This will help prop up the table of "spiritual food" (AKA regular indoctrination) that has been missing a leg since the merging of the Book Study into the other mid-week meeting.
Apognophos
JoinedPosts by Apognophos
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Apognophos
That's interesting, thanks for posting. Now, since Russell lived till 1916, I wonder what he had to say by then about his delicate timetables not coming to fruition.
"And Studies in the Scriptures show from the Bible that the date was actually 4128.
*snicker* Too bad that Fred Franz later decided that it was actually 4026.
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Everyone asked to take their literature back to the KH?
by MrMonroe inmay be bullshit or just confusion, but here's a post at a facebook ex-jw page:.
"so last night i performed one of my occasional meeting attendances, and whilst watching the kids and planning my exit strategy in the event of a walking dead style zombie outbreak, i think i heard them read a letter saying that the brothers are now to destroy all old literature in their possession if it's in bad condition, or return it to the elders if it's in good condition, but you can no longer keep any old literature... hmmm".
anyone know anything about this letter?
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Apognophos
Someone creates a thread like this every few months.
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Apognophos
Annual General Meeting. It's actually just called the "Annual Meeting" by Witnesses, but somehow the acronym AGM caught on here. It's not really an AGM because it's not a shareholder meeting and there's no election of board members taking place.
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Kennedy assassination....
by new hope and happiness into me its a great example of a totalitarian government's ability to manage information and keep us in the dark; .
all right it was a long time ago.
should we just forget about it?.
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Apognophos
Many are known to get involved in doomsday religious cults like the JWS
Yes, the Conspiracy Theorist is definitely one of the personality types drawn to the religion.
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Leaving the JWs, experiencing Christianity and finding freedom! (But it took awhile)
by im_free inthis is my first post here.. i was raised in "the truth", and am an ex-bethelite who worked in brooklyn for several years back in the 90's.
a few years after i left bethel, i started to become disillusioned after doing research about the society and reading crisis of conscience (i know..i wasn't supposed to do that lol).
i eventually stopped attending meetings and going out in service.
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Apognophos
It's a triumph of revisionism that Christians can read a primitive, simplistic account about a wily snake who tricks a woman into eating forbidden fruit, gets his legs zapped off by God and is cursed to have his head stepped on by humans, and get out of it a tale of angelic rebellion and a far-reaching prophecy about the redemption of sinful mankind. The ancient Hebrew storytellers who passed on this fable from generation to generation would be speechless in their bafflement to learn of this.
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The Blatant SEXISM of Watchtower!
by Island Man infrom my yahoo answers question here: .
"the bible says of deborah: "now deborah, a prophetess, the wife of lappidoth, was judging israel at that time.
5 she used to sit under the palm tree of deborah between ramah and bethel in the hill country of ephraim; and the sons of israel came up to her for judgment.
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Apognophos
The reason why I mentioned the antiquity of the Song of Deborah is that it's been theorized that earlier human societies were matriarchal. There's not a lot of direct evidence for it because we're talking about prehistoric times, though a number of primitive societies that have survived until modern times are more gender-equal than we are accustomed to. A number of examples are given in the Matriarchy article on Wikipedia.
Though it's indirect evidence, it's interesting to note that some of the oldest stories in mythology have strong women in them. I just got done re-reading the Cattle Raid of Cooley, which has a number of strong women in the story. Cuchullain, Ireland's greatest folk hero, gets the finest training in the world from a fearsome woman anmed Scathach (Shadowy). Beowulf has the mother of Grendel being stronger than Grendel.
At the very least, it seems that earlier societies may have been more gender-egalitarian. By the time of the writing of the Bible, things had changed and so almost all the stories are notably patriarchal. But the ancient song of Deborah may harken back to a previous era in human history.
On an evolutionary note, it's interesting that our two closest relatives, chimps and bonobos, are very yin and yang; chimps are patriarchal and fairly violent, and bonobos are matriarchal and pacifistic. We have various attributes that are closer to chimps and some that are closer to bonobos.
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Kennedy assassination....
by new hope and happiness into me its a great example of a totalitarian government's ability to manage information and keep us in the dark; .
all right it was a long time ago.
should we just forget about it?.
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Apognophos
Yes, I've seen it suggested that conspiracy theories actually soothe people's fears. The idea that a lone idiot with a rifle could kill the president is upsetting because it makes the foundations of society look shaky and uncertain. If, however, you assume that Oswald was supported by the mafia, an extensive criminal network, and furthermore that Ruby was cleaning up a loose end for the mafia when he killed Oswald, it allows you to relax a bit and say, "Well, it's just business as usual, since the world is run by a handful of people at the very top, and sometimes they come into conflict like this. This is all over our own heads as ordinary citizens." The world is thus under control, even if it's under the control of bad guys to some extent.
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To Transfuse or Not To Transfuse
by Chris Tann inwhen my son became baptized as a witness at age nine, it worried me that he could now get a no blood card.
i wanted to make sure if blood transfusions were really as disgusting to "jehovah" as i was taught.
i already found out some things about my beliefs that were not true, so it wasn't hard for me to be questionable about this.. i first looked in the reasoning book under blood as to why we don't accept transfusions.
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Apognophos
A further point of interest is that, when the Society reversed their stance on organ transplants in 1980, they took back their previous statement in 1967 that an organ transplant was cannibalism. In fact, they reasoned, it's not cannibalism because the organ is serving the same purpose within your own body that the old organ did -- it's not being digested for sustenance but simply becoming one with your body and performing a needed function. Amusingly, this knocks a leg out from under their no-blood teaching, since they claim that taking in blood intravenously is the same as eating it.
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Apognophos
That's basically my understanding too, rebel8. I read a little about this while making a topic the other day, and Russell definitely believed by the time 1914 came around that it marked the end of the Gentile Times. Apparently this meant to him that man's governments would collapse, and that he and other true believers would be taken to heaven. I'm not clear on whether he thought that the destruction of Armageddon would also take place then, but one would expect that it would have, if the righteous were being removed from the earth at that time.