Hello AllCool,
I get the same 'green' feeling.
ScenicViewer
JoinedPosts by ScenicViewer
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35
Could you 'Wake Up Happy' if you were an active Witness, knowing what you know now? (A 2012 Convention invitation)
by ScenicViewer ina convention invitation.
i came home the other day and found an invitation to the upcoming district convention in my door.
i don't believe these are left in the doors of the general public, so a well-meaning witness must have been thinking of me, even though i have not been to the kh in about 7 years.. the leading question on the front immediately got my attention, and made my jaw drop a bit.. i thought i would ask the forum, .
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35
Could you 'Wake Up Happy' if you were an active Witness, knowing what you know now? (A 2012 Convention invitation)
by ScenicViewer ina convention invitation.
i came home the other day and found an invitation to the upcoming district convention in my door.
i don't believe these are left in the doors of the general public, so a well-meaning witness must have been thinking of me, even though i have not been to the kh in about 7 years.. the leading question on the front immediately got my attention, and made my jaw drop a bit.. i thought i would ask the forum, .
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ScenicViewer
A Convention Invitation
I came home the other day and found an invitation to the upcoming District Convention in my door. I don't believe these are left in the doors of the general public, so a well-meaning Witness must have been thinking of me, even though I have not been to the KH in about 7 years.
The leading question on the front immediately got my attention, and made my jaw drop a bit.
I thought I would ask the forum,
- Could you 'Wake up happy every morning, with positive thoughts' knowing what you know now about the Watchtower Organization?
- What things would prevent that?
- Did you ever wake up happy as an active Witness?
My own answer to the 3rd question is that Yes, I did wake up happy at one time. I was in my 20s and very naive, knowing nothing about the true history of Watchtower, and believing everything I heard at a meeting or an assembly.
"The former things will not be called to mind"
Isaiah 65:17 is quoted in the tract. This concept, as it is applied by the Society, may be appealing to new ones, but as experienced Witnesses which 'former things' were you the most happy to leave behind?
- The things you left behind to become a Witness in the first place, such as celebrating birthdays, honoring the cross, etc? (Feel free to add more.)
- Or the things you left behind when leaving the Organization, such as the policies of disfellowshipping, denying blood products, looking to the GB as God's sole channel of light and truth, etc? (Add any doctrines, concepts, or policies that are meaningful to you.)
Did you wake up happier then as an active follower of the Watchtower, or now as a former follower?
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I wonder what the GB would say about this article....
by johnnyblazedog ini found the following link on the yahoo site.
as i read it i began to wonder and lol at what kinda of bolony the gb would say after reading this article.....too funny.. http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/six-living-generations-family-gather-aged-111-years-180408199.html.
its not really 6 generations, its only 1!!!
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ScenicViewer
The direct link,
The oldest member of this family, born in 1901, would have been around to see the events of 1914 unfold. At one time the Society said this was the generation Jesus spoke of, that would not end until the 'system of things' ended.
Now, as you noted, all 6 of these generations are viewed as being in the same 'overlapping' generation. This amounts to Watchtower's manipulative thinking at it's best, or should I say worst.
By the way, 6 generations in the same photo is amazing!
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65
A Brother Died At Bethel
by MrFreeze ini got a text from my mom when i got into work today saying that a brother i've known for a while had died.
he was a bethelite and they found him dead in his room.
he was the same age as me.
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ScenicViewer
i don't believe they do JW memorials at kingdom halls if it was suicide.
It depends, but sometimes it's done. I attended a memorial service held in a KH, death by suicide, for the wife of an elder. No mention was made of how she died at the service.
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69
"some were led to believe that the end would come in 1975"
by Sour Grapes inlast week a young elder giving the public talk made.
the statement that "some were led to believe that the.
end would come in 1975, but aren't we so thankfull.
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ScenicViewer
Terry said,
"JoAnn was left without any world beneath her feet. She plummeted."
What a tragic loss Terry. The extent of the destruction caused by false prophets will never be fully known because the fall-out from it just can't be tallied. Your sad experience is just one of how many? No one can possibly know.
This reminds me of a scripture that warns of the bad effects of failed expectations,
(Proverbs 13:12, NWT)
“Expectation postponed is making the heart sick, but the thing desired is a tree of life when it does come.”Watchtower has caused untold suffering, altered lives, unfortunate educational and career choices, family divisions, and more because of it's many failed predictions. The "thing desired, the tree of life" has never come, and will never come as a result of Watchtower activity.
Broken lives will continue to be the only result of following the WTS.
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Hardcopy Help! Where can I find some?
by okage ini've got pdf's of certain watchtower publications, but i need the hardcopies to back up my argument.
it's annoying when you show a witness the jw.org website, download the pdf of the watchtower study issue in front of them, and they argue that you have no point because apostates tampered with the file.
mind you, it's on a wt/ccjw server, so i don't fathom how any apostate can tamper with it.
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ScenicViewer
@ Okage,
Ebay and Amazon are good sources for hard copies of the literature. How cheap and easy it is to get will depend on what you are looking for.
- Watchtower volumes, 1960s thru mid-2000s. Easy to find and usually cheap. ($1 to $5 each, plus $4 shipping. Buying several from the same seller saves on shipping.)
- Watchtower volumes, 1950s and back. Harder to find, and more expensive, the farther back you go. Some from the 50s can still be relatively cheap, but from the 40s expect to pay $15 to $90 per year, plus shipping.)
- Awake volumes are about the same as the Watchtower volumes pricewise, but usually they are harder to find. They are fairly plentiful from the 70s through mid 2000s, but earlier than the 70s they take longer to find.
- Early Watchtowers can be had in the form of Watchtower Reprints. The originals, printed by the Society, vary greatly in price depending conditon. They were printed in 2 editions, the first one 1879 thru 1916, then from 1879 thru 1919. $600 to $2500. (For example, see this site. These prices are on the high side.)
- The Bible Students have also printed the Watchtower Reprints, 1879 thru 1916. They can be found on ebay from time to time, usually in good condition, from about $250 to $300. Some sellers want a little more.
- Both the Watchtower magazines and Golden Age -or- Consolation magazines (early names for Awake) from the 1920s thru the 1930s are tough to get.
- The Society's books from the 1950s thru 2000s are easy to get, as are some of the older ones from Rutherford's day (I've paid $1 to $10 plus shipping). A select few are hard to find and expensive. The Society has printed lots of books.
If you only need a few pieces of literature, and it doesn't have to be very old, you can find plenty of it cheap, but if you need to put together an extensive library it will take lots of time and money. In this case, FatFreek 2005's idea about the Watchtower CD is a very good one.
Regarding the arguments that some Witnesses use in rejecting your digital sources, at some point the burden of proof will have to fall on them. If they say your offering has been altered, they should prove it by consulting the correct literature and showing you a scan of it. Of course most Witnesses will not bother to do that. It's much easier to dismiss your proof (any lame excuse will do) and move on.
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Biting off more than they can chew - why I think the Society's internet approach is good for us, bad for them...
by cedars ini've been giving some thought to the society's latest decision to reduce the size of the awake, and relaunch jw.org as a revamped site - intended for bringing in yet more converts.
for those who missed it, here is the relevant part of the leaked letter to elders discussing these changes.... the internet is a technology that jehovahs organization is using to good advantage to spread the good news to all corners of the earth.
consider the impact our web sites are having.
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ScenicViewer
Pams girl said,
I went searching for an "authentic" Jw forum, and found you lot....
Watchtower has survived until now largely by influencing it's people to be separate, different, from everybody else (no birthdays, no association with anyone not a Witness, look only to the Society's publications for religious information, etc). By isolating people away from others it has been able to control their thinking to a great extent.
But now the Society is going to try to keep it's head above water by jumping into the same pool as it's opposers, such as JWN, JWfacts, Freeminds, and others. This is a dramatic new turn for Watchtower, and I think the results could be disasterous for the Organization.
If the Society had been an early adopter of the internet it might be different, but it seems kind of late now. Opposition sites have developed many thousands of pages in their data bases that will come up in any internet search related to Watchtower, Jehovah, or other key words that Witnesses are sure to use.
Encouraging people to use it's own site will inevitably expose them to the very sites that Watchtower wants them to avoid.
Witness the experience of Pams girl and many others.
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Nathan Knorr's own circuit assembly badge?
by FatFreek 2005 infor what it's worth, the following image was sent to me in an anonymous email so i can't testify to its authenticity.
she (or he, since it wasn't signed) says he/she was one of the bethel housekeepers and spotted the name tag in a waste basket.
at that time, the early 70's, knorr was regarded by many, including this person, (though disliked by even many bethelites) as god-like.
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ScenicViewer
Band on the Run asked,
I wonder if ex-Witnesses, scholars, or Witnesses collect. Perhaps all three.
There are a lot of people who collect Watchtower memorabelia; I assume most of them are Witnesses. There are quite a few sellers who regularly list on ebay, as well as websites dedicated to selling Watchtower items. Here is one of those sites; brouse through it and have a look at some of the prices.
As George said, that name tag with Knorr's signature would probably get lots of interest.
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Is the WTS and the JW's going to collapse in 2014?
by braincleaned intwo years to go, and an embarrassing whole century will have gone by after 1914 -- the date of armageddon.
in no world is that a "short period of time".... .
let's put things in perspective, since the wts claims to be the channel god has choosen.
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ScenicViewer
"...I suspect the same thing will happen to Christianity in general, too."
I don't look into other religions much, but from what I've read on this forum Mormons and Scientologists are struggling too, because if the internet.
I wonder about Seventh Day Adventists and larger groups like Baptists and Catholics.
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Is the WTS and the JW's going to collapse in 2014?
by braincleaned intwo years to go, and an embarrassing whole century will have gone by after 1914 -- the date of armageddon.
in no world is that a "short period of time".... .
let's put things in perspective, since the wts claims to be the channel god has choosen.
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ScenicViewer
"But I have a hunch that there could be a massive exodus from the Organisation. Especially those who know the WT history well..."
The problem is, there aren't very many Witnesses that know the true past of the Organization. Watchtower has been masterful at revising it's history.
I believe this is changing, but not because the 100th anniversary of 1914 in near.
The older generations of Witnesses had no easy access to what the Organization was really teaching prior to 1914, 1925, etc. After each failure there was an exodus of people from the religion, but the Society would later spin that into "Jehovah cleansed his earthly Organization,' resulting in most Witnesses today thinking those who left were 'over-zealous,' or they 'misunderstood' what the Society was teaching, or they were only 'serving for a date,' and needed to be weeded out.
It's changing because the younger generation is tech savvy, and they have easy access to amazing amounts of information via the internet. In spite of strong warnings from the Society not to search for information about Watchtower's past history, many do it, and more will in the future. They are learning the true history of the Organization, as are many of us older ones now, and it will only snow-ball as time passes.
Watchtower is reaching a point where it can no longer cover up it's sins. Will the religion end? They almost never do. Will it eventually decline? Absolutely. It will be interesting to see how much, and how fast. Watchtower's struggle is just beginning.
