Posts by EdenOne

29

Who is the FDS class from midweek meeting....last night

by Legacy in

last night we had our midweek meeting.

the bible reading was from "who is doing jehovah's will....the part where they asked who was the fds.

i thought because of the past sept. wt, every hand would go up....all you heard were crickets.

EdenOne

*crickets*

35

Earthly Organization Reset - What Would You Do?

by committeechairman in

i've been reading and posting comments on this site for a while now (about a year) and the comments i see indicate that many who are here have good ideas about what would be required if either (1) jehovah's witnesses were completely reset and the whole framework of belief and organization were started over or (2) if a completely new organization were built.

this assumes, of course, that you believe god exists and that he is interested in human affairs (i know some of you don't).

it also assumes that you do not believe that the "heritage" of jehovah's witnesses has such great weight and importance that it precludes putting all beliefs and procedures on the table to examine them and change them if necessary.. given all this, what do you believe should be the beliefs and organization of true worship today?

EdenOne

Ok, here's what I think:

First and foremost: Admit to all past mistakes, repent and publicly ask for God's forgiveness.

a) Abandon the 'blood doctrine' ban regarding blood transfusions and storing own blood for later use. Like many other things, leave it as a matter of personal choice.

b) Abandon the "two hopes" theology. There's only ONE hope for Christians, the heavenly hope. There won't be eternal life on Earth, although God will change this planet into a place where righteousness will be prevalent.

c) All are to partake on the bread and wine.

d) Door-to-door preaching isn't a requirement. Reporting preaching work, measuring members' spirituallity according to field service cancelled.

e) Drop the shunning policy upon those who are disfellowshipped from the congregation.

f) Women can teach in the congregation

g) Drop 1914 as a "significant year" in prophecy. Acknowledge that most prophecies in the Bible have already been fulfilled in the past. Abandon the apocaliptic tone and adopt a more "Christian Lifestyle" approach.

h) Encourage individual members to be socially engaged to better the lives of others in the local community.

i) Encourage members to get the best possible education, and better themselves so that they can better serve God and Christ and be useful to their families and the society at large.

j) Drop the episcopal, vertical-oriented structure of the organization. Instead, adopt a more presbyterial/congregational horizontal model, where each congregation is given a significant measure of autonomy to choose those who take the lead amongts themselves and how local matters should be decided locally.

k) There should be a regular synod where doctrinal matters are decided, with each congregation choosing who will represent them in that synod. This should be a non-permanent arrangement that would only be called when the need arise.

l) There should be a minimum organization, mostly to handle administrative affairs, publications, etc that concern the common good of the congregations world-wide. This organization should not decide on matters of doctrine or discipline. This, of course, would mean to abandon the "Governing Body" arrangement.

m) Each congregation or groups of congregation should engage in charitable works for the benefit of the community.

n) There should be only one congregational gathering per week. This would be centered around a meal (Christian supper), with a simposium part before.

o) Quit the "we are the sole true religion" mindframe. Christianity is the true religion, we are one among many in the household of the Lord.

Eden

3

The argument JW`s use for animal predators on land , what argument do they have for marine predators ?

by smiddy in

EdenOne

What happens in the water, stays in the water

Eden

27

If the GB reinstated the Book study, would it take?

by BU2B in

i have been noticing in recent threads that people have been observing that the zeal has been waning among r+f jws.

i have observed that most zealous, die hards have gone to foreign lands, or foreign language congregations, leaving the others in the stagnant english congregations.

when you think of it, if you cared at all about bringing people into the cult, you probably would be preaching where it is fertile, the foreign field.

EdenOne

I actually liked the concept of the book study meeting. What I didn't like was to have a third day busy with a meeting. But I feel that the gathering at someone's house to study the Bible was the closest thing to an original (read: first century) Christian gathering that we ever had. There was a much more relaxed athmosphere, much less pre-scripted meeting, and the brothers and sisters got to know each other much better. If anything, I would gladly trade the Theocratic School + Service meetings for a return to the Book Study meeting in private homes. It would be much more beneficial to the congregation and much more...well, Christian-like. With perhaps the exception of the weekly Bible reading highlights, the TS+S meetings are utterly boring and frankly, useless.

Eden

21

Question for apostates!

by TheStumbler in

i have a question.. the conventional wisdom seems to be that to 'convert' a jehovah's witness (or get them to see ttatt) you have to ask questions that they cannot answer and engage with their true personality not their 'cult personality'.. intellectual arguments tend to fall flat because jws (who do not already have personal doubts) believe they already know the absolute truth so anything contrary to that truth is nessecarily wrong.

any criticism of their beliefs will be seen as an attack or persecution and will be dismissed as flawed 'human thinking' or 'apostate lies'.. to 'true believers' any amount of contrary evidence and illogical inconsistencies in their beliefs can be dismissed or explained away.

their starting point is that they have special knowledge of absolute truth and all evidence and arguments are then weighed against this preconceived belief.. here is my question.

EdenOne

TheStumbler: It seems your awakening (realising the organisation is not spirit direct) was for intellectual reasons and a result of your own research. Do you think you would have come to the same conclusions if an outside source revealed the organsiation's history to you rather than finding out from your own research?And I think I agree with you generally that logic and reason won't deconvert a staunch JW but the fact the Watchtower tries so hard to prevent its followers' being exposed to critical information means that it must be somewhat of a threat to the religion's closed belief system.

I know that i wouldn't be persuaded unless by my own critical research. When in doubt, trust no one but yourself. If someone would come to me and attempted to persuade me of anything, I would use every intellectual resource available to evade or reject those reasonings. But being interested in doing my own research I was able to crack the nut open. At least that's how it worked for me.

Eden

21

Question for apostates!

by TheStumbler in

i have a question.. the conventional wisdom seems to be that to 'convert' a jehovah's witness (or get them to see ttatt) you have to ask questions that they cannot answer and engage with their true personality not their 'cult personality'.. intellectual arguments tend to fall flat because jws (who do not already have personal doubts) believe they already know the absolute truth so anything contrary to that truth is nessecarily wrong.

any criticism of their beliefs will be seen as an attack or persecution and will be dismissed as flawed 'human thinking' or 'apostate lies'.. to 'true believers' any amount of contrary evidence and illogical inconsistencies in their beliefs can be dismissed or explained away.

their starting point is that they have special knowledge of absolute truth and all evidence and arguments are then weighed against this preconceived belief.. here is my question.

EdenOne

Although I don't accept your definition of 'apostate', here's my insight on your question:

A faithful JW won't be persuaded by logical reasoning, because the fundamental of his belief system is anchored on the notion that the Jehovah's Witnesses have the "truth", and everything else out there is satanic thinking, and this thinking should be avoided like the black plague. This is tied with the notion that the Watchtower organization and their leadership are "spirit-directed" personally by Jehovah and Jesus Christ. Who could argue with THOSE, right?

So, in order to avoid a JW to stop thinking when their beliefs come under scrutiny, the thing that needs to be done first is to deconstruct the MYTH that this organization and its leadership is - or ever was - "spirit-directed". Once you manage to see that there is no direct line between this organization and the heavenly powers, then you start realizing that is a man-made construction, self-appointed as God's chosen sole channel of communication on earth. In doing this, you are destroying their basis for authority. Only then you may feel free to research other sources of material other than those heavily filtered and skewed by the publications of the "faithful and discreete slave". And this is where you are fully exposed to reallity and wake up to a different vision of the world, where things aren't black and white, where your choices aren't narrowed to "Jehovah's Organization" [read: the watchtower] or "Satan's Organization" [read: everything else], and you open your eyes to evidence that the teachings of the WTS are seriously flawed. But in order to get to this point, first one needs to establish that the Watchtower Society and its leadership are NOT being directed by God and Christ.

There are several ways to get there. What personally did it for me, coming from a social sciences background, was to examin the history of the origins of the Watchtower Society. This was very telling, because I realized that brother Russell wasn't an original thinker, that his theology was crafted after the ideas of many other religious teachers in the wake of Millerism; that he came from a historical and geographical context that produced him. This convinced me that he wasn't especially "spirit-directed", but simply a christian in search of answers. He developed those answers, but many others developed similar answers, with variations that resulted in many Christian churches. Many survived to this day, many fell by the wayside into oblivion. By a set of circumstances, the Jehovah's Witnesses turned out to be fairly successful in this faith market of the "second awakening". Once I examined the historical context of the origin of the Watchtower Society, I was ready to read Raymond Franz's "Crisis of Conscience", and that was the final nail on the coffin of the "Governing Body" leadership's credibility. From that day on I stopped seeing these religious leaders as having any special divine guideance that would set them apart from any other Christian religion leadership. They are all man-made, none of them was appointed by Christ or God.

And it went from there ...

Eden

35

Earthly Organization Reset - What Would You Do?

by committeechairman in

i've been reading and posting comments on this site for a while now (about a year) and the comments i see indicate that many who are here have good ideas about what would be required if either (1) jehovah's witnesses were completely reset and the whole framework of belief and organization were started over or (2) if a completely new organization were built.

this assumes, of course, that you believe god exists and that he is interested in human affairs (i know some of you don't).

it also assumes that you do not believe that the "heritage" of jehovah's witnesses has such great weight and importance that it precludes putting all beliefs and procedures on the table to examine them and change them if necessary.. given all this, what do you believe should be the beliefs and organization of true worship today?

EdenOne

Marked for later

27

In effect the GB says the new testament was only written for the 144k - right?

by Comatose in

because if you just read it then its plain that all should partake of the emblems and go to heaven etc.

they get around that by saying it only applied to those when written who all anointed and then a small group today.

so they take away the bible for the average witness.

EdenOne

The only way i found to conciliate doctrine here is: Heavenly hope is the ONLY hope for all who put faith In Christ. However, at some point, God will intervein to change this earth into a better place for those who dwell on it, so that their temporary existance as human beings is more bearable, even pleasant. That's The doctrinal viewpoint I have adopted

Eden

288

Is it just me or has this site become a Believer/Atheist warzone?

by BU2B in

jw
friends

i enjoy the odd thread about evoloution vs creation, etc but lately it seems that a large percentage of threads here devolve into fighting between atheists and theists and distract from what most of us here see eye to eye on, the wt and related things.

i wish things could be more civil here and fr people to realize that people will never see eye to eye on the topic.

it gets so tiring to see the contstant bickring and fighting on those threads.. they seem to go on page after page but very little of substance is discussed seeing as the existence or non existence of a god can be proven by anyone.

EdenOne

My Lord just told me my rent is late.

erm ... The Lord of The Land ... The landlord type

Eden

8

Preterism vs The Rapture??

by DATA-DOG in

in the preterist view, all scripture is fulfilled.

when jesus said to his disciples, " this generation ", he meant it.

they would not pass away until they saw the destruction of jerusalem.

EdenOne

Marked