Posts by TheOldHippie

39

JW Family Tries Black-Mailing Me

by Prisca in

i have spent the last week or so with my sister and bro-in-law and my 6year old niece, all jws.

they live in a town not too far away from me, and i visit them every couple of months or so.

my sister and i are close, not extremely so, but we appreciate each other as we have no other bros & sisters, our mother died 21yrs ago, and our father treats us as though we are dead too (due to non-jw issues).. last time i went to visit them, my bro-in-law asked my niece to ask me if i'd go to the meeting.

TheOldHippie

Refiners Fire said, "Any Witness in his right mind, just reading that, would be cause enough to question whether the orgs the truth. Using your own kin, and little children against you"

OK, so what one family, or one man, does, is reason enough for "any Witness in his right mind" to question that. I see. Likewise, then, what one Catholic man or woman does or does not, is cause good enough for the 600,000,00 or who knows how many, Catholics, to question their organization, or their faith? I don't say what the guy did was OK, by no means, but if you haven't got any better reason for questionsing the organization to which you belong, than what one unploite guy does, then the reasons are rather meager, if you'd care to ask me ......

15

no disfellowship for inactive?

by jaccilynn in

my mother was having a moment while she went to visit a friend a few weeks ago, worrying about me being disfellowshiped and having our relationship change.

the sister told my mom, that i could not be disfellowshiped because i am not an active memeber of the congregation.

supposedly, her daughter was a full time pioneer, stopped attending meetings, and realized that she is a lesbian.

TheOldHippie

It varies; here, a woman was just df'ed - she hasn't been seen for some 3 years, but then her name popped up at an electoral list, and a committee was formed and out she went.

Another guy went gay, but nothing was done, since few knew him any more.

My hint: If the congregation changes elders and publishers due to moving etc., and new ones don't know the person in question, he/she no longer is considered a Witness by most of the people in the congregation, and so nothing is done.

What I feel strange, is how people lie or walk quiet or whatever, in order not to be df'ed or do not da themselves, because they want the social touch, but are utterly negative towards the Witness beliefs. Hypocracy, OK (don't know the spelling ....). I far more respect a person who stands up for his meanings, his beliefs. It is far easier for me to speak to a df'ed person with voiced opinions, than to a sneaking guy whom you can clearly see "is only in it for the money".

37

Does the soul or spirit exist?

by JanH in

jw
friends

science deals with what can be observed, directly or indirectly.

so in one sense, you could say that science is simply not providing any answers to the question about the existence of a soul or spirit component of a human being.. .

that, of course, keeps science polite to religious ideas.. .

TheOldHippie

I just love it, when JanH and others so boldly state that "Now, we all know that ...", "Science has proven that ...", "As we all know ....", and then, when talking about those of another opinion as "crackpots", "lunatics" etc. How neutral, how detached, how solely devoted to sorting out the facts!

It is so funny, in my eyes, to see how so many think that we today have the 100 % knowledge of all things. 100 years ago NO, 50 years ago NO, 15 years ago NO, but today YES. In 20 years, in 50 years, in 100 years ..... ? We laugh so heartily of what the lunatic crackpots in their utter stupidity and ignorance believed 100 years ago - and how do you think the people 100 years from now, when we are long time dead and gone, will talk about us?

"When you have been dead and buried for 100,000,000 years - then a fraction of a second of Eternity has elapsed."

12

MSNBC RE-AIRING of DATELINE:NEW STUFF

by dungbeetle in

here is the added material:.

stone phillips:(or john larsen).

in fact, anderson gave dateline a copy of this letter written in 1992 by a psycotherapist, a jehovah's witness himself, who said he'd treated many witnesses who'd told him they had been molested, and he had personally dealt with a number of elders who were more interested in suppressig a matter of abuse .

TheOldHippie

The psycho guy wouldn't happen to be Bergman, would it?

18

JW becoming normal religion

by Realist in

jw
friends

am i wrong or is there a trend to make the wt to a normal religion?

first they gave up to predict who the new king of the north is.

then they stopped predicting the end of the world.

TheOldHippie

KJV, you said that "I believe that once again in the future they will rule the dubs with severe strictness."
Eh..... excuse me, my friend, but I was under the impression most of the people here, including those of us who are Witnesses in so-called relatively "good standing" have the feeling that NOW is a time severe strictness is used when dealing with the brothers. For my part, if this is supposedly a period of relaxed treatment, I would not like to stick around long wnough to witness what severe strictness is really about .....

9

"They know we have the truth!"

by Atreyu in

i remember a popular idea that often surfaced in informal discussions among the jws in my congregation, especially back in the 70ies:.

(this was in norway, and please remind that the evangelical-lutheran church is a national church and that ca 95% of population are members.).

"the priests know that we have the truth!".

TheOldHippie

Not very "fundy-light", but Menighetsfakultetet. No reason to doubt that.

5

Letter to Dateline from WBTS

by staceman in

this may have already been posted, but here is a link to the letter written to dateline rejecting the offer for an on-camera interview.

and the reasons why...... .

http://www.jw-media.org/releases/rgreenberg020702.pdf

TheOldHippie

Dungbeetle - was that one of your famous hugs?
.............
By the way, I just heard from a friend that the whole board of elders in his congregation back then in '95 when the Repressed memories and two witnesses article appeared, wrote to the Branch and "protested" against the article, asking specific questions etc., and also saying none of them would deliver that magazine from door-to-door. The branch never responded. As this friend of mine, one of the elders, said, "They had better not come and say they have not been warned!"

9

"They know we have the truth!"

by Atreyu in

i remember a popular idea that often surfaced in informal discussions among the jws in my congregation, especially back in the 70ies:.

(this was in norway, and please remind that the evangelical-lutheran church is a national church and that ca 95% of population are members.).

"the priests know that we have the truth!".

TheOldHippie

I remember the same stories.
Of course, individual priests have said and done so, and "know" that the Witnesses "have the Truth" and use our literature. One of the teachers of one of our children used the "Bible Stories" book in the Religion classes, and at first read "God" as a substitute for "Jehovah", but ended up using God's name. There are of course hundreds, if not thousands of true stories like that.
The Atreyu story deals with this being true for all priests. I remember an old sister who had listened to the radio's religious morning program, and thereafter stated to all of us that that particular priest must have read all our literature and used it in the preparation for the program, as what he said was so close to the Truth.
There are, though, some rings of truth to some of it. For example, in the Lutheran theological seminar, they are taught that the eternal future for mankind according to the Bible is on Earth and not in heaven. But they are instructed not to dwell too much on that in their sermons, because it would confuse the average church goers. A priest in my area wrote articles in the local church magazine that the future is here on Earth, and there were loud discussions when he pointed out that even the seminar textbooks pointed out this.

5

Letter to Dateline from WBTS

by staceman in

this may have already been posted, but here is a link to the letter written to dateline rejecting the offer for an on-camera interview.

and the reasons why...... .

http://www.jw-media.org/releases/rgreenberg020702.pdf

TheOldHippie

No, you'll never get a straight answer, and that is one of the worst things. I recently wrote a looong letter with specific questions because of elders and circuit overseers had said and done things that were waaaay out of line and directly opposed to what specific articles in the Watchtower stated, and I asked for replies as to what were the correct ways of doing this and that - the "articles' ways" or the "pharisee ways" - and all I received after a looong time, was a reply that the Society did not want to comment on disagreement among brothers. So when elders step on you and kick you while you're down, it's disagreement among brothers. But shame on you if you protest, then it's no more disagreement, but rebellion and apostacy.

12

Elder School and trained to believe about c.1980

by thewiz in

i have only suspicions about this, and an elder at the hall over 2 -1/2 years ago tipped me off to this and kind of semi-verified my long held suspicions.

i never did get to elder school or even ms school because i never kissed enough ass, so i can't emphatically prove it myself.. he basically inferred or implied that nearly all the wtb&ts late 20th century problems had something to do with the "great" apostacy (witch hunt) of c.1980.. i have also talked to my brother-in-law about this matter a couple of times and he seems to be of the same bend or thinking.

it's kind of like the borginazational culture that everyone "believes" or it's "known" that the troubles were rooted out when ray franz and friends were booted.. .

TheOldHippie

Although living on the other side of the Atlantic, I remember the circuit overseer gave a special talk at the elders' meeting during his visit, where he warned that we were to expect difficulties from within during the next years, as apostates had tried to gain control over the Society but had been ousted. We were asked to take notes, and then to give the main points of his talk as a special talk after the second book study to be held after he had left. At the first book study, we were to ask everybody to make sure to be present at the next study because of that talk. It was a gloomy talk, warning about apostates and drop-outs, but no specifics were given, nothing about what were really the issues. We were told to make good use of the "Commentary on the Letter of James" book, as it was said to deal with this - but only later did I find out that that study book was in fact written by one of the very "apostates".