Well, now we know why Splane was all hepped up on his "negative news reports are directly from the Devil" rant on the "Saturday afternoon" portion of the regional convention video.
FFGhost
JoinedPosts by FFGhost
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8
Four Corners: Bearing Witness airs Monday 13 September at 8.30pm on ABC.
by smiddy3 inabc 4 corners tv here in australia to be seen on monday 13th september.. i`m looking forward to seeing it.. ex witnesses have their say ..
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2021-08-S-196--Using Enjoy Life Forever! in the Ministry!
by Atlantis in2021-08-s-196--using enjoy life forever!
in the ministry.
english and spanish.
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FFGhost
Exhibit 6,847 in "how to micromanage every aspect of your adherents' lives".
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1995 generation change
by Gorb innow, many years later, i remember the 1995 generation change, very well.. since early youth, hearing my father explaining in field service the 2520 years.
it was his main theme in the field.. with the change my doubts started.
with some jw friends we did not trust the organization anymore.
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FFGhost
1995 was pretty much the last gasp for a coherent set of doctrines. Not coincidentally, that was about 2 years after Fred Franz died and by then Henschel was well along the path of senility.
There was no "oracle" thereafter. The next de facto boss after Henchel was Jaracz, whose primary concern seemed to be keeping the "sheep" in line rather than tying up the frayed, loosening knots of JW theology. And it's only gotten worse.
For the past ~20 years, the WTS has been about virtually nothing beyond behavior control. Their latest books on Jeremiah & Ezekiel are not about prophecies and their meanings - it's all disconnected scriptural snippets culled from here and there that the WTS presents for the way they model preferred JW behavior: "look at how obedient Jeremiah was..,look at how zealous Ezekiel was....look at how meek and submissive they were...."
At this point, doctrine is absolutely and literally of utterly no consequence. TD brings up many good points about the incoherence of their doctrine, and the loose ends they've never tied up. Doesn't matter anymore. What matters is obedience and submission. The appearance of being a "good" JW. Accepting the hierarchy and not questioning anything. Behavior control.
Yes, the current generation teaching is laughably absurd. Yes, the "great crowd was identified in 1935" has massive "plot holes". They know it and don't care. What they do care about is, do you say you agree with it? If yes, great, you can stay in the "club". No? OK, fine, say goodbye to your family, friends, and the only life you've ever known.
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Was anyone at Bethel on 9-11-01?
by snarf inwas anyone at bethel on 9-11 or know of anyone who was?
i was just wondering the reactions to the bethelites there on that day.
also, was bethel close enough to ground zero to have any effect on the publishing that day?
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FFGhost
Do JWs think that they are the only nice people in the world ?
I know that was a rhetorical question, but yes, they really do think so.
Every - EVERY - experience about JW honesty (returning lost money, etc.) features the JW saying "I returned your wallet because I am a JW".
The implication being, that every non-JW in the world is greedy, every non-JW would have kept the money, etc.
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If you think Watchtower is disappearing any time soon…
by Reservations inyou are sadly mistaken.. i hear people say it on here all the time, and dare i say his name *cough* lloyd evans *cough* has said it a number of times, that watchtower is running scared and watchtower is in decline….. we need to put in perspective the decrease from the 2020 report.
if we calculate a yearly -0.6 decrease over a 10 year period from 2020 figures it leaves us the grand total number of witnesses of:.
by 2030: - 7,933,479. by 2040: - 7,471,357. by 2050: - 7,036,154. i agree that this is a significant decrease, but let’s not kid ourselves, the wt organisation will still be alive and well even with an annual 0.6% loss.
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FFGhost
There is a market for:
-- organizations that tell people who would rather not decide for themselves, what to do
-- organizations that peddle too-good-to-be-true solutions for problems to non-critical thinkers
-- organizations that allow small-minded people who would be (or are) failures in other aspects of life, to assert a measure of authority of others or meet some internally-contrived measure of "success"
The WTS is far from unique in catering to this market. If the WTS were to "disappear" tomorrow, the market would still be there. The vacuum would be filled nearly instantly by some other organization(s). All the "displaced" JWs who have one or more of the needs outlined above would be "gobbled up" by those other organizations within months.
The WTS is slowly, grudgingly, adapting to changing times. So long as they remain at least partially committed to rolling with societal changes, they will exist in some form or another. Almost certainly smaller, even less significant than they are now, but still there.
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Sep. 2021 Broadcast: more money
by neat blue dog inin the latest jw broadcast, anthony morris the turd gives a talk about donations.
to camouflage this, he starts and ends the talk by saying that isn't actually what he's doing.
first he starts with the usual disclaimer, 'wt has never begged for money like christendom and we never will', you know the drill.
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FFGhost
"We are not leaders, but we are taking the lead."
"We are not asking for money, but please send us money."
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Enduring watchtower study
by road to nowhere inmy studying consists of skimming the article.
this one starts with 2017 don't give up convention.
at the time i changed it to i give up.
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FFGhost
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this issue (dated July 2021) is the first time the WTS has explicitly acknowledged the COVID-19 pandemic in the WT magazine.
Paragraph 2 of yesterday's study article, as well as the QFR at the end of the magazine about how internet dating sites are a bad idea (what a surprise they reached that conclusion ) specifically mention COVID-19 and how it is affecting JWs.
Of course they've done countless video segments on it and there are dozens if not hundreds of pages in excruciatingly fine detail regarding the micromanagement of conducting meetings by Zoom, but printed references in their "flagship" journal have been, IIRC, completely non-existent up until now.
They are of course, in general, dreadfully reactionary and slow to act, but this seemed even slower than usual, to wait nearly 1.5 years to "officially" acknowledge, in the official magazine, how the pandemic is affecting the lives of their adherents.
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1995 generation change
by Gorb innow, many years later, i remember the 1995 generation change, very well.. since early youth, hearing my father explaining in field service the 2520 years.
it was his main theme in the field.. with the change my doubts started.
with some jw friends we did not trust the organization anymore.
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FFGhost
They didn't have to change it! There are still at least 50 people worldwide born before 1914 (actually, probably several hundred):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_oldest_living_people
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"Seven nations more populous than you are"
by FFGhost ini wrote this up a few months ago:.
https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/5087628499091456/camp-israel-problem-pooping.
this other little nugget from deuteronomy caught my eye as well:.
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FFGhost
I wrote this up a few months ago:
https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/5087628499091456/camp-israel-problem-pooping
This other little nugget from Deuteronomy caught my eye as well:
Deuteronomy 7:1 (NWT):
When Jehovah your God brings you into the land you are about to enter and take possession of, he will also clear away populous nations from before you: the Hitʹtites, the Girʹga·shites, the Amʹor·ites, the Caʹnaan·ites, the Perʹiz·zites, the Hiʹvites, and the Jebʹu·sites, seven nations more populous and mightier than you are
I commented in the above-cited thread about how the WTS dogmatically asserts that the number of Israelite nomads, at the time of their conquest of the promised land, was 3 million.
Here, in this verse, Jehovah promises to "clear away" these 7 nations, "more populous than you are".
So, assuming I do better at math in this thread than in the previous one, and assuming that "more populous" is the bare minimum, we'll assign a population of 3,000,001 to each of those 7 nations.
That means that, in the land of Canaan, roughly corresponding to modern-day Israel, Palestine, and Jordan, there were, at a bare minimum, 24 million people either living or camping there (3 million Israelites and at least 21,000,007 other guys).
Hmm, I wonder how populations of Europe / Asia Middle East from 3500 (WTS chronology) years ago compare to today?
Must be pretty significantly higher, right? 3500 years ago, there were about 500,000 people living in Greece, now there are 10 million plus. 3500 years ago, there were about 2-3 million people living in Egypt, today there are 100 million plus.
So, let pull out my Google-ator here...population of Israel, Jordan, and Palestine in 2021...is ~24 million.
So, since as the WTS asserts, every word of the Bible is "God-breathed" and is absolute, literal, verifiable, true history, the population of the "promised land" has.....remained identical to what it was 3500 years ago.
Or....
Now bear with me here...could it be....
That the Bible doesn't really contain absolutely truthful, literal, absolute history?
Nah, that can't be it. The population must be the same today as it was 3500 years ago.
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The camp of Israel and the problem of pooping
by FFGhost inso, in a couple weeks, the jws move on in their bible-reading slog to the book of deuteronomy.. take a gander at deuteronomy 23:12,13:.
a private place should be designated for use outside the camp, and there is where you should go.
13 a peg should be part of your equipment.
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FFGhost
This reminds me, I want to do a companion piece on the Israelite trek, regarding the nations they defeated.
*** Coming soon ***