Not to go on a tangent, but I am very familiar with the Stanley in New Jersey, the assembly hall where this meeting was held (as seen in the photos on the jw.org page). I imagine a number of you New Englanders are. It was a luxurious theater that was neglected for years, but bought by the Society and lovingly restored by the brothers. One of them, who had a prominent hand in the work, delighted in walking the friends around and showing us the expensive chandeliers and other fine details. Other aspects of ostentation were too obvious to miss, such as the facades on the sides of the auditorium (again, see photos), which are intended to resemble the streets of Renaissance Italy. The ceiling is not shown in the photos, but it's a sort of painterly planetarium. During intermission they used to dim the lights and turn on the star-and-cloud projector to wow the audience (I think they no longer do that). I wonder how much it will sell for when the Society is done with it? You can read more about it in a surprisingly detailed Wikipedia article (I wonder if I know who wrote it...): Stanley Theater.
Apognophos
JoinedPosts by Apognophos
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65
It's Official! The Governing Body IS the Faithful and Discreet Slave (Annual Meeting Report - jw.org)
by 00DAD init's official!
from the jw.org website:.
november 9, 2012. annual meeting report .
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Sisters and the Double Standard in the Hall
by Apognophos in"i do not permit a woman to teach, or to exercise authority over a man, but to be in silence.
" -- paul.
okay, so this means that a sister has to speak to a householder when on the platform, so she isn't addressing us herself and teaching us something.
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Apognophos
" I do not permit a woman to teach, or to exercise authority over a man, but to be in silence." -- Paul
Okay, so this means that a sister has to speak to a householder when on the platform, so she isn't addressing us herself and teaching us something. Gotcha. But a sister can give a lengthy comment from her seat, addressing the congregation directly over the mike. Sure, she's basing her comment on the literature, not "teaching", but what else is she doing but summarizing literature when she gives her talk?
And if commenting is permitted, why on Earth can't she do a Bible reading, a talk #1?! It's not teaching, it's reading an assigned passage! Sisters do that from their seats all the time too! And they can certainly do it at the door, even when speaking to a man; I guess those men don't count because they're not "Christians"??? Someone important a few decades back must have had a serious complex about seeing sisters stand up in front of him and speak... or perhaps he was afraid the brothers would be staring lustily at her ankles....
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New Light or A More Tangled Web?
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Apognophos
The "new light" doesn't really surprise me much. I think that it was always clear that the GB placed themselves above the regular anointed because after all, who was publishing the literature? I could swear I had already read in the literature sentiments to the effect of what is now being officially announced as new light; perhaps it was my imagination and I was reading the logical thing into the matter myself, or perhaps they were working towards this announcement.
I'm personally more interested in how they mark 1919 as the beginning date for the FDS and whether it hints that they might try to move away from talking about 1914. After all, 1919 is a concrete date where something actually happened with respect to the Witness organization, whereas 1914 was invisible and the reasoning on its significance is, as we well know, dubious at best. I also heard 1919 mentioned in a recent public talk, rather than 1914, which seemed like a new point in the outline to me. Could they be trying to get away from this embarrassing old teaching based on "pyramid power"?
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Crazy things Sisters put on the Head when they Pray...
by Confucious ini remember a sister that put a tissue over her head as a headcovering....
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Apognophos
Sorry to necropost, but I have to say that mouthy totally won this thread. I didn't even know it was a competition until she won it.
The head covering rule is a classic case of Pharisaism.
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I've been thinking the Bible isn't legitimate--long indoor mat-rant
by sd-7 ini'm not sure where this thought came from (believers will no doubt say 'from satan'), but it has started to coalesce in my brain lately.
i've often referred to the bible and argued from it to debunk jw beliefs, and still tried to consider it as a great piece of literature at the very least.
but as my wife was listening to the meeting on a loud speaker phone at home this weekend, i just had this thought.
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Apognophos
Or look at it this way, sd-7. The Genesis account is a Jewish creation narrative. What about the actual Christian part of the Bible? We can't be Christian if we don't believe that Jesus was the Christ. We're told he fulfilled lots of prophecies, but what independent confirmation do we have? Apparently he healed half the people within a 200-mile radius and fed hundreds but no one bothered to record this happening except MML&J. Is this like how Witnesses know the Bible is inspired of God because it says so in 2 Tim. 3:16, QED?
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It's Official! The Governing Body IS the Faithful and Discreet Slave (Annual Meeting Report - jw.org)
by 00DAD init's official!
from the jw.org website:.
november 9, 2012. annual meeting report .
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Apognophos
Matthewing.
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Guys!! Guys!!! Two Jehovah's Witnesses were just at my door!!
by ziddina inand of course, i had some fun with them... an older, brunette woman who obviously dyes her hair and could stand to lose a bit of weight, and a slim blonde teenage girl - probably around 15 - 17.... i started out by asking them if they knew how old the bible was.... .
(and unfortunately, i think i demonstrated that i wouldn't make a very good "undercover" bible study prospect... .
but they didn't even know how old - young - the bible was!!.
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Apognophos
Thanks for bumping this, I enjoyed reading it. Besides ziddina's posts, I also love the post by WontLeave on page 1, it's one of the most incisive things I've seen someone write about the Witnesses.
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The Decline of Elders and Ministerial Servants
by Londo111 ini seem to remember somebody saying that since the 90's the number of elders has declined from 90000 to 60000. does anybody have any hard figures regarding this?.
the organization is desperate for "qualified" men.
but their standards are much too high, especially the monthly field service hour requirements tagged on to endless meetings and congregational busywork.
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Apognophos
To some degree, the HQ may be unaware of the seriousness of the issue because they don't have local shortages of MS and elder material. Having grown up next to Patterson in a congregation that was always well-staffed with Bethelite brothers, it's amazing to hear some of these stories about desperate appointments. We always had plenty of help for the basic stuff like mike-running, and the elders just kept on multiplying. Some were long-timers, some were appointed in their 30s.
I suspect now that the elders would have loved to make me an MS, as I was already doing the more menial MS tasks like handling sound and assisting with literature and contribution box collections (new elders who moved into the cong. always assumed I was an MS until told otherwise), but my service time was always bare-minimum, as they would point out in sheperding calls. I knew that if I got my hours up and was appointed, it would mean having to give some of the longer talks, which was an intimidating thought. It was hardly encouraging me to reach out.
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I've been thinking the Bible isn't legitimate--long indoor mat-rant
by sd-7 ini'm not sure where this thought came from (believers will no doubt say 'from satan'), but it has started to coalesce in my brain lately.
i've often referred to the bible and argued from it to debunk jw beliefs, and still tried to consider it as a great piece of literature at the very least.
but as my wife was listening to the meeting on a loud speaker phone at home this weekend, i just had this thought.
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Apognophos
In one of my high school math classes, the teacher was fond of a certain expression. He would talk about how solving an equation requires finding the right place to start -- once you pull on that thread, "the whole thing unravels like a cheap sweater". This happens with the Bible for many ex-Witnesses because the Witnesses have such a tightly-fitted, puzzle-like reading of the Bible. A more feel-good religion that dips into the Bible casually for nice Sunday sermon moral lessons doesn't have this issue, but what careful thinker would accept the Bible as God's Word with that kind of limp-wristed approach? No, we were in a religion founded by self-made Bible scholars who believed in micro-analyzing the word of God because every letter had to have inspired meaning and every verse was corroborated (often figuratively) by another verse somewhere else.
Every good Witness was expected to adopt the same attitude of careful, letter-by-letter analysis (except that we were expected to do this by reading their literature first, and reverse-solving their interpretations back into the Bible). Their theories sounded plausible for a while in the 1800s, but have not withstood the test of time. So the very attitude of taking a scholarly approach, which we inherited in a second-hand, regurgitated-bird-food kind of way, turned back around on the teachings as we began to allow ourselves to explore our doubts, integrate modern scientific knowledge, and develop our thinking skills further. And in the end, it really was a house of cards, as LisaRose says.
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I've been thinking the Bible isn't legitimate--long indoor mat-rant
by sd-7 ini'm not sure where this thought came from (believers will no doubt say 'from satan'), but it has started to coalesce in my brain lately.
i've often referred to the bible and argued from it to debunk jw beliefs, and still tried to consider it as a great piece of literature at the very least.
but as my wife was listening to the meeting on a loud speaker phone at home this weekend, i just had this thought.
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Apognophos
It might not have been so out-of-the-blue of a concept. It's been suggested that it started with the concept of one God being raised up above other gods in the pantheon (like Marduk and Aten). The Jews might have liked this idea and taken it even further, reducing the minor gods to angels. Note how, although it's mostly not in the "canonical" Bible, the Jews had many names for angels, who each had their own attributes. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_angelic_hierarchy.