Posts by WinstonSmith

336

The New Diary of Winston Smith

by WinstonSmith in

we had to go off grid for a time, time and half a time as we thought we had been outed.

fortunately it was a false alarm, but it was a stressful time.

i asked for my original diary thread to be deleted in case there could be anything on there to identlfy mrs smith and i. i am always very careful when posting, and am sure there was nothing on there, but felt it best to have it removed in order to be as cautious as a dove.

WinstonSmith

PanHandleGirl: It is good to be back! Nice to have a warm welcome from everyone :-) Looking forward to posting more and sharing info.

00DAD: Hi bro! We are more committed than ever to fading out of this. Little by little is our motto. How are thing with your son? Never give up my friend.

Clarity: The future has a whole new meaing when you learn the truth about the truth. So very happy that Mrs Smith is awake too. I can't imagine what it would be like to do this alone, and have huge respect for those who do. :-P is an emoticon of someone poking out their tongue. I post from an iPad and the ones like you used in your post don't come up properly for me so I have to type them the old fashioned way ;-) And yes, there are some crazies on here, but they all contribute to the fabric that is the human experience.....

Conceptual99: Cheers mate, just replied!

39

For Recovery: A discussion about the Great Crowd and the Other Sheep

by Londo111 in

recovery,.

as requested, a discussion on the great crowd and the identity of the other sheep.. .

first question: where are the great crowd rendering sacred service day and night?.

WinstonSmith

Bump.

There is a perfectly good thread going here, with some good dialogue, yet it is being ignored, and a new thread on pretty much the same subject has been started.

There are still a lot of unanswered questions here. Some might say " I am glad onlookers can see how no one will address the points and most people are simply not interested 'in the truth about the truth'." (quote from Recovery in his post #201)

Everyone is welcome to believe what they want to believe, but reviewing different points of views and coming to their own conclusions. Threads like this are a way people can learn about different points of view, so let's keep it going not "for the sake of exJws" but "for the sake of JWs" (another quote from Recovery in his post #201)

336

The New Diary of Winston Smith

by WinstonSmith in

we had to go off grid for a time, time and half a time as we thought we had been outed.

fortunately it was a false alarm, but it was a stressful time.

i asked for my original diary thread to be deleted in case there could be anything on there to identlfy mrs smith and i. i am always very careful when posting, and am sure there was nothing on there, but felt it best to have it removed in order to be as cautious as a dove.

WinstonSmith

Well, here I am again. We had to go off grid for a time, time and half a time as we thought we had been outed. Fortunately it was a false alarm, but it was a stressful time. I asked for my original diary thread to be deleted in case there could be anything on there to identlfy Mrs Smith and I. I am always very careful when posting, and am sure there was nothing on there, but felt it best to have it removed in order to be as cautious as a dove. Thank you to Lady Lee for assisting with this. So let's go again, here is a recap of my story:

I have been an elder, a pioneer, a Group Overseer, Ministry School Overseer Watchtower conductor, given talks and demos at assemblies and conventions, been in a few dramas, pretty much all the things you would expect from someone raised in the truth from a young age. Ticked all the boxes of doing what I oughta, was a good boy, the golden child. All this for close on 25 years. Now things are different. Through the years I have always had questions. Like why can't I grow a beard? How come most things in Revelation are viewed as symbolic, yet the number of 144,000 is taken as literal? Why is there a thousand rules when Jesus advised to the contrary? How many different definitions of 'generation' can there be? These and more made regular appearances in my brain and were swiftly shutdown. Silly boy, trust the organisation, it is God's visible arm on earth! So I worked faithfully, my wife and I. However, the longer I worked in the congregations where we lived, the more the veneer of truth began to peel. It became more and more obvious to me that there was no way Holy Spirit appointed either me or my fellow elders into their positions. There were some statements made in some study articles that I just couldn't reconcile with the scriptures. Serving as an elder became more and more difficult. The more aware I became of what the WT said not aligning with the scriptures, the more my conscience played on me. How could I stand up there and teach others things that didn't make sense to me? Due to my experiences as an elder, I was seeing the organisation from the inside. The side that Joe Schmoe publishers don't see. The heated battles pre CO visit about who should be put up for appointment. Counselling young dudes on the scruffy facial hair and not being able to give a scriptural answer to the question 'why?' Doing shepherding calls on people who smile and nod and then carry on doing what they were doing before. I couldn't keep doing this and stay sane and true to my inner voice. Opportunity arose with some issues in my family. We are spread all over the globe and some of them have serious issues. They are nice to everyone who praises them and kisses up to them, but poison to those who call them on their bullcrap. There was a lot going on at that time, and my wife and I decided we needed time for us. I wrote a letter to my fellow elders and stepped down. What a relief. The weight had gone. More time. No more stupid elders meetings running late into the night over nothing. Bliss. Not long after stepping down, I was assigned a Number 3 talk on the increase in earthquakes. For some reason, I thought I would not do the research solely in WTS publications. So I hit up Google and to my surprise the USGS website sad that there has not been an increase in earthquakes. Hmm. Interesting. I skipped over the obvious apostate sites and found a similar story elsewhere. The USGS has no vested interest in reporting that there has not been an increase in earthquakes so my Spidey senses got a-tingling. My mouse hovered over the link in the Google results to jwfacts.com. Should I? Sure enough I clicked. I didn't have an Ananias-like experience, so I was able to read the whole article. 'Scuse my French, but shit got real. Suddenly I didn't feel so bad about having those doubts all along. Obviously others had the same or similar thoughts and had done some research. Some serious research. I spent a good part of the evening looking up things that had always bothered me, and along the way found this here JWN. Other sites I looked at were CARM, Freeminds, JW Struggle, 144,000.110mb, sccmcroberts, and many others, along with a big pile of books on religion, athiesm, and everything in between. My mind was at ease finally. I was not bad person for asking all those questions in my mind. It turns out that there are many who had wondered the same thing and sought out those of similar mind. Certainly a long way from the crazy apostate types presented in the pages of the Watchtower. Some on here are :-P but for the most part there is a lot of sound discussion backed up by evidence. I still had one dilemma. My darling wife whom I love to pieces. Having been deep in the matrix myself, I knew that any attempt to wake her up in a hurry could have horrible consequences no matter how deep our love. Very slowly, here and there with careful questions, I got her to start using her brain and not think what she is told to think by the WTS. Did you know that transplants used to be banned? They were equated with cannibalism! Where does it say that there will be a paradise earth? When you read Revelation 7:9 doesn't it sound like the Great Crowd are in heaven? Slowly slowly she began to realise that the answers to these questions and what is taught in the WT publications didn't match. On Friday the 13th (LOL) of April, she finally said to me 'we are in a cult'. Things began to change. We both researched more and more and are completely mentally out of this cult. We are working on a long slow fade. We are gradually reducing our field service time, are missing meetings, and are looking at moving some time next year. We are in a big congregation, and as long as you smile and nod, put in that unscriptural field service report (with the made up numbers on it) and keep a low profile, you get left alone. Here I have chosen the name Winston Smith - a name taken from the main character in the book Nineteen Eighty Four. This is my diary, a place for my thoughts. I hope you enjoying reading my posts. Please, always feel free to leave your comments and join in the discussion. My last diary topped more than 10,000 views over its twelve or so pages, so I hope we can continue helping and informing people and sharing information - both for members and lurkers alike. Here's to the future!

Winston Smith

398

Jwfacts, Why Do You Equate Miracles With Magic?

by Recovery in

i have a question for the author of the website jwfacts.

as i was reading the sparlock article, i couldn't help but notice something seriously wrong:.

"the bible abounds in vivid fantasy, such as its many celestial descriptions, or the portrayal of warring kingdoms with imaginary beasts.. the sparlock message is confusing, as much for an adult as for a child, as the bible shows that god's followers practice magic, even if they are usually referred to as miracles.

WinstonSmith

Hi Recovery,

Just wondering if you can please clarify something for me?

In your post #153 you said:

"One of the easiest ways to find out the meaning of a particular word is to look up a thesarus and find a long list of synonyms that have similar meaning to it. Let's do this again with the word "magic"

Magic: "alchemy, allurement,astrology, augury, bewitchment,black art, conjuring, conjury, devilry,diabolism,divination,enchantment, exorcism,fascination, foreboding, fortune-telling, hocuspocus, horoscopy, illusion,incantation, legerdemain, magnetism, necromancy, occultism, of impossible feats by tricks abracadabra,power,prediction, presage, prestidigitation, prophecy, rune, sleight of hand, soothsaying, sorcery, sortilege, spell, superstition,taboo, thaumaturgy,trickery, voodoo, voodooism, witchcraft, wizardry, Satanism, demon worship,

Do the synonyms honestly convey a similar list of synonyms you'd expect when you type in the word "miracle"? If no, why not? If it does not, then the two terms are distinctive and not interchangeable."

I love crosswords, and I like to use a thesaurus to help me find the answers. The one I use is the Merriam-Webster and the online version is great. I did what you did above, and typed 'magic' into it. The result is here:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/magic

In both of the results, 'miracle' is not listed as a synonym, but in the related words, 'miraculous' is listed. 'Miraculous' is defined in the same work as meaning 'of the nature of a miracle' (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/miraculous).

There does seem to be a close link between the words 'miracle' and 'magic'.

In fact in the link above to the definition of 'miraculous' if you scroll down to the heading 'Related to Miraculous', in the list of synonymns, the first one listed is 'magical'.

Can you please help me to understand how 'miracle' and 'magic' are "distinctive and not interchangeable" with each other when the reference work noted above links the two? I'm trying to get my head around this.

Cheers mate :-)

WS

39

For Recovery: A discussion about the Great Crowd and the Other Sheep

by Londo111 in

recovery,.

as requested, a discussion on the great crowd and the identity of the other sheep.. .

first question: where are the great crowd rendering sacred service day and night?.

WinstonSmith

Bump.

Some good discussion here on a key teaching of the WTS but this is getting less attention than certain other threads that are somewhat less productive.

Londo started with a well laid out question for Recovery. Recovery responded with some references. Londo replied with a review of those references and maintains his initial assessment.

I believe the ball is in Recovery's court now. I'm eager to see some energy put into developing this conversation to see how it unfolds.

Cheers!

WS

59

Favorite JW Urban Legends

by Christ Alone in

what are your favorite urban legends that you heard as a jw?.

here's mine:.

a brother, through his work, was asked to give a speech to the united nations.

WinstonSmith

I forgot to add that anything ending with the phrase "Years later at a convention I felt a tap on my shoulder....." set my BS radar screaming

59

Favorite JW Urban Legends

by Christ Alone in

what are your favorite urban legends that you heard as a jw?.

here's mine:.

a brother, through his work, was asked to give a speech to the united nations.

WinstonSmith

The nickname of NZ's boat in the America's Cup yacht race a few years ago was 'Black Magic' (because the boat was black and awesome). The Kiwis defended their title in Auckland and a father bought a merchandising cap for his son with the boat's nickname on it. The next morning the kid was at the breakfast table in tears because during the night the boy had seen the cap moving of its own volition.

"I mean really, brothers and sisters. What did this father expect? The cap had Black Magic written on it!"

39

For Recovery: A discussion about the Great Crowd and the Other Sheep

by Londo111 in

recovery,.

as requested, a discussion on the great crowd and the identity of the other sheep.. .

first question: where are the great crowd rendering sacred service day and night?.

WinstonSmith

Bumpity bump bump....

42

Latest WT: Reduction in branch offices is "visible proof" that Christ is "breaking down human barriers"

by cedars in

as has already been mentioned, the december 15th watchtower (study edition) is now online and available for download on this link.. i couldn't help but smile at the concluding comments of the final study article on page 28 where it had this to say:.

"the very concept of foreigner has already lost much of its meaning among jehovahs witnesses, who pay little attention to the nationality of those in their midst.

recently, for example, several of their smaller branch offices were merged to simplify the work of oversight and to improve efficiency in accomplishing the preaching of the good news of the kingdom.

WinstonSmith

Great work in finding those quotes everyone. I knew there had to be something out there. These guys can't keep track of their own crap.

I checked my notebook from the convention, and in the last talk the speaker said that the recent merges were Jehovah breaking down national boundaries in preparation for the end.

They change their minds more than they change their undies.......

42

Latest WT: Reduction in branch offices is "visible proof" that Christ is "breaking down human barriers"

by cedars in

as has already been mentioned, the december 15th watchtower (study edition) is now online and available for download on this link.. i couldn't help but smile at the concluding comments of the final study article on page 28 where it had this to say:.

"the very concept of foreigner has already lost much of its meaning among jehovahs witnesses, who pay little attention to the nationality of those in their midst.

recently, for example, several of their smaller branch offices were merged to simplify the work of oversight and to improve efficiency in accomplishing the preaching of the good news of the kingdom.

WinstonSmith

I wonder if there is a statement in a past Watchtower that says something along the lines of 'The increase in branches / printing is a sure sign that the end of this system of things is coming' because that would nicely contradict the imminent "Closing down branches and reducing printing is a sure sign that the end of this system is coming' type comments....