being brought up a jw until age 25. i never made an attempte to search anywhere else for information until i moved out (thank god).
thanks to the internet,, my curiosity led me to different websites, books, documentaries and video presentations.
one of the topic at large was ufo's i remember there was an awake (inthe 80 or 90's) but was too young to comprehend or figure out what it was.
I believe that it is quite possible. It appears that there are planets in our own galaxy that could support life as we know it. Bacteria is believed to be living in the vacuum of space on astroids/meteors.
As far as intellegent life visiting our planet from other worlds, I think it is possible, as well. There are some things we have a hard time explaining.
I am a firm believer that the Sphynx and Great Pyramids predate the Egyptians. The evidence of civilizations predating the Biblical account of both Noah and Adam are a large part of why I no longer believe in the Biblical accounts of the Great Flood or creation. The fact that the the Great Flood could not physically take place as told in the Biblical account is the other large part of what loosed me from the chains of religion.
when you left the man-made organization currently known as the wtbts??.
and for those still "in" but mentally "out" what have you started doing thats against the silly, stupid and non-scriptural watchtower policy/law/rule??.
i know the question has been made before on another thread but i couldn't find it and also there's been quite some growth in new ones here to jwn, so just wanted to see if we could all share some lovely/funny/random experiences.
I did a slow fade over about a 3 year period. After I became completely inactive, the first thing I did was fulfill my dream of becoming a police officer. Even though that isn't exactly forbidden, I put that up as the first thing.
Shortly after that I began to buy Christmas and birthday gifts for the kids. This was the first year my kids went trick-or-treating on Halloween. The past 2 Christmasses we even decorated the house.
I registered to vote and I vote. I am very politcally active. I am a member of a local Republican club. I am currently helping 3 candidates with their election campaigns.
I have no issue with saluting the flag when in uniform or saying the pledge of allegiance. If I were single and had no kids I would enlist as an Army reservist. My kids want to enlist and I am supporting their decision to do so.
I feel that I am a better person now than I ever was because I am supporting my community and making real positive changes. That is infinitely greater than just telling people that God will make it all better one day.
in 1958 mike wallace conducted a most fascinating televised interview with mortimer j. adler the philosopher and educator, author behind the encyclopedia brittanica's great books and great ideas series.. the discussion is amazingly prescient of today's severe conflict between conservatives and liberals and their argument over the.
unfairness and injustice of capitalism.. in this interview adler actually predicts that in 50 years (2008) the economy would collapse if steps were not immediately taken to.
address the drift by our government toward wrong policy.. .
Thank you for sharing this link. It's too bad ABC doesn't still air programming like this. As if The Biggest Loser is intellectually stimulating.
looking at the 607/587 bce issue, i was wondering if the bethel could spin some new light to avoid embarassment and buy themselves an extra 25 years or so.. if it was 1935, they could claim that the call to close the doors to heaven was actually the real date of jesus' invisible reign and tie up two embarassments with one flash of light.. best i could find though, nothing really important happended then.
anyone else with better jw historical records think of an "out" for them?.
once 2014 comes, they are in for a major explanation.
One might compare Jehovah's Witnesses with other christian religions. Most christian religions teach there will be an "end of days" and teach of the rapture. This teaching has been taught for centuries, if not from the dawn of christianity. There doesn't seem to be a mass exodus from other christian religions.
Accord to the Watch Tower Society, Jesus began to rule in heaven in 1914. In the year 2014 his 1,000 year reign will be 1/10 over. Not very significant. So, the overlapping generations doctrine is a drum they can beat for decades.
The truth is, millions now living (who are Witnesses) will die. Even worse, look at the number of Witness who are alive now, lived through the whole 1975 debacle, are in their sixties, seventies, or eighties, and are completely unprepared for retirement. I truly believe the reason why such ones keep a death grip on the religion is that it would be too emotionally devistating for them to come to terms with the truth: the wasted their entire life for a lie.
I was born in the seventies. I remember as a child in the eighties be told by people in my congregation telling me I'd never attend high school because this system would end before then. Now, those kids like myself have children graduating from high school.
When I was in my late teens I would paint members of my congregation into a corner. They might complain of something they are dealing with due to their age. They would turn to me and say,"Just wait until you're old." I would reply,"I'm never going to get old." I could see in their face they wanted to say,"Keep telling that to yourself, kid," but wouldn't. They would clinche their teeth and say,"That's right." To do otherwise would imply that they do not believe the end is just right around the corner.
this weekend assy first day thankfully over!
had a good laugh at arrogant prick do last talk saying apostates are to be "loathed" and used a scripture in psalms that simply had the word "loathe" in it to support his weak point.
im gonna happen by him tomorrow and tell him his final talk had such an impact on me i tore out proverbs, ecclesiastes, and song of solomon out of my bible cause those books were written by an apostate.
Growing up, I was given the impression that apostates were Jehovah's Witnesses who wanted to do something prohibitted by the Bible/Watch Tower Society or who felt it was unnecessary to go out in field service. They would find scriptures to back up their beliefs and express their opinions openly.
Now, my impression is that those person called "apostates" by Jehovah's Witnesses are persons who have found information that exposes the holes in the doctrines of the Watch Tower Society as well as exposes the religion for what it really is. Because of this, the Watch Tower Society must protect the flock is fleeces by having such enlightened ones shunned. Thousands of Bethelites are depending on your contributions.
desirousofchange made a point that i feel needs more exposure.
brother macmillan got right back on stage and gave another address saying they had been mistaken and needed to wait on jehovah.. someone at hq actually admitted they had made a mistake.. regarding 1975, it was the over-anxious r&f publishers who made the mistake of assuming more than was written.
no mistakes at hq!.
Inspired has been defined as " aroused,animated, or imbued with the spirit to do something,byorasifbysupernaturalordivineinfluence".
Directed has been defines as "control the operations of; manage or govern".
Notice the difference? Here's a hint: there is none.
life is the greatest value.. for ordinary humans self-preservation is the beginning of all other values.. without life no other values are even possible.. religiously speaking, this is especially true!.
a dead person cannot worship a living god.
when death becomes a valuable purpose it exposes a core insanity.. .
How does Do Not Eat Animal Blood = Do Not Accept a Blood Transfusion?
The Watch Tower Society's ability to go from God's command not to eat animal blood all the way to not acceptig a blood transfusion is a leap in human opinion. The Watch Tower Society tries to tell people what God's thinking is by connecting imaginary dots between his command and their doctrine. This is called "human reasonning".
Blood is sacred. So were the special bread offerings that David ate in spite of the fact it was forbidden by law to eat them.
john 3:16. i'll just say that the way i understand it is i am existing in it, it is not existing in me.. 166 (ai?nios) does not focus on the future per se, but rather on the quality of the age (165 /ai?n) it relates to.
thus believers live in "eternal (166 /ai?nios) life" right now, experiencing this quality of god's life now as a present possession.
(note the gk present tense of having eternal life in jn 3:36, 5:24, 6:47; cf.
It is an assignment. At least in the world of Jehovah's Witnesses. Jehovah's Witnesses proclaim that you must deny yourself and dedicate your entire being to Jehovah. This mean not pursuing your own interests.
As a reward for being faithful, you will be spared at Armageddon and live forever as a slave to Jehovah. You will pursue his purposes, forever, and his purposes alone. Living forever as a non-thinking robo-slave.
Also, everlasting life is not immortality. Immortality infers that life comes from within ones self. Where as everlasting life means you will live as long as something unnatural does not cause your death.
ah, deception must be so-o-o-o-o-o- easy when you can deal with people who have no critical thinking skills.. an amazing example?
the past november awake magazine !
the cover asks, "is belief in a creator reasonable?".
I was out in service with the presiding overseer's wife one day. She made a comment along the lines that all dinosaurs were herbivores and that t-rex and other predator dinosaurs used their teeth to strip bark off of trees for food.
