Half banana

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Posts by Half banana

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  23

  Hello

  by Tobyjones262 in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  new to this forum.

  i ran across it when watching lloyd evans videos and searching out jw links.

  i left the cult many years ago after a long stint in it.the cult caused me much pain and problems even though i left.

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  Half banana

  A big welcome to you Tobyjones262. Do tell us your story.
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  16

  Convention Dramas Let us read the reviews

  by RULES & REGULATIONS in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  the summer 2006 convention drama reviews .

  *spot on with the acting and costumes.

  jehovah looks in our hearts regardless of the color of our skin.

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  Half banana

  I like it Snugs: a pageant. Pageants have no need to be anything connected with reality and of course JW dramas have no connection. Its just to put the wind up cult believers to try and keep them loyal to the leadership.

  But really! "Your Deliverance is at Hand" blah blah. Who on earth needs being delivered? What a fantastical fantasy? It is so far removed from normal sane life, it is the sort of talk by desperate people forced to live in a cocoon suspended over an active volcano.

  I for one want it to be known that I do not wished to be delivered, thank you very much, now or at any time. You can stuff your Biblical deliverance.
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  17

  How to peddle Doomsday for Fun and Profit

  by TerryWalstrom in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  james ussher (1581-1656).

  your name is ussher – james ussher – and you are the archbishop of all of ireland.. you are living in the 1600s and are obsessive-compulsive when it comes to speculative ideas.

  you are convinced that you alone have the intellect to figure exact dates of all the major events in the bible actually.

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  Half banana

  Love you article Terry. How many JWs today know the history of their cult and how arch-fantasist Freddie Franz led the whole Watchtower cavalcade through the twentieth century? The JW cult has indeed always been led by fixated believers (perhaps with the exception of the more pragmatic business man Knorr). Religious fixations used to be its strength and remains so at present but they have had their time in the sun, only now the twilight gloom beckons.

  I think we should give Ussher a bit of credit! Early in the seventeenth century it was an original idea to use available information and arrive at a date for the start of the world as we know it. Albeit hopelessly wrong it was the first stab at understanding the time scale of life and the planet. Geologists and Victorian antiquaries paved the way nearly two hundred years later. From the evidence of their findings they recognised that the Bible was simply wrong on the matter of dating. It is only now, a further two centuries on, that we have a good handle on the dating of our planet and the timing of origins of the things on it. You have to start somewhere and Ussher for all his faults was that beginning.
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  58

  THIS IS IT Tony Morris Identifies King of Norht

  by scotoma in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  this is the announcement we have heard “about” but now it has been released to the whole world.

  its in the 2nd of a three part serries about the jw annual meeting (oct 2018).

  to minute 52. .

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  Half banana

  @ Smiddy, just a technical point but the Great in Great Britain is of course a geographical description not a power statement. i.e. the greater part of the British Isles minus the Republic of Ireland.

  When those twerps in the Watchtower began looking to bamboozle the many, Britain was indeed the pre-eminent world power and they would twist the scriptures to fit any prevailing state of affairs-- as they continue to do today implicating Russia.

  How long before they attempt to show a Biblical prophecy foretelling the rise of China?
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  58

  THIS IS IT Tony Morris Identifies King of Norht

  by scotoma in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  this is the announcement we have heard “about” but now it has been released to the whole world.

  its in the 2nd of a three part serries about the jw annual meeting (oct 2018).

  to minute 52. .

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  Half banana

  There is no such thing as Babylon the Great today. It's a label from two thousand years ago, part of the propaganda imagery used then to keep the gullible in thrall to their leaders.

  Modern religion as interpreted by the GB will not "fall" collectively because it has a large and diffused political power base. New religions will keep forming and old religions dying out. Therefore this ploy of looking out for the gross removal of Religion a.k.a. "false religion", will keep the JW suckers hanging on indefinitely--or at least until they wake up from the JW delusion. This surely is the reason for the announcement?

  Regarding Russia, note how the Watchtower could have pointed to the former communist state to demonstrate how Babylon was falling back when Stalin at the fifteenth annual Soviet Congress in 1928 ramped up the anti religious rhetoric . Now however the so called 'democratic' Russia permits the presence of its national Orthodox Church and most other sects. The GB didn't say in 1991, "look Babylon is rising" did they?

  The GB are the proprietors and beneficiaries of a religious scam.
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  58

  THIS IS IT Tony Morris Identifies King of Norht

  by scotoma in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  this is the announcement we have heard “about” but now it has been released to the whole world.

  its in the 2nd of a three part serries about the jw annual meeting (oct 2018).

  to minute 52. .

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  Half banana

  Pathetic tired delusional drivel from JW HQ. Flogging dead donkeys comes to mind.
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  10

  When Israel was living under a Theocracy ,was it a Paradise ?

  by smiddy3 in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  the bible books that speak of a time when the israelite`s were enjoying jehovah`s blessings , isnt it true they were still dying from old age ,sickness , and death ?

  didn`t they have a leper colony in their midst ?....yes.

  didn`t they still have the poor among them ?

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  Half banana

  Absolutely FTS. I have just been to the British Museum exhibition called I am Ashurbanipal. He ruled Assyria from 699 to 631 BC. The artifacts on display show highly developed artistic representations of court life, the richness of furnishings, fittings and dress and a great example of the thousands of clay tablets which would have have made up part of his library (the texts were miniscule). The exhibition is dominated by sharply defined relief engravings on large stone panels, which would have been brightly coloured in their day and adorned the palace walls. They told the world what a god-like king Ashurbanipal was.

  Indeed the Assyrian tree of life was guarded by two angels or cherubs, call them what you will. How can anyone understand the Bible without knowing the cultural context from which it was drawn? Certainly not the WTBTS!

  Ancient Assyrian territory covered Iraq, Iran, Syria, Western Turkey, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Cyprus and a lot of Arabian desert. Northern Iraq today is the home of Isis who have created their dystopian theocracy there. It's just as well that many of the Assyrian treasures are cared for in responsible museums outside of that fundamentalist hell. I was much reminded of how Islamic extremism represents a continuum of gory practices made public to create fear, which reach back into antiquity as shown graphically in the royal artwork. Some people never learn.
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  20

  Sign at gilead graduation

  by Gorbatchov in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  you know, i'm not such a conspiracy thinker.

  but why do they display this sign / symbol at the background?

  with some litle imagination it is a freemason sign.

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  Half banana

  In this picture all three are overdressed and earnest. This highlights the degree of devotion the members show to their organisation or at least sends out this idealised message that the producers of the clip want to show.

  The angle of shot does give emphasis to the background title by excluding anything in the view of it such as the interviewer who could easily have covered a part the right hand side of the word frame making it a more natural shot. Propaganda in all of its manifestations is always slightly off-key.

  I don't think there was any intention to reference Freemasonry, but how do I know!

  If you are a graphic designer decorating the middle ground of a rectangle, then simple lines at 45 degree angles will do nicely.
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  4

  My intro essay revisited

  by vienne in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  hi everyone [even the person who always marks my posts thumbs down - snicker] i've added to and revised my introductory essay for separate identity volume two.

  please read it and give me your thoughts.. thanks,.

  rachael.

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  Half banana

  Vienne, from the three dislikes, it seems you have three JWs who view honest, objective historical facts about the JW organisation as if those facts (or you) are in opposition to truth.

  Can clearly supported facts ever oppose truth?

  Does the JW org to want to hold the exclusive 'rights' to shape or sanitise its past?

  Would knowing its past history reveal to the public historical events they would want to now deny?
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  2

  What are the JW flock up to-- despite the GB?

  by Half banana in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  poster westiewilly quoted on another thread the biblical proverb “expectation lost is sickness to the heart”.

  the kjv puts it well, “hope deferred makes the heart sick but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life”.. does this not encapsulate the emotional tone of the jw organization today; “heartsick”?.

  those who saw the total failure of the watchtower promises of the twentieth century must be heartsick from the disappointment.

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  Half banana

  Poster Westiewilly quoted on another thread the Biblical proverb “expectation lost is sickness to the heart”. The KJV puts it well, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life”.
  

  Does this not encapsulate the emotional tone of the JW organization today; “heartsick”?

  Those who saw the total failure of the Watchtower promises of the twentieth century must be heartsick from the disappointment. What I am exploring is how would we expect the faithful to respond to this fundamental problem? Their lives were geared to this hope, the rigid certainty of the Kingdom by the end of the last century was guaranteed by none other than the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society-- "the generation of 1914" was often quoted, it was undisputed, JWs thought it was a Bible certainty, it was their ticket to paradise. . .

  Psychologically even wearing the mask of a kingdom smile, today the heart has gone out of the whole enterprise, the abysmal attempts at squaring the generation of 1914 to accommodate successive generations by “overlapping” has only meant a further loss of confidence, and the GB must know it.

  How then have the flock reacted?

  As we know, what the JW org offers the public is a quick fix to all life's problems: never dying, a life of bliss in paradise; the hope of a permanent world of “no worries” with cuddly pandas thrown in for good measure. As we also know this is moonshine but the world is full of sad punters who in the past have lapped it up.

  So with the expectation now lost, for those who didn't leave the organisation, the first thing was a re-evaluation and this meant finding justification for what has happened. It was akin to having foolish parents who made a very foolish mistake, you don’t blame them do you? You put up with them ‘cos they are the only ones you have.

  For those unthinking and infantilised JWs, the governing body had become the surrogate parent.

  So the remaining JWs at the turn of the twenty first century then started to look for new dates, not a promising line of enquiry since WT dates have always been wrong in the past.

  Outwardly the remaining JWs continued performing the meeting and preaching rituals but egged on by HQ, shifted the emphasis away from a date limit to stressing the imminence of Armageddon. Having lost a marker point JWs were now focused just on the nearness—always round the corner, always round this enormous one hundred and forty year long corner. Are Jehovah’s Witnesses round the bend yet? Of course, The Watchtower has always been round the bend!

  What other alternatives are available to the JW?

  Stay put and enjoy your friends and family? As the WT told the flock in 1980 after their previous major prophetic disaster of 1975, “we still have our brothers and sisters don’t we?” Yes it's a good social club if you are partially brain dead.

  Or one could just leave-- however leaving the JW club carries a big penalty. The cult goes to great lengths to avoid defectors and the flock knows it well. Being ”sent to Coventry” as we say in England or shunning, is the technique used to harm the feelings of the would-be leaver to induce them to stay. It often works, and the consequence of this is that the kingdom halls are filling with physically present but mentally alienated members. . . lots of them. . . it’s part and parcel of the heartsick membership.

  There is however one significant response not often discussed and that is the hidden token protest JWs are practising now by not contributing money.

  Have you practised this or heard of others doing it?

  ( And by the way, has anyone found the tree of life Proverbs mentions?)