Cults try to make you form a maladaptive relationship with group leadership. It could be any group. Once that happens, the original rationale for the formation of the group to begin with is lost and irrelevant.
Sea Breeze
JoinedPosts by Sea Breeze
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53
What makes a cult (in the pejorative sense)?
by Vanderhoven7 inmichael moore writes:.
a cult is an organization that enslaves minds and destroys families using cult mind control.
cult mind control involves orchestrated deception, social pressure, psychological abuse, and repetitive indoctrination (brainwashing) centering around an unchallengeable ideology enforced in a totalitarian way in a closed socially-separatist community setting.
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109
The point of existence and how it refutes the Trinity
by slimboyfat inrowan williams, the former archbishop of canterbury gave an interesting answer to the somewhat stark question, what’s the point of us existing?
as a christian, my starting point is that we exist because the most fundamental form of activity, energy, call it what you like, that is there, is love.
that is, it’s a willingness that the other should be.
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Sea Breeze
CAN THE UNITARIANS ON THIS BOARD WHO REJECT THE TRI-PARTITE NATURE OF MAN PLEASE EXPLAIN HOW A MAN CAN RESURRECT HIMSELF FROM THE DEAD, WHILE HE IS DEAD IF HE IS NOT GOD?
Please just answer a simple question and put this issue to rest. HOW CAN YOU ALL CONTINUE TO IGNORE THIS QUESTION AND STILL FAKE A MISUNDERSTANDING OF THE NATURE OF GOD?(See John 10:18 & John 2:19) Either Jesus is God or a liar. Choose a position.
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Are There any JW Teaching that you DO Agree With?
by NotFormer in(apologies for the typo in the title.
"teaching" should read "teachings".
i misread vanderhoven7's most recent post as being the above.
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Sea Breeze
Yes.
Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and a significant number of Protestant denominations are Amillennial, meaning that they do not believe in a literal thousand year reign of Christ on earth. It is the dominant view in Christianty.However 2/3 of Evangelicals believe in a literal thousand year reign, just like JW's do.
Amillennialism is a holdover from the 4th century due to the symbolic interpretations of theologian and philosopher - Augustine. It left a big theological hole in the minds of many Christians that never heard of a literal earthly Kingdom Reign. Watchtower exploited this theological void and it made them sound like they had the "truth", and were experts. There are countless passages that point to a literal reign of the Messiah on the earth.
To this day JW's are mostly unaware that hundreds of millions of Evangelical believers believe in a "Paradise Earth", they just don't call it that. They call it The Millennial Reign.Watchtower used this basic truth to sound like they were the only ones with this view, and then they used their influence to dupe people into rejecting the New Covenant "for the forgiveness of sins that Jesus offered to "whosoever" in Mt. 26: 27-28.
Without the blood covering found in the new covenant, JW's will never see the kingdom - in heaven or earth.
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The point of existence and how it refutes the Trinity
by slimboyfat inrowan williams, the former archbishop of canterbury gave an interesting answer to the somewhat stark question, what’s the point of us existing?
as a christian, my starting point is that we exist because the most fundamental form of activity, energy, call it what you like, that is there, is love.
that is, it’s a willingness that the other should be.
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Sea Breeze
@SBF
I don't believe the Trinity is refuted at all:
God is love. Love can only be expressed in community. God is a communty of three persons in one substance. Therefore he is complete.
God's nature requires him to be such that he is.
To say there was a time God couldn't love and needed to create us in order to be complete, is to say he wasn't complete without us and therefore wasn't God at some point in the past.
It suggest an upsidedown world. One where God needs us and not the other way around.
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What is the current Watchtower "rent charge per publisher" for Kingdom Halls in the USA???
by Balaamsass2 ini was following a few threads in reddit from current pimo jws complaining about local announcements regarding halls being short on their per publisher "rent payments".
third gen and i have been out pomo for a while...so how much is this charge now?
could this be part of the recent push to get people to "come back" or get re-instated...if it even is online and 15 minutes of service per month?
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Sea Breeze
Last I heard the assessment per publisher in the U.S. was: 11.50 per month for the World Wide Work
Wow, that is a small price to pay for being able to believe that there is no consciousness after you die, no judgment after you die, and that even if you screw everything up in this life you get your sins forgiven by dying. A big bonus (at no additional charge) is getting a do-over living in a timber-frame mansion next to a giant waterfall and a global petting zoo.
Seems too good to be true.
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What the new JW light position really is 👍
by ElderBerry ini’m still an elder and i consider myself jw light.
as my fellow elders are.
we don’t throw our weight around like elders used to in the past, it’s all very easy going these days.
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Sea Breeze
They do shadow birthday celebrations and ignore most of the directions from the fat old men in upstate NY.
Wow. It's psychologically worse now than it used to be. If you are a kid growing up in a family "strong in the truth", and you see elders being hypocritical; that would serve to wake up kids even faster than before when everyone believed the GB spoke with the voice of God.
When you wake up at 13 or 14 in a family that is "strong in the truth", there is literally no where to go but the street, especially if you are a kid who is not afraid of confrontation and who likes to talk alot.
Kids who talk too much don't make it far in a cult. May God protect them as they try to navigate the complete chaos they were born into. -
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Ebion
by peacefulpete inearly christianity was every bit, if not more, diverse than christianity today.
one of the very early sects was named the ebionites.
we have unfortunately nothing left of their own writings apart from a few quotes from what epiphanius believed was their recension of matthew.
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Sea Breeze
Early Christianity was every bit, if not more, plagued by heretics as it is today. Fortunately, we have thosands pages of wrtings from the foremost Christian leaders (then and now) naming who they are, how they got started, and the specific teachings that made them abberant.
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What is the current Watchtower "rent charge per publisher" for Kingdom Halls in the USA???
by Balaamsass2 ini was following a few threads in reddit from current pimo jws complaining about local announcements regarding halls being short on their per publisher "rent payments".
third gen and i have been out pomo for a while...so how much is this charge now?
could this be part of the recent push to get people to "come back" or get re-instated...if it even is online and 15 minutes of service per month?
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Sea Breeze
"Pay us money every month and we will let your old "friends" and family talk to you again !"
Cults sell you things you already have, but never noticed.
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What does God eat ?
by stan livedeath inbeans ?
( human beans ).
to those of you that believe in god: do you all believe the same thing ?.
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Sea Breeze
Fish
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The Share of Religious Americans will continue to decline- New York Times. Why? New Pew Study
by Balaamsass2 inlocally, in northern california i have seen/heard a drop in jw and mainstream church attendance especially in person attendance.
(exception: a new creepy local new-age charismatic/pentecostal group: "bethel church" 11,000 and growing mega church(kundalini yoga/sex combined with prosperity gospel, trumpism, guns, rock music, dancing, glitter, speaking in tongues, and faith healing).. for me this paragraph sums it up regarding jehovah's witnesses: " ...smith described organized religion to me as having become a “polluted” idea in the american mainstream, because of the publicity around sex abuse scandals and financial malfeasance in many different faiths in the ’80s and ’90s as millennials came of age.
“the scandals violated most of the virtues believed to make religion good,” smith wrote.
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Sea Breeze
Looks like the Spaghetti monster church has been declinng too.
On July 24, 2013, CNS News reported: "Atheism is in decline worldwide, with the number of atheists falling from 4.5% of the world’s population in 1970 to 2.0% in 2010 and projected to drop to 1.8% by 2020, according to a new report by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Mass.
On September 27, 2014 in a blog post entitled The Atheist Disillusionment, the prominent atheist PZ Myers declared:
“ "I will make a prediction, right here and now.... The number of people identifying as atheists will stagnate or even shrink, because organized atheism is happily in the process of destroying itself with regressive social attitudes, scandals, and their bizarre focus on irrelevant metaphysical differences that don’t help people...Unless we change. I don’t know that we can". Atheists as a percentage of the world's population have declined since 1970 and global atheism is expected to face long term decline.
On March 15, 2024, Frontier Partners International reported concerning global atheism: "Simultaneously, atheism, which once saw a peak around 1970 with 165 million adherents, is on the decline. The current growth trend for atheism is -0.12 percent, with their number falling from 147 million in 2020 to 146 million in 2024.
