Posts by dropoffyourkeylee

41

Pioneer Hours Update

by Bartolomeo in

regular pioneers: 600 per year, 50 on average per month.auxiliary pioneers: 30 hours per monthauxiliary pioneers in march and april: fee reduced to 15 hours.

dropoffyourkeylee

A couple of comments on the 1943 quotation.

1. I haven't seen it before, and am amazed at the audacity to claim it is the Lord's direction. I have to laugh at the final statement:

This expression of the Lord’s will should be the end of all controversy. It is for your good that these requirements are made; for thereby you are enabled to prove your integrity and magnify the Lord’s name LOL

2. Considering the historical context. Rutherford had died in '42, and very soon after that it was a priority of the WT organization to get the brothers a minister qualification for the draft. WW2 draft was issue #1. This is quite clear from reading the book Jehovah's Witnesses in the Divine Purpose. They didn't have a lot of success in getting the minister classification; loads of the brothers were in jail. The made several organizational changes in the war years and into the '50s to give the brothers something to present to their draft boards.

A couple of the objections they were facing:

You don't have any training - The WT organization invented the Ministry School

You don't have any WT books providing training - The WT published Qualified to be Ministers

You are only 19, how can you be a minister - All JWs are ministers

You have no proof you are a preacher - Here are my written records of the hours spent in ministry

You are not fulltime - WT invents the 'pioneer', with specified fulltime hours

It was all about the draft back then. The 1954 Walsh case is worth a read as well, where it is clear that they were trying to maneuver their position to support their legal stance towards the draft issue.

8

Somehow I think nobody read the memo!

by LostintheFog1999 in

i came across an old notebook of mine when we were spring cleaning our attic space.. for some reason i had written down these two references from older wt magazines.. reading over the two of them now i can only think that elders didn't pay any attention to the message either at the time or since.

*** w75 8/1 p. 474 par.

14 elders presiding in a fine way ***.

dropoffyourkeylee

I seem to remember also a quotation to the effect that the elders were not 'thought police'. I have been unable to find that quote, so it could be I was thinking of one of these quotations in the OP.

In any case, many if not all of the elders I ever knew were dictatorial and policemen, and they liked it

20

Hell, what is it

by Anony Mous in

so perhaps we all heard the jw story about jesus talking to gehenna and he was referring to a place outside the city where there was a dump burning refuse and everyone knew what it meant.. according to jw.org: tradition relates that the valley of hinnom thereafter became a place for the disposal of garbage.

and the bible provides confirmation for this.

at jeremiah 31:40, for example, the valley of hinnom is evidently called the “low plain of the carcasses and of the fatty ashes.” there was also the “gate of the ash-heaps,” a gate that seems to have opened out onto the eastern extremity of the valley of hinnom at its juncture with the kidron valley.—nehemiah 3:13, 14.. i think i heard that in the study of the greatest teacher book first.

dropoffyourkeylee

Hell, damned if I know

41

Pioneer Hours Update

by Bartolomeo in

regular pioneers: 600 per year, 50 on average per month.auxiliary pioneers: 30 hours per monthauxiliary pioneers in march and april: fee reduced to 15 hours.

dropoffyourkeylee

Wow, they are just watering it down to nothing.

8

The UN, was the WTS given special knowledge?

by peacefulpete in

the league of nations and the united nations in prophetic speculation

how is it that so many individuals through the centuries have found such a pleasure in playing the role of prophet, despite the fact that their prophecies so seldom come true?

regularly their predictions fail, yet they go on with prophesying.

dropoffyourkeylee

Rutherford was definitely opposed to the League of Nations, but in this he was not alone. Wilson was one of the League architects, but there was such resistance to it within the US that the US never joined it.

I'd be interested to know more of why Rutherford opposed it, likely was more of a personal reason. I wonder if it had anything to do with the fact that William Jennings Bryan supported Wilson's efforts to get the US into the League. Rutherford had campaigned for Bryan back in the 1890's before becoming a Bible Student; maybe he wanted to take an opposition stand to Bryan.

76

Front row seats watching the collapse of watchtower

by Indoubtbigtime in

i’m a pimo ministerial servant and i won’t fade because i want to keep my front row seats watching what happens next few years.. my predictions are that this current governing body will slowly die off and the current younger helpers will be the next gb.

they will eventually have new light that they were wrong about 1914 and the overlapping generations.. the new light will be something on the lines of the last days are now because of king of north king of south pushing each other etc etc.

they will do their very best to burry old literature and try to change the past trying to make it sound like they were right all along just as they have done for 150 years now.

dropoffyourkeylee

It's not going away, as much as I might like to see it. There are just too many people who have given their lives to it and it is just human nature to never want to admit the whole thing was wrong to begin with.

That being said, there will no doubt be a lot of changes as the number of JWs and congregations declines over the next twenty to thirty years.

my opinions only:

I do expect elder and MS to be opened up to women

The 1914 doctrine will fade away eventually as it becomes more and more preposterous

The two class Christian (anointed vs great crowd) doctrine will have to go

The disfellowshipping practice will morph into something else, I don't know what, but it is unsustainable as it is.

27

So where oh where did Judge Rutherford come up with JW theology?

by Terry in

jw
friends

bits of unreported history that may be of casual interest… as to doctrinal origins.

sykes was one-of-a-kind in the pentecostal movement, but he was considered quite a maverick who went his own way with heretical teachings repugnant to the pentecostal faith.. joshua sykes’ congregation was integrated, unlike pastor russell’s public speeches/sermons where blacks and whites both could attend, but only in separate sections--sykes's members were sitting side by side in the pentecostal church.

this was considered dangerous and inflammatory at the time.. pentecostal preacher joshua sykes practiced racial and gender "integration" as early as 1908 -- having both african-american and female assistant preachers, staffers, and members.

dropoffyourkeylee

Many of the JW doctrines and practices that make me want to scream came from the Rutherford era. I have always maintained that much of his doctrinal and organizational changes were made as a knee-jerk reaction to his opposers. In particular he wanted to distance himself from his critics who broke away and formed their own Bible Student groups, what he called the 'evil slave' . I used to have some of the LHHM Bible Student books of the time period, and it was clear that the thinly disguised statements were directed at Rutherford. Likewise much of the vitriolic anti-Catholic retoric came out of the rivaly with Father Coughlin.

42

Have you ever been on a congregation picnic?

by LostintheFog1999 in

were you ever on a congregation picnic?

i was on several occasions.. the arrangements were often announced from the platform after the closing song and prayer by the last elder up on the platform.. sometimes it was included in the service meeting announcements as "on saturday we're meeting at 10.00am at the kingdom hall for field service, and after field service for anyone who wishes, especially for the younger ones, we will be having a congregation picnic meeting at the beach carpark on seaview road.".

well, according to the new elders manual you won't be hearing those words again.

dropoffyourkeylee

The congregation picnics and ballgames (the JW equivalent to the church social) disappeared about 2000 or so. I think it was mostly driven by liability fears, and the WT practice of self-insuring. Church socials have a substantial degree of risk for the sponsoring organization, with quite a number of lawsuits out of food poisoning and sports-related injuries.

10

Viruses Killed The Woolly Mammoths.

by LostintheFog1999 in

i can remember the original turquoise coloured evolution book produced by the organisation and the numerous public talks around it.

mind-blowing to a gullible youngster growing up in a jw family.. the flood of noah's day when thousands of tons of suspended water fell from the atmosphere and on hitting the cold poles instantly plunged the woolly mammoths into a deep freeze, to the extent that the last mouthful of grass was still there in the mouth in mid-chomp.

you can quickly see why a kid with a fertile imagination was transfixed by those apparently up-to-date scientific discoveries as presented by the wt org!.

dropoffyourkeylee

I am curious enough to look up the Wikipedia article on mammoths, which discusses several of the prevailing theories on their extinction. In short, there are three major theories:

Hunted to extinction by humans

Virus

post Glacial change of habitat

A combination of these reasons.

Funny, it doesn't mention Noah's flood as being a possible cause of extinction :)

11

Can I block someone who messages me.

by LostintheFog1999 in

i keep getting this person who wants me to email them with information already freely available on this website.. i have told him that i have no intention of emailing a total stranger from my personal email address, but they keep sending me this demand.. from bola to lostinthefog1999.

can you tell me how to block this persistent messager?.

dropoffyourkeylee

LITF are you referring to email, or to the message service within this site? If the latter, Simon would have to weigh in. I don't use the JW Discussion messaging much, but I don't see a way to block users.