Posts by alcyone

45

Closest to the truth?

by punkofnice in

i know many jws that state that the watchtower corporation is the 'closest to the truth'.

thus they quiet their cognitive dissonance.. i don't have access to a corporation library any more.

is this a stance that the watchtower corporation has actually claimed?.

alcyone

When leaving JWdom there are 3 basic paths you can follow:

1, Standard Christianity: if you accept historic Christian doctrine, either Evangelical/Pentecostal, Catholic, EOC, mainstream Protestantism...

2, Atheism: Rationalist / materialist path - you reject faith in God or you stay as an agnostic.

3, "Half-JW": In case you are neither rejecting faith nor accepting Christian Orthodoxy (nor even liberal theology). Still you believe in JW specific doctrines - Unitarianism, Paradise on Earth, ...

Of course, many other paths could be followed (some people end up as Muslims, Buddhist, pagans; or in the camp of extreme political views), but these 3 represent basic types we usually meet.

Typically people that are "Half-JW's" use the argument "closest to the truth". It does not make sense for an atheist or for a standard Christian to utilize it, but people still attached to the WTS theology, even through they reject "slave class", could feel this way.

30

Is this the earliest WT reference to 1975?

by Splash in

i thought that the 1975 thing started in the mid to late 60's, but it seems the seeds were sown two decades earlier.is this the earliest reference to it?.

18 how many today are awake to the fact that the lord christ jesus, by his resurrection of the faithful bride members that slept in death, is taking his "bride" unto his father's house and the marriage of the lamb has begun' .... they do not say, 'it is a long time yet to the wind-up, and, according to the present understanding of bible chronology, six thousand years of human history will end first in the coming seventies and till then it is a long stretch to serve the lord continuously and undividedly.'.

... they keep their eye and heart on jehovah's kingdom, and not on the time clock.

alcyone

w42 8/1 227:

It is of God's great mercy that he has not com-
pletely wiped out the human race ere now for all
its unrighteousness which stains every page of its
history. Sober-thinking men ought to tremble at the
thought that he will wipe out all the worldly nations at
the impending Armageddon fight and thereby at last,
after a wait of six thousand years, vindicate bis name

It seems they started to prepare the stage for 1975 fiasco even earlier...

Only I am not sure whether they referred to the past event (i.e. completed 6,000) or to the future 1975.

47

2015 Jehovah's Witnesses Annual Meeting Lett warning about apostates CLIP

by Watchtower-Free in

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ja4z2-sf4ky.

alcyone

if somebody had such facial expressions during TMS talk, he would be beaten to the ground after the meeting. Or you can try to imitate the Lett's face when you are in field service with CO... what counsel you will get

Apparently rules do not apply to "7 dukes".

35

Did Ray Franz manage to live out a comfortable retirement from the proceeds of his books.

by joe134cd in

i'm just curious if anybody knows.

firstly i don't take issue with the man making money from his books and if he was able to live comfortably from it then i say power to him.

but what i'm wanting to know was just how successful was it and did it allow him to live out the remainder of his years in comfort e.g buy a house, eat good food etc.

alcyone

It is good this topic (Ray Franz making a fortune out of CoC) is mentioned here. I have heard / read some WTS apologists to use this to discredit Ray. They are trying to show he was not sincere in his decisions.

This is in line with JW logic: "we are the truth, everybody leaving must do it because of demons / money / immorality / ..." - cultish way of thinking.

362

No 'Tight Pants' policy is now official - classed as 'disturbing'

by wizzstick in

in short:- tight pants is no longer just a am3 hang up (or is that a hang up on the well hung?

)- brothers who have effeminate body language are flagged up- as are sisters with 'masculine' hair styles or dress- such dress is 'disturbing to the congregation'- the above must heed the (repeated) counsel from the elders...or they get stripped of the right to share on the ministry- however...this will not be revealed (announced) to the congregation.

wow.

alcyone

I am really surprised with stripping 'the right' to share in ministry. AFAIK this form of punishment has never been used before. Even if somebody was reprimanded publicly, still he was expected to share in ministry, the same for reinstated ones. They were but not allowed to comment during the meetings.

I can imagine funny situations in future: brother Tight-pants stops to share in ministry suddenly (as there is no public announcement of his being stripped of it). Then other members of the congregation will start to encourage him to start again not knowing he is not permitted to go to the service. Is he allowed to explain it? Are elders allowed to disclose this new policy to the one punished?

3

Merchants of deception

by alcyone in

has anybody read this book?.

https://archive.org/details/merchantsofdeception.

it is story of a man who worked for amway.

alcyone

Some quotes from the book:

As a matter of fact, within it, we were told there was a "100% success 
rate and outside of it a 0% success rate."

Is it not similar to WTS?

This is something we all experienced when realizing ttatt:

In my torment, it was by the grace of God that I made a decision that changed my 
life. I decided to 'unplug' from the system in ways that would be invisible to the group. I 
stopped listening to tapes every day and reading books from the approved list. I felt they 
were keeping me from being able to have clear thoughts.

I remember when i read it i started to wonder: 'what would happen if I decided to unplug from WTS?' Amway is keeping people in the same constant indoctrination as the WTS - 'read our books every day, listen to the motivaitonal tapes'.

This looks like KMS meeting:

Kathy and I began studying the follow-up pack that described the mechanics of 
starting your own business. The literature advised that to have a successful meeting, we 
needed to invite at least twice the number of people that we expected to come. In the 
follow-up pack, we also were given "inviting" techniques and instruction on how to 
handle certain questions that friends might ask. I was very clearly coached to make 
certain not to use the words "Amway", "products" or "selling" in the phone calls to 
friends.

In the same manner as in the WTS world Amway instructs its followers to avoid controversial stuff when opening conversation. The same as when JW does not mention shunning, rejection of higher education or some bizarre doctrines as '7 trumpets interpretation'.

It is interesting Amway imposes some rules preventing free discussion among the members:

"Never cross line" was a core principle that referred to not having business-related 
or personal conversations with distributors that were cross line from you. It was 
recommended that you had little or no social contact with these people as well. The 
reasoning was that this could cause confusion and inadvertently damage both of your 
businesses.

So similar to WTS making taboo sharing of negative information.

3

Merchants of deception

by alcyone in

has anybody read this book?.

https://archive.org/details/merchantsofdeception.

it is story of a man who worked for amway.

alcyone

Has anybody read this book?

https://archive.org/details/MerchantsOfDeception

it is story of a man who worked for Amway. It is so interesting the story is quite similar to experiences of JWs - it was mentioned a couple of times here in the forum Amway internal workings resemble WTS.

I went through this book when i was fully believing WTS is the truth and i can recall how much i was distressed: 'what if i am in the same position as the author of MoD, only i am not able to realize it?'. I had really serious doubts after reading this book.

For example his business was not bringing results, but instead of reconsidering the business model, he tried again and again to twist reality into Amway system - perhaps he is not working hard enough, if he will persist, results will come, ...

The same as a jw is able to convince himself repeatedly that doctrine changed so many times and failed so often is still the truth.

15

WT LAWYER REPRESENTED MUHAMMAD ALI

by badboy in

jw
friends

hayden c. covington represented muhammad ali when he refused to sign up for the draft.. covington's argument was that muhammad ali was a religious minister.. this argument failed.

alcyone

it is interesting they omit this story in the news:

http://www.jw.org/en/news/legal/by-region/united-states/dorothy-covington-dies

it is symptomatic for all info on history of JWs given by the WTS. Facts that can result in questions are wiped out systematically. They list important civil liberties cases, but Cassius is not mentioned there.

61

Today's Special Day Assembly Expenses and the $10,499 Deficit. Silent Majority?

by Tenacious in

today i attended a one-day assembly in my hometown.

i knew when it came time to read the afternoon expenses that it would be an incredibly high and ridiculous amount that was nowhere near the real expenses for that day.

sure enough, after lunch came the announcement.

alcyone

i do not know how they do the trick, but i cannot recall there ever have been a surplus. See it: every assembly / convention they report lack of funds.

Some methods were mentioned here: putting not only real numbers into balances; adding artificial 'rent' etc.

I suspect they report 'n-1' number - they report amount collected before the convention started during the afternoon part, what was collected during the lunch is not counted there. And as in the morning crowds are running for good seats, perhaps not so many are contributing before the program starts.

36

NWT is soooo inaccurate....

by iwasblind in

hi this is for the lurkers.. please start reading from another translation and use tools like www.biblehub.com to verify the differences you find.. biblehub has an interlinear and a strongs concordance and heaps of dictionaries and commentaries.. you don't have to be a translator but you can clearly see how the watchtower bible and tract society has changed the bible to devalue jesus, to support their idea of a paradise earth hope for christians and many other false doctrines.. i could never understand why the jw's where attacked when they chose to translate the bible - now i know.. seriously people, there are a lot smarter people than me on this forum and heaps of research.

.

don't be afraid of the truth!.

alcyone

A couple of notes on YHWH vs. NT:

1, The Jews stopped to pronounce the name before 1st century. Why we cannot find any criticism of this custom in the Bible? Majority of Septuagints used Kurios instead of the tetragrammaton. But there is no discussion of how bad is to use 'Kurios' instead of YHWH anywhere in the Scriptures. So it seems the 1st Christians accepted usage of Kurios.

2, Standard WTS claim somebody replaced YHWH in the centuries after Jesus: I have not seen any hard facts provided by WTS supporting this theory. Historic science simply does not work this way - I cannot simply state something happened but I need to provide proofs or strong indications for it.

3, Christian heresies in the first centuries are documented - Docetists, Ebionites, ... We have also good traces of Gnosticism, discussions with Jews, various discussions among Christians. But we do not have any trace of discussion of Kurios / YHWH. Why?

4, At the end of 1st century there was apprx. 1 million of Christians spread across the whole Roman world. How did somebody manage to replace YHWH with Kurios in this geographically dispersed realm? How did these conspirators manage to leave no trace of this big change?

5, George Howard and WTS - GH says a) it is a theory b) he is not supporting 237 places changed by the WTS. Try to google him.

6, How is it possible we do not know exact form of the name? If it was widely used then at least one Christian or even enemy of Christians would use it - but there is no form preserved in Greek / Latin form. Why did not secular historians from that era say 'Christians... those people using the name...'?

7, This step done by the WTS is not a small thing - it is completely changing meaning of some scriptures - for example Rom. 10, or Acts 7:59,60