Posts by Reasonfirst

The main problem the witnesses have is that the whole basis for their practise of DFing is FAKE (that's the bible, of course).

Another "BAD" memory:

Who could place (sell) the most magazines?

In good old Aussie land, the champion must have been a guy called Vince McNee. He's an interesting character.

He came from Brissie (Brisbane), and had been raised in a catholic orphanage, local witnesses spoke of him being the 'illegitimate' child of a certain local Catholic priest.

Whatever the truth of that, he certainly had certain Irish charm characteristics and could give spell-binding talks.

In Sydney we first got to know him when he was appointed as a circuit overseer, and was willing to do things a little differently.

Like witnessing on Sydney's suburban train network. His technique was simple. Start from one end and work the 8 carriages to the end. He'd approach the passengers, holding out the two magazines, and say, "The latest, 20 cents!" Whether it was his Irish charm or whatever, I don't know, but he could place 100s of magazines in a day.

If you were travelling on the train network, and found WT's and Awakes scattered around, you'd know that Vince had been on that train. The fact that the mags. were on the floor indicated that few had been read.

The Train dept. soon became unhappy with the litter, and banned sales of any product on the network.

I said Vince was an interesting guy. He was twice, invited to Gilead, and twice dismissed from Gilead. I never heard why.

He finally came to an end, when no longer used in any organisational capacity, his wife came home unexpectedly one day, and found him in the shower with a certain handsome young ex-bethel brother.

He was divorced, and disfellowshipped, and I never heard of him again.

But he could certainly place magazines!

So think about it?

Several versions of the David and Goliath story, Which one was inspired?

Can we really bel;ieve that the old man in the sky "inspired" humans to write his propaganda?

Since I'm now old and nearing the end of my life, I'm not having many new experiences to remember, so one of the things my mind does (to keep itself busy) is to regurgitate old ones.

So no more print magazines. Oh! Shit! Have I got some memories.

Yeah! The day I arrived at a new special pioneer assignment (the previous guys had thoughtfully left the tenancy of an old one room farm building for me), and on the table was a stack of several hundreds of WTs and Awakes, still rolled up in the bundles, as posted by the WTS. This I think, was a hangover from Russell's days when bible societies (not only the WT bible and Tract one) would provide bible literature to 'colporteurs' at highly reduced rates to support themselves while flogging bible shit across the country.

A Circus serpent, (Ron Walters, if any Aussie remembers him) arrived shortly after, and I innocently asked him what to do with those old magazines. He snapped back at me, "Place them, of course." This NSW country town had a population of about 4000 and my only transport was a bike to cover the sparse rural areas.

I thought about it for a while, and concluded the mags deserved a christian burial. The soil around my hut was too hard, So I biked a few km out of town. to a bridge over a nearly dry creek, and buried them under the bridge.

It rained a few days later, and the next time i went over that bridge, I found that the rain had caused the creek to flow, and the mags. were floating, reproachfully, face up to old YHWH.

My funny story about associating with another DFed witness.

I have a FB page associated with the degree I did some years ago (it's about Asian History). Anyway, one day I saw the name of a Jw, who had first studied with me. It turned out to be him.

I asked if he was willing to have a conversation? He said yes, so we did. He said he could talk to me as he was disfellowshipped. That shocked me. He came from a good JW family, had been a Circuit OS, and a Gilead graduate and a missionary.

So I asked why he was outed? And, he told me the story. His first wife had died and a few years later he'd married an Asian woman (also a JW). He claims he came home early one day and found her in bed with 3 men. Wow! So he started divorce proceedings, But when the elder's asked the wife if the story was true, she denied his claim.

Result, the elders disfellowshipped him.

Is his story true, and if I hadn't known him so well in the past, I wouldn't have believed it, and I really don't care either way. A little while later he refused to talk anymore, so I guess he was seeking re-instatement.

Seabreeze to me: "Open your eyes. It is a successful business model. They bring your family into a conflict when necessary to control you and to protect their "thing". It is so successful they are quite adept at convincing you to even commit suicide... or at least forfeit the authenticity of your life, which is a type of death."

Sb, are your own eyes really open? Or, maybe your just short-sighted. I'm not attempting to spoil your fun in slinging shit at the Jws, many have been hurt by WT policies, but objectively, not all witnesses, or all elders are like gangsters.

Your analogy of the mafia can be applied to all churches, why not compare Xtianity, with its threats that unbelievers will burn in hell forever, to the mafia also. It's the same business model.

Paul stated that those who are 'false' teachers are anathema. But how to decide who is a false teacher?

Years later, when the early church had started to use episkopos as church leaders, Origen, commenting on Matthew's gospel (in the 240 C.E decade.), wrote that the Bishop's "terrify people, and make themselves inaccessible, especially if people are poor ... we behave as no tyrant would."

That's real gangster style isn't it? It's the same 'business model.' Why not make it clear that early christianity was the model.

to joe134cd: Yes! These days few jws would know of those events during WW2. Even then (early 1950s) it was not generally discussed. I was young then and am now old, so I guess, is everyone else from my youth, and those who witnessed the events are even older. So the fact that a University academic took time to research the event is useful.

As far as the WTS is concerned, they'd probably like the 'sins' of the Aussie branch to be forgotten.

Though, strangely, a Gilead graduate once told me that the Aussie branch's deviation from the party line was mentioned in the lectures at Gilead, and held up as an example of what 'could' happen at the end of the 1000 years.

A long, long time ago, when I was young (in years and that org.) I was interested in a girl in the same cong.. Her mother was a witness, but not her father. I thought I'd win some kudos, if I could 'persuade' the father to come to meetings. But he opened up one day and told me that he'd been a witness, and been the WTS's accountant (back in the day when there were only a few thousand witnesses in all of Aust.) and he had left the org. because it was/had become commercialised.

That was news to me, and I nearly left the org. then. But another oldie (Bill Schnieder, if any other Aussie ex-witness recalls that far back), got hold of me and told me what had happened.

Back in the 1930's the WTS had bought a property (in Strathfield NSW) to be the branch office. But it had to be refurbished and buildings constructed for the office and printery. After the purchase, there was no money left for all that work (Aust. still affected by the 1929 depression) and, of course, the org. was very small in Aust. Anyway as they could afford it, they started building some of the above things with volunteer (JW) labour.

Then came 1939 and WW2. and lots of men enlisting in the army (keeping in mind that JWs refused to do military service) but there was still a need for building work and maintenance in the general community. So the relatively few tradies who were working on the the Strathfield Bethel, were suddenly in demand. The word got around in the general community about these guys so then the Branch office started seeking this outside work - and that's how the Aussie office had become commercialised.

That was an interesting time, the branch office was taken over by the government, and although the Bethel family were still allowed to live there, in 1942 the Aust. Army placed 24 hour sentries around the building. The Branch overseer was a guy called Alexander MacGillivray. He was out one night dining somewhere, maybe too well, and when he got back to the Bethel home, the sentry challenged him and MacGillivray said something stupid, so the sentry shot him. Didn't kill him but I was told it was a serious wound.

Anyway, the witnesses took the case to the High court, and in 1943, the government's ban on the Jws was overturned and the Army evicted from Bethel.

Nathan Knorr turned up, as soon as he could after the war ended, and condemned the commercial activities, eventually installing T.Jarasz as Branch servant.

An academic study, by Dr. Jayne Persian (University of Southern Queensland) of the above can be found at: https://www.academia.edu/170809/The_Banning_of_Jehovahs_Witnesses_in_Australia_in_1941

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Attempting to keep an objective view of my (and the WTS's) past I find the comparison of the witnesses to the Mafia rather strange.

We live in a monetised world. (The alternative to bartering). We earn money to buy goods and services. Organisations like churches, have to pay money for their goods. How can they obtain that money. That was the dilemma faced by the Aussie WTS, in my remembered experience way back in my youth. Other churches also face that same dilemma (think, the big-time evangelisers on TV). Think, the RC church in the middle-ages selling indulgences. It's fascinating to know that in the USA, that church (according to the N.Y. Times) has resumed selling indulgences.

Quote: "The fact that many Catholics under 50 have never sought one, and never heard of indulgences except in high school European history (Martin Luther denounced the selling of them in 1517 while igniting the Protestant Reformation), simply makes their reintroduction more urgent among church leaders bent on restoring fading traditions of penance in what they see as a self-satisfied world."

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/nyregion/10indulgence.html#:~:text=You%20cannot%20buy%20one%20%E2%80%94%20the,indulgence%20per%20sinner%20per%20day.