There is no reasonable answer to this question because you are trying to make reasonable sense of a myth. It's the same sort of thing as trying to make reasonable sense about how Santa Claus can deliver toys all over the world in one night and squeeze down all those chimneys.
Looking for an answer to questions that assume myths are fact is simply silly.
There are sophisticated cave paintings in Europe that are 24,000 years old, dated by several different techniques that verify one another. According to the Bible, the WTS says, Adam and Eve were "created" only 6,033 years ago, when in actuality science shows that there were all sorts of people living all over the globe at that time. Science has proven that humans have been on Earth hundreds of thousands of years.
Trying to make sense of Genesis is doomed to failure, especially if you take it literally.
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Seeker4
JoinedPosts by Seeker4
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Were Adam and Eve the only humans created?
by heyfea inmy husband asked me a questions that kind of stumped me for a moment.
he asked, in genesis, when cain killed abel, and god, as punishment cursed him and drove him from the land, making him a restless wanderer, why did cain say to god that the punishment was too hard; that anyone who found him would kill him?
who was going to kill him?
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CRAFTSMAN Tools
by YoursChelbie ini don't know why but i like watching men work on building stuff (except one day kingdumb h's).
there is precision involved, there's muscle invoved, creative talent.
to think that the greedy wt$ would always take advange of very talented young men for free to further it's own bottom line.
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Seeker4
A life time of projects, building furniture, and several years I did carpentry work. Mechanic work mostly out of necessity.
I'm finishing a remodel on the house I own with my ex-wife, and a few projects going on the house Lori and I own. There are always projects...
I'm also getting and finishing a restoration of a 1968 Honda 305 vintage motorcycle.
The hierarchy of tools is an interesting one, and varies somewhat from coast to coast among professionals. But basically, for top of the line in daily use, its Craftsman tools for mechanics, Stanley for carpenter hand tools, DeWalt, Makita, Milwaukee and a handful of others for hand and cordless powertools. Delta bench tools. Estwing hammers are popular in the East, and the new super lightweight ones made by a name I can't remember. There like $200 for a framing hammer, but it weighs half of what the old framers used to.
Thank god for the advent of nail guns and compressors!
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1000 asked to leave bethel complexes
by atpeace ini just heard this - anyone else?
i was curious as to the reason people were given for this.
and i can't help but think of those that will be trying to get a job in this economy, with few skills and probably no college education.
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Seeker4
From what I know, it seems that 30 years at Bethel is the cutoff point. Those above that can stay, those below that are likely to be asked to leave.
The comments above seem accurate. This is a way of purging the majority of Bethelites in their 30s to 60s who are becoming more of a liablity due to age and health issues. Bethel isn't exactly the healthiest lifestyle.
They may still be accepting new Bethelites, but I'd be willing to guarantee that they are mostly healthy, very young men needed as physical workers, and the occasional engineer or lawyer who will likely be older, but comes with important education and professional certifications.
The WTS spin on this is that this is a chance for these friends to get out in the field and help with the "massive increase" being experienced 'cause the time is so short. Yeah, sure!!
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1000 asked to leave bethel complexes
by atpeace ini just heard this - anyone else?
i was curious as to the reason people were given for this.
and i can't help but think of those that will be trying to get a job in this economy, with few skills and probably no college education.
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Seeker4
AtPeace,
Where did you hear this? Is it a recent happening or the same disizing that occurred a couple of years ago?
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News from Mother ship
by jefferywhat in1. bethel in ny suspect high level apostate, cant identify it but know its there.
2. major organizational changes about to start rolling out, one is changes to the "service committee" and titles, po to be done away with, thats all i know for now.
was told that if you are the sort of person that cant handle changes, you wont stay in the org for long.
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Min,
Enjoyed your "rumors from a reliable source" thread!
I understand what you're saying, and will also wait and see if anything comes of this. I wasn't born yesterday. For sure!
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News from Mother ship
by jefferywhat in1. bethel in ny suspect high level apostate, cant identify it but know its there.
2. major organizational changes about to start rolling out, one is changes to the "service committee" and titles, po to be done away with, thats all i know for now.
was told that if you are the sort of person that cant handle changes, you wont stay in the org for long.
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Seeker4
Hey, Min, Happy New Year!
I've been skeptical on this thread, but I have to say again that the ideas here are interesting.
As I noted above, and you've probably been aware of this as well, there are definite issues among the elite at Bethel. You may remember our old DO Paul Illingworth. I was his assistant at several district conventions, and got to know him fairly well. Paul served a few years at Bethel in the Writing Dept., but he had trouble with the politics there and decided not to stay.
I've talked enough with Merton Campbell of the Service Dept. and Fred Rusk in Writing to know that there were definite issues between these two departments over the years. I remember once hearing Merton talk about how Service had to double check and approve everything that came out of Writing to make sure stuff wasn't getting into the literature that would cause problems. It was as though Service felt it had to keep a tight rein and close supervision over Writing.
After I faded, I had a long talk with a CO friend who opened up to me that he had tremendous doubts about the WTS, and how upset he was that his last CO school had essentially been a clamping down on the traveling brothers to get everyone away from questions, doubts and freethinking regarding the Governing Body and the directions from "Mother."
I don't believe he's alone, and maybe some of these folks are talking to each other.
The "leadership" at the WTS right now is pathetic. After 125 years with visionary, charismatic men at the helm, there has been nothing like that since Fred Franz died. Schroeder at least had a college degree and served on the NWT committee, but this group now are a bunch of barely high school educated company men. Jaracz is a stand out only because he's a hardass and perhaps a bully. It seems that the company line over the past decade has been to firewall the headquarters organization against possible legal attacks, dumb down the message more than ever, find ways to try to save money in the operations and demonize anything that threatens the Society - higher education, the Internet, the media, questioning and outside research.
These conditions are ripe for dissension, especially among those in the know, and that describes the US Bethel.
I'm not saying that any of this is happening, but I certainly wouldn't be surprised if these issues were becoming a concern at Bethel. Some of the friends there are bright - we saw what research did for Barbara Anderson, Ed Dunlap, Ray Franz and others – and they've got to see what a house of cards the 1914 generation, this change in the gathering of the 144,000, the WTS "science" on mankind's origins, a literal Flood and dozens of other WTS teachings are.
Just a few thoughts, and I also welcome these "new" posters and their insights. They are certainly likely to have much more current Bethel connections than those of us who've been out for a few years now. Bethel was always a house of rumors (there used to be a joke that they were constructing a new building at Bethel just to house the rumors!), but a lot of those rumors were based in facts.
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News from Mother ship
by jefferywhat in1. bethel in ny suspect high level apostate, cant identify it but know its there.
2. major organizational changes about to start rolling out, one is changes to the "service committee" and titles, po to be done away with, thats all i know for now.
was told that if you are the sort of person that cant handle changes, you wont stay in the org for long.
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Seeker4
Attorn wrote early on in this thread:
"I can confirm that there is a whole group of medium to high ranking JWs in NY (Brooklyn & Pat) that could be considered "apostate" since they hold certain "unaccepted" & "inofficial" believes.
"These believes and chronological understandings were delivered to the GB/WD (again) in 2001 on their request through an envoy. The material was "classified" and filed away but out of the initial cirlce of brothers who got to read it a kind of "secret" group formed.
Those guys got some kind of consent from GB members (some of whom have already died now) to further study and research the material as long as they would stay faithful to the org. It is possible that this fragile construct recently collapsed...."
In the past, I've known brothers both at Bethel and outside who have been asked to do research for the GB or for the Writing Dept. I was friends for many years with Fred Rusk, and know that he was instrumental as one of the non-GB members who confronted the GB with the need for publicly acknowledging responsibility for the 1975 debacle. It took them five years or so, but the GB finally owned up, at least a little!
I would not be surprised at all to find that a group of highly placed, responsible brothers quietly held what would be considered apostate beliefs if they were to go public with them. A LOT of thinking brothers I knew over the years quietly expressed serious doubts about any number of WTS teachings when they were alone with me and felt safe doing so. There is a shitload of WTS teaching that any thinking brother who did some serious research would see as having ABSOLUTELY NO FOUNDATION.
Again, I also can vouch for attorn that there have been definite schisms in the WTS heirarchy, though for the most part they have been quiet and suppressed.
Perhaps with the passing of the nearly-deified old time GB members these past few years, some of these silent dissenters have felt more confident in speaking out. None of these new GB members seem like scholars or particularly impressive - most seem like unimaginative company men. I had a chance to observe Sam Herd for a while as a DO and Elder's School instructor, and he wasn't all that impressive as a DO or Bethelite.
It's one thing to see the GB as the godlike men we imagined Freddy Franz, Nathan Knoor or others of the old timers were. Those men, espeically Franz with his giant brain and encyclopaedic knowledge of the Bible, were not to be questioned. But now, when a good portion of the GB are 50-something Johnny-come-lately anointed ones and glorified Circuit Overseers with an average knowledge of the Bible and average performance at best in other areas, the glow of being a GB member is really dull right now.
Perhaps as attorn said, this quiet apostate alliance has collapsed by now, but this is worth keeping an eye on.
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1000 asked to leave Brooklyn Bethel!
by cyberguy in1000 were asked to leave brooklyn bethel (actually, this includes the farm and patterson) "voluntarily!
" only 6 replied to the request in the last 3 weeks.
it looks like the "waters" of bethel are drying up, or rather, their revenues are drying up!
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Seeker4
Does anyone know if this is a new batch they are letting go, or the same group that started in 2002?
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News from Mother ship
by jefferywhat in1. bethel in ny suspect high level apostate, cant identify it but know its there.
2. major organizational changes about to start rolling out, one is changes to the "service committee" and titles, po to be done away with, thats all i know for now.
was told that if you are the sort of person that cant handle changes, you wont stay in the org for long.
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Seeker4
Wow, this is an interesting thread. I'm far too out of the JW loop now to have any insider info on issues at Bethel. But, I do know that in the past, especially in the 1980s, there was definitely tension between the Writing and Service Depts. Writing had one point of view, and Service, at least some of them, were much more hardline. I would assume at this point that the Legal and Service Departments function almost as one and the same, and that part of their mission is to make sure that the Writing Dept. doesn't get them all in trouble.
I also think that there is a bit of wishful thinking going on in this thread, people hoping that some in Bethel are paying a little bit of attention to the buzz among the thousands, tens of thousands, no, literally hundreds of thousands who have left the Org and are leaving now.
Truthfully, when I talk to active JWs and a lot of ex-JWs, I realize that most know almost nothing about the issues that trouble many of us here. The UN scandal, the Generation change, the new teaching on the 144,000 not being complete - most of these folks are ignorant of this. I was at a party last Saturday night, and there were five other ex-JWs there. NONE of them are involved in JWD or any ex-JW website. If there is ONE PLACE where people really know about all that is wrong with the WTS, it is Bethel.
If there were to be an effective schism created in the WTS, it would have to be at Bethel.
That having been said, I think the chances of that happening are close to nil. I hope I'm wrong. I will soon be spending a week with a faded JW who has very close family in long time, very responsible positions at Bethel. I'll see if he's heard anything.
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Weeklong Elders School for POs This Year? Any info?
by Seeker4 ini just heard that my ex-father in law will be attending a weeklong elder's school at patterson for presiding overseers sometime this year.
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Seeker4
Thanks to all, and thanks for the link back to the oct 07 discussion.
My father-in-law is in his mid-70s and not well. He was hoping to be able to get out of it, but it looks like the pressure is on to go. He should not be on a Bethel schedule, for sure.
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