Posts by Journeyman

21

Canada Bethel (Georgetown) to begin renovations early 2017

by Richard_I in

jw
friends

a letter was just read at my midweek meeting that georgetown (canada bethel) will have renovations done on it beginning spring 2017. the letter asked for publishers who are electricians/plumbers/etc.

and in good standing to apply to help out.

those helping out will be considered "part-time commuters" and will only be at the property for about 3 days a week and must reside outside of bethel and pay for all their own expenses.

Journeyman

the circuit overseer is still begging for free labour on this project.

It's odd that it's taking this long because in the USA and UK, when they put out appeals for labour and such for Bethel construction, they're usually able to get 'volunteers' quite easily.

I had heard that numbers and interest were declining in Canada (in common with most other developed lands) - perhaps the drop-off is greater than we thought?

Or perhaps, as said, it's the post-COVID effect. The building of the new US and UK Bethels were completed before the pandemic (in the case of Chelmsford, only just!) It's been noticeable that meeting attendance and ministry enthusiasm since 2020 are dramatically down, so perhaps volunteering is too? (Of course the GB would never admit to that.)

Another thought: JW numbers in the USA are much greater so they would get labour more easily, but the UK and Canada are comparable (about 120,000-140,000 peak pubs) - but of course the distance to travel is much greater across Canada, so maybe that's putting off volunteers who don't want to cross the country and stay away from home, or can't afford to do it - or both?

11530

It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars

by Newly Enlightened in

original reddit post (removed).

Journeyman

How exactly is he swamped? Ok, so the JW conventions are coming up. So that's three days (actually only about 18 hours in total) of meeting content. Wow. Added to what? One broadcast, a few additions to the JW website to comment on and maybe an interview or a couple of voicemails and a handful of member live chats a month. That's supposed to be his actual job though!

Hardly "swamped". What else does he do with all of his time, apart from some occasional gigs or comedy shows? Oh, and writing nasty, gaslighting messages to his wife.

11530

It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars

by Newly Enlightened in

original reddit post (removed).

Journeyman

We don’t know whether he has replaced it with a newer and better vehicle. He left it open for speculation and perhaps this was deliberate.
... Perhaps he has done what all micro-penis middled aged men do in a mid-life crisis...

That's a fair point. After that hair, the embarrassing motor would be a logical follow-up. Or maybe he's bought a motor-home. Travel around the country without having to pay rent and have his own 'love nest' in the back for those 'special' (paid for) encounters.

And I can't believe I missed this wide open goal:

... unlike yourself, eh, Lloydy-boy?

Oh, and by the way:

That number just keeps on slowly sinking!

11530

It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars

by Newly Enlightened in

original reddit post (removed).

Journeyman

So why has he sold off the BMW?

Surely he still needs his own transport if he's going to be at venues for gigs/comedy shows, or for taking the kids out when he meets up with them?

Since he was concerned about how much he would get for it, perhaps he really is cutting back financially now? He didn't sound as though he was happy to part with it.

11530

It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars

by Newly Enlightened in

original reddit post (removed).

Journeyman

Looks like the tweet has gone now and there's no sign of this "live debate", so he was either trolling or he probably couldn't be bothered. Or perhaps the alleged unbaptised publisher backed out (if they ever even existed).

But really, is this how low he's sunk? Trying to drag unbaptised publishers into his arena to be put on display and harangued for views?

What happened to the lengthy panel discussions with members of the exJW community, the exclusive leaks and news from inside WT?

Oh yes, that's right. All his sources and contacts abandoned him because of his disgusting behaviour, so he's reduced to this sort of thing.

29

Revelation book

by Gorb in

jw
friends

do you remember the jw.org book of revelation and how many times we had to study it?

in retrospect, all those hours turned out to be for nothing, the explanation of the prophecies is now completely outdated..

Journeyman

For an organisation supposed to be so focused on the time of the end and what God will do in the near future, they've not released any detailed new 'understanding' about the book of Revelation in nearly 20 years since the Rev Climax book, and yet are still recycling the same old articles such as this past week's WT about "preparing for baptism" or next weekend's "learn about God through creation" topic, which really amount to "the milk" of God's word, especially given how dumbed down a lot of their material is now.

Ok, they released the "Pure Worship" book in 2018 about Ezekiel which covers their most recent understanding of the GT, but it's from a different perspective and only contains 5 references to the book of Revelation (see below), with nothing about the harder to explain elements like the pouring out of the seven plagues on the earth, seven trumpet blasts, etc.

A new book on Revelation would have been a natural publication to follow-up after the "Pure Worship" book, focusing on these details of the "end times", but nothing so far. It's as though they're out of ideas as to how to explain it, now that Fred Franz is gone - and hardly surprising since their most prominent "prophetic teacher" these days seems to be David Splane!

---

One of the things I found as I got more into my own Bible reading is that in nearly a century of publishing, the percentage of the scriptures they've actually written about or analysed in any detail is quite small. Look at their 1986-2023 and 1930-1985 online indexes by Scripture Index and for much of the Bible there is only perhaps one reference from a book or WT decades ago (many of which are out of print) or even nothing at all. And to my knowledge they've never really written any commentaries in the true sense, apart from the Commentary on James which was of course ditched and erased from their history.

You'd think that in more than a century of printing and translation work (and ~~selling~~ distributing publications), they would've written comprehensive commentary on the entire Bible, verse-by-verse, by now. Especially as they are always encouraging Witnesses to "read God's word daily".

It calls into question their actual dedication to teaching the "solid food" of God's word, beyond constantly recycling articles about their favourite verses like Matthew 24:14, Matthew 24:45 and so on.

11530

It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars

by Newly Enlightened in

original reddit post (removed).

Journeyman

Talk about low-hanging fruit.

But yes, this is just perfect for him - a chance to humiliate someone on video legitimately (well, sort of)... and expect payment for it!

And a get-out at the end too, in case 1) he can't be bothered to do it after all, or 2) the unbaptised publisher actually out-debates him and he ends up looking like a dick, so he decides to cut the recording short and not publicise it.

4

One criticism of the NWT

by Wonderment in

it's no secret that forum members on this site are well aware that i tend to defend the nwt as a product in more than a few places.

i, unlike some others here, do not view the version as unprofessional.

i feel the translation is quite good.

Journeyman

If you start religiously burning people at the stake for using your own old translation, then you are no better than the inquisition.

Whether you accept the basic NWT as an acceptable translation, that's one of the two big problems I have with the current situation.

1) I don't know any other religious org that would treat someone with an 'older' translation as a pariah, yet if a JW were to come to the meetings relying on the 'old' (1984) NWT, or even worse, the even older 'green' one, they are viewed as an 'oddball' or suspected of being an apostate, a disfellowshipped person or someone extremely spiritually 'weak' or 'backward'.

2) the 'revised' NWT removed some features which were useful, such as the plural YOU (there wasn't even any attempt to explain why this was removed), and the notation that showed that certain additions had been made for clarification (such as "other" at Colossians 1:16, etc). I'm not debating here whether any addition/clarification should be there or not. My point is that if a clarification is added, it should be made clear that that is what it is (just as past translators' marginal notes were indicated as separate to the core text) - not a part of the previous extant text. Removing the footnote notation makes the unsuspecting reader think that the wording given is as it was in the 'original' (ie source manuscript) and for any supposed believer, risks deliberately disobeying Deuteronomy 4:2 and Revelation 22:18-19.

50

To All Those Keen To Tell Us About Their Beliefs

by Simon in

we seem to have had an influx of religiots - the people who want to tell us all about how we / the wts / whoever are wrong, wrong, wrong about everything and how right they are.

they obviously have special insight, or voices (probably voices, right?

) telling them the real truth.. as proof, there is inevitably a wall of random scripture references and quotes.. sorry, but we're not here for that.

Journeyman

I've yet to find anyone start a religious group and claim to have insight that ... it will occur at any other time but the one in which the author is living.

I always found this somewhat arrogant - to believe that you and your generation are the one that will see "the end", that your generation specifically will not have to see death (whether that be due to 'rapture' to heaven or transfer into an early paradise) despite all the billions before you who have gone to the grave.

Even if you believe that there will come an "end" (and I do), it seems staggeringly arrogant to assume you and your generation above all others are going to be the ones to see it and to usher in the great "new world", build the foundation of the future, or whatever. The timing is God's not man's, and Jesus warned against trying to set dates or "run ahead" of God in that way, yet almost every generation of supposedly Christian leaders thinks it's "their" time.

It's also why I was never convinced by the proclaiming of the "millions now living will never die" message, as it was still being taught for decades, albeit not as explicitly as at in the Rutherford era.

The second thing that put me off believing the "any day now" hype is being aware of all the generations of previous Bible Students and JWs who have lived, grown old and died waiting with such certainty for their expected passage into the new world. In common with most of us who are or were active JWs for at least a few years, I've known elderly ones who have now been dead for 5, 10 or more years who long ago admitted to surprise at being frail, ill and at death's door when they thought they would stride into the new world while in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s... etc.

773

Breaking News: Anthony Morris III no longer serving on the Governing Body

by WingCommander in

jw
friends

this has been announced on the jw's official website, in the "jw news" section.

this is not a joke.

anthony moron da turd is out as a gluttonous body member!

Journeyman

Not only must you not know what happened, you’re not even allowed to ask what happened.

Sadly, that's not unique to the upper echelons of the JWs. Lots of major corporations operate that way these days. Also, remember all the fuss a few years ago about a certain footballer's sex life and him taking out a "super injunction"? They've been used in corporate and celebrity privacy deals, and because you can't even discuss them without risking prosecution, they are a particular threat to an open society, although by their very nature it's hard to know how often they have been used.

It seems to be a product of a paranoid society, and it's not surprising that the GB would also increasingly fall into that category. Any group that is not willing to let light shine on their activities or to even have them debated (let alone questioned) is liable to fall back on draconian secrecy measures if it can get away with it. That's true of corporations, governments or religions.

I wonder if even the people who made the “don’t ask” rule know what happened themselves. Or are they passing on a “no ask” policy from above without being informed what the situation is about.

I suspect most are the latter group. We know how the hierarchy works. The word comes down from the GB, to branches, to COs, to bodies of elders. So most of those layers probably don't even know the details themselves, they just absorb the "don't tell, don't speculate" message and pass it on.