Posts by Afterburn

25

This site needs a little more humor in it

by HiddenPimo in

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This site needs a little more humor in it

by HiddenPimo in

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Afterburn

For "a little more humor," may I recommend Brad Williams?

https://www.bradwilliamscomedy.com/

33

Baptism Question #2 Verified and Changed.

by truthlover123 in

pimo verified this at the latest assembly attended.

check on this forum.

he was giving us attendance and baptism info and this was a side note... it is noted by another that when the question was asked after assembly was over, non seemed to hear the change.

I was baptized in 1985, in the first series of assemblies that used the old "new" baptism questions. I had studied the prior ones carefully to make sure I could, in good conscience, answer "Yes!" to both. I was surprised by the changed ones. I answered yes out of blind trust that I would not be asked to agree to something directly offending the Bible's direction.

I was wrong. Now, I am shunned. Fortunately, I no longer care about the Bible's direction. I only wish that my family would treat me as they treat a person of the nations, rather than treating me worse than Jesus treated Satan.

98

One simple photo to sum up the heartless and hypocritical attitudes of many Jehovah's Witnesses

by nicolaou in

jw
friends

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this was taken in london yesterday by a twitter user still managing his fade so i can't be more specific than that.

disgusting.

Afterburn

Drearyweather, I understand your point. The following is offered in the spirit of a sincere caution, not just for you, but for anyone tempted to corral people's visceral reactions to what they see happening.

I am quite certain what is happening in that photo. Five JWs are faithfully following the directions of the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses rather than the explicit instructions of Jesus, while pretending to themselves and to the world that they are adhering closely to what the Bible teaches.

Essentially, your emotional appeal is to only feel empathy for the rank and file JWs while condemning the source of the instructions they are following, and while condemning elders who wield presumptuous authority over others like a weapon.

Humans are not required to only feel one emotion at a time. I don't like the way you attempted to constrain emotional reactions to only one segment along a specific spectrum when it is perfectly okay to feel empathy for these people while acknowledging, and emotionally responding to, their cult-dictated calloused and insensitive cruelty toward a fellow human. I'm going to credit that you may not have been fully aware you were doing that.

Has the cult numbed them and desensitized them to the plight of the least of these? Most certainly. Is that entirely their fault? No. Do they deserve indignance along with empathy? You bet.

We are no longer in a cult. We get to feel mixed emotions, and we have no place shaming others into our perspective on which emotions are the "correct" ones to have. Perhaps when you were in the cult you had a position to "call people out" for how they said they felt about things they saw. And you are right when you note that any of them could be family members of mine. Family members who shun one they say they love at the behest of a self-aggrandized publishing company.

I am ashamed of my family's choices. I am indignant that they follow men's commands, derived from conjectured opinions about the Bible, while they reject the direct commandments found in the very book they claim to hold sacred. I am wistful that they will choose better. I miss them terribly. I am regretful of the wasted productivity and energy that I see them spending on nothing at all more than wishful thinking. I am empathetic with their self-destructive cycles of thought that trap them in a cult. I am furious with them for siding with a cult against their own flesh and blood. I am appalled at how callous they are toward the current dismal plight of the least among us, while acknowledging that their convictions in the truth of false promises of divinely granted future delights is the source of all of their calloused responses.

I feel all of those things. At the same time. Which of these are the wrong ways to feel, in your opinion?

I suspect you have also felt all of these ways, simultaneously. I believe you have overstepped because a narrow spectrum of emotion surged to the surface in you, for a moment, and you rationalized a basis for that to be regarded as the "right way" to feel. When someone else has different emotions surge to the surface, that doesn't make their resulting perspectives wrong, or deserving of any correction at all.

Jehovah's Witnesses are doctrinally guided to become "insensitive louts."

Do you disagree with that statement of fact? If so, I can share reams of information from their own doctrinal literature with you that can educate you otherwise. Just let me know.

The vast majority of Jehovah's Witnesses comply with that doctrinal guidance because of fear of social ostracism; an evil punishment with many varieties. A few of them are formal and official, most of them are informal and are "felt" rather than stated.

19

Quick Story

by APieceOfShitNamedTate in

so one night i'm at a meeting.

it's the beginning of the meeting and a brother is up on stage introducing the parts for the night.

he's going through the parts and then he says, "...and apieceofshitnamedtate will be handling our bible highlights.".

Afterburn

Back when I was PIMI, I used to prepare thoroughly for talks #2 and #4 every week. Every. Week. So that I would be ready in case someone needed a substitute. I often gave talk #2 in the main auditorium and then talk #4 in the library, for 2nd School. I really believed that was an offering of service to God, helping a cult indoctrinate people who mostly did not prepare at all for that meeting. Now, I feel dirty about that despite appreciating what that did for my comfort with public speaking.

22

What Jesus' Return Would Mean for JWs, According to the Bible

by Afterburn in

on the last day, jesus returns, and 8,000,000 jehovah's witnesses are shocked that he didn't return invisibly.

remembering the account of stephen, they know if they can see him, they can speak directly to him, so they line up proudly to be rewarded for all they've done for his brothers.. "lord, lord," they happily cry out, "just look what all we have done in your name!".

"i know," jesus says, "i saw.

Afterburn

I'm not sure if anyone noticed, but Rattigan350 studiously avoided addressing the point I made regarding the cult's emphasis on a ministry of dedication to and on baptism into a religion rather than on the ministry Paul had been given of reconciled personal relationship with God and on baptism into Christ.

The former does not fulfill the commission found at Matthew 28:18-20.

The latter does.

The former does require extensive indoctrination into a religion's dogma prior to baptism, because a specific prayer of dedication would require that much knowledge and understanding.

The latter does not require any organized religion, at all, and only requires enough information to convince one that 1) a person has no personal relationship with God, and 2) there is a way to restore that relationship, open to all persons.

Which do we see happening at Acts 2:22-40?

What about the Ethiopian eunuch at Acts 8:26-40?

And then there is Acts 10:33-48, where Peter speaks less than 200 Greek words to an assembled group of Cornelius' family and friends, all of whom are baptized by holy spirit "while he was still speaking"; followed immediately by water baptism. Is that anything like JW baptism, at all? Which of them was required to publicly commit themselves to a religion?

Acts 16:14-15 and Acts 16:25-34 are two more examples; Lydia with her whole household, and the Philippian jailer with his entire family. The Agnostic Philippian certainly didn't meet any JW criteria for baptism, and never published the good news to anyone. Well into Paul's ministry throughout the known world, and long after there was already a congregation established in Philippi.

It is a fact, well known to the Governing Body, that there is no Scriptural justification, at all, for the concept of an unbaptized publisher of the good news among Christians.

It is a fact, well known to the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses, that there is no justification found anywhere in the Bible for any of their prerequisites for Christian baptism, most especially for a specific prayer of dedication as a requirement, nor any verbal commitment to a specific religion, nor to a verbal commitment to adhere to the teachings of any group of men.

They know that they are teaching falsehoods as truth about Christian baptism.

About one of the elementary things of the primary doctrine about the Christ, Jehovah's Witnesses teach many separate lies as truth.

Hebrews 6:1-2

Therefore, now that we have moved beyond the primary doctrine about the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying a foundation again, namely, repentance from dead works and faith in God, the teaching on baptisms and the laying on of the hands, the resurrection of the dead and everlasting judgment.

22

What Jesus' Return Would Mean for JWs, According to the Bible

by Afterburn in

on the last day, jesus returns, and 8,000,000 jehovah's witnesses are shocked that he didn't return invisibly.

remembering the account of stephen, they know if they can see him, they can speak directly to him, so they line up proudly to be rewarded for all they've done for his brothers.. "lord, lord," they happily cry out, "just look what all we have done in your name!".

"i know," jesus says, "i saw.

Afterburn

No one prevents people from having a relationship with Jesus Christ, except there is no point in it. He is not the objective. He is a priest bringing people to Jehovah God. Israelites could have friendly relationships with the high priests, but the high priests were just a go between. The whole point was to bring them to God.

Rattigan350, no one "prevents" any one of Jehovah's Witnesses from doing anything, in the strictest legal sense. That's true enough, in the sense that your cult cannot be successfully sued in civil proceedings on that basis.

However, much like the Jews of Jesus' day, your cult's use of shunning is, as Insight On the Scriptures aptly states, "a very powerful weapon" to coerce people into conformance with a doctrine that rejects the position blatantly assigned to Jesus in the Bible.

I have a question for you, so that you can explain your cult's teachings more expansively for others reading here:

If "the whole point was to bring them to God," and if a personal relationship with Jesus was not the first objective in restoring an individual relationship with God, then, 1) why did Jesus repeatedly direct people to come to him and 2) why did Paul lie to Timothy when he said that Jesus (personally) was our only mediator in the process of restoring our individual relationship with God?

I think you've been lied to about what the Bible teaches on this point. If you believe otherwise, please explain these incongruities for the benefit of any others who might read this exchange between us.

22

What Jesus' Return Would Mean for JWs, According to the Bible

by Afterburn in

on the last day, jesus returns, and 8,000,000 jehovah's witnesses are shocked that he didn't return invisibly.

remembering the account of stephen, they know if they can see him, they can speak directly to him, so they line up proudly to be rewarded for all they've done for his brothers.. "lord, lord," they happily cry out, "just look what all we have done in your name!".

"i know," jesus says, "i saw.

Afterburn

Wow, Tenacious, thank you!

11

Is this guy making a lot of mistakes?

by rockemsockem in

i watched this video just a bit and from what i saw he made a lot of fundamental misstatements on jws.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le5kqhf8fx0.

Afterburn

Vidiot and alanv,

What someone choose to do does not mean that they do so without coercive consequences.

What someone is allowed to do is permitted free from any coercive influences. It is important to plug that fact into how you are both evaluating whether JWs are "allowed" to talk with ex-JWs.

If it is allowed, there is nothing perceived as wrong with doing so, and no one will pressure a different choice from any position of authority. When it comes to how Jehovah's Witnesses officially state ex JWs are to be treated, there is no ambiguity whatsoever. They wield the harshest legal punishment the Pharisees had available under Roman law: shunning. This was the penalty for the man born blind that Jesus healed.

Insight On the Scriptures states that this form of punishment was "a very powerful weapon" to compel conformity with the legal and religious opinions of the Rabbis and the Pharisees.

Vidiot is correct that they will "counsel" anyone they discover to be socializing with an ex JW beyond "necessary family business" and, if that "counsel" is not applied, they will investigate and convene a Judicial Committee. If the "counsel" continues to be ignored, they will announce that the person who has continued socializing is no longer one of Jehovah's Witnesses.

In each case, the "counsel" takes the form of discussing the verse in 2 John that says, "... not even saying a greeting to such a man."

If this edict masquerading as "counsel" is ignored, they will apply the most extreme coercive force they have available ... it is the same as that wielded by the Pharisees.

22

What Jesus' Return Would Mean for JWs, According to the Bible

by Afterburn in

on the last day, jesus returns, and 8,000,000 jehovah's witnesses are shocked that he didn't return invisibly.

remembering the account of stephen, they know if they can see him, they can speak directly to him, so they line up proudly to be rewarded for all they've done for his brothers.. "lord, lord," they happily cry out, "just look what all we have done in your name!".

"i know," jesus says, "i saw.

Afterburn

Crazyguy2, I understand why you might perceive that as a problem. They do conflict, somewhat, don't they? But, what did Jesus say, according to the Bible? And, the entire letter to the Romans was not a prophecy offered in symbols about future events at a later time, but about how Christians should view things in general, no?

The letter of Romans literally states that no one should be judging one another about <drumroll!> opinions! What has the Governing Body stated their interpretations are? Oh, yes, that's right. Opinions. "Best surmises." They directly defy what Romans says when they judge others over differences of opinions, especially when they do so over opinions about interpretations, and Revelation says nothing at all to contradict that point made in Romans.