Room 215

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Posts by Room 215

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  50

  Couple of questions for the Christians here - CO's talk mentioned some things that I want to understand

  by Doubting Bro in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  this is a question for all the christians on the board.

  i sat through the first co talk last night which was basically a plea to not give up preaching.

  one of his main points was that no one else had "the truth" and every other person that claims to be christian is in error.

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  Room 215

  One of our fellow contributors to this forum hae a memorable response to the CO's dismissive remarks about how Christendom regards Holy Week and the whole Easter period, recounting his visit to a church:

  "It was very odd going into a church during a service. what was interesting was that the chaplin spent time explaining how the death and resurrection of Jesus made it possible for everyone to be a friend of God. Whether you hold religious affiliation or not it is refreshing to be in a place where you are not being ranked as less than someone else.

  "The message was a universal one that everyone had the same opportunity. As a witness and member of the rank and file you are always being told that the scriptures are not written to you but to the annointed. That the hope mentioned is not for you but the annointed and that Jesus didn't die for you or mediate for you.

  "The focus was on the resurrection of Jesus and not the death and betrayal. The witnesses seem to have missed the whole point focusing on the negative not the positive. how typical of them."

  To which I say Amen and Amen
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  42

  Did You Tend To Question The Organization Or Did You Just WANT To Believe?

  by minimus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i know some who always questioned the elders, the society, and others because they were typically skeptical.. there are those who just seemed to want to believe whatever they were told.. i was more a skeptic, during my last decade.. .

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  Room 215

  I accepted all the major doctrines, and still do for the most part -- no trinity or hellfire, soul sleep, the earth's destiny, etc., but withheld judgment whenever the WTS embellished the details "filling in the blanks" one these with their own conjectures. One teaching I never bought into through all my years of pioneering and Bethel was their "mass murder" concept of Armageddon -- the notion that the accomplishment of God's will on earth required the pitiless destruction 99.9 pct of the world's population.
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  20

  Society putting out "Want ads" in BOE letters

  by sir82 in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  it seems the society has a severe enough shortage of help in some areas that it is asking for help thru all the us boes.. there is one recent letter circulating asking for volunteers who can work on a persian translation team to move to "britain".

  elders are to track down anyone who speaks persian & english, and ascertain their willinglness to move to bethel in london to help there.

  there's a bunch of the standard "in good standing" questions they are to ask, as well as immigration / citizenship / visa issues to work out.. also, they are looking for programmers who know silverlight & xaml to work on a project for software the rbcs are using.. .

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  Room 215

  "Also, they are looking for programmers who know Silverlight & XAML to work on a project for software the RBCs are using".... another evidence of their priorities -- property development staffed by unpaid volunteers....
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  64

  Can We Please Stop Referring To The Simplified English Watchtower A The Dumbed Down Version

  by Philadelphia Ponos in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i really shouldn't have to say any of this but as someone who is in the process of learning a second language, i can tell that simple language makes things a lot clearer when you are not familiar with the language.

  everyone on here started out reading simplified english while they were learning, including you native speakers.

  i'm sure no one here was reading on a college level in elementary school.

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  Room 215

  The new simplified version, it seems, is tailored for the thousands of illegal aliens here in the U.S. who comprise the main source -- likely the only source-- of any increases in membership.
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  26

  The latest July 15 WT - un-real.

  by just n from bethel in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i've been trying for some time to find the motiviation i needed to completely leave the cult behind.

  i'm mean, do it emotionally as well as mentally (whole-souled, right?

  ), despite still having a lot of family and friends that are cult members.

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  Room 215

  articles like these are the "raison d'etre" of the kool-aid editions of the WT. Maybe we would do a great service by distributing THEM in public places, so anyone potentially interested in JWs but unitiated could get a glimpse of their real nature.
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  11

  Memorial Attendance

  by DagothUr in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  according to the jdub talk forum, the memorial attendance this year was pretty high.

  my opinion is that it is a turmoiled year so some people seek refuge in religion.

  they think it was because of their "increased activity" and i guess so does the gb think too.

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  Room 215

  For pioneering, 30 hours is setting the bar pretty low. The rank and file may well report more hours, but the intensity of effort is ludicrous when compared with the stalwarts of the 40s and 50s. Lots of desultory driving around, slow-walk shuffling and liesurely coffee breaks as the clock ticks down toward noon....
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  172

  re-enforcing the shunning of immediate family - WT 7-15-11

  by undercover in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  july 15th wt study edition (regular dumb edition, not the dumber one).

  god's rest - have you entered into it?.

  subheading, when someone we love leaves jehovah.

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  Room 215

  It's also clear that the GB is losing patience with what must be the thousands of otherwide "exemplary" JW parents/relatives who invoke the "discussing necessary business" alibi as a pretext for circumventing their draconian orders ti ostracise any DF'd loved one.
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  81

  New simplified Watchtower

  by alanv in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  beginning with the july 15th 2011 edition of the watchtower, the society are producing a simplified version of the study copy.. this is apparantly for the many people whose first language is not english, and yet they live in a predominantly englsih speaking county.. the normal study edition will still be produced but it looks like the cong.

  will be able to ask for a supply of the simplified version each month.. this simplified version can be downloaded from the watchtower site.. http://www.jw.org/index.html.

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  Room 215

  Making the Watchtower even simpler than it is at present -- now that's a challenge!
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  41

  April "Pioneers" - a large army

  by dozy in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  anecdotally , from my ( rapidly diminishing number of ) jw contacts , it does seem that the april 30 hour pioneer campaign is going well.

  some congregations have over 1/2 the publishers on the pioneer list for april , including all the elders & ms. .

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  Room 215

  As we oldtimers who slogged around for 100 BONA-FIDE hours a month (no hour-long coffee breaks at the Wa Wa or Starbucks, 20-mile rides out to the rurals to knock on a "back call" who never answers the door, dumping off old issues of the magazine at old age homes and laundramats, etc.), 30 hours is a breeze to fake one's way through. As a nutty young Bethelite, I averaged more than 30 hours for several months while I was there. Nothing more than one more "feel good," guilt-assuaging exercise.
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  24

  How The WT's 144,000 Theology Hijacks Their Annual Memorial Meeting

  by Room 215 in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  at last year's local memorial service, purported to honor jesus' sacrificial death and its signficance to the eternal prospects of humanity, the visiting speaker from bethel quite remarkably managed to talk for almost an hour without one recourse to the word "resurrection".. a remarkable achievement, given its centrality in the belief system of nominal christianity.

  nor were the stirring moments of high drama in the bible's depicting of jesus last hours on earth-- his last supper and his prayer for the well-being of his disciples, the betrayal of judas, the agony of the garden; his disciples' succumbing to sleep; his betrayal and arrest in the garden of gethesemane; the scattering of his fear-gripped disciples; peter's denial, and the climactic soul-stirring awareness of the signficance of the empty tomb and its guardian's chilling pronouncement to mary magdalene and the women "why are you searching for the living among the dead?"...

  and so on, to his post-resurrection appearance at emmaus, etc.. all of this was swept aside in favor of convincing those in attendance that they had no business in partaking of the emblematic bread and wine.

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  Room 215

  Following Ding's reasoning above: Assume a very conservative annual growth rate for primitive Christianity, given the facts he presents: 3,000? 5,000?

  Consider that the epoch of "pure, unadulterated Christianity" spanned the lifetime of Jesus and his apostles. In the case of Paul, we can estimate 32 years (33 CE through 65 CE), for a total of 96,000 Crhistians at 3,000 per year, 160,000 at 5,000 per year. If one prefers to lengthen that epoch to include the lifespan of John, or until 98 CE (or 65 years), then these numbers grow to 195,000 and 325,000, respectively.