my 17 year old daughter told me 2 men were at the door saturday looking for adults that lived in the house.my wife and i were out of town for 2 days.they had suits on and carrying book bags.
they asked if she was over 18. she replied that she wasn't.
they left without indentifiying themselves.
we were told to say.. representatives of the watchtower bible and track society..
I remember reading somewhere that we were NOT allowed to say that we represented the watchtower. There was some sort of legal liability the society wanted to avoid. They want the r&f to go out and sell mags, but not take the responsiblity of allowing the drones to represent their legal interests.
I was always taught to use start the presentation with: "we are bible students visiting our neighbors."
does the bible teach that adam was a perfect human?
do any mainstream christian churches hold this teaching of human physical perfection?.
(i know that adam and eve is a myth, but bear with me for the purposes of discussion!
I always had a problem with the term "perfection." What does this mean, other than physical attributes?
How does a perfect person act as compared to an inperfect human? Are they smarter? Is their memory capacity greater? Are they more moral? Are they less selfish? Are they kinder? When you start going beyond just the physical attributes, it gets a little foggy.
And just because a person may be perfect in form, that does not mean that they cant break their arm, or lose a limb in an accident. Or evey die. If a perfect human has a building fall on him or her, they will get smashed just like someone who is less than perfect.
are you trying to give nvr a run for his money when it comes to bizzar topics?.
no nvr, that wasn't a challenge.....ok, maybe it was.. .
this is one celebration i look forward to even more than christmas.. the world in general has christmas, and that's fun.. but only ex-jws have non-attendance of the memorial to celebrate.
Happy Freedom Day, NewYork44M
Thank you very much. Lets celebrate. I accept presents, cash or both.
are you trying to give nvr a run for his money when it comes to bizzar topics?.
no nvr, that wasn't a challenge.....ok, maybe it was.. .
this is one celebration i look forward to even more than christmas.. the world in general has christmas, and that's fun.. but only ex-jws have non-attendance of the memorial to celebrate.
The Memorial is generally the first meeting a newly interested one attends and the last meeting that a fader attends. So there is a lot of significance of either attending or not attending the memorial.
For those fading from the org, non-attendance to the memorial is considered the last shackle that is released. If you want an name, lets call it freedom day.
i used to read the old h2o site and i believe they brought up that this place was up......either that or i typed in jws on search.
The link from freeminds.org
my mom learned the truth 40+ years ago from my uncles and some people in europe.
she has been going regularly since 1978 or so.. lately she's been going to some meetings only due to health.. yesterday at noon she got a visit from the p.o.
and he made a "pastoral visit".
The P.O. did not answer her question, and said that only the faithful and discreeet slave know!!!
It is possible that the elder did not remember the change,, only that there was a change. Those deeply entrenched do not understand or think about these "deep" doctornal issues. This just proves, that understanding is not a prerequisite for getting ahead in the organization.
My former wife was like that. She absolutely believes she has the truth. But she really does not understand the details of her faith. And could never articulate any details in a cohesive manner.
here is the text of the box.
could someone please confirm that it is correct, as i garnered this cut and paste from a non-witness locale, and have no way to confirm that it has not been altered.. question box.
* does "the faithful and discreet slave" endorse independent groups of witnesses who meet together to engage in scriptural research or debate?matt.
"a few associates of our organization have formed groups to do independent research on Bible-related subjects" - they don't even call them brothers and sisters, setting up the wall that will be erected when they cast them off for violation in the future perhaps?
Good catch on the language. They are not called, "brothers," or even "friends." Association does not imply membership. The society is clearly trying to draw a "line in the sand." Of course, what else would you expect from a cult?
one thing that i really enjoyed taking part in was shepherding the flock.
i saw this as the perfect opportunity to really encourage others and help play a part in strengthening them.. however...... i started to despise giving shepherding calls.
the elders that i went with seemed to suck out any possible joy that both parties could receive from the visits.
In the congregation where I was an elder we met every month to go on shepherding calls.
A controversy arose amoung the elders related to whether or not you could count time for a shepherding call. I was with the PO who insisted that you could count time but only if there was an unbaptized person present when we meet.
So, we go to this family. Mom and Dad were waiting for us. The PO asked where the kids are. They replied that they are in bed. They thought that sending the kids to bed early would give them more time to talk to us. They may have had things they wanted to talk to us about without the kids around.
The PO says: "Go wake up the children, they need to be here." They wake up the kids, and for the next hour and a half the PO goes on an on about some stupid point. It was like a talk that had no beginning or end. The whole time the kids sat there in silence not knowing what the hell was going on. Most of the kids were half asleep.
As we were walking back to the care, the PO told me to be sure to count your time because there were unbaptized kids there.
i went to the grocery store today - no that's not your fault.. it's 103 degrees today, not bad.
there were three people sitting in the shade in front of the grocery store.
there was a middle aged woman, an older man in a wheelchair, and a thin man whose frozen smile screams "elder.
Good job. I aspire to be you.
one thing that i really enjoyed taking part in was shepherding the flock.
i saw this as the perfect opportunity to really encourage others and help play a part in strengthening them.. however...... i started to despise giving shepherding calls.
the elders that i went with seemed to suck out any possible joy that both parties could receive from the visits.
I was part of a similar experience. I accompanied another elder on a shepherding call with a family that was quite irregular to the meetings.
The elder became very coercive in his tactics to infilct guilt to get these people back. I was very unconfortable with these tactics. Several times during the conversation I, unsuccessfully attempted to intervene to attempt to change the tone of the conversation.
As a general rule, the calls were used to keep the flock in line, not to really address real problems.
