NotFormer

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Posts by NotFormer

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  31

  Has the Watchtower Faithful Slave become the Evil Slave?

  by Vanderhoven7 in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  what evidence suggests to you that the wt f&ds is actually more like the es of matthew 24?.

  45¶who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath made ruler over his household, to give them meat in due season?.

  46blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing.. .

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  NotFormer

  Who forced the WT to forgive the Kingdom Hall loans?
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  9

  Lessons in Deception

  by Sea Breeze in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i recently came across a piece of historical trivia: italian singer adriano celentano released a song in the 70's with complete nonsense lyrics meant to mimic american english, to prove italians would love any english song.

  it was a huge international hit!.

  it made me think how the wt simillarly used a lot of stage props and nonsensical religious sounding words to fool millions into destroying their families and futures.

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  NotFormer

  They were great perpetrators of the lie, Seabreeze. Many people of talent and intelligence were caught up in it. And then that talent and intelligence was trained to be focused on sales and sales recruitment. While being told that it was doing God's work. The lie was enabled by the sound of religious noises. It's a bait and switch tactic. You're told you're joining God's true religion, but you're actually a salesperson for a publishing company.

  It reminds me of Amway's bait and switch. Amway is a business, and tells you up front that you're in business with them, although you are an (IBO) Independent Business Operator (it used to be "distributer" back in the day, compare that to "publisher"). They tell you that the Amway business revolves around selling product, to avoid accusations of being a pyramid scheme (pyramid schemes sell distributorships, not product, you see!) But the real business model of Amway is that you, the IBO, buy and use Amway products and recruit people under you as your "downlines". That means pestering friends and family to take a look at some mysterious "great business opportunity".

  Once you sign up as an IBO, you begin to be immersed in the real world of Amway. The emphasis shifts from selling and using the products to buying the marketing "tools" from your upline. These are various self help books and tapes that supposedly help you set up your downline businesses. The secret of making the big money in Amway is in selling the motivational stuff to your downlines. The Amway myth is that you make the big money by being "rewarded" for the business volume of the product being shifted by you and all your downline organisations. Those rewards come with titles, such as Gold Producer, Emerald Distributer and so on. It's when you hit around Diamond Distributor level, that you hit the big time.

  The compensation you receive from Amway itself at this level is OK, but it's not the licence to print money that you were told it was. The big money starts when your downline businesses are spun off as a separate Amway Motivational Organisation. This is when all sales of the motivational materials are by you to your downlines and you get all the profits. Unlike the selling of Amway product, your downlines see no part of that action. The real money in Amway is made by these AMOs, trading off the back of a somewhat successful product marketing enterprise.

  This is the bait and switch. You are told that you are creating a downline business that sells Amway product. But what you are doing is buying books and tapes from your upline, and encouraging your downlines to do it too.

  And when you join the WT, something similar happens. You start off attending "Christian" meetings, reading the Bible, saying prayers, attending home study groups. But you soon find that the emphasis is on Kingdom Business, selling magazines and books. The Theocratic Ministry School is a sales course, and the Kingdom Hall is a distribution warehouse.

  Or at least, that's how it was. As the publishing business fails, they are ironically finding themselves morphing more into the form of a religion. Time for a different method of bait and switch?
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  42

  New meeting format

  by ExBethelitenowPIMA in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  just watched november broadcast very different order to the leaked agm .

  be good if someone did a deep dive on the difference and why the changes?

  i didn’t time the items but it should be easy to see if edited?.

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  NotFormer

  Ex-bethelite, what is the change you refer to?
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  3

  Memorial Attendances 2020 to 2023

  by slimboyfat in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  following from the convention attendance thread i looked back on my notes to see the memorial attendances over the pandemic.

  this is what i found.

  i don’t have any pre-pandemic attendances but i’d estimate them around 80 to 90 or so in recent years.

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  NotFormer

  If you add the zoom numbers to the physical attendance, that seems to be a healthy increase. Do you believe the figures?

  BTW, whenever I see your screen name, I hear Weapon of Choice in the background 😁
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  9

  Lessons in Deception

  by Sea Breeze in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i recently came across a piece of historical trivia: italian singer adriano celentano released a song in the 70's with complete nonsense lyrics meant to mimic american english, to prove italians would love any english song.

  it was a huge international hit!.

  it made me think how the wt simillarly used a lot of stage props and nonsensical religious sounding words to fool millions into destroying their families and futures.

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  NotFormer

  On the "born again" issue, I looked through some old posts. It appears that only the "anointed" 144000 could claim to be born again. So what I was told by WT outsiders in the 80s was probably a misapprehension on their part.
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  9

  Lessons in Deception

  by Sea Breeze in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i recently came across a piece of historical trivia: italian singer adriano celentano released a song in the 70's with complete nonsense lyrics meant to mimic american english, to prove italians would love any english song.

  it was a huge international hit!.

  it made me think how the wt simillarly used a lot of stage props and nonsensical religious sounding words to fool millions into destroying their families and futures.

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  NotFormer

  I thought "undeserved kindness" was their term for "grace". But it's a great example of the way they change things for the sake of difference.

  As for the the video clip, some of it sounds kind of English; it's quite an amusing exercise. I remember a lot of stuff from the 60s and 70s where foreign languages were represented. They never got someone who actually spoke a language to coach the actors in what to say, but would just rattle off something that they thought sounded like the language. As much as I loved Scooby Doo Where Are You, I always cringe at the bit in the episode Mystery Mask Mix-up where Don Messick (Scooby's voice) is supposedly speaking Chinese (Cantonese?) to a bloke in a Chinese laundry in San Francisco, and he's just making a lot of Chinese sounding noises. 🙄

  I suppose that all aligns with your original point, that the WT tried to create a religious "sound" that was unique from the the other religions of the time. So the WT buzzwords are just them making a lot of religious sounding noises.
• 
  9

  Lessons in Deception

  by Sea Breeze in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i recently came across a piece of historical trivia: italian singer adriano celentano released a song in the 70's with complete nonsense lyrics meant to mimic american english, to prove italians would love any english song.

  it was a huge international hit!.

  it made me think how the wt simillarly used a lot of stage props and nonsensical religious sounding words to fool millions into destroying their families and futures.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  NotFormer

  They found themselves in a dilemma whereby they wanted to appear religious, while not being identifiably like any religion. Over the years they have had to sometimes walk that back to appear more mainstream. It is my understanding that they rejected the label "Christian" , until they felt the need to change that stance. I heard that they were allowed to claim to be born again when mainstream protestants challenged them on this on the doorstep (that may not be true, it was something I was told by fellow Pentecostals during the 80s. Is there any WT ruling on claiming to be "born again"?
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  9

  Lessons in Deception

  by Sea Breeze in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i recently came across a piece of historical trivia: italian singer adriano celentano released a song in the 70's with complete nonsense lyrics meant to mimic american english, to prove italians would love any english song.

  it was a huge international hit!.

  it made me think how the wt simillarly used a lot of stage props and nonsensical religious sounding words to fool millions into destroying their families and futures.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  NotFormer

  I find the WT buzzwords to be fascinating. The one that bemuses me most is "fine". As in Jehovah's fine arrangement ("arrangement" is another buzzword that they seem to love peppering things with). Even to the point where Jesus is the "fine shepherd" (!) in their rendition of John 10:11 and 10:14! They can't even bring themselves to call Jesus "good"??

  They started out differentiating between themselves and mainstream Christianity by rejecting standard terms, and having to find substitutes. So, information boards instead of bulletin boards, talks instead of sermons, all their different terms for office holders to not sound like they have a clergical hierarchy, Kingdom Hall instead of church and so on.
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  22

  Former Jehovah's Witness admits: We targeted grief-stricken as 'ripe fruit'

  by Londo111 in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/80708572/former-jehovahs-witness-admits-we-targeted-grief-stricken-as-ripe-fruit.

  jehovah's witnesses target grief and see the recently bereaved as "ripe fruit" for conversion, a former elder of the faith says.. vince and michele tylor​ spoke out after reading the story of wellington woman jean sergent-shadbolt, who received a handwritten letter from a jehovah's witness three months to the day after her step-cousin, friend and flatmate died.. a current senior elder of the faith says it has no policy to target grieving, and those who do so are acting on their own initiative.

  however, he concedes such people may feel guided by jehovah's witness literature.. but vince tylor said he knew of members who would trawl though obituaries to find grieving people, or visit cemeteries.. "not only do we see watchtower printed material suggesting and supporting writing letters from obituaries such as what jean received, but we even have reports and articles of encouragement for jws to go to cemeteries to look for people as well.".

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  NotFormer

  Nathan, you're right, I know that a lot of JWs are decent people with a good moral compass. The trouble being highlighted here is that the "minority of uber-"spiritual" half-wits" can get noticed, in this day and age. It only takes one idiot to ruin it for everybody else. This bit of negative publicity is terrible for the majority of JWs who are not sociopaths. It may, however, be helpful in light of the inquiry into abuse in care being conducted by the NZ government. In that it is another blow to the WT claim that JWs are lovable cuddle-bunnies that never do anything wrong, and that if they do, it was never because their leaders told them to.
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  42

  New meeting format

  by ExBethelitenowPIMA in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  just watched november broadcast very different order to the leaked agm .

  be good if someone did a deep dive on the difference and why the changes?

  i didn’t time the items but it should be easy to see if edited?.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  NotFormer

  In the old days it was easy to categorise the WT as a publishing company with an unpaid workforce, as opposed to a religion. Fundraising was through literature sales and the Theocratic Ministry School was the sales presentation course, with the Kingdom Hall being the distribution warehouse. Now that the old business model has been jettisoned, they are having to become more like a religion. All available evidence suggests that even the higher ups in the WT really have no idea what the final product will look like, or even what they want it to look like.