TonusOH

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Posts by TonusOH

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  282

  How Will They End 1914 Teaching?

  by EmptyInside in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  i'm sure this has been discussed, but 1914 has to go away.

  instead of, the overlapping generation teaching, they should have just ditched 1914. .

  they should have done that a long time ago with 1975. it's the last of the teachings in the charles taze russell era.. i'm thinking they just will stop talking about it, and it will be out of the mind of the rank and file loyal witnesses .

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  TonusOH

  Remember that Russell believed that 1914 would be when God's kingdom would be established on Earth (ie, not the start of the end times, but the conclusion), and that 1874 is when Jesus ascended to the heavenly throne and began his invisible rule. He taught this for decades and expressed full confidence that God had revealed this to him.

  If his confidence was misplaced and he was forced to modify his explanation (and quite drastically, at that), then there is no reason to accept modern explanations, no matter how confidently they are expressed.
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  11530

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

  by Newly Enlightened in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  original reddit post (removed).

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  TonusOH

  KIMSILVIO: It’s nearly the anniversary of “Lloydgate” 31 January….what’s everyone doing? What should the M7 do?

  Another livestream mocking him would be great. Maybe everyone can relate their experiences of how drastically their lives have changed as a result of their conviction for the crime of insult.
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  13

  Desperation - 3 year old Becomes UnBaptized Publisher

  by Sea Breeze in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  jw's seem to be getting desperate.

  this three year old is paraded on a jw blog in cuenca, ecuador.

  it is about 1/3 of the way down on the page.

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  TonusOH

  JWs love precocious children. If you can get a very young child to give a comment in a meeting, or read a Bible verse, everyone gets the warm fuzzies. Later, they all comment admiringly about how those parents are raising fine young JW children. It's a feel-good moment. If they can get the children to offer a pamphlet or even give a short sermon, both the JWs and the person at the door get to share an amusing moment, and JWs feel as if this is an awesome way to witness for Jehovah.

  My guess is that the ones that are most precocious when they are young are the ones who leave first, because they rarely have any understanding of the Bible or even of JW beliefs. To them, it's all a show, and once people stop admiring them the buzz is gone and they realize that there's nothing underneath the fluff. You can teach children, or you can use them as showpieces. The latter does not work out in the long run.
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  11530

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

  by Newly Enlightened in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  original reddit post (removed).

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  TonusOH

  It's likely that he was used to the income levels that he was enjoying before 2022. The money hasn't dried up, but he may have kept up his lifestyle and spending until it became clear that there would be no rebound. He may have misjudged just how much his new circumstances would cost, month-to-month. He may be regretting taking so many vacations instead of managing his finances more responsibly.

  It's easy to improve your life to match your income level, especially when it seems as if your income will continue to increase for the foreseeable future. I mean, he does not strike me as someone who is good at planning things cautiously and looking towards the long-term.
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  282

  How Will They End 1914 Teaching?

  by EmptyInside in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  i'm sure this has been discussed, but 1914 has to go away.

  instead of, the overlapping generation teaching, they should have just ditched 1914. .

  they should have done that a long time ago with 1975. it's the last of the teachings in the charles taze russell era.. i'm thinking they just will stop talking about it, and it will be out of the mind of the rank and file loyal witnesses .

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  TonusOH

  Jeffro: That change only reduced the significance of the amount of time that has elapsed 1914.

  The impression I have is that they made the allusion to the year and its significance more vague. It looked like a first step towards ultimately abandoning the teaching, as they had done in the past when the significance of certain years became untenable. I wonder if the issue is that the newer members of the GB are lacking in imagination, or courage.
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  46

  Bible MIRACLEs!! Are they a Myth or Emeth?

  by Fisherman in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  the bible records miracles such as resurrections, angels, prophecy and destructive acts of god to mention a few.

  are these all a pack of lies?

  how do you explain them?

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  TonusOH

  Many ancient books/texts "record" miracles. Vespasian was said to have performed miraculous healing, including restoring the sight of a blind man. There doesn't seem to be a shortage of such "records." Maybe they all happened. More likely, it's a common human tactic to "record" things that didn't happen, or "record" details that are not true.

  As cofty points out, this activity continues into the modern day. Ask yourself why you are convinced about one set of 'recordings' and unconvinced about others. That might help you understand those of us who are not convinced about any of them.
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  282

  How Will They End 1914 Teaching?

  by EmptyInside in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  i'm sure this has been discussed, but 1914 has to go away.

  instead of, the overlapping generation teaching, they should have just ditched 1914. .

  they should have done that a long time ago with 1975. it's the last of the teachings in the charles taze russell era.. i'm thinking they just will stop talking about it, and it will be out of the mind of the rank and file loyal witnesses .

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  TonusOH

  When they made the "generation" change in 1995, where they appeared to try to quietly drop it, that was when they had the opportunity to let it fade away. Once they revived it with the 'overlapping generations' explanation, they effectively doubled down. Now they are committed to it, like it or not. If they try to reverse it now, it would be a glaring admission that they were stumbling about in the dark the whole time.

  It's possible that they felt they needed to address it somehow, and adding fifty or so years to the explanation lets it fade away without them having to ever talk about it again. But that just kicks the can down the road. They won't be able to handwave it in 2076, assuming they're still relevant at that time (or that they haven't shut down by then).
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  170

  Staying in physically for all the benefits

  by Indoubtbigtime in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i wonder how many are like me staying pimo for the great association and gathering etc.

  also find it very interesting having a front row seat watching the collapse of borg.. im not wasting any more time or money on anything i don’t want to do like preaching and mostly just go on zoom .

  there is nothing i want to do that would be considered disfellowshiping sin, i’m married and want to live by bible principles but i have serious doubts that the gb were chosen by god and are his one and only spokesmen on earth.

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  TonusOH

  "Perception deception" sounds like confirmation bias, which is just one of the ways that our brain works in order to manage the overwhelming amount of sensory information we gather every waking moment. Unfortunately, our brains aren't very good at figuring out that we've drastically changed our world over the past few thousand years, so it still behaves as it did when we were hunter gatherers out on the plains.

  It also means that maintaining a skeptical outlook is very difficult, because we are programmed to bias towards certain info, ideas, views, etc. And we also tend to invest ourselves far deeper than is warranted, given the limited information we usually have. It's recipe for taking a side on an issue and being very reluctant to let go.
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  6

  ChatGPT and all the data in this forum

  by StephaneLaliberte in

  1. forum
  2. suggestions

  hey simon, have you considered pushing all the knowledge gathered in this forum into an instance of chatgpt?

  since its open source, i believe you could download, install and configure an instance of it.

  would be quite interesting to interact with the data gathered in this forum through that medium..

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  TonusOH

  Hmmm, whose posting history would be used to train the AI?
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  11530

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

  by Newly Enlightened in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  original reddit post (removed).

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  TonusOH

  So, after stating repeatedly that he wasn't asking for money, he celebrates that he received enough money to keep the grift channel going. But no, he totally wasn't asking for money. Maybe now, Stephen Lett will do a YT video chastising Evans.

  And LOL at "due to the events of last year." He has to tread carefully around his donors, lest more of them find out that he has been misleading them in order to keep the money well from completely drying up.