Posts by Anony Mous

29

Patterson New Visitor Centre & Museum Announced

by raymond frantz in

https://www.jwupdates.com/post/new-patterson-visitor-center-and-first-century-museum.

january 1, 2024, marked the official opening of the patterson visitor center, located at the watchtower educational center in patterson, new york, u.s.a. the feature museum of the visitors’ center is entitled “first-century bible village.” brother isaiah miller, who works in the museum department at bethel, said: “the bible village was designed to provide everyone with a realistic and educational experience.

studies show that interactive learning has a powerful effect on people of all ages.” after her tour, one visitor exclaimed: “this museum made me feel like i had been transported back to the land of ancient israel.

Anony Mous

At least Ken Ham has employees and contractors that he has to pay. WTBTS has none of those, but they do calculate the representative value of an employee. So they ‘rent’ a Bethelite, there is an internal charge of $20/h+34% to WTBTS which they can then present to the state as an expense, they then turn around and the Bethelite gets what $100/week?

They do the same for quick-builds and other building projects, the internal costs are insanely overpriced and on the other end, any discounts, interest and credit card points go to the WTBTS rather than the project, they then present that complete price ticket to the local congregations to pony up in “loans” while also applying for any government grants and other discounts they can get.

27

Stop the Electric car solar power brainwashing Lies!!

by Witness 007 in

ford e.v cars lost the company 1.3 billion in three months!

i put 18 solar panels on my house but only get a small rebate $50 a quarter.

bill is $400.

Anony Mous

Note that solar panels, even ín the US are currently heavily subsidized both by China and by the US (no or negative tarrifs on import). Most states also subsidize the installation cost.

Still, it really depends on where you live whether they make sense, even after all the rebates, a decent installation that would cover my house is in the $50k range. My entire house is electrified, my house has had 3 heat pumps with electric heat backup for like 30+ years, 2 electric stove/ovens, 4 fridges/freezers, 2 dishwashers, 2 water heaters, dryer/washer etc. - it is power hungry. I have a 300A service and it’s being maxed out between the two living units. The backup heat alone can consume 100A when it is too cold for the heat pumps to work, they stop being efficient around the freezing point, they stop being able to heat at about +5C for the old ones to about -5C for the one replaced last year.

Still I pay between $50 in summer and $200 in peak winter for energy for 2 ‘families’ (nuclear sourced power is very cheap). A payment plan over the expected lifespan of a solar panel (5-10 years) with sufficiently sized battery pack to provide in the winter months (I’d have to clean snow off my roof daily) is more expensive than that.

And I don’t even have 4-5 EV chargers I will need once my children are old enough to drive, that alone needs another 200A which simply isn’t available. I don’t have a tankless water heater the green nuts would like you to use (this consumes a lot more peak power), I don’t even have a pool, let alone a heated pool.

Even in summer, you need about 20 solar panels with a decent battery and still have grid backup to power my house at night, let alone the 50-100 extra panels and battery if I needed to be off grid and provide sufficient power during winter.

13

Conscription FEARS to END? Jehovah's Witnesses in EUROPE?

by raymond frantz in

https://www.jwupdates.com/post/conscription-fears-across-europe-could-end-jehovah-s-witnesses.

as the clouds of war are gathering fast over the european continent many countries including britain are contemplating a return to conscription and some form of mandatory military service.

considering the fact that the watchtower fought long and hard especially in europe for the right of its believers to abstain from military service it is very interesting to see how this new development will affect the watchtower across europe.

Anony Mous

@Jan: it’s not just he UK. Germany is also considering bringing it back and they did allow for it in legislation from the 2010s. As others pointed out, the Western ideology of appeasement has failed especially as the formation and expansion of the EU weakened Europe to invading ideologies like Islam which will not negotiate, moderate or appease.

The relative peace is going to end at some point and the children of today are too weak and stupid to fight. Ukraine and the unrest in the Balkans is a symptom of the EU being weak to nationalist expansionist ideologies like Russia or China has.

11

My parents did not really shun me when I left but I am now breaking their hearts…

by sinboi in

if they have shunned me and chase me out of the house when i leave the cult, i would not give a damn.

i can still feel their love and concern for me even now.. though i have moved out voluntarily when i joined the army, i am afraid that the life i am living now will break their hearts.

i am now a bartender in a bar and am cohabiting with a woman.

Anony Mous

I wouldn’t be too concerned, plenty of parents kind of sidestep the organization’s direction when it comes to children. Given you have been in the army, they probably can guess you’ve been doing things they may not approve of. It sounds like you’re somewhere in Asia, the culture there is different as well and parents are less likely to give up their children in favor of an American cult.

My suggestion is just be honest, let your parents figure out their feelings. If you have at least one parent on your side as it sounds like you do, it will be very difficult for the other parent to follow through, there are natural bonds.

37

My grandmother called my mother

by Anony Mous in

so, i’m just posting this as a warning to lurking jws.

if you’re still on the fence, here is a story.. my grandmother, now in her 80s hasn’t talked to anyone in the family for over 20 years ever since my mother was the last one of her children that left ‘the truth’, she had sent my mother a card to never talk to her again.

so here we are 21 years later, she gets a call out of the blue that she needed help, she hadn’t been able to get into her kitchen.

Anony Mous

@NotFormer:

Those referred to as “my brothers” are spirit-anointed men and women, who will rule with Christ from heaven. (Rom. 8:16, 17)

Likewise, he is not saying that each individual judged to be a sheep must literally feed, clothe, nurse, or visit one of his brothers in prison. Rather, he is illustrating the attitude that the figurative sheep display toward his brothers. He describes the sheep as “righteous” because they recognize that Christ has a group of anointed brothers still on earth, and the sheep loyally support the anointed during these critical last days.

https://www.jw.org/en/library/magazines/w20150315/loyal-to-christs-brothers/

The article even references your KJV translation of brethren.

44

2023 Yearly Report UNDER the Microscope

by raymond frantz in

https://youtu.be/pi7sn2rnrke?si=lnvklqct6nuayv2q.

branches of jehovah’s witnesses: 85 (= down one from 86 from the previous year and quite possibly they are referring to the hong kong bethel that closed down recently).

number of lands reporting: 239 ( =the same as 2022).

Anony Mous

@Thomasmore: I didn’t know foreign language groups in Western lands were dissolved, but it makes sense, often those groups were an excuse for people like me to get out of the way, pretend you’re doing a lot of work and because these congregations have no native speaking CO or other oversight, they are often nearly independent from branches, lack ‘spiritual food’ (even getting English literature was spotty because the branch doesn’t like shipping small orders) leading to independent Bible study and thinking. Truly you want to be in a foreign language congregation if you can, it’s awesome, relaxed and people are often transient and illegal themselves so you don’t get tied down, elders (if they even have them) have a hard time structuring service and meetings and you don’t get ratted out if you do something wrong and every male and female is looking for a partner to be able to stay in the country (the stories I could tell you about drinking and ~~grinding~~ dancing with Russian sisters).

My last assignment in foreign language, the entire Chinese congregation had very pro-China leanings (if you want to see true skin color racism, go see Asians) and eventually the entire congregation defected and was disbanded, thinking about it decades later, I suspect the elders may have had ties with the Chinese government.

In other countries where I’ve been, there are many ‘local’ languages as the country itself is multi-lingual. There will be no way they set an official language in those areas. I know for a fact there are still multi-language congregations in my country of origin, since officially there are 3 native languages.

44

2023 Yearly Report UNDER the Microscope

by raymond frantz in

https://youtu.be/pi7sn2rnrke?si=lnvklqct6nuayv2q.

branches of jehovah’s witnesses: 85 (= down one from 86 from the previous year and quite possibly they are referring to the hong kong bethel that closed down recently).

number of lands reporting: 239 ( =the same as 2022).

Anony Mous

@thomasmore; congregations does not mean buildings, although in many cases 1 congregation = 1 building in the past, nowadays they’ve been strongly consolidating that, often 4 or more congregations per building. In places like Congo and Brazil and other developing nations with lots of (both native and western) languages, every language gets their own ‘congregation’ although they often share buildings, meeting times and often even speakers (either using a common tongue or someone doing translations). Although in places like Congo you also have heavy persecution of Christians by some groups so as the wars there ebb and flow, you’ll have a sudden explosion of congregations that were previously unreported and other such non-sense. JWs don’t go back and update their reports with new data.

33

Where’s the 2023 Service Report?

by slimboyfat in

what’s keeping them?

this has got to be the latest it’s ever been.

maybe it’s the last one they’ll ever publish too, after dropping reporting hours for publishers ….

Anony Mous

There’s various reasons, as others pointed out the children are getting baptized earlier and earlier, I’ve heard about 6, 7 and 8 year olds getting baptized - first graders, that’s ridiculous, many kids at that age can’t even read or go to the bathroom independently.

Then there is also the drop in counting hours, suddenly all the PIMOs are counted once again as ‘active’ publishers, all you need is a check mark which they will even accept doing a part in the meetings. Back in the day, elders wouldn’t even accept us as active if we didn’t have at least 10 hours on that slip.

Remote attendance is another one of those things, you don’t even have to show up at the meeting to get counted, I’ve heard many say that people choose to stay home.

All-in-all, they will eventually run out of tricks to stop the bleeding unless there is a major shift in the disfellowshipping at which point they simply will end being JW to me and just another church.

23

Jehovah and Pleiades

by James Brown in

does anyone remember seeing old watchtowers in their kingdom hall library before they destroyed them all, of the watchtower annoucing jehovah from pleiades kingdom.

i am 72 years old and i remeber seeing these old magazines somewhere..

Anony Mous

JWs have always followed what seemed like was popular at the time, whether it was Pyramidology which was popular towards the end of the 19th century, the early 20th century was beset with cosmology after Einstein and Hubble’s theory, in the 60s and 70s it was the end of days from cosmic/Mother Earth origins (that’s where JW depictions of Armageddon started getting meteors and cracked open earth) after many Hippie cults, in the 80s and 90s it was the end of day due to nuclear (remember those Awake with nuclear bomb explosions on the cover), then in the early 2000s it was technological progress which morphed into environmentalism. They’re just following pop culture and are always proven wrong, within a few decades the posts on here will all be about how they followed the COVID and Environmental cults, it’s just a thing to appeal to the masses that ties their death cult into the popular causes of what could bring about fear and death, as if a god needed human imagination to kill billions of people.

14

The Memorial

by jhine in

the wt teaches that the memorial ( communion) should only be celebrated yearly and only the anointed can partake of the bread and wine .

is that right ?

i don't think so ..

Anony Mous

Jesus used the words ‘do this in remembrance of me’ so seemingly whenever you ponder the sacrifice of Jesus in the accompaniment of other Christians, you should do it. There seems to be neither a temporal limit nor restriction.

Similar language in Hebrew scripture is used to signify weekly (Shabbath) and various other religious events which occurred at least monthly if not required daily during some religious weeks. I know some churches still have daily and require at least weekly communion in the weeks leading up to Christmas, Easter etc.

Justin Martyr’s First Apology indicate that weekly administration of the Lord’s Supper existed in the first century. The Catholic Church actually puts a limit of communion no more than twice daily to prevent people from thinking that it could somehow be quantified, so people doing it daily in early Christianity were seemingly not uncommon (still not uncommon amongst people in the clergy).