Posts by TonusOH

27

Convention and other devolpments

by Gorb in

jw
friends

visited the convention for a day.

did speak a lot of jw.. there is a lot change going on, did indept conversations.. my conclusion:.

- jw.org is transforming with evangelical and gospel influence.. some told me:.

TonusOH

Vidiot: Either way, the incentive to stay can’t help but be further eroded.

Plus, it erodes the power and influence of the GB itself. Which they must know.

I wonder what they are seeing that has them making such drastic changes for the past few years, which seems to be accelerating lately. The organization that Gorb describes in the first post is nothing like the religion I grew up in, or the one I left for good in the late 90s/early 00s. Maybe they feel they have to take the risk of alienating current JWs in the hopes of attracting (and keeping) new converts?

54

2 Peter 1: 1 Corruption in the NWT

by Sea Breeze in

here's how this verse should read: simeon peter, a servant and apostle of jesus christ, to those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our god and savior jesus christ: - 2 peter 1: 1. here's how watchtower prints this verse:.

simon peter, a slave and an apostle of jesus christ, to those who have acquired a faith as precious as ours through the righteousness of our god and the savior jesus christ: - nwt.

why did watchtower change this verse by adding the word "the" ?.

TonusOH

To summarize:

LOL

3205

It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars (continued)

by Simon in

jw
friends

uh oh, looks like the mega thread gave up the ghost, so while i investigate / fix it just continue the discussion here .... it's been a long 9 years lloyd evans / john cedars.

TonusOH

slimboyfat: he says he might shock horror need to get a second AND third job. Wouldn’t he need to get one job first?

He is a professional activist! He earns a salary, just like a doctor. And, like any doctor, if his boss stops paying into his monthly "salary fund," his income will start to dry up.

That... that is how it works, right?

Oh... I guess it doesn't.

We are now seeing what happens when you lecture your patrons about how they have no say in how you spend your "salary." Turns out they have this thing called "I'm cancelling my subscription" that doctors apparently don't have to worry about. I know this is a crazy idea and no one ever does this, but he could try getting a real job and doing the activism ~~hustle~~ on the side...

15

Floods in Texas

by Sea Breeze in

jw
friends

i am getting requests to confirm we are ok from several continents.

we live about 5-10 minutes from the guadalupe river in texas.

i didn’t realize this made global news.. i utilize a lot of weather subscription apps to help me in my business.

TonusOH

Where I live there is an early warning system for tornadoes. There are sirens placed all around the town. At noon on the first Monday of every month, they run a test. They actually have used the system twice in the ten years I have lived here, but both times there was minimal damage from tornadoes.

I don't know what it costs to implement the system Sea Breeze described, but it sounds like a good idea. The river may not flood catastrophically very often, but it probably floods regularly. The area where I live has had some major tornadoes roll through every 100-ish years, so the warning system isn't really for that. It's for the less massive but still scary ones that happen every few years.

3205

It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars (continued)

by Simon in

jw
friends

uh oh, looks like the mega thread gave up the ghost, so while i investigate / fix it just continue the discussion here .... it's been a long 9 years lloyd evans / john cedars.

TonusOH

Whoever offers him a place to stay "temporarily" is setting themselves up for some major disappointment...

44

JWs can toast now….what’s next

by FFGhost in

so you can see from multiple topics here (& elsewhere), based on gb update #4, jws now have permission to toast.. there’s been a boatload of “xyz is now allowed” over the past couple of years….beards, no ties in field service or at the kh, sister can wear pants at the kh & in field service…... what do you think is next?.

a lot of folks are speculating on birthday celebrations being allowed, and i agree that will eventually come, but i don’t think it is next.

too big of a jump.. heres my guess:.

TonusOH

Rattigan350: Customs are stupid. They are not logical.

Quite true. But very little that humans do is logical, since most of our behavior is managed by our subconscious, which operates by its own rules and doesn't care about logic. Our self-awareness and ability to reason allow us to override that programming on occasion, but we're still heavily dependent on our 'animal brain' for our behavior.

Religion is borne out of our need to form tight, us-versus-them social groups, but most of the cruft and nonsense around them are based on the attempts of primitive people to make sense of this behavior. None of it is logical, but every facet of it is explicitly human.

23

What Did You Do For Fun That You Felt The WT Frowned Upon?

by NotFormer in

jw
friends

in the light of the lifting of sanctions on glass clinking and recent threads on chess and dvds of lord of the rings, was there anything you did for fun, as a hobby or for recreational purposes that you felt might be "taken the wrong way" if it came to the attention of the elders or sister busybody?.

TonusOH

I had been fading for so long that my life didn't change much after I decided I was no longer a JW. But I do recall a couple of things that I did, that I would not have dreamed of doing as a JW:

I watched The Exorcist. I have been a huge horror fan since I was a young child, but some movies were definitely out of the question, as they might be an open invitation for real demons to enter my life! At this point in my life, I was losing any fear of the supernatural, and how could I be a horror fan and not watch one of the most popular horror films of all time?

I bought and played Diablo III. Same reasons; I was a fan of video games in general and RPGs in particular. I had (secretly) played a couple of them, such as Might and Magic. But a game literally titled Devil was a bridge too far. Once again, after I learned that I was afraid of things less substantial than shadows, I had no issues playing and enjoying it for years.

Oh, I also swear like a sailor, something I absolutely never did as a JW.

5

An interesting article on the Sons apparent identification as Wisdom

by Blotty in

"none of the three apologists attempts to express the coming forth of .

the word with the verbs ‘to create’ (κτίζειν) and ‘to establish’ (θεμελιοῦν) .

from prov 8:22–23.

TonusOH

Two posts, totaling more than 4,300 words, in about an hour.

Does anyone even read these, anymore?

44

JWs can toast now….what’s next

by FFGhost in

so you can see from multiple topics here (& elsewhere), based on gb update #4, jws now have permission to toast.. there’s been a boatload of “xyz is now allowed” over the past couple of years….beards, no ties in field service or at the kh, sister can wear pants at the kh & in field service…... what do you think is next?.

a lot of folks are speculating on birthday celebrations being allowed, and i agree that will eventually come, but i don’t think it is next.

too big of a jump.. heres my guess:.

TonusOH

Birthdays could be on the block because it's a pretty easy one to reverse. The reasons for forbidding it are pretty thin (two birthday celebrations in the Bible involve the death of an innocent) and they have never forbidden the celebration of wedding anniversaries or baby showers, so the concept of celebrating such things is not alien to JWs.

It's a fine line to walk, though. How many changes can you make before the rank and file start to realize just how much control they have over your life? Giving back a few freedoms might make them aware of how many normal and reasonable things they still cannot do.

27

Anyone explain the generation idea!

by Witness 007 in

i don't understand we went thru a phase where we down played the generation so now it's the generation that knew the 1914 generation???

is that correct?

how does that even work.

TonusOH

Witness 007: How does that even work.

About as well as any of the other crap they teach. They decided that Jesus's comment about the temple's destruction within the lifetime of those listening to his speech also applied centuries later, to the people who were alive in 1914. It's nonsense. They came up with it to use it as a way to create a sense of urgency. Remember that they kept tinkering with the explanation: first, it was people who were in their teen years in 1914. Then, it was toddlers. Then, it was those who were born that year.

The idea was to make it seem as if the end was imminent. By 1995, they had stretched the explanation so thin that it was clear that it was becoming a problem, as the generation born in 1914 would be 80 years old. So they quietly dropped it, which is how that particular mess should have ended. Why they decided to try to revive it with the "overlapping generations" disaster is anyone's guess, but I am thinking that Tony Morris must have purchased extra booze before that meeting.