Posts by RunningMan

65

WT monitoring JWD? Absolutely!

by fedorE in

jw
friends

from channel c (today).

you may have read something similar to this before but the specific details are interesting.. this was put on a uk forum by an xjw called gordon...he gave me permission to use his post.. .

quote:.

RunningMan

The original post seems to be a rather alarmist description of some pretty routine stuff.

All of this monitoring seems to be possible and not too difficult. However, most of it would probably be reported only on an exception basis. Could you imagine how many people would be required to listen to every phone conversation, read every computer's internet log, and scour every JW and ex-JW site in the world. They would need an army of snoops.

I do suspect that they check out the apostate sites, just to keep an eye on the opposition, but they would have to be really careful. Normality is contagious, you know. They would probably have a lot of snoops going over the wall

29

WTS Idea of "Prophecy" Do You Find This Ridiculous???

by Seeker4 in

oops, it posted too soon!

the wts view is that we don't understand bible prophecy until after it is fulfilled.

thus their excuse for mis-understanding what was going to happen in 1876, 1914, 1918, 1925, 1975, etc.

RunningMan

This is one of the statements that really annoyed me. I can still recall coming home from the book study in the Revelation book where we discussed this matter.

I looked up the word prophecy in the dictionary. It said something like, "to fortell the future as if by divine inspiration."

Well, if you can't understand it until after it happened, it's not a prophecy. It doesn't fortell anything. And if you can't interpret it until afterwards, then the "future" part of the definition falls away, too.

In Watchtower land, a prophecy is defined as, "looking backward to see if what we said can be twisted to make sense."

8

Any one have the Public Talk Outlines?

by jpcbs in

i know this comes up from time to time.

i had the link for the reexamine site bookmarked but since it is now on perpetual maintanence, i can't acces them.. thank you .

RunningMan

As far as trimming them down by 15 minutes, that shouldn't be hard. The outline is only two pages long (and usually the second page isn't full). I always had to bring in additional material. I would use the references given in the outline, and pull in information from them that was really outside of the outline.

Let's face it, most public talks could be covered in 20 words: "The world is going to hell. Jehober will fix it all up. The end is near. Sell Watchtowers or die."

8

Any one have the Public Talk Outlines?

by jpcbs in

i know this comes up from time to time.

i had the link for the reexamine site bookmarked but since it is now on perpetual maintanence, i can't acces them.. thank you .

RunningMan

I have a couple, and IP_SEC is completely correct. They're nothing special.

11

crazy stories from dubland - MEPS

by karvel in

our bookstudy conductor said that the chinese gov't wanted to buy meps for "millions" from the society.

anyone else ever heard this story?

or is this one region specific?.

RunningMan

When MEPS first came out, many witnesses misunderstood what it was. They thought it was an automated translating machine. At the time (early 80's), I was a computer programmer and knew that many large companies had tried this, spent millions, and failed. In fact, even today, translating machines are rudimentary, and require considerable human intervention.

MEPS is a phototypesetting machine that is functional in multiple languages - a neat piece of software, but hardly the world-leading technology that many witnesses believed it to be. Today, it is now 21 years old, and in the software business, 21 years is like a millenium.

The likelihood of the Chinese wanting to buy an outdated piece of software for millions of dollars, when there are undoubtedly superior products commercially available is laughable. The idea of the society turning down free money (I mean, selling software in no way diminishes your asset) is equally laughable.

But, witnesses like to believe that they are better than the rest of the world.

This is the same logic that leads them to exclaim how well managed their assemblies are - everything is so precise that only God's direction could make it happen. Well, last year, I went to a Stones concert. The elaborate staging and logistics, and the speed of set up and take down boggle the mind - far superior to anything I ever saw at a convention. But then, Satan has always been better organized than God.

29

new e-mail from my mom

by Heather in

jw
friends

my moms e-mails get shorter and shorter.

this latest says only this.. 2 peter chapter 2. lovely.........i'm a dog returning to my vomit.

RunningMan

My favorite Bible verse is this one:

"the gecko, the monitor lizard, the wall lizard, the skink and the chameleon." - Lev 11:30 NIV

284

NAME JUST ONE thing....ONE THING...revealed by God....

by Terry in

somebody is always insisting they have an invisible and mysterious source of divine information and selling it like hotcakes and syrup.

but, why are you still buying?

when will you ever learn that this is a scam among many scams.

RunningMan

And, as for God's hygiene regulations, you recall that he told the Israelites to take a stick with them when they squatted, so that they could cover their poop.

Well, that's not bad advice when you've got twelve people living in tents. But, don't forget that, according to the Bible, there were approximately 2 million Israelites wandering in the wilderness. Imagine a nomadic camp with the population of the greater Cincinatti or Vancouver metropolitain area, and now picture all of those people walking outside the camp, taking a crap, and then covering it with dirt.

All in all, I'd say God's hygiene record was a little weak. He couldn't even think of digging a latrine.

284

NAME JUST ONE thing....ONE THING...revealed by God....

by Terry in

somebody is always insisting they have an invisible and mysterious source of divine information and selling it like hotcakes and syrup.

but, why are you still buying?

when will you ever learn that this is a scam among many scams.

RunningMan

The Circle of the Earth

If you look at a pizza from a distance, it looks like a circle. So, when the Bible speaks of “the circle of the earth”, did it mean that the earth was spherical, or just round?

Well, the evidence seems to indicate that God thought the earth was flat and round, like a pizza. Here is why I say that:

"I saw a tree of great height at the center of the world. It was large and strong, with its top touching the heavens, and it could be seen from the ends of the earth." – Daniel 4:7, 8

So, God inspired Daniel to write that the earth’s surface has a center, and that a tree could be tall enough to be seen everywhere on the planet. But, the surface of a sphere has no center, and no matter how tall a tree is, it will not be visible from a large part of that sphere.

Jesus and the Devil make a similar mistake:

"The devil took him (Jesus) to a very high mountain and displayed before him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence...." - Matthew 4:8

Now, you could argue that the Devil used a vision to show Jesus the kingdoms, but the scripture implies that the purpose of going up the mountain was to make it possible to see the ends of the earth.

A similar concept regarding height shows up in Genesis 11:4. In this story, the people are trying to build a tower that would reach right up to heaven. This was very threatening to God, because heaven was his realm. So, he confused their languages and scattered them. I wonder why he hasn’t put a stop to modern sky scrapers. Surely the height of a ziggurat could not compare to the Sears Tower.

So, when the Bible talks about “the circle of the earth”, it appears to be talking about a flat, round surface, not a sphere.

But, let’s give God the benefit of the doubt and overlook this mistake. Let’s assume that he really did know the shape of the earth. Would that be evidence of divine inspiration?
Everyone who grew up watching Bugs Bunny knows that common knowledge held the earth to be flat until Christopher Columbus proved them wrong. Except, of course, for a bunch of Greek fellows. In 240 BC, Eratosthenes not only figured out that the earth was spherical, he even managed to devise a brilliant method of calculating its diameter using trigonometry.

Aristarchus built on this information to calculate the diameter of the sun. He was a little off, but he realized that the earth and sun were both spherical, and that the sun was many times larger than the earth. According to the Encylopedia Brittanica, the spherical shape of the earth was common knowledge among the Egyptians and Greeks as far back as 2550 BC.
So, even if God had actually thought that the earth was spherical, it really wasn’t that remarkable of a conclusion. Other people, not too far away, had figured it out all by themselves.

16

New picture on this weeks Bookstudy

by Connaughty in

jw
friends

i'm curious as to why the picture in the new revelation book, on this weeks schedule, seems to be different than the original version.

does anyone know why?

it shows completely two different individuals, but the same background.

RunningMan

Maybe he was an Amalekite:

“And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Write this as a memorial in a book and recite it in the ears of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.” - Exodus 17:14

34

anyone here in the stock market?

by Gregor in

jw
friends

what a roller coaster it has been lately.

no way i would want to manage our investments.

leave it to the brokers and try to ignore it.

RunningMan

In addition to mutual funds, I've been doing my own investing for about 10 years.

Most people make the mistake of thinking it's a game. It's not. When you buy stocks, you are buying part of a company. When I buy, I carefully analyze their financial statements, and try to get to know something about the management and prospects of the company. Once I'm satisfied with the company, I will watch and wait for a price that looks like a bargain. If it never comes, then I don't buy.

If you buy quality, and know why you are buying and selling, then the daily dips and spikes mean nothing. Today, one of mine is up nicely, on an announcement of a successful share placement and a large order for materials. Another is down. The rest are pretty much flat.

Overall, the stock market tends to rise and dip based on large-scale news, fears, and excitement. Individual companies don't drop in value just because someone gets scared about interest rates or banking losses.