NotFormer

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Posts by NotFormer

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  12

  Ken and Barbie

  by peacefulpete in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  forgive the insensitivity of this but does the wt imagine the "resurrected" bodies of the dead will have useless genitalia?

  or will the humans 2.0 have the smooth appearance of a ken doll or the nipple-less breasts of a barbie.

  any breasts at all?

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  NotFormer

  I'm aware of the discrepancies, Seabreeze. My question is to mainly point out the logical shortcomings of what I understand to be the WT position. Or at least, what I've been told in discussions on my doorstep. 🙋 As someone who was never a JW, I could be wrong as to what they really say about it all. That being said, I feel like the WT has always been deliberately vague about how the new system is supposed to work. 🤔
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  15

  Is There Going to be Money in the New System?

  by NotFormer in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  if not, what's in it for the gb?.

  but seriously, how is it supposed to work?

  pictures of jws in paradise show them raising crops, wearing clothes and building houses.

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  NotFormer

  If not, what's in it for the GB?

  But seriously, how is it supposed to work? Pictures of JWs in paradise show them raising crops, wearing clothes and building houses. They still have to eat. The distribution of labour between various projects, needs and priorities has to be rationed out somehow. That's the role of money in the current system. Something like it would have to take its place. Unless the plan is abject slavery. (It's not like the GB hasn't already been grooming the JWs to think of themselves as slaves)
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  12

  Ken and Barbie

  by peacefulpete in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  forgive the insensitivity of this but does the wt imagine the "resurrected" bodies of the dead will have useless genitalia?

  or will the humans 2.0 have the smooth appearance of a ken doll or the nipple-less breasts of a barbie.

  any breasts at all?

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  NotFormer

  "They will have children.

  Must be frutiful and fill the earth."

  I was under the impression that those who survive the big A will be spending the Millennium preparing the earth for the resurrection of pretty well everyone who died in Armageddon. 8bn people divided by 1000 years means around 8000000 people per year for whom housing must be provided (remember all those vision of paradise pictures of JWs building houses during the Millennium?) The faithful survivors will be too busy to be having children and raising them. Besides, why do you need to have children when 8bn people are about to arrive on the scene? And why does the earth need to be repopulated when you already have 8bn people?
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  24

  BadAss Bethelites, did they really peak in the 1960's?

  by was a new boy in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  in the 70's a bethel elder told me that every morning in the 60's the paint and scaffold crew, (which was located on the 5th floor of building 4) would go up to the roof and walk around the perimeter on top of the ledge, which i doubt was more than 12" wide.

  then they'd go render sacred service to jehovah..

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  NotFormer

  "Diogenesister, my last contact with Bethelites, they joked that they had a betting pool as to how long a unmarried "sister" at Bethel would last as unmarried, it turned out it was six months."

  Wow, Diogenesister, you could have not only had new socks, but a new husband! 🙋🧦
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  49

  Will the GB Eventually "observe" Tithing?

  by Sea Breeze in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  found this on fb from the recent losch talk.

  time for a new business model?.

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  NotFormer

  I thought of a membership fee when I was posting about whether or not the GB will implement tithing. I wasn't sure how they could really impose it, since there are no groups in mainstream Christianity that I know of that do it*.

  That that is how modern Judaism works is interesting, but I can't see the WT appealing to their customs to convince the slaves.

  *There are high control groups and churches that check people's payslips to ensure that they are tithing the correct amount, but most mainstream groups operate on a free-will offering basis.
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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

  "Confusing mess" seems to be the order of the day. No-one seems absolutely clear on what is really going on. Taking "pledges" may be a step along the road towards something more concrete. Is there anything to really stop them adopting tithing or something like it as a model? They are, after all, a high control group, which hasn't been afraid in the past to tell members how to order their personal affairs, including in the financial realm. If they squeeze the membership on this, perhaps they'll lose a few hangers on initially, but we know from past experience that there is always that loyal core that will take whatever they dish out.

  Perhaps they have crunched the numbers and figured they will gain more than enough from squeezing the loyal core to offset what they will lose with a slight exodus of those who have had enough.
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  49

  Will the GB Eventually "observe" Tithing?

  by Sea Breeze in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  found this on fb from the recent losch talk.

  time for a new business model?.

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  NotFormer

  "And now the elephant in the room: Loesch looks awful. Do they really think that his face will move the R&F to empty their wallets?"

  You're echoing my thoughts from when I first saw this thread. Why on earth would you use someone who looks like that as a frontman? I'm not just talking about him looking like Herman Munster; he just gives off an unpleasant vibe of unapproachability (to me, anyway).

  If they're going to go down the televangelist route, they need to recruit zsomeone from outside the GB who is younger, charismatic (not in the religious sense, obviously!) and able to weave compelling stories for consumption. Someone like a Joel Osteen, perhaps. (Not like Kenneth Copeland; the guy stimulates nothing but revulsion!)
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  9

  January 2024 Study Watchtower is totally flooded.........

  by BoogerMan in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  .....with the name "jehovah.

  in all my years, i've never seen such overkill in any jw publication.

  is the org worried about something?.

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  NotFormer

  "Why is this even an issue for discussion?"

  Some people have inquiring minds. 🤔🧠
• 
  49

  Will the GB Eventually "observe" Tithing?

  by Sea Breeze in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  found this on fb from the recent losch talk.

  time for a new business model?.

  .

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  NotFormer

  The movie studio could become a money earner, if handled properly. "Faith based" films still have a market, examples being Passion of the Christ, and more recently The Sound of Freedom. The trouble is that the rarified atmosphere of the Bethel echo-chamber has produced a completely tone-deaf "creative class", such that they wouldn't know how to produce a movie that wouldn't piss off 99.99% of its target audience.

  They've got subject matter that could translate to movies. They are always proud of the stances they've taken in the face of government disapproval. The trouble is, anything they've done in the past that could be depicted as positive influence on society is inevitably nuanced in negative ways.

  They could make something about the Judge's going to prison for fighting for free speech and freedom of religion rights. A period piece handled properly (with the truth about the Judge heavily massaged) could be an interesting watch. But the WT these days has distanced itself from the Judge.

  They could make one about the young JW men who resisted the draft and went to prison as consciencious objectors. Clean cut JWs struggling against the chaotic backdrop of the 60s (with some of the music from the time strategically dropped in!) might work in a film. But then people who actually went through it, like Terry, will emerge from the woodwork and tell their true story. And the whole Mexico/Malawi thing will come up.

  They could go into full-on history rewriting mode and tell the their own version of Sound of Freedom, say the story of a fearless elder (or CO/DO) who hunts down and weeds out paedophiles in the organisation. Heck, since they're rewriting history, why not invent their own internal unit, along the lines of the HLC, that hunts down those guys? While it could make for a great movie, the outpouring of reality from the internet and other sources would destroy it within minutes of its release.

  Let's face it, simply owning a state of the art movie production facility isn't going to help them much. Any attempt to make good, saleable movies is going to collide with their own history and their own rules.
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  8

  Did Charles Taze Russell die a broken man?

  by Vanderhoven7 in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  his 1914 predictions failed...but did he succumb to depression as a result?.

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  NotFormer

  "Revived the Arian heresy after it had been resolved for 1500 years,"

  To be fair, Arius' version of anti-trinitarianism was different from the WT version, even though they make him out to be some sort of hero of the faith. In Arius' version, the Holy Spirit, while not being God, was still a person, not a "force".

  The "holy spirit as a force" idea was stolen from John Thomas, founder of the Christadelphians.