playing devil's advocate here.... what's the difference between the gb changing bible interpretations compared to parliaments all over the world changing laws?
although the us constitution (=bible) remains untouched, congress passes i don't know how many new laws every year.
and of course people are expected to follow them.
I saw some of my cousins recently at a BBQ. When we were all kids my parents witnessed to them and their parents. Telling them of 1975 and the generation that will not pass away and how we would never grow old. Now a lot of my aunts/uncles are dead and our grandparents are gone. As I was leaving one them asked about our lives as witnesses.
I'm sure had I told them about the overlapping generation I would have got a big laugh.
so the wt used ex 1:6 to define a generation from the very beginning.
then in the this september broadcast the same person (splain) who spent 20 min with charts to explain a generation, makes a point that joseph and his brothers were very close in age?
(min 4:29).
I thought the new idea was the generation was marked by the event, like the Woodstock generation so ages dont matter so much
l could be wrong but I thought the event was the sign and in the comparison with Joseph the event was his life
does anybody remember some of the sensational demon stories jw's would tell back in the day?
i was a kid in the early 80's and i remember a few times hearing of people having real life encounters with demons.
for example, one sister claimed that before she became a jdub she would regularly talk to demons and they would even fix stuff like her washing machine!
Does anyone else remember such stories? The demons seem to have gone,
I haven't been part of the congregation for over twenty years. However one of my relatives related an experience with demons in the house of someone we knew very well. This was things flying around the room and other problems. Fairly recently.
A Witness who has spoken to me in recent years and expressed his doubts regarding the faith told me that when he spoke to an elder these experiences were mentioned as part of why he believes in God.
So it doesn't seem to be gone to me.
Also one of my customers not a witness told me of a very similar experience to one I heard of years ago in the congregation, the customer could not explain it and had the police in several times to investigate what was going on in the house. Nothing was found.
is the jesus of religion conservative, and the jesus of the new testament liberal?.
your thoughts?.
I was looking up fascism regarding my father not really knowing what it is. Anyway I came across this on Wikipedia
'A number of historians regard fascism either as a revolutionary centrist doctrine, as a doctrine that mixes philosophies of the left and the right, or as both those things'
Maybe Jesus was a bit of a fascist by this definition.
Being quite political ( we had a picture on the mantle piece of a politician ) and my father becoming a JW and supposedly a friend in the same party. There were some things that appealed to him.
I think my political views are slightly left of centre and his were more to the right. I struggled with being a witness and feel more comfortable with my Christianity since leaving.
after exiting the org, i mean cult, how have each of you felt personally about the lies you had been taught, the hurt from feeling betrayed by these people, actual hopes of once believed false teachings, rose colored lenses of seemingly just and right doctrines that turned out to be a bunch of horse $#!+, the shunning of family and friends?
right now i am going through the motions, i've just moved to a new home, which means hopefully no more elders searching for me at my previous address.. i can't help but feel sad though right now because of the fact that although i am not df'd ( maybe the elders will do it in absentia assuming i've been avoiding them and the 2 jc's they've invited me to as well as the last handwritten letter at my door before i moved ) my mom treats me as though i am dead to her, she says " i am living the life of a disfellowshipped person, and until i come back to jehovah this is how things will be because this was my choice to leave jehovah " ok i get it, but i don't- everyone has free will, so yes this was my choice but it is also her choice to shun me, especially after the "shun unrepentant wrongdoers" talk at the rc, funny how they come out with these talks to reel members back in.. she claims that she has an obligation to jehovah of which she promised to him after she was baptized not at 11, 13, or 17 ( young ages ) but fricken 26 years old.
i absolutely hate this organization and everything that it is, it's taken away my family and most importantly my own mother.. i always thought that a mothers love was to be unconditional, but hers for me is only conditional.
I felt happy and sad and angry.
I felt happy and saw some witnesses in service when I was leaving some twenty years ago and felt I wanted to stop and share with them the reason I was leaving but I knew they wouldn't get it so I didn't.
I felt sad that the end wasn't imminent and the fulfilment of Rev 21:4 wasn't soon.
I felt angry about the decisions I'd made based on false hope.
give me my romeo; and, when he shall die,take him and cut him out in little stars,and he will make the face of heaven so finethat all the world will be in love with nightand pay no worship to the garish sun.. -- romeo and juliet 3 ii.
I can't say that I really like Shakespeare. Admittedly I have not read much or seen many plays. We had to read Romeo and Juliette and Richard III at school and not long ago I saw the play The Comedy of Errors and I started reading The Two Gentlemen of Verona a while ago but it remains half read. I saw Doctor Faustus (Christopher Marlowe) last summer performed in a large old cemetery which seemed like a great setting and I really enjoyed it.
at the moment i dont beleive in anything.
im pretty much an open book, but my critical mind is very alert to bullshit.
but anyway i decided to re-read the bible with a non jw filter.. i researched online first which is supposed to be the best translation out there.
when i stopped attending the meetings I found the bible more interesting and read a lot more of it and enjoyed it.
when i first met my wife and on that so important first date i was 21 years old and sadly broke, she was an 18 year old au pair.
any way i treated her to mcdonald's but she had to pay for the meal.
now over 20 years later and still together, i realize how lucky i was she didn't say on that first date " if you can't afford to pay "our" mcdonald's meal f...off" .
b not just the first date
if a jw wanted to get a concealed carry permit, would the society have any moral or ethical problems with it?
in other words, if one of your elders noticed you were carrying concealed, would they be apt to just ignore it or would they counsel you on it?
.
I know elders wife told me has conceal carry license nothing to do with work evidently the police can tell by her license plate or something. Always lived in a big city in USA
we like to think we are logical and have good reasons for for our beliefs.
no more so than when it comes to our reasons for rejecting the truth claims of jws.
we reject their version of history, such as the date of the fall of jerusalem, because it doesn't agree with the historical evidence.
Having said that, regardless of our reasons for leaving, we are all reinforced in TTATT as we get to know and come in contact with the growing exJW community.
I don't find this to bee true four me.
