just received this note out of the blue from a pimi jw.
how would you respond?.
hi vander,.
Yeah any thing with the WT involved will just be ignored or justified. The WT has done a good job on short circuiting any attacks on it's beliefs. They are insidious.
since i've never lived in time with dire events, this virus and it's effects, has taken me by surprise.
not that i should be surprised by how people responded, but until you experience it first hand, you just don't get the scope of it all.. all the hoarding.
i've always taken things in a more rational way.
Since I've never lived in time with dire events, this virus and it's effects, has taken me by surprise. Not that I should be surprised by how people responded, but until you experience it first hand, you just don't get the scope of it all.
All the hoarding. I've always taken things in a more rational way. Take what you need and don't be selfish. And at first, I was sort of amused by people hoarding. But then it was annoying to see people with carts stacked 3 ft higher than it, with toilet paper.
Stores that have some art & crafts stuff are practically wiped out. Probably parents keeping their children occupied and art is a great way to do it. Kids are benefiting in some ways from this. The big hobby stores aren't open so you try the shipping route and find they are out of stuff. Looking on Amazon you find some supplies are outrageous in prices - like 5 times it's worth. (art stuff) Even if I go to a more local Dick Blick store, I have to order a lot to overcome the shipping costs.
More home projects are getting done. I don't mind not going to work. Wish there wasn't the money drain tho.
I went to Walmart and Lowe's yesterday. In both parking lots, there were quite a lot of discarded gloves on the ground along with a few masks. Really people, how jerky is that?
Most people are doing the social 6ft distancing. Walmart had tape on the ground and outside they had made a long tent over the standing - in - line area. People seem more inclined to say things to you. Like we are all in the same boat thing.
I made a funny discovery in the Walmart store. I was in their shipping supplies area to get a few boxes. Behind the medium flat pack of boxes, someone had hidden a 12 pack of toilet paper. So they might have gotten some already but there is a limit, so they tucked it away to come back later or maybe for someone else to come get. Well I took it and got some "where did you get that's and You're lucky" chats. I feel kind of bad because I'm just one person and I have some at home. I feel like a hoarder over that but then, I just don't want to deal with having to look later for some. Because even tho they restock, still no hand sanitizers, lysol spray (although one worker went and got one for a lady that had nicely begged for sanitizer) tp gone and supposedly was going to restocked at 6.
How about all of you? How is your area on stocking and how people are taking it? What surprised you the most?
not sure if this was covered as i could not find anything on it but talking to my son he tells me one of the gb had a talk telling them this is a sign of the last days.
have the jw's being pressured into talking to relatives and friends to bring them back into the fold before the end of the system blah blah blah?
the reason why i ask is my son was saying his mother has being on his case the last few weeks and then two days ago i got a telephone message from my sister, that hasn't spoke to me in 4 years, asking how i am doing.
Well I don't have to worry about that with my still in family. Pretty much the cold front from them.
this topic is to focus on status updates & advice (no opinion or politics please).. status.
latest status is that it's serious, probably isn't going to be contained and most large companies are making contingency plans, cancelling large events etc... which i don't think would happen if it was just people being alarmist.
the incubation period means it may have already spread further and infected many more people than are currently known, so expect jumps in the numbers over the coming days and weeks.. tracking.
I found out something interesting today. Last week I had to go in to the place I had worked - the installer was there cleaning up. Turns out around the time I had my bout with the cough, fever, no appetite and fatigue - he had it too. My sister who is manning the phones for info on the virus had a man call in and say he had known a Chinese man who had gotten him ill at around the same time we did.
Whether it was a mild case of the virus or not, seems suspicious that we all came down with something out of the usual.
i recall when it was released ,that's when i was a drone, how excited i felt at the prospect of reading it and formulating ways to sell it at the homes in my area.. i thought, finally a book to explain the last book in the bible and indeed one that the churches seemed to want to leave alone!.
i sold quite a few probably because of my enthusiasm and can still remember clearly the first day when i went knocking on doors with it ,and it's been decades since.. but over time it lost it's shine and my mind started to question the explanations in it due to the scene of other things being changed in the jw beliefs.. do you remember they flogged that book so many times in the book studies even when it was found to have "newer light " eclipsing it!.
who else remembers the printed pages with the official corrections to insert into the book ,so many that the book collapsed to be of no relevance anymore really.....what an embarrassment!.
And every time that you mentioned that book in conversation with JW's , eyes would roll, shoulders would shrug and the finish would be a shake of the head with their hands flying up in frustration.
Either that or their eyes would glaze over. No one wanted to even think about it. The WT did a good job on making Revelation GC a confusing mystery to keep their doctrine alive.
do you have any evidence that the gb had bad intent?
as opposed to blind faith/cognitive dissonance and honest mistakes.. i'm inclined to think they have the best of intentions and are just wrong (primarily because the bible is wrong), but i'm willing to consider the evidence otherwise..
At the time the organization was telling all of us, that even going to a swimming pool at the YMCA was fraternizing with false religion, they were using the UN's "library". And who is the UN in WT's dictionary? The "beast that ascends out of the abyss" the one that wages war against the holy ones.
So it's ok for them to lie down with false religion, but they warn the regulars not to use a pool.
As regards to what I said early about Daniel and Revelation, here is the scripture that cause a minor meltdown for me.
Rev 11:7 When they have finished their witnessing, the wild beast that ascends out of the abyss will wage war with them and will conquer them and kill them.
Rev 11:3 shows that it is the "two witnesses" that are the "them"
In WT teachings, the two witnesses are them. They were "chosen" in 1916 and were "killed" and then resurrected in 1916. They relate to Daniel 7:21,22, 25,26.
Notice that it is the "beast that ascends out of the abyss" that kills them. Yet when did this "beast" ascend out of the abyss? Not in 1916. The WT has it that the UN - known as the League of Nations first - "ascended" out of the abyss in 1945. So it is impossible for them to be the "two witnesses" by their own tagging.
For fun, you could - if you have the old CD of their literature - look up Rev 11:7 and see how many times they omit the part about the "wild beast" or "the abyss" in their articles that reference the "two witnesses" I know just before I left about 6 or 7 years ago, there was an article that did that very thing which was misleading of course.
For fun, see that a scriptural reference to the "abyss" found in Rev 11:7 isn't there. Usually they link important reference scriptures but not in this case. In the burgundy bible, the one right before this gray one, they did have a reference. Except it went to the scripture about the "angel that had a key to the abyss" which is an entirely different subject. This gray bible does have the scripture reference in the back that links to the correct beast of the abyss Rev 17:8, while the burgundy bible didn't.
Why? As time passes and their emphasis on the "two witnesses" gets further dimmed, unless you have grown up with this, you will not even question it or even get a clue that something is amiss.
None of what I've posted will make an impression on you. Simply because it takes time and cross referencing and most importantly, a desire to investigate. If you really think they are just a bunch of misinformed but good hearted guys, these things will just be shrugged off. I had to research these things myself to know for certain. What my sister told me about the sexual abuse towards children and how the WT hides it, made sense to me because I knew my sister wasn't a liar, but also because of the 20/20 television show that came out years ago collaborated it. But still, I had to know for myself. Once I found out through my own research their purposeful misdirection and lying, that was it for me.
Hope you find your tipping point in this.
do you have any evidence that the gb had bad intent?
as opposed to blind faith/cognitive dissonance and honest mistakes.. i'm inclined to think they have the best of intentions and are just wrong (primarily because the bible is wrong), but i'm willing to consider the evidence otherwise..
Well after my sister and husbands experience with how the WT handles child sexual abuse - I did my own evaluation of the bible vs the WT teachings. Specifically the prophecies of Daniel regarding the two witnessess/attack on God's people. I also read those portions in Revelation pertaining to that also. Once the WT filter is off, you can clearly see that they have it wrong. They claim to be the two witnesses, but the bible and their own tags on who the beast that ascends out of the abyss is, shows they are not.
After having a mind blowing experience over that, I thought, "I must have it wrong" and pulled out the book "Revelations Grand Climax.." and went to that section.
It was abundantly clear after comparing, that they knew what they were teaching was wrong. They purposely hid and chopped things up and misdirected. I went to the Daniel Prophecies book - same thing. They contradicted what was in the R.G.C. book and shuffled info.
I am sure they justify, excuse and reason it away in their minds. I have a sister that is still in, that is an expert at fooling herself in the same way. The end result is that they are never to blame for the things they say/teach etc. It is always the person who listens to them.
...while under house arrest sheltering in place?.
i'm editing a (non jw related) novel i hope to self publish soon.
i may be making an announcement about that in the near future.
I've finally got out to do yard work. Piles of invasive weeds and overgrown plants.
But I've also started my art again. I'm close to retiring age but probably can't. But it really makes me wonder why I'm working for boss that I have when I have not a lot of years left to actually do something I like.
Hahaha sort of like being away from a cult for awhile.
this isn't a poor me thread.....just what is going on here in my small world.. since both my son and me own tour companies, when the lock down happened three weeks ago our businesses literally died over night.
we both depended on the tourist that come to phoenix and sedona, so that all went away as people stop taking vacations.
all future tours have been cancelled.. my son moved in with me two days ago, much to chagrin of his jehovah's witness mother.
I've not gone into work for a week or so - CA - but I look at youtube and have gotten some art work done. How I miss having time to just do art. Guess I have time now.
oh my goodness!
how come we never thought of this before?
if the israelites had animals to sacrifice to jehovah in the wilderness, then how come their god jehovah had to give them manna so they wouldn't starved to death?.
I always thought of Manna as being the food that supplied what just eating meat didn't. You know like vitamins and greenage.
