Posts by vienne

Perry, Yes, we have a web site. the blog where the chapter is displayed. to see more click on the 'older posts' button at the bottom of the page. The blog is very rich in content. We've been adding to it since 2007/8.

6

Watchtower History

by vienne in

some of you read our history blog and have read our first two books.

we're pushing to finish volume 2, separate identity.

a rough draft chapter from volume 2 is up on our blog.

vienne

Russell never met White, and they never attended the same Church. Russell was a one faith/ age to come believer, never a seventh day adventist.

6

Watchtower History

by vienne in

some of you read our history blog and have read our first two books.

we're pushing to finish volume 2, separate identity.

a rough draft chapter from volume 2 is up on our blog.

vienne

Some of you read our history blog and have read our first two books. We're pushing to finish volume 2, Separate Identity. A rough draft chapter from volume 2 is up on our blog. This is a temporary post. If you are interested in an academic treatment of Watch Tower history, you will, I hope, find this interesting.

https://truthhistory.blogspot.com/

5

Can you help with this?

by vienne in

i need a scan of this: the apocalyptic interpretation of history of american premillennial groups, phd dissertation by carl ludwigson, 1944. if you have it, please contact me..

vienne

yes, please. I do still need a copy.

44

What crime should elders report?

by kramer in

jw
friends

so, i am trying to get my head around what the right position of elders should be when they come across crime is.. i think i get the issuess around clergy confidentiality - and how that might potentially be breached when they talk about it to other elders, let alone the police.. but if people are saying that elders - or clergy of another faith should report crime to the police when it is confessed to the, then where are the boundaries.. so if someone says they should report to police on a confessed example of child abuse, that's one thing.. how about reporting to police consensual sex between a 19year old and 15 year old - which is statutory rape in the uk.

how about criminal fraud if they come across it.

assault on a congregant?.

vienne

It may seem like a 'fine distinction' but aren't elders just clergy? They aren't civil authority. So while 'sin' may be reported to them, the police should be contacted first if crime is involved. If we bypass our civil obligations, the consequences rest on us. Theocratic Government is a myth, a false name for church authority. Go to the civil authorities first, and then, if you feel so compelled, to church authority.

5

Can you help with this?

by vienne in

i need a scan of this: the apocalyptic interpretation of history of american premillennial groups, phd dissertation by carl ludwigson, 1944. if you have it, please contact me..

vienne

I need a scan of this: The Apocalyptic Interpretation of History of American Premillennial Groups, PhD dissertation by Carl Ludwigson, 1944. If you have it, please contact me.

18

J.W.Sisters are not recognized as part of the 144000 Anointed class by the Governing Body of Jehovah`s Witnesses and never have been.

by smiddy3 in

rev.14: 1-6 describes the 144000 as males who do not defile themselves with women and are classed as virgins.?.

how does the governing body of j.w.`s explain that a man having a sexual relationship with a woman defiles a man?.

isn`t this or shouldn`t this be an affront to women who are jehovah`s witnesses ?

vienne

this from the 1974 Watchtower is still current teaching as far as I know:

In what way are they “virgins”? The Bible explains. Concerning the 144,000, who are seen standing with the Lamb of God on the spiritual Mount Zion, it says: “These are the ones that did not defile themselves with women [like the religious harlot Babylon the Great, and her daughters]; in fact, they are virgins. These are the ones that keep following the Lamb no matter where he goes.” (Rev. 14:4; 17:3-5) After becoming spirit-begotten ones, having hope of reigning with Christ in the heavens, they do not commit spiritual “adultery” with this world. Consequently, these Christians do not defile themselves with the religious and political system of this world. They do not meddle or interfere in any way with politics or the operations of human governments.—2 Tim. 2:3, 4.

23

Stroup's "The Jehovah's Witnesses."

by em1913 in

a book that doesn't get a lot of talk these days is herbert h. stroup's 1945 study "the jehovah's witnesses.

" which is too bad, because in the field of jw studies it pretty much stands on its own as a serious, scholarly look at the rutherford era of the movement -- one written with no theological or doctrinal axes to grind, but rather with the impartial eye of a professional sociologist.. stroup received no cooperation whatever from brooklyn in writing this book, but he spent a great deal of time among rank-and-file witnesses of the late 1930s and early 1940s, attending their meetings, joining them in field service, and eating at their homes, and what emerges is a picture of an overwhelmingly working-class movement which overlapped in its hopes and ultimate goals the ambitions of other radical social movements of the 1930s.

the witnesses were not marching in labor parades or participating in sit-down strikes or engaging in other forms of street-level radicalism, but stroup finds that, in their individual views on the social and economic structures of the time, they were largely in harmony with those who were, even in spite of their religion's supposed disavowal of politics, and he sees them as much as a political movement in that sense as a religious one.

vienne

We should probably note that up to 1940 clergy in the South and in rural areas elsewhere were often illiterate or nearly so.

Liston Pope’s analysis of clergy education in Gastonia County, North Carolina, illustrates my point:

The policy of the Baptist churches has been even less exacting. The denomination has never erected an educational requirement for its ministers, or maintained an informal standard, or insisted on a course of study. In 1869-70 there were only two college graduates in the Baptist Association which included most of the churches in Gaston County. In 1903 few Baptist preachers in the county had even a high school education and college men were almost unknown. The tendency in more recent years has been to give preference to better-educated men, but only 56 per cent of them at present have college degrees and only 18 per cent have completed a seminary course.

The newer sects in the county are led by ministers almost wholly uneducated. Several of them find it necessary to have some more literate person read the Scriptures in their services. Others did not go beyond the fourth or fifth grade in the public schools; none have college degrees. Most of them are on sabbatical leave from jobs in cotton mills. There are no established educational requirements for preachers in the sects with which they are affiliated, though there are trends in that direction.

As compared with Presbyterian and Lutheran standards, Methodist demands have been relatively low. The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, did not establish a college degree as a prerequisite to ordination until 1934, and it was possible until 1940 to circumvent this requirement. Less than half of its preachers in Gaston County at present have had seminary training; most of them now have college degrees, but several older men, representative of past standards, have only a high school education or less.[1]

[1] L. Pope: Millhands and Preachers, Yale University Press, 1942, page 107-109.