Some of this sounds very familiar...
Narcissists mellow with age, study suggests
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2v0qq7z12qo
Journeyman
JoinedPosts by Journeyman
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2959
It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars (continued)
by Simon inuh oh, looks like the mega thread gave up the ghost, so while i investigate / fix it just continue the discussion here .... it's been a long 9 years lloyd evans / john cedars.
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Journeyman
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Lines You Never Used To Hear From A JW (But You Can Now)
by NotFormer ininspired by ron.w.
's thread:.
https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/5992982038183936/lines-you-would-never-hear-from-jehovahs-witness.
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Journeyman
Secretary: "Did you do any field service last month, brother?"
Publisher: "Yep."
Secretary: "Ok thanks, that's all I need to know."
And in view of what seems to be in the Aug 2024 WT, we'll soon hear:
"Welcome to the meeting. I was sorry to hear about your removal - I hope you'll be back in the congregation soon." -
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August WT: DF'ing renamed "Removed." AKA: GB re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic
by WingCommander inso: the mystery has been clarified as to more "new light" / clarifications of decades old doctrine and procedure.
august watchtower has finally been leaked.
disfellowshipping?
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Journeyman
It's plausible deniability.
The Org are trying to offload responsibility for the way those
disfellowshippedremoved from the congregation are treated to the individual publishers, in the same way as they've try to divert responsibility for everything else in recent years, from the choice to go house-to-house, man a literature cart, refuse blood, and so on.On one level, yes, of course it is - and should be - every person's choice to practice what their religion teaches. However, as many have pointed out, the problem comes with high-control groups, where the peer pressure is strong to conform to what the group - or more often the hierarchy - want.
If this is their aim, I think the GB will struggle to justify this to secular authorities as sufficient evidence of 'relaxing' of rules, when the Org itself cannot help but run on a rigidly hierarchical structure. The very fact that it requires a WT article (and likely videos from GB members, a letter to all congregations from the Branch and updates to the Shepherd book to follow-up) to make changes like this official and give congregants 'permission' to change, shows how centrally controlled and led everything still is.
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Big News: August English Watchtower released on servers
by ukpimo inbig news.
just in from a friend who is fading.. disfellowshipping will no longer be a term used by jws.
study article 35, paragraph 4 footnote says this:.
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Journeyman
Gen 3:22:
And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil
us---?Yes, "us". In Biblical context, Jehovah was talking to other spirit creatures in heaven, most likely his son Jesus, who was alongside him during the whole of the Genesis account (Proverbs 8:22-31, John 17:5)
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Journeyman
The concept of a statute of limitations for serious crimes such as sexual or violent offences, amazes me.
If someone has committed a serious crime in their past there should never be a limit on them potentially facing justice, provided evidence can be produced that is substantive, convincing and meets the standard required for the courts.
I'm glad I live in the UK where we do not just brush serious offences under the carpet like that. There is no statute of limitations for criminal offences here (although there is for less serious areas like motoring offences, contract law, fines, etc, which are tried in lower courts).
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Yesterday's Public Talk: '' Reject Worldly Fantasies, Pursue Kingdom Realities''
by RULES & REGULATIONS inmy brother ( an elder ) calls me every time he's assigned a public talk.
he believes listening to zoom meetings is a great start, to eventually attending in-person meetings.
the talk is titled : '' reject worldly fantasies, pursue kingdom realities.
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Journeyman
It's all about the things in this world you're gonna get if you stick with Watchtower, and not what you've been forgiven.... which is the Christian message.
On this I agree with you, SeaBreeze. It's something I've noticed in the Org in the past couple of decades. The emphasis is increasingly on the material benefits - a restored planet, a nice home to live in, fresh food, no sickness, no disability, no death, seeing dead loved ones again. Those are all well and good, and it's true the Bible promises those things, but the real emphasis is on restoring the spiritual relationship between God and mankind, and the subject that even the GB used to speak about (but has largely vanished from discussions of the future these days) restoring God's rightful rule over the earth and that old phrase "vindicating his sovereignty".
Dwelling on the physical promises has increasingly pushed out focusing on the much bigger spiritual blessings.
I have no problem in principle with the title "Reject Worldly Fantasies, Pursue Kingdom Realities", in fact from a Biblical Christian perspective, that is a very wise statement - but the way it is translated from the outline in most cases is in very mundane or simplistic ways, slanted to suit the GB, like the examples given. For example: "Enjoying too much entertainment, working too many hours or investing in get-rich-quick schemes = bad, doing more for the Org like pioneering or applying to Bethel = good"
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WT CONVENTION RELEASE LIFE OF JESUS
by blondie inhttps://wawa-news.com/index.php/2024/06/14/episode-1-of-jesus-christ-series-set-for-release-at-gfl-memorial-gardens-june-14-16th/ .
episode 1 of jesus christ series set for release at gfl memorial gardens june 14 – 16th.
in new south wales, australia, there exist replicas of regions once visited by the most notable prophet who ever lived.
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Journeyman
For once the WTS is putting Jesus at the forefront. He has taken the back seat in the WTS teachings. I wonder if that is because so many jws have no real knowledge of what Jesus did and said.
While I agree it's good that the Org is focusing more on Jesus Christ himself (and this video series is not the only example of that), and that the Greatest Man book was one of the best JW publications, I have to disagree that JWs generally do not know what Jesus said and did. In fact, in my experience they are generally very familiar with Jesus' life and the Gospels.
The fact that the GM book was published and studied so many years ago and yet is still so beloved of Witnesses in fact disproves the idea that JWs are unfamiliar with Jesus' life. Also, more recently, a new equivalent of the GM book was printed and studied, called "Jesus - The Way" (although IMO it's inferior to the GM book, for the reasons blondie laid out about the chronological study and so on), so it's not true to say there's been little focus on Jesus in recent years.
Where most JWs do get it wrong is in not recognising how, in the rest of the New/Greek Testament, there is so much emphasis on Jesus as King, exemplar and head of the congregation and much less on God himself who comes across as a more distant figure, approached and seen more through one's relationship with, and imitation of, Christ.
My concern more broadly with this whole new emphasis on 'blockbuster' videos with the JW org stems from two things:
1) Their most recent films play fast and loose with the narrative and history, sometimes inserting whole characters or scenes that are completely speculative and have nothing to do with the actual Bible narrative - for example the convention video where they 'created' a theoretical 'sister' for Jonah, with whom he had conversations. If this were just some movie entertainment company like Disney or Pixar that wouldn't matter so much - there have been plenty of alternative interpretations of Bible stories released by Hollywood. But this Org is supposed to be so serious about the Bible being the actual word of God, and believes it's representing God and Jesus on earth so doing such things is effectively "adding to" the Scriptures, something Christians are warned NOT to do.
2) There is already a problem with Witnesses believing and talking as though the pictures in WT publications - artist's impressions or staged photographs - are 'real' historic scenes. This becomes even worse with these feature-length videos, where the R&F talk about them as if they were fly-on-the-wall documentaries. I heard one in a recent WT study relate a scene from a past video as if it was an event they personally witnessed.
Encouraging this kind of belief in what are really fictionalised re-imaginings of Bible accounts is presumably motivated by a desire to embed the GB's own interpretations in the R&F minds as fact and indivisible from the Bible's own narrative.
Given we live in a very visual society and culture anyway, where the majority of people are easily influenced by movies, advertising, and now internet memes and streamed media, this is an obvious way to get under the skin and into the minds of your followers, but it's very dangerous from a spiritual perspective.
I haven't yet seen this first part of the story of Jesus, but it will inevitably have made lots of assumptions in the filming, as there are simply not enough details in the Biblical narrative to reliably make feature-film length and Hollywood-style representations of the stories.
And really, is it desirable or necessary to do so? There is a danger that fancy visuals and sweeping musical or emotional arcs overwhelm or crowd out the essential meaning behind the accounts themselves. If one believes God has provided the Bible as a guide to life, then it is complete in itself - it does not need to be reimagined in 4K high-definition in a multi-million dollar studio! Most of us have the brains and the imagination to be able to read the narrative (or at least have it read to us) and put ourselves there without needing someone else to create their own version of the visuals for us. That's how it's worked for nearly 2,000 years so far!
As for the motive of why the current GB seem to be shifting more emphasis onto Jesus recently, I agree with NotFormer that it could well be linked to their increased push to elevate themselves to parity with Christ, with constant references to how they will become kings in heaven with him very soon, and so on. Again, also putting themselves on very presumptuous and dangerous ground spiritually. -
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Kingdom hall cleaning
by Farmer Jim1 inwhat are your memories of hall cleaning?.
i actually enjoyed it on the whole, my dad as the elder always tried to keep it to under one hour but in my later years in a hard-line congregation it was a chore.
the po's wife had a printed list and we had to complete it all before left (or got disapproving looks if we left after an hour).. as well as vacuuming the whole building the lost said you had to dismantle the vacuum and clean and polish all the internal elements.
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Journeyman
In my experience, Hall cleaning has not been too bad - as said earlier, it's usually over in about an hour, and where I am the mood is fairly relaxed, not like the example given of having to dismantle all the tools after every session and clean the parts, etc, like some kind of military boot camp!
One thing that does make a big difference to me is the background - I'd much rather work in silence with just the chatter of brothers and sisters, but lately the brother taking the lead will insist on putting on "Kingdom songs" on the speaker system throughout the building while we're working - and worse, the vocal versions, with their exaggerated and weird intonations, or those awful "additional" songs that are like even poorer versions of 'Christian' pop or Disney numbers.
When that happens, I try to retreat to a part of the hall where the speakers don't reach and clean there - or offer to do the hoovering so I can drown out the sound! 🤣
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2959
It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars (continued)
by Simon inuh oh, looks like the mega thread gave up the ghost, so while i investigate / fix it just continue the discussion here .... it's been a long 9 years lloyd evans / john cedars.
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Journeyman
I don't think he has the concept of delayed gratification. Something linked to poor impulse control and lack of social competence (sound like someone?). Read this article and all the way through it's describing Lloyd: "As adults, the high delayers were less likely to have drug problems or other addictive behaviors, get divorced, or be overweight."
... and that news story from "The Sun" (ok, I know 'news' hardly describes that rag) highlights something else that goes along with those character faults that's also instantly recognisable: complete absence of personal responsibility - no, it has to be someone (or something) else's fault for life's failures and setbacks.
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Where is Tony?
by Athanasius inon february 22, 2023, anthony morris iii was officially removed from the governing body of jehovah's witnesses.
a few months later it was revealed that the watchtower bought him a house in lumberton, north carolina.. however, and correct me if i am wrong, since leaving the gb nobody has reported seeing tony attending jw meetings or participating in field service.
in fact nobody has reported seeing him anywhere, not even at a local liquor store.
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Journeyman
3 things we can say for sure:
1- There is a very serious reason why they are hiding him. People don't go into hiding for no reason.
2- He and his wife are willing participants.
3- His departure from the GB was for a dishonorable reason. The GB has made a delibrate public display of distancing themselves from him. They have practically erased / canceled him.I agree with those 3 points broadly, but I'm afraid I disagree with Mikejw: apart from exJW and PIMO places like this, there now seems to be much less pressure for the truth to come out about what happened.
Tony is just not on anyone's radar any more in the congregations, as far as I can tell. It's old news.
Many have probably already forgotten he was one of the GB, now they're seeing the two new boys giving talks along with all the rest of the gang. And the removal of most of his back catalogue of videos means he's less visible even on the website (obviously the intended reason for those deletions). So out of sight, out of mind.
However, I can't speak for the mood in WT HQ (and of course in the circuits where they knew him best). There may still be rumblings back at base about his departure, so if that's the case, maybe there are still some who are biding their time until it's safer and are planning to leak the real story later.
Time will tell...