Posts by Rivergang

15

JWs Tortured in Russia

by blondie in

jw
friends

https://www.upi.com/top_news/world-news/2024/06/16/russia-tortures-jehovahs-witness/3971718239875/ .

russia is amping up to severe torture for jws.

i don't think this is appropriate behaviour for anyone..

Rivergang

Agreed.

You couldn’t call the perpetrators of those acts “animals’, as that would be an insult to animals!

19

BBC poor grammar - but FUNNY!

by BoogerMan in

"hamburg police shoot man with axe ahead of euros match.

" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news.

why don't german police just use guns?.

This dumbing down of reporting is not just confined to the UK. While going through some of my father’s old things, I came across a newspaper cutting from the year 1959. The contrast in standards between that and modern reporting was startling.One of the reasons I no longer read newspapers!

78

God, one person, or three?

by slimboyfat in

the trinity doctrine says god is three persons in one being.. yet the bible says god is one.. gal 3.20 a mediator, however, implies more than one party; but god is one.

niv.

gal 3.20 now a mediator is not for just one person, but god is one.

Rivergang

An argument which has been raging for over 1500 years, and unlikely to be resolved anytime soon.

88

Who Was The Biggest Jackass Circuit Overseer You Ever Met?

by Sea Breeze in

there was on older white-haired circuit overseer in houston around 1989 or 1990. last name started with a w i think.... not sure though.

even the most brain-dead robotic elders told me he was offensive.

.

Rivergang

PS: @ozziepost

I remember Neville Bromwich giving talks at one of our circuit assemblies. However, we never had him as Circuit Overseer (not in my time, anyway). Perhaps we didn't miss much?

88

Who Was The Biggest Jackass Circuit Overseer You Ever Met?

by Sea Breeze in

there was on older white-haired circuit overseer in houston around 1989 or 1990. last name started with a w i think.... not sure though.

even the most brain-dead robotic elders told me he was offensive.

.

Rivergang

@ozziepost

Happy to be corrected as to the spelling of “Cyclone Rex’s” surname!

88

Who Was The Biggest Jackass Circuit Overseer You Ever Met?

by Sea Breeze in

there was on older white-haired circuit overseer in houston around 1989 or 1990. last name started with a w i think.... not sure though.

even the most brain-dead robotic elders told me he was offensive.

.

Rivergang

I am a little surprised that nobody from Down-Under has mentioned “Cyclone Rex” Manwaring. Don’t think the term “Jack Ass” would quite describe him, but he was certainly unforgettable!

18

Know it’s not true but stay anyway

by Elena in

how many of the millions of jws know it’s not true but stay anyway?.

my guess is most jws know it’s not true on a subconscious level to an extent but they don’t want to think about it too much and would never ever voice it out loud.. but this is probably true with all religions around the world?.

Rivergang

but this is probably true with all religions around the world?

Typically, they might give lip service to whatever their religion teaches, but in practice just quietly ignore its more extreme demands. (A good example of this being the Catholic Church's stance on contraception. Not too many "practicing" Catholics pay a lot of heed to that one!)

It is similar amongst the JWs. I notice that the ones who have remained long term with the religion are generally those who are likewise inclined to turn a blind eye to the more extreme (or more ridiculous!) utterances of the GB. This is certainly the case in my family, anyway.

Within any of the so-called "Mainstream Churches", such a course of action is not too difficult to take. For example, the Catholic Church's rules are "attend mass at least twice a year, and confession at least once a year". Meet those requirements, and the church generally leaves you alone.

However, amongst the JWs, it must be a lot more difficult to maintain the charade? (This question is addressed to those who are PIMOs).

As WC Stevenson summed it up in his 1968 work The Inside Story of Jehovah's Witnesses: "No other religious group would demand so much from its members, in return for so little". Compared with the other Christian churches, the demands placed on their adherents by the WTS/GB is greater by a number of magnitudes. (In fact, this difference is what mathematicians would describe as "exponential").

30

Education video this midweeks meeting

by jehovaxx in

there is an item this week all about yang ones leaving school.. the two brothers go to a career advisor seminar.

one brother thinks it’s good to work hard full time while you are young and tries to encourage his friend to as well.. his friend (who is the good jw trust the gb no matter what they say)) he wants a part time job.. the video shows him dreaming about investing his money on his phone and the chart goes up, he drives a nice car and seems to be doing well financially.. then he reads the scripture in proverbs and next you see that investment chart go down in the red and he is so pleased he just got a low paid part time job.. this infuriates me.

how many of us are now struggling because we were told to get menial part time jobs and we were told the end would have been here by now.. i will never tell a young person to listen to the gb advice on this.

Rivergang

Beth Sarim,

There is nothing like expecting to have it both ways, is there!

During the recession of the early 1990s, I was living in a circuit which encompassed a low socio-economic area. People there struggled at the best of times, yet the WTS still expected everybody to be forthcoming in paying for the planned new Assembly Hall.

There were pointed talks "from the platform" which practically accused us all of being just a bloody bunch of tight-@$$es. However, interspersed with those were other talks expressing dim views of young persons who even just wanted to enter into an apprenticeship - let alone pursue a higher qualification.

At the time, the most charitable thing I could think to describe the situation was "a total disconnection with reality".

30

Education video this midweeks meeting

by jehovaxx in

there is an item this week all about yang ones leaving school.. the two brothers go to a career advisor seminar.

one brother thinks it’s good to work hard full time while you are young and tries to encourage his friend to as well.. his friend (who is the good jw trust the gb no matter what they say)) he wants a part time job.. the video shows him dreaming about investing his money on his phone and the chart goes up, he drives a nice car and seems to be doing well financially.. then he reads the scripture in proverbs and next you see that investment chart go down in the red and he is so pleased he just got a low paid part time job.. this infuriates me.

how many of us are now struggling because we were told to get menial part time jobs and we were told the end would have been here by now.. i will never tell a young person to listen to the gb advice on this.

Rivergang

Not again - the €{¥#ards have broken out in a fresh place!

5

In Defense of the Crusades

by aqwsed12345 in

christians in the eleventh century were not paranoid fanatics.

muslims really were gunning for them.

by the time the crusades started, muslims had already captured two-thirds of the christian world.

Rivergang

If Constantinople had fallen in 1100, the Turkish army would have descended upon Europe four hundred years earlier, and the flourishing late medieval culture that was beginning to emerge at that time might never have developed:

The problem was, though, that the Fourth Crusade (1204) sacked Constantinople. In doing so, they fatally weakened the Byzantine Empire - which was Europe's key defence against Muslim expansion.

That the Crusades ever kicked off at all was because of an appeal for help by the Byzantine Emperor, Alexios I Komnenos. In 1095, he asked for assistance from Western Europe to resist incursions into his territory by the Seljuk Turks. What the emperor envisaged was an addition of another force of mercenary soldiers to reinforce his army - an army which already contained a large number of mercenaries. (Those mercenaries included Muslim troops - the matter was a lot more involved than just "Good guys wearing white hats, bad guys wearing black hats").

However, what the emperor wanted and what he ended up getting were two quite different things! While the First Crusade did take a little of the heat off the Byzantine Empire, in the longer term the Crusades weakened it to the point where it no longer served as an effective bulwark against Turkish invasion.

The real unsung heroes in defending Western Civilisation would have to be the Poles. Twice (in 1683 and again in 1920) they saved Western Europe from disaster.

In 1683, Polish forces under Jan Sobieski lifted the Siege of Vienna and inflicted a decisive defeat on the Ottoman Turks, thus saving Western Europe from invasion. Then again in 1920, when the seemingly unstoppable Red Army was poised at the River Vistula and looking certain to burst into Western Europe, it was routed by the Polish forces under Jozef Pilsudski. Were those Soviet armies not defeated at the Vistula, there would have been very little to stop them from sweeping through to Germany and beyond. The "Iron Curtain" would have been in place a generation earlier than it was - and would have bordered right on the English Channel!

(The Battle of the Vistula is well described in Dennis Wheatley's Red Eagles)