i just had this thought in my other thread.. jehovah witnesses refuse blood transfusions because they believe blood to be the sacred symbol of life.
that's the primary reason, the medical justifications are simply ad hoc excuses.
couldn't it be said that their willingness to give their lives for the sanctity of the symbol of life is idolatrous?
So how can a Jehovah`s Witness use blood fractions in good conscience as a medical procedure since fractions are obtained by a laboratory procedure from donated blood that is given by worldly people who are going to be destroyed at Armageddon and stored in a laboratory and processed into fractions.
Its more like - a Hindu guy will not eat beef (cow meat) but is fine with wearing leather jackets made from cow skin
if you have a look at the december broadcast on jw tv they tell you that they wont be showing you a normal format for december but the 143rd event of gilead because the watchtower does not have the resources other wise to translate it many different lanuages.. with all the cuts the watchtower have made and are going to make you would have thought that they would have lots of resources.
So the watchtower is cuting down on the number of magazines to concentratre mostly on the web and now they cant find 600 jws from all the world and $1.5 million to translate the web programes in about 200 lanuages
That is if you say 3 people to translate a lanuage and if they live at bethel at $50 per person per week
Pepperheart, Let me help you more in this:
You don't just need 600 JW's, but 600 trained translators who have expertise in translating videos. Currently, 90% of the existing trained translators are busy translating the Song book, revised nwt, Nwt study edition, revised OD book, revised SKE curriculum and the revised public talk outlines. So practically, you cannot overnight have another batch of translators ready to do this job.
Lets take the 3 hour Gilead graduation program. You are right, It will take 3 people to just translate it. But, it doesn't stop there. You need following more resources for each language:
You need a coach and an assistant who will read through the script and prepare a team of people for auditioning for the narration. Each different voice for a different speaker/person on the video. You can't have an 18 year old give his voice for an 80 year old Sam Herd.
After auditioning, the coach and his assistant will take the approved candidates and practice each and every line of the script to match the voice, emotions and gestures of the English speaker.
After the practice session, the entire team will go the the local recording Studio at the RTO or travel to the Branch office studio to start the recording session.
At the studio, you will need a sound engineer and a reading coach who will listen to all the recording and may ask the candidate for multiple takes.
Finally, the sound engineer will do the task of editing and re-editing till the final copy is done. and then it goes to the branch office.
So now, pepperheart, factor all of the above in your calculations and let us know your final assessment.
I have worked as a Translator and believe it, Translation requires massive efforts and humongous amount of energy and time, and it seems naive to just pass it off as a $50 per person per week job, as you say.
yesterday, they showed the story “from enemies to friends” at the kingdom hall.
my mother in law told me about it as she was touched by the story.
so then, later in the evening, i searched for the video and found it in the january 1st 2017 broadcast.
What do you think about the Sabina Hernandez video?
i have written some time ago, about how the religion i grew up in no longer exists.
i was an 80’s jw kid who became a pioneer then a bethelite.
they have new meetings, new elder roles, new acronyms, new core teachings, new songs and even a new bible.
Do we have info of what happened to the sign "Brooklyn Tabernacle" which was atop the Hicks Street Property which was sold in 1918?
If the debate on his smile is over, i think most people would start estimating the cost of the suit that he is wearing and will then compare it with a photo of run-down shack or a bamboo roofed kingdom hall in Malawi.
am i the only one who can't reconcile new light with the light gets brighter?
if it matters at all.
i bring a candle into my house and light it.
Lost in the fog, Can you point out or source some references from the WT publications where they have used the term "New Light" while changing or adjusting their doctrines?
for the december monthly broadcast instead of jws from around the world waving to you and items of how to shun people we will have to make do with repeats of of old gilead videos that have been on the jw website for a good while.
WHAT PROOF DO YOU HAVE THAT THEY HAVE GOT LOTS OF ASSETS
8 million members.
The greatest asset any religion has is its members.Cults and religions survive because they always have a group of members that believe what they say.
for the december monthly broadcast instead of jws from around the world waving to you and items of how to shun people we will have to make do with repeats of of old gilead videos that have been on the jw website for a good while.
but why do they say they have not got the resources to a normal formatt december broadcast and to translate the 143 gilead into lots of lanuages ?
Because at the moment all languages do not have the number of translators to translate a broadcasting program and a Gilead program simultaneously and release it in December.
It is simpler to translate written material, however it is very complicated to translate videos and especially talks with spontaneous speech and then put the translated voice-over on it.
Money can buy you buildings, but can't give you translators overnight.
for the december monthly broadcast instead of jws from around the world waving to you and items of how to shun people we will have to make do with repeats of of old gilead videos that have been on the jw website for a good while.
An EX-JW predicting the end of Watchtower Corp is like a JW predicting the end of the world. Both's not going to happen..
faithful and discreet slave parable.
matthew 24:45-47 "who really is the faithful and discreet slave whom his master appointed over his domestics, to give them their food at the proper time?
happy is that slave if his master on arriving finds him doing so.
Most of what you have written is theory, but on ground level, nothing has changed pretty much for the partakers.
My comments:
After all, for nearly 100 years, all jw’s were taught and we believed that all the ‘anointed’ on earth at any particular time is what constituted the “faithful slave”.
Yes, all anointed were the members of the faithful slave, but we were also thought that only a group of anointed was involved in the “spiritual food dispensation” department. Never in the history of the JW’s or the Bible Students have individual partakers apart from the President/BOD/GB were involved in preparing and dispensing spiritual food.
Then suddenly and without warning, much of what we had been taught to believe and what was an integral part of our core beliefs for many, many decades all changed in just ONE Watchtower magazine.
Most of what JW’s believe has been changed this way, through one Watchtower magazine and without warning. This is the only way any JW doctrine changes.
Individual governing body members, theoretically, had no more authority than the other members of the “faithful slave” class.
Individual GB members/President’s had more authority than the other members of the faithful slave. At least in preparing and dispensing spiritual food. Right from Russell’s time.
Then came the stunning change. The governing body decided, independently from all the other members of the “faithful slave” class, that they, the governing body, they alone were the “faithful slave”.
This change was not stunning, because, historically, all decisions were made independently of the other anointed ones. In fact, if you go behind in history, only one person, namely the president (Russell, Rutherford) made most of the decisions.
That, IMHO, was exactly like a governmental coup.
I think, a coup is when one group seizes power and authority from other group. In 2013, there was a titular change for all anointed individuals. No anointed person, even an individual GB member would tell that they are a faithful slave. Individually, all were now classified as domestics. Regarding power and authority – individual anointed ones never had any power or authority since 1879 and hence there was no question of seizure or overthrow, hence I don’t consider this as a coup.
It was a seizing of power and authority in a most visible way.
I am not sure how this was visible, rather than being printed in the Watchtower. What visibly changed for an anointed member in a local congregation?
I really wonder how the rest of the ‘anointed’ truly feel about their being stripped of their “faithful slave” class designation without their consent or input?
There are hundreds of protest letters written to the WT. Some of these can be found on the internet and this forum. But its almost rare to find any such protest letter from a disgruntled anointed one who left the JW’s because of the change in 2013. In fact, in 2012, there were 12,000 partakers, while in 2017 there are 18,000 partakers. Such a drastic coup should have decreased the numbers, but it’s become the opposite. More and more are joining the ranks even after the GB feels that some of them are mentally unstable.
