so, is there anyone in the l.a. basin area who saw the space shuttle endeavour and its nasa boeing747 transport, as it made its way over southern california today?
or, for that matter, anywhere over california?
i saw it, from the parking lot of a hotel, directly across the street from disneyland, as it crossed over disneyland.
Leolaia,
That's funny. Your Endeavour with 747 images point leftward; mine point right.
I went back in the files and found the ones from 20 years ago (spring '92 - I think) when the Endeavour was headed out from Downey and stopped by then too. Back then the lower black carbon-carbon tiles still had a "cotton-ball glass shine". No scuff. The main photo difference after 25 ascents and re-entries.
after i posted my last "getting to know you" video where gerrit losch explains his "unique" views on armageddon, a couple of posters mentioned that other similarly controversial comments had been made by gerrit concerning higher education.. well, these comments were actually made in the same recording as the one i used in making the "armageddon" video, so i thought i should make the second video focussing on these.. here it is.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b7drwti-h4.
i realize many heavily indoctrinated publishers will try to defend these remarks by saying that, if it isn't in the society's publications, then gerrit losch's personal opinion is of no particular consequence.
however, the bible says that "out of the heart's abundance the mouth speaks", so by making these videos i hope i am at least showing people what is in the hearts of the men who lead us, and who claim to act as the mouthpiece of the slave class.. .
FFF,
I think we are on the same page. Check a couple of post boxes above.
When I opened up this post, I did a quick look for "obsessive compulsive disorder" on the forum. The search came back with 400 references. It's not like it had never occurred to anyone that there is some connection. That a member of the governing board would rattle on about it might be the equivalent of giving away company secrets. There's probably a binder labelled OCD in his office - eyes only.
A couple of years ago, many things that started to happen in my house seemed to be characterized by an ever raising high jump bar. As my X started to disappear over the event horizon, I heard her say something one day while she was on travel; this was at the point that we actually had to stay in separate hotels when I met her in Phoenix to show her the Grand Canyon. When I had offered to go to a Sunday service with her again, she now declined, but added.
"I just keep feeling like I can't do enough for Jehovah..."
And the bar was still going higher.
after i posted my last "getting to know you" video where gerrit losch explains his "unique" views on armageddon, a couple of posters mentioned that other similarly controversial comments had been made by gerrit concerning higher education.. well, these comments were actually made in the same recording as the one i used in making the "armageddon" video, so i thought i should make the second video focussing on these.. here it is.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b7drwti-h4.
i realize many heavily indoctrinated publishers will try to defend these remarks by saying that, if it isn't in the society's publications, then gerrit losch's personal opinion is of no particular consequence.
however, the bible says that "out of the heart's abundance the mouth speaks", so by making these videos i hope i am at least showing people what is in the hearts of the men who lead us, and who claim to act as the mouthpiece of the slave class.. .
"Now this young man survived and the bullet had hit this part of the brain that was responsible for his compulsory behavior. After he recovered he was normal. So, the question is: Yes he survived coll[ege] in that case we can supply it to college. He survived that operation, the bullet operation.
"But would we recommend that to others? That’s a different matter"
-------
I don't follow this man's reasoning at all. Were we even presented a coherent question? He might have made his case better in the Italian.
Since GB member Gerrit Loesch waded into this metaphor-parable quagmire, this is what I come away with (below). And like an optical effect in a drawing, once it's seen, it's really hard to ignore.
Whether intended or not, he suggests that university training is comparable to remedying an obsessive-compulsive disorder by attempted suicide with a gun.
Now where does the compulsive disorder come into the picture?
His call to would-be students to drop what they are doing and start knocking on doors and distributing pamphlets so that other people might start knocking on doors and distributing pamphlets that have been churned out obsessive-compulsively for the last 100 years.
Let us disregard for a moment the severity, suffering or possible disrespect for people who have this problem. To cut to the chase, i f I had a choice between shooting myself with a gun or going to university to cure an OCD, I would choose the former. Especially with the knowledge that this invocation to duty comes from the same guy that was speculating on seven billion non-publishers getting irradiated for their non-participation.
It sounds like many on this forum already made a similar decision.
Loesch's argument implies that if the world as we know it ends in the next ten minutes or within Metheuselah generation years, you'll be sorry. For this he cites Luke 12:13. I read the chapter. That does not leap out at me. This "suit" should examine verse 33 as well. But I guess that wouldn't be publishing or governing.
That 71% of students mentioned monetary reward as a reason (perhaps among many) to go college should not be surprising. The air we breathe is 71% nitrogen as well, but I do not reject the sustenance of the 20% of it that is oxygen. Had Loesch ever come across the parable about hiding gifts under a bush? Or just simply bringing to maturity the gifts that God has granted us?
I have never heard of any one going to college for celebrity. Perhaps he is referring to those who might wish to go to a famous institution. Many of my high school friends wanted to go to Princeton or to Notre Dame…
It did not seem to trouble Mr. Loesch where concepts such as compulsive disorders seem to come from or where knowledge of them might be gained. Is psychology a word in his vocabulary? And then I wonder by what miracle did the young man survive the gun shot or how it was determined that he had performed fortuitous surgery ( if this is more than an urban legend) on the part of his brain where the malady originated? If it is true, then it was all in a day's work for someone who could have (as a result of theocratic enlightenment) been spending his days knocking on doors with copies of the WT and "What the Bible Really Teaches".
after i posted my last "getting to know you" video where gerrit losch explains his "unique" views on armageddon, a couple of posters mentioned that other similarly controversial comments had been made by gerrit concerning higher education.. well, these comments were actually made in the same recording as the one i used in making the "armageddon" video, so i thought i should make the second video focussing on these.. here it is.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b7drwti-h4.
i realize many heavily indoctrinated publishers will try to defend these remarks by saying that, if it isn't in the society's publications, then gerrit losch's personal opinion is of no particular consequence.
however, the bible says that "out of the heart's abundance the mouth speaks", so by making these videos i hope i am at least showing people what is in the hearts of the men who lead us, and who claim to act as the mouthpiece of the slave class.. .
WAIT A MINUTE, WAIT A MINUTE!!!....
Which is more like obsessive compulsive disorder?
Going to college or university and making decisions about a career or curriculum...
Or
- Spending every week for the rest of your life knocking on doors to distribute pamphlets generated by the organization that prides itself in turning more pulp into paper commentary on another book.
- Going to the several meetings per week which are devoted to 99.99% affirmations and "Ja" votes.
- Waiting perpetually for an Armageddon Event which has its goal posts perpetually moved to the elastic limits of "this generation"....?
- Nodding your head in agreement to whatever a figure like Gerrit Loesch might have said.
Can you think of some others?
NOTE: As an outsider, I wasn't all that familiar with all the lore. The first time I saw a picture of the video guy I thought it was James Garner in one of his lesser known roles - Not Maverick or some private eye, but maybe as a huckster selling used cars or discount clothes. I had it all wrong. I guess...
the latest december 15th study edition of the watchtower opens with an intriguing article entitled "beware of superstitious use of the bible".. as an example of what constitutes "superstitious use" of the bible, it has this to say.... .
"perhaps a more common misuse of the bible is the practice of bibliomancy.
it refers to opening at random a book, often the bible, and reading the text that first meets the eye in the belief that those words will provide needed guidance.
Once apon a time "Baby Doc" (son of "Papa Doc") Duvalier of Haiti was asked about human rights.
His reply: "I am in favor, but they have to be on my terms."
Similarly with this situation. The WTS does not give a hoot about reading random text in the Bible. It assaults everyone with random verses, often quoting in backward sequences. If you wake up from a nightmare in the middle of the night and grab the NWT and you find a verse that draws you closer to J, they're not going to complain.
No, this was all about the individual held up as a bad example. It was a way to knock Augustine of Hippo. And the body of literature which he wrote. It was in his book "Confessions" where he described the incident.
In the mid 380s AD, Augustine was commuting between his home in Carthage, North Africa( he was born nearby in present day Algeria) and Milan in northern Italy, then the seat of Roman government. Well educated and well to do, it was Augustine's parents who had provided him a mixed, but overall Christian background. His father converted from paganism and his mother was an orthodox Catholic, trying to convince her son to be of the same faith. Until the incident described, Augustine was a professed Manichean.
Whether one believes it a heresy or a legitimate outlook, Manicheanism is well worth looking up. One of many early Christian belief structures, very dualistic, it claims that the universe is in a tight balance between good and evil, the sort one might suspect if Satan is presumed to own the world. Manicheanism spread from Persia and was pervasive in the Roman Empire at about that time. It borrowed much from Zoroastrianism and incorporated Jesus, Claiming a division of creation into two kingdoms good and evil in eternal combat.
Sound familiar?
Anyway, Augustine couldn't make up his mind about this belief. From on-line sources, a home encyclopedia and translations from Confessions:
...In the summer of 386, after having heard the story of Placianus about his and his friends' first reading of the life of Saint Anthony of the Desert, which greatly inspired him, Augustine underwent a profound personal crisis, leading him to convert to Catholic christianity, abandon his career in rhetoric, quit his teaching position in Milan, give up any ideas of marriage, and devote himself entirely to serving God and to the practices of priesthood, which included celibacy. According to Augustine his conversion was prompted by a childlike voice he heard telling him in a sing-song voice, "Take up and read" (Latin: tolle, lege):
"I threw myself down somehow under a certain figtree, and let my tears flow freely. Rivers streamed from my eyes, a sacrifice acceptable to you [Ps 50:19- your conversation is devoted to wickedness and your tongue to lies] and (though not in these words, yet in this sense) I repeatedly said to you: 'How long, O Lord? How long, Lord, will you be angry to the uttermost? Do not be mindful of our old iniquities.'[Ps 6:4 - Yahweh, relent and save my life...].
"For I felt my past to have a grip on me. It uttered wretched cries: 'How long, how long is it to be?' 'Tomorrow, tomorrow.'[33] 'Why not now? Why not an end to my impure life in this very hour?'
"As I was saying this and weeping in the bitter agony of my heart, suddenly I heard a voice from the nearby house chanting as if it might be a boy or a girl (I do not know which), saying and repeating over and over again 'Pick up and read, pick up and read.' At once my countenance changed, and I began to think intently whether there might be some sort of children's game in which such a chant is used. But I could not remember having heard of one. I checked the flood of tears and stood up.
"I interpreted it solely as a divine command to me to open the book and read the first chapter I might find. For I had heard how Antony happened to be present at the gospel reading, and took it as an admonition addressed to himself when the words were read: 'Go, sell all you have, give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me'[Matt 19:21]. By such an inspired utterance he was immediately 'converted to you' (Ps. 50.15). So I hurried back to the place where Alypius was sitting. There I had put down the book of the apostle when I got up. I seized it, opened it and in silence read the first passage on which my eyes lit: 'Not in riots and drunken parties, not in eroticism and indecencies, not in strife and rivalry, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh in its lusts'[Rom 13:13-15].
"I neither wished nor needed to read further. At once, with the last words of this sentence, it was as if a light of relief from all anxiety flooded into my heart. All the shadows of doubt were dispelled.
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine, Book VIII, Paragraphs 28 and 29.[36]
Noted in summary from sources.
The volume Augustine read was Paul's Epistle to the Romans. He wrote an account of his conversion in his Confessions, which became a classic of Christian theology. Ambrose baptized Augustine, along with his son, Adeodatus, on Easter Vigil in 387 in Milan, and a year later they returned to Africa. Unfortunately both his son and mother also died within the same year.
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Note also that Augustine did NOT read from the BIBLE at random. Random perhaps, but he read from a book he set down by one of the Apostles, identified as Paul - and it included the letters to the Romans. The Bible was a concept that was gathering like a rolling snowball. It was not until 367 AD that a 27-book list of the canon was published by Athanasius in Alexandria. What should eventually be bound together in a book including old and new testaments was a concept about two decades old - but still not entirely determined.
Augustine would figure prominently in the debates on this and advocacy in the west. The City of God, Confessions, essays on the books of the Bible, letters...
As for whether he was wrong and about how much, someone would actually have to read something of his work. And to the writers of the 15 December article, that would be even more terrible than selecting passages at random from the Bible - before they did.
in matthew 25:45 it says :"he will reply, 'i tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.
' " since this prophesy is happening during jesus second coming ,these least ones must be a specific group of people .your thoughts please ?.
The idea that an analysis can reduce the scope of those in need to the tribe of brothers and sisters in the congregation is not reconciled with the use of the Greek word plision or neighbor. The law is described as "love thy neighbor as thyself" in all three canonical Gospels. Luke 10:25-37 adds a parable with to give neighbor a definition. The Good Samaritan, clearly someone who knows nothing of Christ or his kingdom. Taking the Gospels together, it is inferred that "the least of these" are simply those of the universal brotherhood who are in the most need. Not that holding the door for royalty would not be good form, but clothing the naked and feeding the hungry would be even better. To many faiths and for centuries the reading of chapter 25 equates the poor of this world with Christ himself. Re-examining the text, I see no reason to reinterpret it.
it's taught that ezekiel 28 is speaking about satan, the cherub who is covered in gems, was in the garden of eden..... anyway there are a few things that stand out and so far no explanation yet.
the whole part is ez 28:12-19.. it says he was full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
he is the annointed cherub 'that is covering'.
Nope. What you are talking about is a typical cherry picking operation propagating a hoax.
Rutherford and the WT used it in the 1934 yearbook. You go to read the chapter and the illusion is shattered.
The first line of chapter 28 is addressed to the king of Tyre.
Although you are human and not divine, you have allowed yourself to think like God.
Ezekiel calls prophesies the destruction of the king of Tyre, comparing him to Adam. Ezekiel was hostile to both Sidon and Tyre because of their shifting alliances with regard to Babylonia.
Ezekiel was wrong. Either it was a truce or Tyre held. Then he started on Egypt chapter 29. That didn't work out either.
it was several years back and from time to time i will look something up in the index.
all manner of things about jw life are revealed - as well as discussions within the leadership, plus historical and contemporary controversies - but there is still something i missed.. please excuse me if this is not a detailed summary.
when the drum roll starts for the purge, it appears that the friends and associates of ray franz are targeted first.
Darth, Farkel,
Then I guess you are all done, right?
Xanthippe,
I believe you are right about that. That's one of those things I have gone back to look at many times. And then later Carl Olaf Jonnson gets an interview at headquarters via Ray Franz's intercession. But the funny thing is, since the chapters of the book move from one issue to another, such as predictions of the end or the Mexico-Malawi issue, I get the feeling that the consequences of the 607 are never spelled out. I don't recall Franz saying that someone comes up to him and says, "Look, Ray, we've had enough about this chronicle issue: drop it or else." He first says that he wrote a ringing but empty defense of the doctrine over a couple dozen pages of the "Aid" and when he visited with Assyrianologists at Yale (?), he couldn't find a scintilla of archeological evidence to support it.
What I gather from this is that he did report back, but we don't get to hear the reaction. We are left to draw a conclusion about whether the GB decided to Deep Six what they heard. Deep six it in every possible way.
I got from that was that as far as that GB was concerned, if you were within hearing distance of controversy, you were on a pathway out. In the corporate world I have seen similar successful experiments in the behavior of breeding sheep; but the guys in dark suits should stand in awe of the results I've seen in local congregations and what used to be my household. Disfellowship for association with the disassociated must have helped.
S+G,
Good you mentioned all that. Because as I read that material, it was hard for me to tell where things were and where things had gone. In that sense I am as dumb as a box of rocks since the talking points from my background were different.
belshazzar was the son of nabonidus the king.
darius i was a persian king who reigned after cyrus from 522 to 486 bc.
he succeeded the son of neriglissar, labashi-marduk who reigned for only nine months and was put to death in a conspiracy.. .
It's been a while since I've added anything to this topic, yet by the very nature of this forum, elsewhere I see ideas built on foundations which the discussion here would indicate are all sand.
In a largely unrelated historical discussion someone pointed me to in another e-group. In a historical essay describing the events leading to the siege of Vienna in the 1680s and the earlier confrontations between European christendom and the Islamic East ( ~1529) I came across the following paragraph:
Suleiman I, called "the Magnificent" in Europe, saw himself as the heir of Alexander the Great, the "last world emperor" who would destroy his rival Charles V and then march west and conquer Rome. Like his competitors in the West, Suleiman was also eager to see himself as the beneficiary of an apocalyptic tradition, based loosely on the Book of Daniel, that foretold of a time toward the end of the sixteenth century when the Great Year would dawn, in which one true religion (Catholic Christianity for Charles V, Sunni Islam for Suleiman) would triumph over all others, ruled by one divinely appointed ruler—the sahib-kiran, "Emperor of the Last Age."
What's the difference? They had plenty of time to read, they were ethno-centric and they were sure that the lines were addressed to them...
it was several years back and from time to time i will look something up in the index.
all manner of things about jw life are revealed - as well as discussions within the leadership, plus historical and contemporary controversies - but there is still something i missed.. please excuse me if this is not a detailed summary.
when the drum roll starts for the purge, it appears that the friends and associates of ray franz are targeted first.
James_Woods, binadub and others,
Thank you for contributing your thoughts on this. I had a feeling this wouldn't be a straight-forward proposition.
When people talk about Columbus crossing the Atlantic, especially in the US, they talk about him trying to prove the world round....Really?
In the case of Crisis of Conscience, something similar has happened. People largely assume that Ray Franz wrote the book and then was df-ed. That is probably an underlying assumption in another topic started by someone who would not even acknowledge as to whether or not they had read the book!
It is tempting to write up a summary of what has been stated so far and add it to that discussion. But if anyone spots any issues in what I come up with, feel free to chime in.
I have also had a chance to think some more about comparisons to Soviet life. When I have a little more time, I would like to describe that. While one might be tempted to think of mass arrests, prison camps and physical violence, re-wind a little to where the process starts:
Revocation of the party card.
