There's very little fruit to be picked in the U.S.A. Here in the U.S., people think they've got it all. With Barack Obama in the Whitehouse, if the river runs dry there's always the welfare dime. He assures us of that. Fruit grows in lands where people don't have their next meal planned.
Celestial
JoinedPosts by Celestial
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Pioneers Bearing No Fruit
by TOTH inmy father in law's sow has been a pioneer for what...twenty plus years now?
she has yet to see any of her studies progress to baptism.
i know this is an excellent thing but to jw's you would think it would be tragic.
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Saturday Morning Service
by Celestial ina couple of months ago, i thought out plans to go out in field service because i was stimulated by my cousin who's married and has recently been appointed a ministerial servant.
i thought to myself, if my life-long newly appointed ministerial servant cousin can knock on doors and present the watchtower and awake!
so can i. so, i can at least progress toward a status other than inactive.
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Celestial
So you get kicks out of posting pro-JW in what is essentially the uber anti-JW website out there?
Also, why would any of us throw hot coffee on you? We went through the same crap and I hope would never treat other JWs in such a fashion. If given the opportunity, I certainly would discuss all the contradictions in the WT and the Bible along with the failed prophecies and such.
In all honesty, what did you ever get out of service? I'd have an interesting conversation once in a while, but for the most part is was mundane. I don't need to waste time knocking on empty doors or talking to people that simply have no interest in converting to my religion.
I find some interest in the intellectual challenges of viewpoints contrary to my own. You likely don't recollect anything desirable as a foot-soldier for Jehovah. It's impossible for some people. The important thing is that you're happy with what you're doing now.
I try to avoid homogenizing people into a collective mold, although yes, the majority of voices online pertaining to Jehovah's Witnesses are anti-JW. I may collectively fold into one of these absolutes sometime in the future, but that's just not the case right now.
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Saturday Morning Service
by Celestial ina couple of months ago, i thought out plans to go out in field service because i was stimulated by my cousin who's married and has recently been appointed a ministerial servant.
i thought to myself, if my life-long newly appointed ministerial servant cousin can knock on doors and present the watchtower and awake!
so can i. so, i can at least progress toward a status other than inactive.
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Celestial
I don't quite understand you, Celestial.
This is just a discussion forum for recreational purposes. Not that I'm playing games, but if you want to really understand people google:
ex-jehovah's witnesses -
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Saturday Morning Service
by Celestial ina couple of months ago, i thought out plans to go out in field service because i was stimulated by my cousin who's married and has recently been appointed a ministerial servant.
i thought to myself, if my life-long newly appointed ministerial servant cousin can knock on doors and present the watchtower and awake!
so can i. so, i can at least progress toward a status other than inactive.
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Celestial
If your newly appointed assistant hounder can waste his time knocking on doors, does that make it any less wasteful for you to do it as well?
It's not so much a newly appointed assistant as it is family/friend related. I've dealt with personal rivalry from this family member since birth.
We grappled over adolescent activities as teens, but things got more serious as we became adults. I'll humbly acknowledge that he kicked my ass career-wise.
It felt good to connect with him outside the corporate world (provided he has interests outside materialism). His door is open to connect with him as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. It's kind of weird because we never discussed anything related to Jehovah's Witnesses growing up until he got married.
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Your own personal Jesus
by Stealth ininteresting article on liberal christains vs conservative christains view of jesus.
if jesus is anything like the governing body of jehovah's witnesses, i don't want anything to do with him.
my jesus is a rebel!.
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Saturday Morning Service
by Celestial ina couple of months ago, i thought out plans to go out in field service because i was stimulated by my cousin who's married and has recently been appointed a ministerial servant.
i thought to myself, if my life-long newly appointed ministerial servant cousin can knock on doors and present the watchtower and awake!
so can i. so, i can at least progress toward a status other than inactive.
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Celestial
A couple of months ago, I thought out plans to go out in field service because I was stimulated by my cousin who's married and has recently been appointed a ministerial servant. I thought to myself, “If my life-long newly appointed ministerial servant cousin can knock on doors and present the Watchtower and Awake! so can I.” So, I can at least progress toward a status other than “inactive.”
It didn't happen. My cousin called and honked his horn in my driveway Saturday morning but I put my pillow over my head. Case in point, if I did go out and knocked on your door, what would you do?
If you could legally throw a pot of hot coffee on me??? -
Agents of Evil
by Celestial inagents of evil .
we are up against the unseen power that controls this dark world, and spiritual agents from the very headquarters of evil.
watchtower 04/01/1999.
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Celestial
Agents of Evil
“We are up against the unseen power that controls this dark world, and spiritual agents from the very headquarters of evil.” Watchtower 04/01/1999
The John class today have also encouraged their companions, the great crowd, to beware of immoral influences, such as those in the debased world of entertainment. There is no need to view or experience corruption out of curiosity or in order to learn what to avoid. It is the course of wisdom to keep far away from the “deep things of Satan.” Revelation Climax chap. 10 p. 52 par. 16I saw this movie in 1994. A couple of clips:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=rrDsv8HiCyc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMNExagZVrc
When I saw this, it disturbed me and stood out in my mind as an incarnate of a demon right out of the Bible. An inhumane, supernatural being of pure evil that massacres using psychokinesis. I assume it captivated me for one of two reasons: either one; I'm spiritually minded, or two; humans by nature are hardwired for spirituality.
Over the years, I've kind of become jaded to any kind of entertainment as anything that disturbs me. There have been movies that have expanded the boundaries of debased entertainment. Rob Zombie and many other screenwriters have written and directed movies that raise the bar and make Clive Barker's horror flicks look kind of cheesy.I can honestly say that many of the images and imagination Hollywood portrays though their recent horror flicks depicts people as the culprit of evil and not the supernatural. Maybe entertainers negatively influence society and maybe they don't, but the truth of the matter is evil exists in the real world. The vertices of good and evil, whether inherently human or inhuman have been explored by sociologists.
It seems that the perception of the source of good and evil separates people. The belief that evil spirits influence humans or the concept that humans by nature can be inherently evil.
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/newsweek-cover-god--the-brain-how-were-wired-for-spirituality-82501122.htmlNewsweek: 'God & the Brain: How We're Wired for Spirituality'
A new field of scientific research is showing how the human brain responds to and may create religious experiences and intimations of the divine. A slew of new books, scientific publications and the establishment of research centers in "neurotheology" are trying to identify what seems to be the brain's spirituality circuit, and to explain how it is that religious rituals have the power to move believers and nonbelievers alike, Newsweek reports in its cover package in the May 7 issue.
All the new research shares a passion for uncovering the neurological underpinnings of spiritual and mystical experiences and for discovering what happens in our brains when we sense that we have encountered a reality different from the reality of an every-day experience, writes Senior Editor Sharon Begley. In neurotheology, the study of the neurobiology of religion and spirituality, psychologists and neurologists try to pinpoint which regions of the brain turn on, and which turn off, during experiences that seem to exist outside time and space. The studies try to identify the brain circuits that surge with activity when we think we have encountered the divine, and when we feel transported by intense prayer, an uplifting ritual or sacred music.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2001/05/20/the-roots-of-evil.html
Scanning the family photographs, we see images of an apparently normal child, as ordinary as Sunday dinner with Grandma. Timothy McVeigh stands proudly behind his sister, plays with a model airplane, frolics in the swimming pool. But what America yearns to see is something quite different: that the man the child has become--the killer with the angular face, the buzz cut, the hard and narrow eyes--is not a man at all, but a monster. We want to see Timothy McVeigh as evil incarnate, as Satan, as depravity in human form. He has willfully and gratuitously inflicted harm on others--the very definition of an evil act--through a cold, cruel calculation untouched by compassion. There is a reason we need to view McVeigh this way, say scientists who study the human mind and the depths it can fall to. Doing so allows us to place him in a category labeled Evil with a capital E, but also, more importantly, one labeled not us. The enormity of McVeigh's act and the yawning hole in his soul where human compassion should lie, we need to assure ourselves, set him worlds apart from us.
But do they? In their search for the nature and roots of evil, scholars from fields as diverse as sociology, psychology, philosophy and theology are reaching a far more chilling conclusion. Most people do have the capacity for horrific evil, they say: the traits of temperament and character from which evil springs are as common as flies on carrion. "The capacity for evil is a human universal," says psychiatrist Robert I. Simon, director of the program in Psychiatry and Law at Georgetown University School of Medicine. "There is a continuum of evil, of course, ranging from 'trivial evils' like cutting someone off in traffic, to greater evils like acts of prejudice, to massive evils like those perpetrated by serial sexual killers. But within us all are the roots of evil." -
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United Nations mentioned in Watchtower publications
by Magi inhi everyone, i have some questions for anyone that can answer.
i've been doing some research in the whole united nations scandal with the watchtower organization.
and i am wondering what the society's view on the un is as of late.
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Celestial
Are they still printing in any of their articles that the UN is the wild beast? Even after removing themselves from being a member, do they still put the UN in a positive or negative light? Or did the society just all together drop any mention of the UN within their publications? I don't have access to any of the watchtower cds to run a search on. If anyone can help out, thanks alot.
An obvious reason for the Watchtower society obtaining notoriety with the United Nations on a limited basis was because of the UN's international threshold and declaration of human rights.
Political entities may have self-serving agendas and corrupt elements associated with their organization, but that doesn't mean all aspects of the organization are completely useless in their service to others.Let every soul be in subjection to the superior authorities, for there is no authority except by God; the existing authorities stand placed in their relative positions by God. Romans 13:1
According to the Bible, the UN is directly related (a representation) to the superior authorities (world governments)....the image of the wild beast... Revelation 13:15
The superior authorities have a relative position influenced by the UN. The Watchtower society likely collaborated with the UN (as a NGO) on a limited basis due to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN's international influence.
Watchtower 12/01/2001 Develop Your Heart to Fear JehovahThe General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948.
Watchtower 08/01/2001 Why Do You Believe What You Believe?
To believe has been defined as “to accept as true, genuine, or real.” The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights enshrines every person’s “right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.” This right includes the freedom “to change his religion or belief” if he wants to do so.
The United Nations directly intervened in a person’s “right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion” according to UN documents.http://www.un.org/documents/ga/docs/51/plenary/a51-542add1.htm
Nevertheless, the conscientious objectors - in this instance, the Jehovah's Witnesses - have refused to wear uniforms, salute the flag or accept the period specified for performing alternative service. The Ministry of Defence claims that the Jehovah's Witnesses, by asking to be exempted from national service, were asking to receive treatment which would discriminate against other Greek citizens. The authorities maintain that the Jehovah's Witnesses must, as Greek citizens, respect the law in force and bear in mind the particular position of Greece, a small State that must protect its territorial integrity. According to the Ministry of Justice, the Jehovah's Witnesses are being prosecuted not for their beliefs but for having violated the law. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicated that the authorities were ready to make concessions provided they had no impact on national issues. The impact the Greek authorities seem to have in mind is any impairment of the obligation to perform national service and of the unity of the country.
39. According to the non-governmental representatives, it is necessary for the Greek State to adopt legislation recognizing the right to conscientious objection with respect to military service in order to put an end to infringements of the religious freedom of conscientious objectors, in particular Jehovah's Witnesses, and of their human rights in general within Greek society (see chap. II, sect. A, "The Jehovah's Witnesses"). The well- known Exemption of Ministers of Religion Act (Act No. 1763/1988) should also be fully applied (see chap. II, sect. A, "Protestant minority").Thousands of Jehovah's Witnesses are said to have been arrested and to have served long prison sentences for proselytism. There are numerous examples of these violations of religious freedom, in particular the case of Kokkinakis, a Jehovah's Witness who was exiled six times, arrested more than 60 times and served five years in various prisons for proselytism (Special Rapporteur's communication of 9 October 1992, E/CN.4/1994/79; case of Kokkinakis versus Greece - 3/1992/348/421 - decision, European Court of Human Rights).
89. With regard to conscientious objection, aside from the observations already made in chapters I and II, according to reports from non-governmental sources, the figures regarding the number of Jehovah's Witnesses in prison as of 1 June 1996 are as follows:
Kassandra Agricultural Prison 58
Kessavetia-Volos Agricultural Prison 46
Avlona Military Prison 85
Sindos Military Prison 164
Total number of objectors 353
Total of sentences imposed 1,147 years
Total of sentences served 296 years
In other words, the notion of religious intolerance attracted the attention of the UN. It appears that ill motivated apostates will obviously attempt to manipulate any contact with the powers that be in an attempt to destroy Christian neutrality. -
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Lions eating straw....is this possible?
by highdose ini recall a jw telling me that.... "they" meaning scientists, had done study's on lions in zoo's and discovered that if they gave lions straw and grass to eat that the lions became very passive and no longer showed predator behavior??
now they never explained who "they" were, or were these "study's" had been done or why based on these study's lions are not now fed grass etc
has anyone else heard this for real?
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Celestial
Carnivores evolved to be thus, it would take a million years, and lots of painful deaths, and a lot of genetic fiddling to get them to eat straw.
From what I've been exposed to, it doesn't matter how you alter the clearly defined ratio of plant or animal intake that distinguishes a carnivore from a herbivore or omnivore and over what period of time, there's no evidence to support macroevolution. This means, that it doesn't matter what dietetic or other environmental factors you induce on a species or how you modify the genes, speciation is unempirical. There have been numerous unsuccessful attempts at artificially induced speciation through breeding methods, laboratory experiments and genetic manipulation. A lack of evidence for speciation whether natural or artificially induced is consistently confirmed by current genomic and biotechnology information.
The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/guide/taxonomy/
Taxonomy Databases
Contains the names and phylogenetic lineages of more than 160,000 organisms that have molecular data in the NCBI databases. This currently represents about 10% of the described species of life on the planet. New taxa are added to the taxonomy database as data are deposited for them.
Phylogenetic lineages as subsets of the “evolutionary tree of life” is the idea that a sequence of species form a line of descent, the theory that each new species is the direct result of speciation from an immediate ancestral species.
The information analyzed in NCBI databases indicates no abrupt, gradual or intermittent development in an organism's characteristics or traits on a cellular, molecular or genetic level towards that of a new species. The phylogenetic lineage databases over any given time frame only consist of inherently identical species with no genetic variation. The idea that macroevolution is “too slow” to in anyway be observed is a blanket statement by diehard theorists to cover-up a lack of evidence.
The Genesis account of creation covers the major divisions of life and shows that these were created and made so that they reproduce only according to their respective “kinds.”
A lion eating and being physically sustained by vegetation “just like a bull,” would require neurological changes and modifications to a carnivore's anatomy.
Instinct and animal behavior are controlled by the brain and nervous system. In this instance, a fixed action pattern in the brain in response to sensory stimulus (food) would have to be rewired so that a carnivore would react to plant-based foods and not be a predator. Changes would likewise have to be implemented in the species digestive system.
Matthew 19:28 does speak of a re-creation. The evidence so far supports life as a product of creation.
Jesus said to them: “Truly I say to you, in the re-creation...” Matthew 19:28 -
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Watchtower's United Nations Association
by Celestial intemporarily, there's confusion until i get the facts straight: .
http://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/united-nations-association.php .
http://www.jehovahsjudgment.co.uk/watchtower-un-ngo/default.html .
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Celestial
Don't think it's only you that might come up empty handed.
Part of this church's requirements is that you become an active recruiter. By the time you work out who is behind the curtain, you might have several converts who will quickly assume that you have joined Satan's minions should you attempt to apologise for recruiting them. That is a very strong incentive to pretend you haven't seen behind the curtain.
I am sure I have several relatives in that position. You can see the fear in their eyes when you push the right buttons.
Not that I expect you to be a psychology expert in rendering life or death therapy, but your post had absolutely nothing to do with anything I said.