'use vegetable oil and soft margarine in place of animal fat,'.
https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/101997444?q=vegetable+oil&p=par.
'when possible, cook with unsaturated vegetable oils.'.
This advice was promoted in the 90s by the UN, eat less fat and everything that rich countries had access to in favor of things poor countries produced. This increased instability in lots of African countries as demand for seed oils globally increased and production could not keep up, exhausting the land and exporting what should’ve been food crops for the locals.
Seems like the WTBTS has been in the pocket of globalists for a long time.
what if the truly unthinkable happened and the tower went down?
perhaps the irs swooped in and claimed fraud and padlocked the headquarters and kingdom hall doors?
or the gb took the money and ran to a nice non-extradition country to live out their years?
I think there are enough people with psychopathic tendencies at the helm. This did happen in the 1800s with both the Bible Students and the Millerites, however nature abhors a (power) vacuum.
I know quite a few CO/DO would declare the end of the world is nigh and start their own little cult, for areas where that didn't happen one or more of the elders in the congregations would do the same. The religion would simply fracture as it has in the past, some would be more devotional and extreme, while others would not.
You'd get anything from full congregations in one location to a few people getting together once a month on the other end, over the next 100 years you'll basically be back in the place we are now, some will have gotten big, some will have disappeared and some may still refer to their ancient roots as the WTBTS does today with the Bible Students while helpfully forgetting their link to some of their more seedy people and the fact that WTBTS are not the Bible Students, but were created from a disagreement with them.
i had a day off today and needed to get some errands done in my local town.
2 carts have allocated here but i never ever see anyone out, even on very nice days.
70% of the congregation don’t work.
Not sure whether you've been under a rock lately, but they dropped the hourly reporting requirement a few months ago. Nobody except for the true believers are going out anymore and even the latter are taking it a bit easier.
That means a congregation of 150 went from 1500 hours (minimum 10h/publisher) a few years ago to perhaps 50 or 100 hours (10% of their original) and a lot of that is probably parents studying with their kids, or pioneers driving around and doing studies/return visits.
That's like a medium sized restaurant downsizing from a full staff to just a waiter and a cook and wondering why it takes long to get a drink refill.
this morning i decided to log into the local cong meeting on zoom, during the public talk the speaker likened the covid vx to jesus ransom sacrifice, saying that those who didn't avail of the vx, the 'anti vaxxers', are just like people who refuse to put faith in jesus.. i felt sick, knowing my unvxed but active jw parents were sitting there, i logged off immediately.
surely such talk is pure blasphemy or am i just over reacting?!.
i appreciate your thoughts, it will hopefully help me to approach my jw family with facts and logic, i'm praying they wake up fully and 'get out of her', i know they have reservations that's why they refused the vx..
@Seabreeze: NY and other cities paid churches $100 for each member they promoted to get the shot. All you had to do is show up and say you were a member of a religion and they sent out money.
Funding under FEMA Public Assistance program includes community engagement and information dissemination to promote vaccination availability, scheduling, and accessibility, as well as reimbursement for activities to increase public confidence in and uptake of COVID-19 vaccines.
HHS, CDC and others all had programs going into the hundreds of millions each for the promotion of vaccines. UN had programs for churches, EU had programs. I don’t think we’ll ever see the books on this, but there was plenty of financial incentive, especially since donations have been flagging, they need something to fund their new retirement homes.
the watchtower—study edition | september 2023. study article 39. let mildness be your strength.
11 if a workmate asks, for example, why we do not celebrate birthdays, consider: could he be wondering whether we are allowed to have a good time?
or might he feel that our position will dampen the company’s team spirit?
We don’t celebrate birth which is pagan, but we celebrate Jesus death which also has pagan roots (spring equinox) and the story of Jesus, including his virgin birth (Romulus and Remus, the autumn equinox), 40 days in the wilderness (weeping for Tammuz) and 3 years ministry and apocalyptic message, turning water into wine (Dionysus, god of festivities) and death by crucifixion and resurrection (Zeus) all based on pagan stories.
But birthday CAKE, a thing that wasn’t invented for 1400 years after Jesus’ death, and birthday parties, a thing that started around the time CT Russell’s parents were born, that is pagan.
i would like to know if ex's and formers who are not church christians, believe that many of jws' doctrines and bible interpretations are correct, or do you feel that they aren't?
.
As far as doctrinal matters that are “unique” to JWs, a lot of them aren’t unique but rather taken from Millerites, which sourced after various schisms and disappointments into Christadelphians, Adventists, various Bible Student denominations and one of those Millerite sects is the WTBTS. They all believe in a soon to be end of day.
I recently learned that Heavens Gate also had similarly millenarian views and evangelical Christian theories that closely aligned with JW/WTBTS/Millerites, they just added UFOs and kool-aid.
CT Russell also had influence from the prevailing spiritualism and Egyptology craze in his neck of the woods which is also where Mormons get some of their stuff.
As far as the Jewish view on blood, they believe that saving life is more sacred than strict adherence to law. The law in Judaism is an ideal guideline more than a strict law, they don’t have the same concept of sin or either current or future divine retribution.
if the current doctrine is that only baptised witnesses are going to survive and everyone else burns them what about this new update new light that some from before the flood and sodomites will be resurrected?.
but didn’t he mention at the agm something about there is no point jehovah killing them and then resurrecting them again?
it seems they are confused about what they teach and that’s why brother jackson joked about “is this what we used to believe or what we believe now?”.
So from what I understand is that the ‘noo light’ is that even if you die before Armageddon, if you rejected the WTBTS at any point (whether you slammed the door or you were born-in and left) you will die.
Besides the pain that must bring to many that were hopeful the ‘old system’ would last long enough for their kids/family to die, I can see many that will give up, commit suicide or do something else very drastic (kidnapping young children etc). All just to stem the fact that many ‘older ones’ are already giving up and leaving thinking that Armageddon won’t even come in their life time and they’ll be saved regardless.
This whole death cult stuff is sick.
this is for all the ex-jw's on that dreadful day..... do you remember where you were when jfk was shot in dallas, tx?
It’s a really long time ago and I was still young when they did the movie about it. One of the more progressive Presidents killed by his own party because he wasn’t progressive enough on Cuba.
while our attentions has been drawn many times to kingdom halls being used as distribution centres (often distributing government supplied relief goods), during a local disaster.
i can't remember reading or hearing of, kingdom halls being opened to house displaced witnesses during these times.. can any one else?.
@road to nowhere: plenty of churches open their institutions during disaster. Having A roof and A toilet is better than none at all.
The primary problem, as others pointed out, is cost. It would cost them in maintenance and upkeep, someone would have to be responsible, they’d have to *gasp* cancel meetings and actually spend money and ask for donations that don’t end up at the headquarters.
The insurance issue is secondary, there is some risk but it is low and insurance companies wouldn’t turn down a claim, however the WTBTS is self-insured (aka not insured, they have to pay everything out of pocket). The primary problem is indeed their own costs.
even elders can be part of the new jw lite brigade these days.
they don’t need to go on door to door anymore and there is no requirement for anything really.. taking meeting parts is all dead easy you could turn up on the day with zero preparation because it’s all in the meeting workbook.. quarterly elders meetings are just old men having a good old natter just like old men do down the pub.. congregations could be likened to pubs or bars these days just without the drinks, those come at other times.. no need for territory maps, these almost went away with covid letter writing now they are extremely slow getting finished as those who still go door to door only do ten mins.. you could even voice your questions these days about things the gb say and then just say “we can’t be dogmatic we just don’t know”.
i predict they will say this about 1914 soon..
@stan: this is already largely the case. Polls peg JWs at 14-16M members (extrapolating what people put down as their religious affiliation across large groups of people) but the number of “active” publishers has officially hovered about 7M for quite some time. That means that for every active dub, there is someone that is no longer participating but still considers themselves “in”. Not sure what those ratios are across other churches but for a high control cult this is rather outside the norm.
