For me, the 70's and early 80's were halcyon days of yore. The best times of my life.
I loved the Comedy and Magic Club (in Hermosa Beach, I seem to recall) where I saw an upcoming comedian named Jerry Seinfeld. Then, the Lighthouse Jazz Cafe' (recently seen in LaLa Land.)
Dinner at Pancho and Wong's or Orville and Wilbur's restaurant was heavenly.
I've regretted every minute away since 1983.
From about 1974 till 1978 my family attended the Kingdom Hall 2102 Aviation Way, Redondo Beach, CA 90278. Only the first year and a half did I sporadically attend.
I was busy pursuing my life's dream of being an artist.
It was from that congregation I was DF'D. Ah, nostalgia.
TerryWalstrom
JoinedPosts by TerryWalstrom
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21
Jehovah's Witnesses and the Picnic Extinction
by TerryWalstrom injehovah’s witnesses and the picnic extinction.
(“those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end…”).
it was another world back then; another time and another place.. you had to have been there to have any sense of it--as a young, impressionable jehovah’s witness under the watchtower presidency of nathan h. knorr--social gatherings (backyard bbq’s, swimming parties) among the ‘friends’ consisted of having a great time at a get together or a picnic.
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TerryWalstrom
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21
Jehovah's Witnesses and the Picnic Extinction
by TerryWalstrom injehovah’s witnesses and the picnic extinction.
(“those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end…”).
it was another world back then; another time and another place.. you had to have been there to have any sense of it--as a young, impressionable jehovah’s witness under the watchtower presidency of nathan h. knorr--social gatherings (backyard bbq’s, swimming parties) among the ‘friends’ consisted of having a great time at a get together or a picnic.
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TerryWalstrom
What dates are you using to bracket "30" years?
The change came inside of one decade -
13
Exposing the Core Premise of JW False Teaching
by TerryWalstrom inpoison is at work in any argument with jehovah's witnesses.
this poison has little to do with the beauty of watchtower logic or the tasty morsels of jw reasoning.. the poison is odorless and tasteless and it has absorbed into their core premise: scripture interpretation directed by jehovah.. if you buy into the core premise (somebody possesses a divinely granted access to an infallible source of truth) you are already dead in the water.. that is the deal breaker.
false premises lead always to false conclusions.. stop right here.. the core misrepresentation of christianity solely rests in accepting the bible as the inerrant word of almighty god.
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TerryWalstrom
Dreary weather
The Jews were called THE PEOPLE of the BOOK.
The LAW was written by the "finger of God." Immediately afterward, Moses destroyed the very tablets containing the Law of God. Nobody examined the original tablets.
The Ark of the Covenant supposedly contained those tablets--but those were NOT the originals.
The (Christian Greek) Scriptures were not the New Testament we have today. No, it was the Septuagint, which legend has it, was translated by 70 Elders separated from each other and ALL their copies matched exactly! Clearly a myth.
Christianity was first Jewish Messianic word-of-mouth preaching to Jews. "Faith follows the thing heard."
But, the New Testament is comprised of very strange things.
At first, the "Bible" consisted of the letters of Paul collated by Marcion, a Christianized tycoon who contributed lots of money to the Church.
Marcion darned near created a completely different version of Christianity because his GNOSTIC teachings denied that Jehovah was the true God. Instead, the God of the Old Testament was an evil god. According to Marcion, Jesus was the true God.
The Church (i.e. universal or Catholic) gave Marcion his donations back and disfellowshipped him.
To compete with Marcion's collated writings, a separate canon was introduced approved by Church itself.
This is the first logical disproof of their authority because they approved as true and legitimate MORE books than the Protestants accepted and approved.
Somebody is lying or both or Both are wrong or one is right and the other is wrong.
In other words--it is all up for grabs, for dispute and unprovable.
Assertions are made, certainly, but in any Court of Law of the land, if you claim to be the heir to a fortune and produce a photocopy of a will--it isn't going to fly.
BEST EVIDENCE is the autograph will, written in the hand of the deceased, witnessed and notarized.
The Jews AND the 1st century Christians and the later Protestants are all claiming to be heirs of the kingdom and they can't produce the autograph documents!!
If the Catholic Church did NOT preserve the actual Bible containing proper Christian teaching--they are undoubtedly wrong about most everything else.
This canon of scripture--IF it were wrong--was allowed to go unchallenged for over one thousand years.
Martin Luther was either right or wrong to remove the "extra" books.
Protestant Reformation either wrecked the TRUE church or exposed the counterfeit teachings of the false one.
It isn't a simple matter, is it?
Without a true, verifiable document, we are betting our lives, fortunes and sacred honor ON THE ASSURANCES of mere mortals with quirky ideas.
That's my point.
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13
Exposing the Core Premise of JW False Teaching
by TerryWalstrom inpoison is at work in any argument with jehovah's witnesses.
this poison has little to do with the beauty of watchtower logic or the tasty morsels of jw reasoning.. the poison is odorless and tasteless and it has absorbed into their core premise: scripture interpretation directed by jehovah.. if you buy into the core premise (somebody possesses a divinely granted access to an infallible source of truth) you are already dead in the water.. that is the deal breaker.
false premises lead always to false conclusions.. stop right here.. the core misrepresentation of christianity solely rests in accepting the bible as the inerrant word of almighty god.
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TerryWalstrom
I'm guessing you take exception to "inerrant". The major evangelical churches fudge by adding the words "in the originals"--as though there ARE any originals :)
I think a good analogy is in our currency. A legally tendered note of any denomination is "backed up" by the Federal Reserve. At one time the U.S. had a Gold standard which made good on the paper currency. Richard Nixon's inability to finance the Vietnam War (ran out of money) forced going off the gold standard. From that point forward, the Fed could issue I.O.U.'s linked to Oil Reserves (Petro dollar).
Christianity under Catholicism was backed up by the Pope's infallible pronouncements on faith and morals. The Pope was in effect THE FEDERAL RESERVE :)
WatchTower leaders try to have it both ways, interpreting Scripture AND making up their own ideas as equivalent to Jehovah's whispers in their ears.
Their "Truth" is inflationary. They must constantly print (New Light) like new currency to replace the old disproved nonsense. -
13
Exposing the Core Premise of JW False Teaching
by TerryWalstrom inpoison is at work in any argument with jehovah's witnesses.
this poison has little to do with the beauty of watchtower logic or the tasty morsels of jw reasoning.. the poison is odorless and tasteless and it has absorbed into their core premise: scripture interpretation directed by jehovah.. if you buy into the core premise (somebody possesses a divinely granted access to an infallible source of truth) you are already dead in the water.. that is the deal breaker.
false premises lead always to false conclusions.. stop right here.. the core misrepresentation of christianity solely rests in accepting the bible as the inerrant word of almighty god.
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TerryWalstrom
EXPOSING the CORE PREMISE of JW FALSE TEACHINGS
Poison is at work in any argument with Jehovah's Witnesses. This poison has little to do with the beauty of WatchTower logic or the tasty morsels of JW reasoning.
The poison is odorless and tasteless and it has absorbed into their core premise: Scripture Interpretation directed by Jehovah.
If you BUY into the core premise (somebody possesses a divinely granted access to an infallible source of truth) you are already dead in the water.
That is THE deal breaker. False premises lead always to false conclusions.
Stop right here.
The core misrepresentation of Christianity solely rests in accepting the Bible as the inerrant Word of Almighty God.
What logically follows from swallowing that poison is what leads to cults and denominations’ next step: offering personal interpretation as the only true interpretation.
A leads to B. Buy one and get one free!This false premise is planted in your head practically from birth. It is inescapable. You find it everywhere like Santa Claus at Christmas.
THE BIBLE IS THE WORD OF GOD and INERRANT?
Is it worth asking the right question about this????
What is the right question?
WHY DIDN'T GOD PRESERVE the original documents?
Original?
(i.e.Moses,David,Paul, etc-sat-down-and-wrote-these-words-on-this-animal skin or papyrus.)
IF YOU DON'T HAVE ANY ORIGINALS AT ALL, what DO you have? Obviously, all you have is somebody's assurance 1. There was an original 2. It was copied accurately. (Without number 1. All you’re left with is an I.O.U. for 2.)
Sleight-of-hand! Your having to trust the assurance rather than the word of God itself. One is cold cash while the other is a promise of cash.
Neat trick, eh?
If GOD did not see fit to preserve the ORIGINAL (Spoiler Alert!) and He didn't…
Why trust the assurances of those who stand to gain by interpreting it for us?You cannot get past this PREMISE, this fatal flaw, the foundation of Christianity and of Jehovah’s Witnesses. There is no original manuscript preserved to be used to prove anything at all.
The original Bible "books" do not exist anywhere on Earth. We are forced to accept neither the apostles nor the church 1. Thought enough of them to preserve them 2. Had any in the first place.
Jesus never wrote a word of scripture. His teaching was oral.
We are told (by others) those who heard his teachings wrote down what they knew.
Well---DID THEY REALLY?
How do you KNOW?
IF THIS PREMISE IS FALSE......then what??
1.The Catholic Church would have had to develop its religious doctrines based on the authority of men.
2.The authority of church officials would be considered equal to that of God.
3.The activities of the church would indicate how "divine" they were.
4.All the early Christian believers would simply be groups of OPINION MAKERS who interpreted opinions of leaders they found worth listening to.
5.Nobody could prove the superiority of one opinion over and above another's without source authority to point to for refutation.
6.The Church would have to try and settle all the fights, arguments, disagreements and clashing orthodoxies with an OFFICIAL canon and pronouncement of right belief. (All because there was no original manuscript to settle those matters.)
7.The Church would have to use its self-created official status to destroy all opposition by declaring heresy punishable by death. Counter opinion would have to be eliminated by burning documents and destroying naysayers in the harshest possible manner.
Well--isn't this EXACTLY what history shows happened?
The 73 books approved and canonized by the official Christian Church did not prevent that same organization from committing foul deeds throughout the millennia. The fruits of their core premise were dastardly.
When Martin Luther challenged Church authority and inadvertently split Christianity yet again---the Bible was the first thing to be challenged as to authenticity!!
Where are those 73 canonized books purported to be the true word of God?
7 of those books were simply tossed out because they did not match Luther's ideas! So much for the inerrant message from the True God passed on by the authority of The Catholic Church.
For a millennia the church would kill anybody who asserted against their magisterium or anyone who tried to place Scripture ahead of official pronouncement.
Martin Luther, in effect, put his thumb in the eye of Mother Church by asserting a NEW PREMISE.
What was his PREMISE?
NEW PREMISE
1. God doesn't rule men through an Organization.
2.Each Christian is authorized by God to his own bible to discover God’s message of salvation, hope, and truth. In Luther’s words: Sola Scriptura (the Bible alone).
Since the 16th Century, the BIBLE alone was the new PREMISE replacing (go ahead, say it) Organized religion.
You and I--if we grew up in a non-Catholic household of Christian faith--were served this PREMISE on our plate. We grew up with it.
Here’s a scary question.WHAT IF THIS PREMISE IS AN ERROR as well??
1.Does there exist a True God who communicates with humanity through a book without any original manuscript to back up such claim?
2.If not--how does Christianity get away with opinions pretending to be Divinely authorized?
3.Why should any of us be bound by opinions, claims, counterfeits?
4. Why waste time arguing scriptural interpretation when no scripture of any kind is demonstrably DIVINE?
Clearly, such “religion” is only a man-made tool for controlling the behavior and loyalty of people gullible enough to swallow the poison.
The Watchtower Society embraces BOTH false premises:
1.WatchTower is a provably ever-changing organization of men pretending to authority to interpret Truth and enforcement of orthodoxy
2. WatchTower’s divine communication between God and man with them as the channel of interpretation is a lie.
The WORST of both lies is embodied in one false premise.
WatchTower's organization is what the Catholic Church was no matter how you slice it. Men pretending to be able to tell you how to live while saying it isn't really them saying it. At the same time, they point to the Bible as a source authority redundantly. The Bible they've gone out of their way to rejigger over and over again (proving how malleable a non-sourced prop it really is.)Food for thought.
We live in a real world and our life is finite in length. Do we need to waste our time arguing scripture, interpretations of scripture, when the only strategy worth asserting is aimed at Jehovah’s Witnesses Achilles heel; their false premise?
How can you believe you have The Truth based on interpretation of the Bible when the Bible itself has no valid foundational documents preserved?
Stick with that and you’ll expose the house of cards on which WatchTower teaching rests. -
21
Jehovah's Witnesses and the Picnic Extinction
by TerryWalstrom injehovah’s witnesses and the picnic extinction.
(“those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end…”).
it was another world back then; another time and another place.. you had to have been there to have any sense of it--as a young, impressionable jehovah’s witness under the watchtower presidency of nathan h. knorr--social gatherings (backyard bbq’s, swimming parties) among the ‘friends’ consisted of having a great time at a get together or a picnic.
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TerryWalstrom
I was a Fort Worth Texas boy who later (1974) moved to Redondo Beach for 10 years. I'm back in Fort Worth.
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21
Jehovah's Witnesses and the Picnic Extinction
by TerryWalstrom injehovah’s witnesses and the picnic extinction.
(“those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end…”).
it was another world back then; another time and another place.. you had to have been there to have any sense of it--as a young, impressionable jehovah’s witness under the watchtower presidency of nathan h. knorr--social gatherings (backyard bbq’s, swimming parties) among the ‘friends’ consisted of having a great time at a get together or a picnic.
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TerryWalstrom
The "push back" came in the form of an avalanche of phone calls and letters to Watch Tower headquarters with every manner of counter-argument, rebuttal, and alternate lines of query.
A couple of examples are in order. Brothers who could not perform sexually because of injury were anguished at having their only means of satisfying an otherwise deprived wife denied to them. It was not a matter of "cheap thrills" for them.
Another example. JW wives with unbelieving mates were placed in a double blind which threatened to destroy their marriage. Who were they more obliged to listen to, the head of the house, the husband--or the opinions of old men in Brooklyn twisting scriptures with dirty minds?
(Presented more elegantly, of course :)
Tens of thousands of letters signaled a BIG problem at a time in which the Watch Tower was on thin ice having gone too far in predicting the End of 6,000 years of human history in 1975. They were overreaching in broad daylight and they suddenly knew it.
Fighting a battle on two fronts is suicide. So, they back peddled. -
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Jehovah's Witnesses and the Picnic Extinction
by TerryWalstrom injehovah’s witnesses and the picnic extinction.
(“those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end…”).
it was another world back then; another time and another place.. you had to have been there to have any sense of it--as a young, impressionable jehovah’s witness under the watchtower presidency of nathan h. knorr--social gatherings (backyard bbq’s, swimming parties) among the ‘friends’ consisted of having a great time at a get together or a picnic.
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TerryWalstrom
I was having one of those "deep" thoughts last night, trying to fall asleep.
You know how the math professors tell us that infinity is as large between integers as it is from one to zero? (Don't feel bad if that doesn't ring a bell :)
I thought about that in hopes my brain would click OFF. It didn't.
The "distance" between 1 and 2 is infinite because you can divide the space into halves over and over and over (I/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32 infinitely smaller.
Well SUDDENLY, I thought about memories and how you can divide them into smaller and smaller stories, each (if told properly) just as interesting as the big story.
We divide the day into 24 hours and we're awake about 18 of those hours.
Those 18 hours are the same length for every man, woman, child, and June bug on our planet.
Each one of those days says "goodbye" to a large group of people. (151,600 people die each day.)
For their families, the BIG story for that day is the death of a loved one.
The rest of us might be having a very boring day or the most fun we ever had.
An infinity of memories is gained and lost each second.
Okay, Terry, you're putting the reader to sleep--get to the point already...
Fine. Here goes.
Jehovah's Witnesses are barely a blip in history and a lesser blip during our lifetime compared to what's going on in the rest of the world. However, JW's don't see things that way at all. Noooo. They see an infinity of importances in everything done by their Watchtower Organization because it supposedly affects eternity.
We thought like that once upon a time.
Now we look back on that nonsense as no more important than a ketchup stain on a white shirt.
So many of us see the same things in an infinity of ways. It is important to tell our story our own way. If we all do, the others have a way of looking at the BIG PICTURE as a context rather than the infinity of emotions from one tiny POV.
We should all try to make sense of our JW episode.
There is something important to be learned about human nature in it.
The more of us who write and speak and discuss--the better our vantage point in unraveling the mystery of our mind control and escape.
Yes, that sort of thinking really did put me to sleep. Probably you too :) -
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Jehovah's Witnesses and the Picnic Extinction
by TerryWalstrom injehovah’s witnesses and the picnic extinction.
(“those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end…”).
it was another world back then; another time and another place.. you had to have been there to have any sense of it--as a young, impressionable jehovah’s witness under the watchtower presidency of nathan h. knorr--social gatherings (backyard bbq’s, swimming parties) among the ‘friends’ consisted of having a great time at a get together or a picnic.
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TerryWalstrom
I have a good friend, a young man, he's still in--except--his mind is out of there.
He's hanging on to his family and his fiancee's family.
He tells me the young men--his friends/Brothers--"engage in loose conduct" and then
SNITCH THEMSELVES OUT.
The fear and guilt overwhelm them.
Girls are mostly put on probation while the boys may be DF'D.
Armageddon may be any day now--but the urges cause them to flirt with 'death.'
Really, it is very 17th Century.
The bottom line is this. The young are not body-controlled--but they are MIND controlled. -
21
Jehovah's Witnesses and the Picnic Extinction
by TerryWalstrom injehovah’s witnesses and the picnic extinction.
(“those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end…”).
it was another world back then; another time and another place.. you had to have been there to have any sense of it--as a young, impressionable jehovah’s witness under the watchtower presidency of nathan h. knorr--social gatherings (backyard bbq’s, swimming parties) among the ‘friends’ consisted of having a great time at a get together or a picnic.
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TerryWalstrom
The pushback (re oral sex) was a gigantic tsunami back in the 70's and I'm pretty sure it must have scared the crap out of the GB. The prohibition mutated into a 180-degree position shift.
A matter of "conscience"--is--a fallback for Pharisees caught puppeteering.
JW leaders have never trusted "conscience."
In 1967, I was taken into the back library by the Congregation leaders and told what my "conscience" was telling me to do about the Draft.
I was also given clear instructions never to state out loud to anybody who asked how I was coached, advised, or otherwise taught by my religion's leaders.
It must keep the GB awake at night wondering how to get into the mechanism of conscientious people and install the remote control so dear to their self-aggrandizing power fetish.