I have come to believe that the anti-Christmas, anti-most other observances came about in the Rutherford years when about half of Bible Students left. Families were split, and the holidays were when the two sides would come together. This Rutherford did not want, so any holiday which would bring the two sides of a family together was eliminated. It was a control move on the part of Rutherford.
dropoffyourkeylee
JoinedPosts by dropoffyourkeylee
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35
The Real Purpose of Shunning Holidays
by metatron inthe watchtower endlessly prates on about pagan traditions in popular holidays - while the bible itself is loaded with subtle pagan religious ideas - such as wicked spirits being cast "into tartarus" (a pagan greek place in which the rebels against zeus got imprisoned) or "sacred secret" - a term the apostle paul likes that was adopted from pagan 'mystery' religions.. then we can throw in the reference to being divinely 'called christians' in acts - which uses a pagan term that refers to demonic oracles of the day.. of course, the watchtower has no objection to accumulating millions of pieces of paper that feature occult symbols (any dollar bill!).
in recent years, for good measure, they have added birthdays and thanksgiving to the official banned list, despite the sketchiest justification for doing so.
if birthdays are wrong simply because they figure in two negative accounts, then it makes much more sense to ban dogs as pets because of all the negativity in the bible about them!.
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33
Gravitation and Electric Energy, Golden Age, August 17, 1932 [Repost]
by VM44 inthe sheer literal stupidity of clayton woodworth publishing this article in the golden age demands that it be reposted.. this article is in the "not even wrong" category!.
*** the golden age 1932 august 17, pp.707-710 ***.
gravitation and electric energy.
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dropoffyourkeylee
Now this is really funny! I wonder who wrote this. Do you think Woodworth wrote it himself and used a pen name?
Usually when they printed something like this it was intended to somehow tie into their wacky beliefs, but I don't see the connection. Anyone? What were they trying to accomplish by printing this?
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2011 Watchtower publisher statistics with analysis
by jwfacts inthe 2012 yearbook has released the publisher statistics for the 2011 service year.
a scan of the report can be found at http://www.jwfacts.com/images/2011-publisher-report.pdf and i have started updating the graphs at http://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/statistics.php.
as expected, it is following on from similar trends to the last 15 years.
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dropoffyourkeylee
In terms of growth, my observation (midwest US) is that the 'growth' they keep reporting is coming from two sources; 1) from children becoming unbaptized publishers, and 2) from re-activation of formerly inactive, such as family members who have attended all along with spouse or parents. There are VERY FEW newcomers who buy into it anymore. I can't remember the last time a respectable couple started studying and came in, as was common in the pre '95 days. The number of baptisms at assemblies is at a level so low I am astonished. Last one I attended had 1 baptized with 750 in attendance.
A number of people have commented that there is growth in the foreign speaking congregations. My personal observation is otherwise. I have a family member who transferred to a French-speaking hall about 4 years ago. Virtually all their 'growth', increase in attendance, is in additional English speakers who transfer to French. They also pick up a number of immigrants (mostly from Africa or the Carribean) who bacame JW in their home country and attend the French congregation here. This congregation has never yet had a French-speaking convert to accept the message, despite the fact that about half of their congregations are pioneers. Pioneering for them consists of driving around to specific addresses supplied by the English speaking congregations when they run across a French speaker... talk about ineffective... it can take hours just to get to 2 or 3 addresses.
On another note: The last 'genuine' anointed, and I use the term loosely to mean someone who was a JW and accepted consecration before 1935, died in '89.
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46
Anti-Apostate blog has fascinating articles, photos and opinions!
by Terry inthe governing body of jehovah's witnesses has decided (oct., 2000) that the positions of president, vice president, secretary-treasurer, etc.
in the legal corporations (e.g., watch tower bible and tract society of pennsylvania, watchtower bible and tract society of new york, inc.,) do not have to be filled by anointed brothers.
therefore, all of the brothers that were currently holding these positions, all of whom were on the governing body, have resigned.
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dropoffyourkeylee
Surely someone on the site has lived in or lives in Mexico and can give a first hand report. There must be thousands of the brothers in Mexico who have faced the military issue there. Can we hear from some of them? Or, maybe there is a Spanish equivalent to this board that someone with Spanish skills can search.
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A little example of how severely the contributions for the Society are drying up
by sir82 injust a little tidbit from the congregation i attend..... the congregation has approximately 120 publishers.. well over 1000 magazines per month are picked up, not to mention all the books, brochures, and tracts that are picked up.. there was a "local needs" part on the service meeting recently, asking for more contributions.. it seems our congregation has averaged just about $300 per month contributions to the "worldwide work" over the past year.. .
assuming 1500 magazines / month, that's just 20 cents per magazine - and that completely ignores all other literature that is picked up.. the last price the magazines had, 20+ years ago, was 25 cents per issue.
with inflation that would have been about 50 cents each now.. just another sign of how severely the contriutions to the society are drying up..... .
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dropoffyourkeylee
How long before the design of KH's and Assy. Halls is modified so that they are even easier to sell ?
I believe they are already doing this and have been for some time. For Instance, new Kingdom Hall locations are nearly always in prime locations (within sight of major highways), KH designs can no longer have the popular 'watchtower' shaped brickwork you used to see (existing Kingdom Halls are instructed to remove the brickwork at the next remodel), Halls with resale value are selected for renovation while others with less value (in out-of-the way neighborhoods) are allowed to deteriorate. In the 70s thru 90s, Halls were often built without windows, recent renovation of those halls have added windows.
All of these things to me indicate preparations for resale. The same holds true for Assembly Halls. Newly built ones are of a special design which would be easy to market.
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Anti-Apostate blog has fascinating articles, photos and opinions!
by Terry inthe governing body of jehovah's witnesses has decided (oct., 2000) that the positions of president, vice president, secretary-treasurer, etc.
in the legal corporations (e.g., watch tower bible and tract society of pennsylvania, watchtower bible and tract society of new york, inc.,) do not have to be filled by anointed brothers.
therefore, all of the brothers that were currently holding these positions, all of whom were on the governing body, have resigned.
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dropoffyourkeylee
Look at the bright side. The person who put this site together is intelligent and studious. He has no future in Watchtower leadership!! YooHoo!
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Very tiny change to Service Meeting Announcements protocol.
by Open mind infor those who want to keep up with the "pure language", i found out this week that at the most recent elder's school, they were told that the announcements should no longer include the following:.
1. name of public talk and speaker for sunday.
2. synopsis of all the parts that are coming up on the rest of the service meeting.
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dropoffyourkeylee
Is the WT prohibition of "bulletin board" based on the related Papal Bull?
I was told years ago that the word bulletin was related to the Papal Bull, and 'We are not in the Catholic Church, brothers!', so the word bulletin was out. Of course, silly, but that was the reason given that we did not call it a bulletin board. This, despite that fact, as Blondie noted, the early predecessor of the Kingdom Ministry was called the Bulletin.
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Credit Donation Machines in Assembly Halls
by leonbus23 ini just received an email from the ex-jw meetup group coordinator in phoenix.
she stated that the jws are putting credit donation machines at the assembly halls.
is this true?
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dropoffyourkeylee
So I was at an assembly recently and had to try it out. My understanding is that the fee for a credit card purchase that goes to the credit card company is about $5, so if I donate $5, doesn't the majority go to the company and almost zero to the WT?
They accept either debit or credit, and they didn't say anything about a minimum donation. I got a laugh when the receipt said 'JWAH' as the vendor.
They are making a joke out of Christianity
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21
Why did/does there appear to be an unusually high number of "Germanic" names in the Governoring Body compared to others?
by StoneWall intoday as i was researching past and present members of the governoring body of j.w.
's something stood out to me that seemed out of proportion towards other name origins.. the vast majority appeared to be from the germanic peoples.
either they were originally from germany themself or their parents immigrated from germany.. here are some of the ones i researched and you should be able to spot just from their names a hint of their origins:.
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dropoffyourkeylee
I agree with Blondie.
It is a natural tendency to look for (and find) patterns and conspiracies where there aren't any.
The early Watchtower membership ( and 'anointed' leadership) was mostly from the U.S. Furthermore, they came from, nearly always, from areas of the US which were predominantly Protestant (remember all that anti_Catholic rhetoric?), which meant that they were often of either British (England or Scotland) and German heritage. So the common German-sounding names is merely an indication of the early 20th century population of the US who were likely to be attracted to the Watchtower message.
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Journal of Philosophical Psychology cites JWs as an example of a self-validating belief system
by slimboyfat ina recent article in the journal of philosophical psychology titled: 'how convenient!
the epistemic rationale of self-validating belief systems' by maarten boudry says that one of the defense mechanisms of self-validating belief systems is "multiple endpoints and moving targets" and cites jws to illustrate the point.
here are the sections that discuss jws:.
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dropoffyourkeylee
Thanks Slimboy for finding this info and posting it.
I was interested to see that one of the sources was by Melton. I can add that the first book which set me on the road out was "The Encyclopedia of American Religions, Vol II, by J. Gordon Melton, editor. It's coverage of Adventism and the Russell-JW religion and offshoots were an eye opener.