we received an email and are wondering if anyone can verify this little tidbit of news.
does anyone know if this is true or not?.
maybe any elder's on here?.
"the elders do not represent the WTS"
They're told that, sure. The WTS wants elders to think that they're actually thinking for themselves, but they're not.
Who gives the elders their elders hand book? The WTS.
Who do elders call when a serious matter (such as child abuse) is brought to their attention? The WTS legal dept.
They don't represent the WTS? Bullshit. They're frontline troops and pawns, fighting the dirtiest of the battles, yet expendable.
alan feuerbacher has written a tremendous critique of the march 2014 awake!, which contains a grossly dishonest discussion on creation.
the pdf file can be downloaded from awake_march_2014_creation_critique.pdf.
it highlights watchtower use of poor and contradictory reasoning..
Thanks for this link. I had already developed my own critique of this horribly written WT article, but it was good to see good ole AlanF's in depth skewering of WT logic and doctrine.
The biggest things that stick with me about this WT article are:
The statement that each creative day could take "thousands of years". Not millions, but thousands, which keeps the WT 'official' doctrine of the 7,000 year creative day length intact... even though, as Alan pointed out, they haven't come right out and admitted it since the 80s.
The WT ploy of trying to separate the creation of the heavens (universe) and earth (the planet) from the actual 6 day creative process. The WTS has really gone into full deception with that one. By pretending, or trying to convince its followers, that the earth/heavens could be billions of years old and still everything on earth was created later, it flies against what the Bible itself says in Exodus. It plainly states the 'in 6 days God created the heavens and earth'. If you get in a debate with a JW over that one, ask them if they accept the Bible as final authority and then watch em squirm as they realize that what this article says is in direct opposition to the Bible.
And finally, what the fossil record vs the Bible record does to the teachings about Jesus death. The WTS says science and the Bible agree, yet still asserts that Adam was created 6000 years ago. Science says man has been on this planet much much longer. But the WTS can't deny that Adam is not real. When you go to the Memorial (if you go), notice that they'll spend a portion of it talking about how Adam lost perfection and that's why Jesus has to die...to buy back what Adam lost. Now, if there was no Adam, then Jesus ransom sacrifice is moot. It means nothing. The WTS is in a corner thanks to creationism. They have to accept some verision of it, in order to accept Adam, in order to accept Jesus as ransom sacrifice. If creation is false, if Adam was not real, it all comes crashing down.
but their views on blood are just plain weird!
meat has blood in it even if it's bled.
still eating meat means consuming blood.
Never dying. I never could wrap my brain around that one. Everyone in history had died. How is it that I happened to be of the very smallest of groups to not have to die? The older I got, the more I doubted it.
okay, i like to hang out with these twelve other guys a lot, but recently one of them---i call him josh--(to help protect his identity) as started being a bit of a jerk.
he just decided that he was the leader of the group, and i'm not 100% comfortable with that.
and he expects us to treat him like he was god or something.
The first rule of Fight Club, is that you don't talk about Fight Club
i have a number of problems with the noah's ark story that i could never find the answer to in the bible and so i thought i could ask here:.
1.how did noah get animals that are indigenous to areas he could not get to (e,g penguins, koalas, kangaroos, moose etc) .
2.the flood supposedly happened around 4000 years ago but there is evidence of civilisation dating back a lot further.
...Can you prove that Noah's ark actually happened
Ye of little faith. Have you not seen the movie trailer? "Maximus and the Ark"? It's all explained right there in High Def movie making. Geez...
i'm still in the matrix(the truth), but 'morpheus' and his team are valiantly working on a way to get me out.
in the meantime, everyday i am discovering so much about being a jw i never knew, like don't buy girl scout cookies, that i keep asking myself "what have i got myself into".. maat.
really lame for a first post, but i figure i should start some where.
Of all the things that JWs 'can't do', Bill Maher had to pick one that doesn't really have anything in print to back up the position. That's 'tradition of men', so to speak. Oral law handed down from on high by word of mouth, generation to generation. But not recorded in the holy WT scrolls.
Not that he's entirely wrong. When I was growing up, not only were you not to join girl scouts or boy scouts, you could not support them by buying cookies or support any other scheme they used to raise money. I figured this would come as surprise to many JWs today who were not around in the 60s and 70s. I could see them all now, Friday night, watching Bill Maher on HBO (another example of JW hypocrisy in itself). "NO WAY! He's wrong! He doesn't know anything about us!" (notice however that they were laughing right along with the absurdities of the other groups mentioned until it got to them). But these are the same JWs that probably have no clue about not owning wind chimes, or about men not tipping their hats to ladies, or not toasting/clinking glasses, or what the real reason why smoking is a DFing offense (spiritism).
I'm glad Bill lumped JWs in with the group, but if he wanted to accentuate the absurd, he probably should have used birthdays, instead of girl scout cookies. That one is verifiable. And just as harmless as buying girls scout cookies. Then any JWs who were daring to watch his show to begin with would feel a little uncomfortable when they got lumped in with the rest of the loonies.
per co last night, he mentioned in his talk that in oder for a brother to be recommended as an elder or ministrial servant he must have a regular and meaningful family worship night.
this will demostrate his willingness not to miss that important meeting and preside over his household.. so i thought, wow what a way to add to the "inspired" biblical list of qualifications.
serving jehovah is sounding more and more and more organizational..
Eh. They'll just lie like we all did when they asked if there was anything that would prevent us from serving...
"No, Brother. I'm an exemplary dub who never masturbates, looks at porn, drinks too much, listens to debasing music, etc etc etc..."
king of the north.
union, the "king of the south" can be none other than the rival non-communist bloc, under the .
so who is the king of the north now?
It's just the over-lapping of Russian generations, donchaknow
from a new wt article (may, i think) about predicting the future.
and i quote:.
religious leaders sometimes predict tragic worldwide events to warn mankind and gather followers.
from a new WT article (May, I think) about predicting the future. And I quote:
RELIGIOUS LEADERS sometimes predict tragic worldwide events to warn mankind and gather followers. Doomsday prophet Harold Camping and his disciples widely advertised that the earth would be destroyed in 2011. Needless to say, the world is still here.
recently attended a sad.. bethel speaker was gushing about the wt's embrace of new technology, in the part of his talk warning about "apostate" web sites.. a loose summary of his comments:.
"and the brothers at headquarters have made it very safe for you to go to our website.
in fact, the brothers talked to the folks at google, and they made a special arrangement so that when you type in 'j w period' into the google search engine, it automatically shows you the jw.org website.
It may be a loving provision for dubs. They're lazy anyway and probably don't spend much time looking for JW related stuff online...between porn and Facebook.
But for outsiders that want to research them, they'll google 'Jehovah's Witnesses' or maybe 'Watchtower'. And behold! The plethora of apostate and anti sites. Even if they don't read much of it, just seeing so much controversy, it would scare the normal person from getting any more involved.
