all these hypothetical questions about the organization's demise or what if god did this or that don't do anyone any good.
personal experiences.
info and insight about your congregation, circuit, area and the watchtower itself is what we need.
Sorry you really hate that. :p
Insight and info about my congregation, circuit, and area is that there is no growth, to the extent that they're willing to compromise standards to get an assembly with at least one baptism. Outrageously so. Field service is perfunctory, routine, watered down, and utterly meaningless. The null or negative reactions at the door actually thrill some of the more hard core of the flock, because they think that means the end is coming closer.
having seen many, many people leave the org over the years, i have to say that, when it comes to married couples, it's almost always the man who makes the first move to leave.
conversely, when it comes to being converted into the witnesses, more often than not it's the wife who joins up first.
although that wasn't the case with my own parents, my father became converted and my mother followed very reluctantly..
You know that I'd be curious to know as well.
It really isn't a firm rule, but people who are led along by social ties and irrational faith seem especially susceptible.
in memory of jimmy olson, i have provided a link to his story below.
many who now post here are new to the forum and i felt it was necessary to honor his memory.
although i never knew him, his brother was my roommate for a time at watchtower farms.
That's so sad...
Bethel always sounds like complete hell.
i realize that the anointed class inherits heaven while the great crowd inherits a renewed planet earth, but how and when are the anointed chosen?
are these people born with spirits or do they grow them as they live?
when they die, they don't sleep but go right to heaven, right?
I love Sam Harris.
my wife just asked me this.
my answer, in no uncertain terms, is no.
we both grew up in the dub religion.
@scratchme1010, yeah it also means that certain older brothers and sisters she admires, and who admire her, do not actually have the truth. That's hard to take.
I also think she's close to waking up, but I don't want it to be too late before she does, and I certainly don't want to force it.
so if the gb changed its "bible based beliefs" on some teaching, would witnesses all of a sudden change their individual beliefs too?.
witnesses like to claim that "their bible trained hearts and minds" make them believe as they do, but we know that the reality is that all witnesses hold their "deep seated beliefs" according to what they have been told to believe.. so what would cause the average witness to question those that dictate their "personal convictions"??.
thoughts?.
Who was i to think i knew better than Gods chosen channel?
You mean, "don't lean on your own understanding"?
Ugh. My friend told me that recently when I showed him how the flood couldn't have happened. That little verse in Proverbs is key to their mind control.
When you go back and read Proverbs as a thinking atheist, you see pretty clearly that at least on the surface, it's a letter from a father telling his sons to stay away from thugs and hoes. If it was intended any other way, it's pretty odd to start out with that.
But no, cults need that mind control measure.
i remember a roman catholic priest acknowledging on the bbc that the outrageously anti-clerical tv comedy father ted was a humorous mocking of his church but an acceptable thing.. try mocking the jw religion to a believer and the result is so very different.. just why is it that jehovah's witnesses can never take even the faintest hint of criticism of their religion?.
When I was a kid, I started writing a parody of the Bible stories and shared my wonderful creation so far with my dad and mom.
Dad... really really REALLY didn't like how 11-year-old me pegged Eve as a social inept who'd simply never spoken to anybody else and thus awkwardly gave it all up to a snake.
i was going to put this in my thread about pyramid schemes, but i thought it's discreet enough to warrant its own.
1) there are many faithful jws.
2) there are many men and women who could take control and fill the void if the watchtower collapses.
"Hey guys! So, a lot of you know about our recent lawsuits. LOL embarrassing, right?! Well we need some money now, we've done our downsizing and such, we're paying our legal fees, etc. etc. And ya know what else? It may surprise you that we have a means to protect our investment at Walkill which so many of you invested your time and energy and money into... We have to pay some contractors back for a remote control lake. Hurricanes, amirite?!"
this is my first post.
as i am currently disfellowshipped, i have no one else to discuss these things with.
even if i was actively associated with the dubs, i suppose i'd still have no one else to discuss this with.
The "Jesus believed it, therefore it must be true" argument is circular reasoning. It's a fallacy. If Isaiah 40 onward wasn't written by Isaiah, and the writer who wrote Luke wrote that Jesus read from Isaiah 61, that *should* cast doubt on either Jesus or the gospel attributed to Luke.
And if a scribe copying this in the *second* century continues from chapter 39 to 40, so the hell what? Seriously, Insight, you're hilarious.
Great call on the circle thing, too. It's not the only place you find a flat Earth in the Bible.
this is my first post.
as i am currently disfellowshipped, i have no one else to discuss these things with.
even if i was actively associated with the dubs, i suppose i'd still have no one else to discuss this with.
It's funny that they go right to Isaiah 40. I personally love the Insight book's statement on that. Insight On The Scriptures is unintentionally hilarious at times.
Unity of Writership. Certain Bible critics in modern times have contended that the book of Isaiah was not all written by Isaiah. Some claim that chapters 40 through 66 were written by an unidentified person who lived about the time of the end of the Jews’ Babylonian exile. Other critics pare off additional portions of the book, theorizing that someone other than Isaiah must have written them. But the Bible itself does not agree with these contentions.
(...)
Jesus Christ himself, when he read from “the scroll of the prophet Isaiah” at the synagogue in Nazareth, was reading fromIsaiah 61:1, 2.—Lu 4:17-19.
Furthermore, the Dead Sea Scroll of Isaiah (IQIsa, believed to have been copied toward the end of the second century B.C.E.) contains evidence that the copyist who penned it knew nothing of any supposed division in the prophecy at the close ofchapter 39. He began the 40th chapter on the last line of the column of writing that containschapter 39.
