Nathan Natas

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Posts by Nathan Natas

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  44

  Why Do People Become Jehovah's Witnesses?

  by minimus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  besides being raised in the religion , why do people become jws?

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  Nathan Natas

  This has been an interesting and informative discussion!

  Let me turn the examination on myself and try to answer "Why did you go along with yo "mama's club" for about 20 years?

  Let's see:

  1. I was raised to be an obedient and respectful kid. I wasn't PERFECT, but I wasn't a "rebel" or a "hell raiser."

  2. I have always been somewhat gullible; it takes me a while to figure out that someone is trying to deceive me. (Believe it or not, this continues to be the case today. I compensate by being generally reclusive.) I believed in Santa, Jesus and Jehovah longer than I should have.

  3. When my mom converted, she destroyed the family. Dad split, we ceased communication with all my "satanic" aunts, uncles and cousins. Thus my access to contrasting opinions was curtailed. I had no school friends. We moved from one low-rent hole-in-the-wall to another frequently enough that by the time I left High School I had attended a total of 8 different schools. I was never, in my mind, part of the "class of XX". I never thought about it.

  4. ARMAGEDDON WAS COMING! (I told you I was gullible.) I learned that I had a share in a great life-saving work. I did what I was told to do.

  5. If I ignored the pain, it was easy. So I ignored the pain, mostly.

  How did I change my mind and eventually leave?

  I began to see inconsistencies between what I was told "the world" was like and what I actually experienced. "Worldly people" weren't terrible; they were PEOPLE.

  I began to notice the little mental manipulations and mind games that the Elders played. "Your sideburns are 1/8 of an inch (3mm) too long" was one example. Trying to use ME to hammer other JW kids was another: "Brother Natas, do you feel that Sister Sally's dress is appropriate for a Christian?"

  (My answer was, "It doesn't bother me.") It was a LONG dress way back when long dresses came into fashion, and Sister Sally was an Elder's kid who was going to become a pawn in an Elder Pissing Match if I resplied any other way.

  I expressed an interest in "serving where the need was greater," saying I would like to see better results from my door-to-door work and I was told by an elder that my motivation was incorrect. He might have been right about that. I didn't pursue the idea a minute longer.

  Then I found out that one of the "six-month TRUTH BOOK wonders" in our congregation was a pedophile, and that cracked my cosmic egg. It took time, but I was finally OUT.
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  44

  Why Do People Become Jehovah's Witnesses?

  by minimus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  besides being raised in the religion , why do people become jws?

  .

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Nathan Natas

  My mother was receptive to the JW in 1955 because:

  1. Her father died when she was just entering her teens, and she was "Daddy's girl;" she missed him very much. So the promise of a resurrection "any minute now" had tremendous appeal for her.

  2. She was in an unhappy marriage and wanted to have God make things better for her "any minute now."

  3. Like EVERYONE at that time, she was concerned about the threat of nuclear annihilation; God would make things better for everyone "any minute now."

  4. She was uneducated; when her Father died, her Mother took her out of school and put her to work on her white-trash hillbilly farm. (My grandmother was probably at least half crazy AND ignorant AND cruel.) My mother never developed a mature perspective on the world that could have neutralized the Watchtower's yammering. She didn;t have any idea about how "the world" worked.

  She's 90 now and a desperate "Klingon."

  "Klingon to The Kingdumb like you didn't know better."
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  18

  Who really is the faithful and discreet NATHEER SALIH ??

  by Calebs Airplane in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  we know he was faithful to frederick franz (or frederick franz was faithful to him).. we know he was discreet because so little is known about him today.

  for example, we know that he was in the writing department (even though he never professed to being a jw), that wore expensive jewelry and that he was frederick franz spokesman (or did i get that backwards?)....

  also, much has been said about salihs strange hebrew-to-english bible translations (supposedly used by frederick franz when writing certain wt articles) and several illuminati and/or freemason conspiracy theories have been analyzed, yet this guy has managed to slip under the radar almost completely unnoticed by all jws and will probably be completely forgotten in just a few years.. so, who really is the faithful and discreet natheer salih?

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  Nathan Natas

  CoCo said, "Strange, other men with that name . . ."

  No, not so strange at all. If you do an internet search RIGHT NOW for FRED FRANZ, you will find about two dozen of them alive in the US.

  Virtually no name is completely unique.
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  33

  discussion w/ Barbara G. Harrison today

  by Dogpatch in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i just got off the phone with author barbara grizzuti harrison (visions of glory; italian days, etc.

  ) who is currently living in brooklyn and has serious health problems.

  she is now 67, but is very mentally alert and still has an excellent sense of humor!

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  Nathan Natas

  Follow-up:

  Sadly, the free version of VISIONS OF GLORY that "dungbeetle" and I worked so hard to produce for Randy is no longer available on FREEMINDS. Ask Randy why.
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  53

  The Real Reason why the WT predicted Armageddon in 1975

  by OrphanCrow in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i am of the opinion that the wt doctrine is influenced more by external factors that it is by internal ones.

  one of the doctrines that has puzzled me for some time is the armageddon prediction of 1975. why would the wts make this prediction?

  what was their real purpose?.

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  Nathan Natas

  Sir82 said, "It was Freddy's idea all the way. He thought it up all on his own and pushed for its acceptance."

  Well, not entirely, really. First it seems that "Perfesser" Franz accepted the basic premise of Archbishop James Usher's (Irish Protestant) decision in 1654 to "reverse-engineer" his Bible so that he could determine the "Bible-based" date for the creation of Adam. Usher settled on "the entrance of the night preceding the 23rd day of October... the year before Christ 4004"

  Our Beloved Perfesser Freddy (Peace be upon him) had confidence that he could repeat Usher's exercise, which he did, several times, each time 'discovering' a reason why God's revelation to him was incomplete and innaccurate. Two examples are the 'discovery' that there was no year ZERO, and that Eve, God's presumed last creative act, was not created immediately after Adam, but some unknown period of time later.

  "When prophecy fails, your skills at improv shall be tested." Kinnison 3:16

  Then there are the undocumented contributions of Freddy's Jewish-Iraqi Bethelite friend, Natheer Salih. In fact, Mssr. Salih is so underdocumented as to be invisible, so I am going to do a very cruel thing: I will drop his name and then drop the mic.
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  53

  The Real Reason why the WT predicted Armageddon in 1975

  by OrphanCrow in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i am of the opinion that the wt doctrine is influenced more by external factors that it is by internal ones.

  one of the doctrines that has puzzled me for some time is the armageddon prediction of 1975. why would the wts make this prediction?

  what was their real purpose?.

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  2. 
  3. 
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  Nathan Natas

  No discussion of 1975 is complete without mention of the 1943 Watchtower publication "The Truth Shall Make You Free," which provided step-by-step "Bible-based" evidence on page 152 that 6,000 years of human history would be marked in 1972.

  Certainly in 1943 when this book was published no one had any inkling that the tax-exempt status of the WTB&TS would be challenged in 1971.
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  15

  Is this an "all-time" Low?

  by Je.suis.oisif in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  i just wanted to vent, nothing more.

  my aunt died in edinburgh last week.

  her obituary facilitates adding candles & personal messages.

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  Nathan Natas

  Sorry to hear your carrot is not feeling grate; take two radishes and call me in the morning.
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  13

  We all "shun."

  by stillin in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  an old friend of mine committed suicide this week.

  he was a great guy; pleasant to be around, a hard worker, kind.

  everybody at work liked him.. then something changed.

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  Nathan Natas

  Shunning is an institutionalized process in the WTB&TS; it is VERY different from the decision individuals make. In the WTB&TS a judicial committee of three men makes a decision and EVERYONE is expected to fall in line regardless of their personal opinion; failure to comply puts the non-compliant at risk for their own shunning.
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  5

  Marques Houston's Baptism - video

  by darkspilver in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  r'n'b star and former immature/imx singer marques houston getting baptized:.

  video.

  https://www.instagram.com/p/bjhhfwnaf6k/.

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  Nathan Natas

  Yeah, that worked out SO WELL for Prince.
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  13

  Worshiping a piece of stone

  by FedUpJW in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  today one of the members of the local congregation who is somewhat limited intellectually was showing off a small bit of cut granite stone.

  as he did so he made sure to let everyone know that it was given to him by the congregation service overseer who just completed his second or third round of bragging rights slave labor at warwick.

  he mentioned that, "brother _______ gave this to me as a piece of reality from warwick.

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  Nathan Natas

  The saying goes, "by the black stone steel itself is sharpened." I have learned a bit more by sharing in this discussion, and I am happy to share what I've learned.

  Here is a bit of what Wikipedia has to say about The Kaaba (I spelled the transliteration incorrectly earlier):

  "The Kaaba (Arabic: the Cube"), is a building at the center of Islam's most sacred mosque, Al-Masjid al-Haram, in Mecca, al-Hejaz, Saudi Arabia. It is the most sacred Muslim site in the world. It is considered the "House of Allah" and has a similar role to the Tabernacle and Holy of Holies in Judaism. Wherever they are in the world, Muslims are expected to face the Kaaba when performing prayer. From any point in the world, the direction facing the Kaaba is called the qibla. The sanctuary around the Kaaba is called Al-Masjid al-Haram (Sacred Mosque). One of the Five Pillars of Islam requires every Muslim who is able to do so to perform the hajj pilgrimage at least once in their lifetime. Multiple parts of the hajj require pilgrims to make tawaf, the circumambulation seven times around the Kaaba in a counter-clockwise direction...

  The Black Stone (or Hajarul Aswad) is the eastern cornerstone of the Kaaba, the ancient stone building located in the center of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It is revered by Muslims as an Islamic relic which, according to Muslim tradition, dates back to the time of Adam and Eve."

  Millions of Muslims and their apologistss will tell you the Kaaba is not worshipped.

  
  

  Above, a bunch of people "not worshipping."