily enough it was a JW friend who showed me exactly where to look because he was a regular viewer of ex jw sites!
As for the majority of ex witnesses I think many have put it down to experience and moved on. The half dozen or so friends of mine who have left the cult talk about it occasionally but are not interested in getting involved in campaigning against the Watchtower. Although on reflection, given the opportunity they might register a complaint.
With two of my children still captive, I can't help loathing the religion.
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A little stock-taking on the JW org. 2017
by Half banana inthe governing body of jws claim without any justification that they alone are holders of a sacred key to divine knowledge and that their history indicates appointment by the almighty creator with the job of giving the world of their privileged information, especially on the time of the biblical “last days.” .
ok they use bible illustrations to explain this with the idea that the “master” has “domestics” who are fed by them but this is always a matter in contention.
they think the illustration is important but can never get a handle on who is who and when it is.
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Half banana
The governing body of JWs claim without any justification that they alone are holders of a sacred key to divine knowledge and that their history indicates appointment by the Almighty creator with the job of giving the world of their privileged information, especially on the time of the Biblical “last days.”
Ok they use Bible illustrations to explain this with the idea that the “master” has “domestics” who are fed by them but this is always a matter in contention. They think the illustration is important but can never get a handle on who is who and when it is. But this is beside the point. The essential case is that if the GB admitted they were not specially chosen; they would have no authority, no more credibility. If they denied being chosen, it would make them just like any other religion and a deflated failure in their self appointed mandate to preach the 1914 Kingdom.
And yet:
The fact that the history of the Watchtower organisation is one of total prophetic failure demonstrates beyond doubt that there exists a complete absence of divine guidance.
But sheep are not discerning; contrary to any reason they stick around with their wayward shepherd.
So where are we? We have an organisation falsely claiming divine guidance and 8 million sheep-like subscribers to their delusion.
Older assertions are routinely buried because they no longer are plausible such as, 1914 being the time when paradise would exist on the Earth. Or the generation which saw 1914 would be the last generation to see the “end of the system of things.” We all know the futility of Watchtower prophecies but now I think we are seeing a new direction. Prophecies don’t work, however their income depends on the big carrot of paradise so they make sure they keep the doomsday ‘top’ spinning to keep the flock hopeful.
Perhaps the recent and uncharacteristic inclusion in the Watchtower study that “the org is not always right” and therefore it is "possible" to defy the Organisation, is a defence directed to the (correct) accusation by lawyers that the GB demand of the flock absolute compliance to their word? The lawyers fortunately are more savvy than the WT who know that what they print is not what they expect from the flock. They did a similar trick when joining the United Nations Organisation; now grovelling to them, they printed matter in Awake in favour of the formerly maligned UN as a condition for membership.
It seems now instead of leading, the Watchtower is now committed to fighting a rear guard action. They are under attack from many quarters notably from bad publicity on the child abuse scandals for which they are reprehensible. They are placing Iron Age Bible doctrines ahead of common sense and above the secular law. Even if they proclaim otherwise, in practice they have no compassionate regard or rehabilitation for those within their congregations who have unfortunately been abused. On the business front they are ditching all but necessary expenditure on staff and property and are engaged in an unholy grasping campaign for money from any source. The educated western world (including Japan) has voted with feet to say no to Watchtower promises.
The JW organisation is a nasty delusional, life-sapping, mind-bending, family-splitting doomsday cult which with all its billions contributes nothing positive to the sum of human happiness.
Wake up governing body—wake up Jehovah’s Witnesses!
I hope we will see more evidence in the near future of the GB putting on their life-jackets and looking for the lifeboats. And for those still trapped inside, what can you do: stop contributing in any way and feel more free to share your dissatisfaction with your JW friends. Introduce them to critical thinking.
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Is the Bible from Men, NOT God?
by the-Question infor those claiming that- how much thought or research have you done?.
objective or non-objective?.
ever read the other books claiming to be from god?
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Half banana
Glad you gave up gambling, that will help your peace of mind but you shouldn't go overboard... it doesn't give you the right to claim that the Bible is true.
You were reading the wrong books in the library. Any book written by a "Bible scholar" will have a bias toward supporting an idea that the Bible must be true. That is the wrong type of book to read.
You need to study the works of academic historians who have spent their lives impartially studying the ancient texts such as Thomas L Thompson and archeologists such as Israel Finkelstein and Neil A Silberman in their book, "The Bible Unearthed".
Academics take the emotion out of questions, religious people mainstream on emotion. There are no shortcuts towards proper study.
By reading the right books we soon get an insight into the naivety of people putting religion before reality. Religious minds have every reason to deliberately ignore scientific evaluations, it pulls the plug on their spiritual hopes.