Posts by NameWithheld

21

WTS and donations

by freedom96 in

jw
friends

many christian type religions, organized or not, believe in giving 10% like was done in the old days in the bible.

you even have the mormons, who must give 10%.. as money hungry as the wts is, why have they not gone for that as well?

they can always justify anything for any reason.

NameWithheld

I do not know of ONE HALL ever built in the USA that was built with money that the bros sent to wt

all the halls i know of are the result of GETTING A LOAN- now why does the wt just find a location where there seems to be a reasonalble interest in the community and say

WE ARE BUILDING A HOUSE OF TRUE WORSHIP - NOPE YOU got to get a loan baby

Too true. They've been collecting $$$$ for the 'KH building fund' for years now. What has it been 15-20 years? And they use this to LOAN $$ to the very people who donated the $$ in the first place. Very nice scam. Here's a deal - you give me money and I'll loan it back to you so you can repay me.

Ask the brothers in Africa where their regional building commitee is and why they don't have a 1500 sq ft building to meet in - oh, it's because they can't afford the loan!

21

WTS and donations

by freedom96 in

jw
friends

many christian type religions, organized or not, believe in giving 10% like was done in the old days in the bible.

you even have the mormons, who must give 10%.. as money hungry as the wts is, why have they not gone for that as well?

they can always justify anything for any reason.

NameWithheld

Skeptic, I'm not sure when your last exposure was. It was not bad until the mid-90's. I think the crunch started about then, as the fall-out effects of the 'donation' arrangement began to be felt upstatirs in crooklyn.

My last couple of years around it, it was indeed that bad - at three different halls I went too. We had 'please give' pleas at almost every Thursday night meeting. And the pleas at the assemblies were constant. And the frequency of WT articles like the above increased enough that my brain-dead brain woke up and realized "Why are they begging so much?" I really thought that well before I left the religion mentally.

Edited to say - we also had a bunch of KM articles about 'how to give' that we would have 30 minute parts on the Thursday meeting about. All about putting WT in your will, planned giving (regular amts from each paycheck), and many other ways to 'give'.

Edited by - NameWithheld on 21 November 2002 11:52:44

63

Computer games are from the Devil

by ignored_one in

sorry guys.

but the old guys in brooklyn have decided that you're spending far too much time enjoying yourself.

see aw 12/22/02 for details.

NameWithheld

Yea blondie, I thought that was funny too. He actually deleted the old game because he was out of hard drive space wan wanted to install Doom3. But he thought it would be a good time to impress his parents ('doubtlessly', whom he still lives with). So he get's his JW elder's kid mug into the WT - which will practically ensure that he snags a good little elderette wifey.

18

To: Lurking Elders or Former Elders

by somebody in

jw
friends

if the watch tower society prints information such as this, claiming that they a legal instrument used by jws, .

watchtower 98 3/15 18 .

living up to christian dedication in freedom .

NameWithheld

The unofficial WT viewpoint I've heard about the 6 points is that the soc. had no choice on this matter because of all the stupid bumbling elders making all sorts of idiotic decisions.

That's a conveinent cop out for JWs to say, but it's not reality. Just shows you a JW can justify ANYTHING in their mind to hold to their world-view.

If an organization has established, printed policy on handling a certain matter, and one of it's reps/employees/etc mis-handles that matter by not following policy, then as it should be, the person in question will be held responsible. But the org stands responsible for the results of it's rep upholding the orgs policy. In a related manner, it would be in that org's best interest to ensure that it's reps/employees were always up to speed (well educated) with the latest company policy too.

That is what the WTBTS is trying to prevent here - is the fall out from elders/CO/DO following established WT policy. We all know it's WT policy, but if the WT can spin it into putting the responsibility on the elder/CO/DO it will do so. It has done so and will always do so, until some gov't or court steps in and say 'enough'.

I think it's true that the WTBTS is a self-insured entity.

8

Embarrassment

by JH in

jw
friends

at first, when you starting studying with the witnesses, were you ashamed of being part of that religion?

were you afraid that your neighbors would see you leave all dressed up with a suitcase?

how about at work, did you reveal to your colleagues that your were a witness?.

NameWithheld

Absolutely. I tried to whitewash it around all non-JWs. It was very embarrasing. Like the response to "Merry Christmas" - instead of 'defending our faith' 90% of JWs reply "You too" (course they cannot SAY the words "Merry Christmas", but most can 'justify' returning the thought)

What's amazing is now I am running into more X-JWs in my day to day activities then I ever do JWs ... hmmmm.

Oh, and I agree Jack, there were a bunch of WT/Awakes I hated using in FS. I'd either hide them behind the other mag, or work with the previous/next month's mags ...

23

The People and the Dream

by joelbear in

jw
friends

i miss my friends.

i love them.

i have attachments to them.

NameWithheld

It's a Matrix moment for sure. The ultimate question - who's happier, the person with their heads planted firmly up their butt, ignoring reality and living a dream? Or the person who sees life for what it is, with all the warts and all.

The sad part of living the dream is that while it's nice to think that sky-daddy's going to come down and fix all your problems 'any day now' - the net result is your life ends up being really sh*tty since you never proactivly try and solve your own problems. So you end up 70 years old, working as a greeter in WalMart still "waiting on Jehovah"

21

WTS and donations

by freedom96 in

jw
friends

many christian type religions, organized or not, believe in giving 10% like was done in the old days in the bible.

you even have the mormons, who must give 10%.. as money hungry as the wts is, why have they not gone for that as well?

they can always justify anything for any reason.

NameWithheld

May I puke and hurl now?

This was one big thorn in my side shortly before I left - I hated how they would get up and and pontificate on how holy they were "Oooo, we NEVER require donations" and yet no 2 weeks would pass without some plea for $$$ for this or that 'fund', the many articles about 'cheerful giving', the thousands of contributions boxes scattered all over every JW event - you couldn't walk convention aisles without tripping over them. The EVERY assembly predictable plea Sunday morning about how o so short they were, wouldn't Jehovah want us to give like the little widow gave her last 2 coins.

Meantime we have poor JWs who cannot afford to even travel to the big show, put off little things like paying rent to go to it, and get guilted into dropping their gas money home into the boxes.

BTW - wooo hoooo!!! 800 posts!

9

COC soft copy

by researcher in

jw
friends

anyone out there have a soft copy of coc, a scanned copy?????

if you can scan the wt books you can scan rf books??

let me know.

NameWithheld

Well, for one thing I thought that the WTBTS publications were 'giving life's water free' and were available without charge from the WTBTS anyway. If that were the case, why would the WTBTS complain that people were distributing their publications electronically, which in effect saves the WTBTS a lot of $$$$.

Of course, we know the above is NOT true, even though the JWs pretend that it is.

35

What do you fear the most about the WT cult?

by Claudia Kittel in

when i was a jw, i think what i was most afraid of was being hurt.

i did everything to keep myself from getting hurt.

i banged on doors with the best of the pioneers.

NameWithheld

As a child I was terrified of a) armagedon, b) demons, and c) bad men coming for me, d) being tortured by satan's evil goverments when they came to perrsecute the JWs, and e) Jehovah.

It's a wonder I'm not permanently screwed up from all that! Or wait, maybe I am ....

Edited by - NameWithheld on 21 November 2002 10:33:50

9

2002 Annual report scans

by izobcenec in

jw
friends

the 2002 annual report scans from 1.1.

2003 wt (german edition).

are now available on http://www.jehovahsxwitnesses.tk.

NameWithheld

But I'm still dissapointed. I figured with the info on the internet and all the molestation scandals, I'd see bigger drop-offs and losses

You have to remember that there is a lot of momentum behind the WT growth, a lot of social pressure, etc. And as noted many times, the vast majority of the growth is from born and raised JW kids. But the telling numbers are those that have been 'gleaned' from the reports above, see some of the other threads with Battmann's posts about how effective the preaching work is. That's a major tell. And the # of baptisms that have remains extremely static for years. The dam is crumbling, and has a lot of small leaks, at some point it might burst. There has to be a breaking point - unless the WTBTS wises up and makes some changes.

The other tells are the fact that the same sad story comes up everywhere, conventions are down, meeting attendance is down, and the JWs are plain and simple sick and tired of being feed the same old 'do more do more' crap.

Edited by - NameWithheld on 21 November 2002 10:28:52