Hi,
As JWs, we are so used to slander of the other Christian faiths that we think the WBTS is some special organization with insight. I have found that it's doctrine is wholly false and none of it is worth anything exceptthe attitude toward good morality and clean living.
I have found out that there is REAL Christianity and a relationship with Christ out here. It's thriving, vibrant and spirit-filled worship leaves the Watchtower way behind.
I recommend that you take the time to investigate any evangelical church after praying to God for His help and direction. Do you have any friends who are born-again Christians? Remember, 'organized' churches are not Christianity, they are only a means to meet and fellowship, disciple one another, work toward common goals.
Don't expect them to be perfect or have all the doctrine you think is right. Find out what they believe and why, see how they treat others and each other. Reach out and someone will meet you halfway....
We a church that has no authoritarian group lording it over the congregations. Each congo is able to go off on it's own if the national body goes wacky on something or other.
I advise that to anyone reading this reply and my e-mail box is always open.
May God guide your steps!
Rex
Rex B13
JoinedPosts by Rex B13
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15
Any respect for organized religion ?
by friendorfoe ini was wondering other peoples views on organized religion since they left the organization ?.
me personally i think all religions started off with one mans interpatation of the bible and i'm not going there again.
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Rex B13
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10
Deer in highlights
by joelbear ini am stuck.
my job is probably going to go away in the next 4 to 6 months due to our company being acquired and my job responsibilities shifting to people in the acquiring company.
i have been with this company for 12 years.
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Rex B13
Practical advice: My company is in the midst of spinning off a generation company and we have bought Merrill Lynch's power brokering business. I work for Allegheny Power and our www.alleghenyenergy.com is where you send the resume' and public job openings are listed there. We have positions in the northeast, the midwest and as far west as Arizona, where we are building another gas turbine power station. Let me know by e-mail if you need any other info.
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OK, it's party time!!
by ozziepost inwell not quite, but would you like to come to a bbq?.
next sunday, near sydney (the olympic city).
say around mid-day to start.. we could have a great time sharing experiences, no i don't mean the type you get first up each day at a district convention!
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Rex B13
How much is round-trip air fare to Oz from Ohio?
Drats! Not enough pennies in the piggy-bank. If you ever get to the midwest of USA let me know. Did you know there are a lot of evangelical Christians in your part of the world?
Bring Prisc.
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10 Nutty Beliefs!
by Tina indr albert ellis has identified 10 irrational beliefs that can influence us and contribute to over reacting in specific situations.. knowing them is the first step in taking back your personal power and not becoming a casuality of such irrational thought.these screwy beliefs tend to make us 'awfulize,think in terms of 'they should,i should' and dysfunctional rationalizations.. 1. worrying too much about what other people think of you.
excessive worrying creates a strong fear of rejection.. these folks will ignore the self to please others or will display this insecurity by attacking others in order to stay distant and detached.. 2. i must not fail at important tasks,and if i do it's terrible and i can't stand it.. 3.people and things should always turn out the way i want them to-and if they don't it's awful,terrible and horrible,and i can't stand it.. 4.if any of the first 3 bad events happens(if im not liked or respected,if i fail,or if things don't turn out as i'd like-then i'll always blame someone for it!
they acted wrongly,as they should not have done,and they are rotten people for acting in that terrible way!.
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Rex B13
Amen Tina!
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11
For those who like a good RIP into WTBTS land!
by biblexaminer ini felt like becoming the first suicide bomber of the wtbts.
i opened the august 1, 2001 watchtower on the way up to the first door in field service the other day.
and i do.. read my rip into their flesh on the bible research page.
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Rex B13
It's time for you to get out of that place. Near the end of my active JW life I started preaching from the Bible alone and used tracts that I could stomach.
Now I preach from the Bible alone and in evangelical Christianity. It took me awhile to realize that all of Watchtower doctrine is suspect. I won't even return to any Free Bible Student gatherings as they do not see our God in His full nature and few of them seem to be 'born again' of the Holy Spirit.
I pray for your deliverance from this, in Jesus' name, Amen.
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Keep God out of public affairs
by Kent inkeep god out of public affairs .
a.c. grayling.
observer.
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Rex B13
Hogwash!
>But as votaries of imported religions grow more assertive in seeking the opportunities and privileges enjoyed by religious organisations indigenous to those democracies, and as the tolerant democracies respond concessively, so the prospect of real difficulty arises.
These "votaries" have been in place since the very founding of the republican forms of government. These 'great brain' doesn't even understand that governments like the USA are not 'democratic'. There is no more 'difficulty' then there ever has been!
>It is obvious that Tony Blair's Government does not see the difficulty, because it is encouraging the spread of faith-based schools, whether Christian, Islamic, Jewish or Sikh, and considering legislation to protect people from harassment or discrimination if suffered specifically on the grounds of their faith.
So, atheist based schools are better? Actually, home based schooling is the most effective for children up to high school age. This has been demonstrated in the USA by comparing test scores.
>Both developments seem innocuous, even (in the latter case) desirable; but in fact they dramatically increase the potential for social divisions, tension and conflict, and illustrate why the public domain needs to be secularised completely as a matter of urgency.
No, what happens is people get to raise their kids and teach them in a environment that keeps atheism out of the picture. The 'urgency' is that this guy sees his comfortable philosophy being undermined.
>The world's major religions - especially Christianity, Islam, and Judaism - are not merely incompatible with one another, but mutually antithetical.
They actually promote some of the same values. It is only extremeists who promote a actual religious form of government. That will no happen until God steps in to do it, for man has proven he can't rule himself.
>All religions are such that if they are pushed to their logical conclusions, or if their founding literatures and early traditions are accepted literally, they will take the form of their respective fundamentalisms. Jehovah's Witnesses and the Taliban are not aberrations, but unadulterated and unconstrained expressions of their respective faiths, as practised by people who are not interested in refined temporisings or theological niceties, but who literally accept the world-view of the writings they regard as sacred, and insist on the morality and way of life prescribed by them.
Crapola! JWs and the Taliban are not representative of the Bible/Koran and that is easily proven. This guys is so worried about people of faith because they will not compromise to his world-view.
>This is where the threat of serious future difficulty lies, because all the major religions blaspheme one another, and each by its principles ought actively to oppose the others - although not, one pessimistically hopes, as they did in the past with crusades, jihads and pogroms.
Which were the product of extremists, as this fellow fails to note. He also does the big generalization used by every atheist. One bad claimed Christian organization makes all of Christianity bad.
>They blaspheme each other in numerous ways. All non-Christians blaspheme Christianity by their refusal to accept the divinity of Christ, because in so doing they reject the Holy Ghost - which is described as the most serious of all blasphemies.
As JW do, whom he cited as examples of 'Chrisitanity'. LOL
Christians wait on the advent of Christ, they do not seek to run any governments other than encouraging morality that is usually agreed upon by society as a whole.>The New Testament has Christ say: 'I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me.' This places members of other faiths beyond redemption if they know this claim but do not heed it. By an unlucky twist of theology, Protestants have to regard Catholics as blasphemers too, because the latter regard Mary as co-redemptorix with Christ, in violation of the utterance just quoted.
And that is a big lie. This idiot does not know as much as he thinks.
Christians view people as individuals who can gain salvation by the same, universal means and which denomination they belong to is a moot point. He is correct about the Christ on redemption but then the ones who will accept the calling are called out by God. All we are to do is what it says in Matthew 28.18-2o.>All non-Muslims blaspheme Islam because they insult Mohammed by not accepting him as the true Prophet, and by ignoring the teachings of the Koran. Jews seem the least philosophically troubled by what people of other faiths think about their own - but Orthodox Jews regard themselves as religiously superior to others because others fail in the proper observances, for example by not respecting kosher constraints. And in general all the religions blaspheme each other by regarding the others' teachings, metaphysics and much of their ethics as false and even pernicious, and their own religion as the only true one.
So what? We are contentious with one another because it is our true nature. When communism/atheism was strong, who fought amongst themselves often? Communists!
>It is a woolly liberal hope that all religions can be viewed as worshipping the same deity, only in different ways; but this is a nonsense, as shown by the most cursory comparison of teachings, interpretations, moral requirements, creation myths and eschatologies, in all of which the major religions differ and frequently contradict each other. History shows how clearly the religions themselves grasped this; the motivation for Christianity's hundreds of years of crusades against Islam, pogroms against Jews, and inquisitions against heretics, was the desire to expunge heterodoxy and 'infidelity', or at least to effect forcible compliance with prevailing orthodoxy. Islam's various jihads and fatwahs had and have the same aim, and it spread half way around the world by conquest and the sword.
Which would have happened for ANY REASON AT ALL, since man has proven himself to be greedy, despotic, vile, depraved and wicked without the various religious influences. This guy uses generalities and does not recognize individual responsibility, just like many of you here.
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Guy to cut off feet on the net!
by ISP inwell why not!?
they're his feet and all........ >> http://www.cutoffmyfeet.com/.
isp
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Rex B13
Bboyneko,
As immortal souls we are born into a physical body which is designed to have the same basic characteristics. We will leave our bodies upon death, taking on a spiritual nature alone and we will not be complete until the resurrection into spiritual bodies, not unlike our own we have now. Read the passages in the gospel accounts of Jesus after His resurrection. He has both physical abilities AND spiritual characteristics. Man is an immortal soul. He is created in God's image and angels are not. This is one of the reasosn that Satan grew to hate mankind so much.
Later,
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WTS limits Field Service in Certain Cases
by Amazing inwts limits field service in certain cases .
should users of tobacco and those addicted to drugs, or those taking substitute drugs (like those on the methodone program), be allowed to share with us in the filed ministry?
july 1973, km, p.4, question box.
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Rex B13
You're all missing thepoint and intent of the Witchtower. Its all about control, none of it has to make sense.
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How Westernized Christianity Is
by Skeptic init amazes me how westernized peoples version of christianity is.
mind you, i have only been exposed to the north american version of christianity.
what made me think of this was how people today find the practice of polygamy to be disgusting.
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Rex B13
Hi Richard,
I just wanted to comment on the 'God killing infants' compaints.1) Some Christian faiths do not accept the accounts of this nature as anything other than Jewish apologetics, for they assert that Jesus provides the revelation of God's true nature and nowhere does Christ affirm these events.
2) Those who do accept his as literal will specualte but in the end, must admit that these are events not justified by God to us, therefore it is a mystery.
3) Divine judgment is the sole domain of God.
4) God determines by predestination when we will die. He allows evil to exist within the sphere of His control, like the passages in Job. We only live as long as God allows us before He takes us home. God makes things happen that turn negative events into positive. We can't always see what they are.....and I admit that.
5) By our very nature we are responsible for our own problems. We develop the warfare and the strife on our own quite well. We have affirmed that we (in our present state) cannot govern ourselves, nor manage our own affairs. We have 'free will.'
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most HATED thing about the meetings ...
by alliwannadoislive inhey ya'll ... ain't tuesdays, thursdays and sundays even better nowadays ?.
i was wondering what it is that you hated most about the meets ?.
the one thing that used to really rile me was the pressure to control the children - the frowns and the disapproving looks when they were just behaving like normal kids .... the worst of it all for me was seeing any little person being taken outside and hearing the loud slaps even when the door was closed .... what is it that you least miss ?
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Rex B13
>I was wondering what it is that you hated most about the meets ?
The one thing that used to really rile me was the pressure to control the children - the frowns and the disapproving looks when they were just behaving like normal kids ...
The worst of it all for me was seeing any little person being taken outside and hearing the loud slaps even when the door was closed ...Yes, keeping babies and toddlers in hour or two hour boring meetings is one of the worst things about the Watchtower. There are also so many women bring kids alone, three or four or more. Then you have the Theocratic Police who are always happy to take some kid out and slap them for you! Churches have activities for kids that are at their level and most would not think of making them stay out in the sanctuary for sermons.
>What is it that YOU least miss?
Thursday night after meeting beer and pizza with my friends, who are friends no longer.
Rex