I noticed there was an article on the CBC website today, with an interview from Lawrence Hughes. The subject of how the HLC is used to intimidate / unduely influence JWs who are in a situation where blood transfusion would very likely save their lives.
Posts by Scully
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11Canadian current and former JWs questioning the blood issue
by Lee Elder ini was interviewed yesterday by stephen smith at the cbc.
he would also like to interview other current and former jws, along with any elders or hlc members who are questioning the blood policy.here is his contact information:stephen smithweb journalistcbc montreal1-141-62251-514-597-6225email: [email protected] you think you might be a good candidate, you may contact him directly.
he has agreed to maintain anonymity for those who need it.thanks,lee.
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114
"The G.B. is neither inspired nor infallible"
by smiddy inthat admission in the feb.17 ,study edition of the watchtower , " who is leading gods people today ?
" "the governing body is neither inspired, nor infallible, therefore it (they/we) can err in doctrinal matters or in organizational direction .".
have the many jehovahs witnesses past and present who have lost their lives by refusing blood transfusions due to the prohibition on blood tranfusions by jehovahs witnesses really got the sense of this statement ?.
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Scully
"The Governing Body is neither inspired, nor infallible, therefore it can err in doctrinal matters or in organizational direction ."
Then what is the point of listening to them? What makes their interpretation of doctrinal matters or organizational direction any better than anyone else? Why, then, if we decided to form our own views, would we considered to be Apostate™ and DFd?
Deuteronomy had the truth test for anyone claiming to speak on behalf of god. If their words came true, they were a true prophet. If their words did not come true, they were a false prophet. How does the GB stand up to the truth test?
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Hurricane Matthew: Relief help report is too vague
by StephaneLaliberte inwhen jehovah's witnesses report on their relief work, they seem to purposefully remain vague.
all i get out of such an article is this: don't worry, no one you should worry about died.
but there are a lot of damage and we are here to help the survivors.
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Scully
I think it was around the time of Hurricane Katrina when Watchtower's ulterior motive was exposed.
They told people donating money to NOT SPECIFY on their cheques that the money was for "Hurricane Katrina relief work", that they would know best what to do with the money. Legally, any money donated with a specific intent *must* be used in the manner specified.
Next, the JWs who were assisted by WT-organized relief work were targeted afterward, and asked to remit any insurance monies to WT, since The Brothers™ had helped them at no cost (but doesn't that imply that a cost is being levied against them - so the work was never truly free of cost to begin with?)
Clearly, the WT's motive in providing disaster relief was to gouge donations from sympathetic donors and then take advantage of the gratitude of disaster victims by asking to be repaid for the "free" "volunteer" help that was provided to them once they received a cheque from their respective insurance companies.
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Jesus, the Great Convincer?
by Simon insupposedly the disciples witnessed jesus' super-power awesomeness first-hand.. so they were all 100% on-board to-the-death martyrs ... right?.
erm .... judas betrayed him.
thomas didn't believe he'd come back.
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Scully
why did he need to be betrayed
Well, someone had to fulfill a prophecy, which brings me to one of my favorite questions: If Judas betrayed Jesus and fulfilled a prophecy by doing so, why is Judas hated so much? It seems to me that he is a *vital* part of the story, and without him perpetrating the betrayal, Jesus wouldn't have died to "save" mankind.
Why isn't he treated like a hero, for ensuring that Jesus fulfilled his sacrificial role?
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7 Things Most JW's Dont Know They're Supposed To Believe
by pale.emperor ini decided to spend my sunday morning creating a youtube video highlighting 7 things most jw's dont know they're supposed to believe.
most of these i learned only after my exit of the cult.
here's hoping a few jw's will stumble upon it.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er44oc0p4ny&feature=youtu.be.
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Scully
Excellent job there, pale.emperor. It might be my old eyes, but I found the transition from proof text to the next slide to be a bit fast, JMO.
The Flock Book™ *might* be a problem, and may legitimize an attempt to remove your video - keep in mind that it is supposed to be a 'confidential' publication for Elders™ only and WT may object to it being available publicly.
We all know that it's been circulating on the internet for decades now, so it's really out of WT's hands, but if they wanted to make trouble for you with YouTube, they might be able to make a case to have it removed.
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FYI, Eloise Dupuis, 27, a JW, died last Wednesday in a Quebec hospital because she refused a blood transfusion
by AndersonsInfo ini just received the following message from a friend this morning.. barbara.
eloise dupuis, 27 years old, died at the hotel dieu hospital in lévis, quebec, canada, wednesday, october 12th.
she died because of her religious principles.
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Scully
According to JWs, she had the operation during which she go infected by a virus. It is that virus that put her in a coma for two days and finally killed her after two days.
They are trying to make it sound like she acquired an infection during the surgical procedure? They sure are in denial!! The "virus" she acquired from the JWs, the one that made her / her family believe that a blood transfusion would taint her, was the one that killed her.
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FYI, Eloise Dupuis, 27, a JW, died last Wednesday in a Quebec hospital because she refused a blood transfusion
by AndersonsInfo ini just received the following message from a friend this morning.. barbara.
eloise dupuis, 27 years old, died at the hotel dieu hospital in lévis, quebec, canada, wednesday, october 12th.
she died because of her religious principles.
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Scully
She died only 2 days ago. Her obituary may not have been published in the newspaper yet. Give it a day or two. Her family must be in shock.
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19
We are imperfect
by HereIgo ini can't tell you how many times i have heard this while growing up as a witness.
every time i questioned hypocrisy in the org i was told " well we are imperfect" and its was beyond annoying.
at what point does "imperfect" turn into just not christian?
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Scully
Try saying that when you get Invited™ to a Judicial Committee™. They'll DF you in a heart beat.
So the GB is "made up of imperfect men" when they print what turns out to be erroneous material in publications that impact the lives of JWs everywhere. When they lie to their followers, in other words. Where is the Judicial Committee™ holding them to account?
If they can't get their $h!t together and be truthful with JWs, why on earth do they deserve to be obeyed? What did god do when the Israelites started offering their sons and daughters to false gods, at the direction of the priests supposedly appointed by god? Didn't he abandon them? Didn't he tell honest-hearted people to stop listening to these false leaders?
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Elder asking for help
by untruth inthis is my first time posting on here so i’m not sure where to start.
i’m trying to keep it as short as possible since i could expand much more.
i’ve been in the process of waking up in the last year and a half.
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Scully
At the beginning of 1993, leaving the JWs was the furthest thing from my mind. I was the stereotypical True Believer™. Mr Scully and I hosted a Congregation Book Study™ and Field Service Meeting™ in our home; we never missed a Meeting™ or Service™. We had 2 young children and another on the way. Within the year, all of that came crashing down around us. By the end of 1994, we had decided that as of January 1, 1995 we would never set foot in that Kingdom Hall™ again. It's a long story, and I've dispersed bits and pieces here and there on JWD over the past 15 years that I've been a member here.
What I will tell you is this: with a True Believer™ you must SLOW DOWN. It's only natural to want to share everything you find, all at once in a massive memory dump, thinking that you know your spouse and that she would never betray you or your doubts. But that is exactly what will happen if she feels overwhelmed with information. She will literally freak out, if not overtly, she will keep it to herself and feel like the life she knows has ended.
The key to a successful fade, with your relationship intact, is to slow things down.
The final straw for Mr Scully and me (as I mentioned recently on another thread) was to read the discussion in the Insight and Aid books on the topic of lying.
Lying generally involves saying something false to a person who is entitled to know the truth and doing so with the intent to deceive or to injure him or another person.
and then further on:
While malicious lying is definitely condemned in the Bible, this does not mean that a person is under obligation to divulge truthful information to people who are not entitled to it.
It really started to bother me that Theocratic Warfare™ - the manipulation of information intended to deceive someone who is not entitled to truthful information - might be directed at JWs by the GB. With this being part of the foundation of its teachings, how exactly could I be sure that I wasn't being lied to by the Organization™? What if that was its entire modus operandi? I remembered the hype around 1975, and it was bugging the living $h!t out of me to see how the history had been rewritten, blaming "overzealous" individuals for raising our hopes. Well, who was responsible for publishing those Watchtower and Awake articles telling people that Armageddon™ was no more than "mere months" away? Or that this was the time to sell your homes and Move to Where the Need Is Great™? And then there was the gradual shifting of The Generation™ from being those who saw the events of 1914 and would have been able to discern their meaning, to those who were merely alive in 1914... what was the purpose of those subtle changes if not to keep JWs (and their donations) from jumping ship? And now this whole new teaching around overlapping generations?? I was actually cynical enough to say to Mr Scully toward the end of '94 that The Society™ would have to come up with something in the near future because we had just crossed the 80-year mark since 1914, and sure enough, a year later, this overlapping generation nonsense came out.
Anyway, what I did with those little blurbs in the Insight book, was to ask my True Believer™ former Catholic-JW-convert husband to help me understand who had the authority to decide who was "entitled" to truthful information, and who was not. What would be a proper motive for withholding truthful information? Moreover, did I have the right to withhold truthful information from someone I felt was not entitled to it, or was that privilege just reserved for the GB in Brooklyn? What if the GB decided that JWs weren't entitled to honesty? How would we know if or when they were lying to us by withholding information, when everything they tell us is called The Truth™? How could we, in good conscience, go Door-to-Door™ while wondering if the message we were trying to spread was untrue on any level?
He couldn't answer me. The more he thought about it, the more disturbed he got. We started skipping Meetings™ in favour of doing fun stuff with our kids. I would spend the Book Study™ upstairs in my room with the new baby, listening in via baby monitor (or not). In short order, the group was moved elsewhere, and we never bothered going after the first Meeting™ at the new place.
We've been *done* with the JWs for almost 22 years, and above all the other scandals and such that you'll come to learn about if you spend any amount of time here, it was the thought that the Organization™ regards its membership as not deserving of truth that decimated my desire to have any further part of it.
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Anionted mom says Jehovah may ask her to kill all her family!!
by Witness 007 inyes my holy anionted mom who has cancer is concerned that the loving god jehovah may ask her in heaven to destroy here non believer family including her 5 year old grandchild during armagedon....how messed up are these crazy people!!?
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Scully
I have been concerned about JWs starting to think like this for a very long time.
The GB has been priming the JWs with messages that Loyalty™ to the Organization™/Jehovah™ (in other words, doing whatever the GB says and following written instructions in the Publications™) is more important than any relationship. They've published statements to the effect that "even if what we tell you to do goes against your values, you should do it anyway." Ignore all your ethical boundaries. Do things that make normal people shake their heads and wonder "WTF is wrong with you?"
They have already convinced the vast majority of JWs to cut all ties with Disfellowshipped™, Disassociated™, and more recently Inactive™ people, including their own children, including children who were never Baptized™ as JWs. It's emotional and psychological torture, fully endorsed by Watchtower. They have said, in the past, that only the laws of the land prevent them from endorsing a Theocratic™ solution that would have been utilized in Bible Times - when "cutting off" someone (including your unruly child) meant taking them to the public square and stoning them to death. They have not retracted this statement but maybe the "new light" has somewhat modified their position on it - maybe it wouldn't be too much of a stretch for someone to take the Loyalty™ statement to the very extreme.
*** Nov 15, 1952 Watchtower ***
We are not living today among theocratic nations where such members of our fleshly family relationship could be exterminated for apostasy from God and his theocratic organization, as was possible and was ordered in the nation of Israel in the wilderness of Sinai and in the land of Palestine. "Thou shalt surely kill him; thy hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And thou shalt stone him to death with stones, because he hath sought to draw thee away from Jehovah thy God, . . . And all Israel shall hear, and fear, and shall do no more any such wickedness as this is in the midst of thee."-Deut. 13:6-11, AS.
Being limited by the laws of the worldly nation in which we live and also by the laws of God through Jesus Christ, we can take action against apostates only to a certain extent, that is, consistent with both sets of laws. The law of the land and God's law through Christ forbid us to kill apostates, even though they be members of our own flesh-and-blood family relationship.