disgusted by waves of scandal, irelands catholics are boycotting mass and .
turning their backs on the church.
http://theweek.com/article/index/263824/everything-you-need-to-know-about-irelands-disaffected-catholics.
This will never happen to the Watchtower society.
Two reasons.
1) The culture of NO dissent tolerated, without nayone REALIZING that is the culture.
2) The world doesn't care enough about JW's to make then newsworthy. They are page 7 footnotes.
That is all.
2014-06-09 adjusted approval and financing process to accelerate kingdom hall and assembly hall construction.
to all bodies of elders.
the congregation secretary should arrange for this letter to be retained in the congregation permanent file of policy letters.
I agree it will take a year or so to shake everything out, and for the CO's to make sure to enforce it. Now that they are given a bit more power (only they can appoint elders for example), they may be asked to flex.
My guess is that more elders than we think, don't even really understand the branches direction.
I just wonder if its going to cause any Menlo Park type situations. My guess is no......hive mentality is hard to go against.
i'm not complaining, jwn is an excellent research and discussion site, and easy to use.
.
it's just that i feel i have to scroll back through pages of threads every day to see who, if anyone, has replied to me.. only asking, thank you for your hard work, simon and the mods..
I echo the not a complaint mantra, but I do wonder if there is a more modern way to make it easy to follow a topic posted on if requested. Its a pretty common feature.
You may comment casually on one thread, and have intense interest in how another one developes.
Simon can I possibly be of help, or are you not really working on the site right now.
Thanks as always.
this is a haiku about going out in field service as a jehovah's witness:.
a suit.
clacks on hot concrete -.
Well done. Is there any occasion not appropriate for a Haiku?
a discussion of this talk on friday morning deserves its own thread.
as i said elsewhere, it was a remarkable one.
the speaker was manfred vencebi (google him - he's a bethel bigwig) and some of his remarks are real gems.
I KNEW obligatory homosexuality was right around the corner.
KH here I come back to ya baby!
some days ago two elders visited my sister because she has not been attending the meetings more than one year.
this time she prepared notes containing watchtower past teachings about the blood ban so as to ask them for those changes, and it seems that the elders were also prepared for her past questions.
for instance she showed them that "albumin" was considered "under scriptural ban" in 1956 (read the page 20 of awake, september 8).
Opus,
I have gotten the same response. It may have been a quick note at an elder school. They thought they had somthing. But nope....
"You shall not eat anything that dies of itself; you may give it to aliens residing in your towns for them to eat, or you may sell it to a foreigner. For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. "(Deut 14:21)
Here is how you can deal with this scripture.
1) The society says the Noachian creed (to pour out the blood......its sacredness) was given to Noa and therefore it applied to ALL MANKIND. The fact the law made an allowance for a non Jew who was still part of mankind, just exposes the flaw of how they view bloods sacredness. In this context, not the ban on blood seems much more dietary and akin to not eating pork or something!
2) In addition, in leviticus 17 (I think), a person who ate an animal already killed (and therefore not properly bled), would be unclean for a day. THATS IT! Less punishment than if you were menstrating (unless of course there were bears around).
3) Finally, real application of this scripture would allow for donation of blood would it not?
The statement regarding light getting brighter is angering of course, because essentially they are saying, " So the branch was wrong with that, and people DID die, but they aren't wrong anymore and those people will be resurrected so no harm no foul." I have repeated what they are really saying back to them (a little less snarkily), and there is always a bit of a pause. I like that pause. Its uncomfortable. I let it linger.
my friend, mike works as a massage therapist, and there is a woman at the shop that is super-jw-woman and is constantly hounding him with things.. today, he's messaging me and he tells me that she was trying to push a brochure or something on him.
he said he'd really rather not read a religious pamphlet.. so... she says, "it's not religious... it's from god.".
isn't that kinda what religious means?
We aren't a religion, just a heirarchal organization that believe God chose them in 1919 to be exclusive harbingers of truth and accuracy which is why we change doctrine when we learn more and require unity of all of our members......you know......NOT a religion.
have a look at the blank faces as this man asks a .
simple question.
this video is proof ...jw's will.
I commented on the other thread.....basically this guy is here every year. Videotaping, trying to get reactions, with a little crew of people with him. Local preacher I suppose.
I spoke to him when I was a JW, but he just yelled while speaking back to try to show he was speakign to a person i guess. He was very offputting, and just trying to make a video....not actually do any good.
No serious banners usually, but him and another preacher usually would take turns basically giving a very loud sermon outside the doors. It really could only be described as showboating.
Hes been there pretty much every year. I was an attendant at his door pretty much every year.
found this on youtube.
its interesting how jws act .creepy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eln4czqcul4&feature=youtu.be.
I spoke to this gentleman on one occasion. I was still a semi-zeaous JW, but I knew this guy wasn't an apostate so I figured hey...show the guy some kindness.
He was a blowhard. He used me approachig him to speak to him out of kindness, as a way to speak even louder and try to....well I'm not sure what he was trying to do.
Honestly, this dude is just a dick in my opinion. Him and an asian guy he cohorts with come by every year, shout a bit, and then goad people while videotaping it.
A guy last year (even though I had one foot out), was just yelling at people that they were woshipping the governing body and were angering the Christ.
Honestly........if I was the branch i would pay these guys to stand outside of every convension. Everyone that goes to the San Dieg convention sees this guy, and knows he is just trying to goad or get a reaction for the cameras. Just sayin.
the elders say "its very wrong to donate blood because you never know what the medical community is going to do with that blood.
" i asked one of the brothers who is a consultant at one of the medical centers, "why are we allowed to take blood fragments if were not allowed to donate blood?
" he/she refused to answer, just shook their head and walked away all red faced!
Here is how I brought it up.
Jehovah's Witnesses are not required by leadership to "abstain" from blood. They receive dental work, and their blood trickles down their throat. They are able to receive organs which are matched to donors and always contain trace whole blood. They give their blood whenever asked from medical personel in order to be tested, heated, prodded, poked, put under a microscope, cultured, or whatever else a lab may do with it.
They talk about blood. They bleed. They prick their finger and put their finger in their mouth so as not to get it n their clothes and encourage clotting.
None of this is abstenence.
At this point the JW is rolling their eys and saying thats just silly. Those are minor things, that isn't what the scripture meant.
Aha! So you mean there is CONTEXT to "abstain". There is a qualifier of some kind. We are allowed to think about blood, say the word blood, ingest a little blood, give freely of our blood to our doctors....and still abstain from blood. So who determines the context?
Once we are this far down the hole, the person is usually done.
One brave soul said what others have thought. The "pouring out" of the blood happens eventually. Meaning the blood we donate for testing is discarded at some point, therefore it is perfectly in line with the bible.
Well......I guess.
