XJWBill

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Posts by XJWBill

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  8

  Rutherford & Creature Worship

  by Farkel in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  but then again, he was just an imperfect man, right?

  after all, he was just an imperfect man.

  but he was just an imperfect man.

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  XJWBill

  Nice work, Farkel. Hope your mom eventually loses those blinders.

  Rutherford's grand slogan, "Religion is a snare and a racket" has got to be one of the all-time classic examples of pyschological projection and trasferrence. We often project onto others what we really feel about ourselves--and brother, what a sweet racket the Judge had!!! The old hypocrite--

  Bill

  "If we all loved one another as much as we say we love God, I reckon there wouldn't be as much meanness in the world as there is."--from the movie Resurrection (1979)
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  19

  rutherford

  by jurs in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  ever since i started questioning wether the truth is really the truth.

  i'm apalled at how much information is out there that just shatters the organization.

  one intersesting site out of many is jesus-witnesses.com (the seven points of watchtower indoctrination) anyhow i never knew that rutherford smoked cigars and was a notorious alcoholic.

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  XJWBill

  Jim's right about the Caddies, which were garaged at Beth-Sarim--supposedly for the convenience of Abraham, Isaac, David, et al. But guess whose big butt rode around in 'em?

  And the Bible Students are right, as far as I can tell--Rutherford DID start the JW's--hell, he even named them! Just saw his opportunity when Russell died, made his move, and kicked everybody else out of Bethel on their asses.

  Shrewd as a fox, he just made up his own religion to benefit himself!! That's what gets me, even all these years after leaving--that I, we, all of us, could be so TAKEN IN by an obvious one-man fraud!

  I can remember going over, in minute detail, in Tuesday-night book study (what was that--the "Finished Mystery" book?), how the power struggles at Bethel in 1918/1919 were the fulfillment of Bible prophecies--what unadulterated bullshit!! And we all just lapped it up.

  Of course, by the time I got snookered in, in the early 70's, Rutherford wasn't really talked about much, and besides, we were so intently focused on 1975, there wasn't much point in dwelling on history. I tossed my "Divine Purpose" book years back--wish I'd kept it, now.

  BTW, in our tiny, small-town library, I recently stumbled across, of all things, the new "Proclaimers" book. And tell you what, it's a real piece of work. Slick--real slick. A really fine piece of propaganda. The DP book was slanted, of course, but nothing compared to this.

  I try not to be too angry nowadays with the WTBTS--to paraphrase something Ray Franz has said, the folks running it now are "victims of victims of victims." But brother, when I think about what a monumental con job old Rutherford pulled--the source of that dirty stream I almost drowned in, and lots of others, too--it just makes my blood boil!

  I knew guys who served years in prison (draft evasion). I knew a family who kidnapped their newborn from a hospital to avoid a transfusion--I attended their court trial. I myself would willingly have gone to prison or even died, like the brothers in Malawi--all for the sake of ONE MAN'S grandiose, assinine, made-up, fairy-tale religion! That gets me, buddy, that really gets me.

  I wonder what the Bible Students are like? Would be interesting to see what their organizational ethos is, stemming from Russell, not the Judge. Russell was just a goof, doctrinally speaking--but Rutherford was plain nasty.

  Bill

  "If we all loved one another as much as we say we love God, I reckon there wouldn't be as much meanness in the world as there is."--from the movie Resurrection (1979)
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  29

  Things Only a Southerner Knows: 2nd try

  by COMF in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i can't reply to the original thread, but maybe starting a new one will work.. knows what, "well i suwannee !!

  it means "i'll swear," and the quote is incorrect.

  it's actually, "i'll swannee," or "i'll swan.

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  XJWBill

  LDH, sounds good to me! What time is dinner? I'll be there....

  Almost every Sunday of her life, my dear little grandmother made fried chicken, cornbread, greens (turnip or collard, fresh from her garden), cold, sliced, home-grown tomatoes and onions, snap beans or speckled butter beans or blackeyed peas, washed down with plenty of iced tea with freshly-picked sprigs of mint. Add a lemon meringue pie for dessert, and a nap afterwards in the front-porch swing, and you've got my idea of heaven!

  Waiting, BBQ sauce is indeed one of the finer things of life. And folks in both South Carolina and Louisiana, where the stuff is grown, are big on rice--the rest of us can take it or leave it.

  Bigboi, I envy your location! I have never had any bad food in New Orleans. Shrimp gumbo and fresh French bread are the food of the gods! BTW, native New Orleaneans are the only Southerners who DON'T have a Southern accent, in my opinion--it sounds curiously like Brooklyn to my ears. Probably for the same reason: a big port town with a mixture of languages from all over the world.

  Gosh, y'all are making me hungry!! Talk to you later, I've got to go fry some okra . . . .

  Bill

  "If we all loved one another as much as we say we love God, I reckon there wouldn't be as much meanness in the world as there is."--from the movie Resurrection (1979)
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  rutherford

  by jurs in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  ever since i started questioning wether the truth is really the truth.

  i'm apalled at how much information is out there that just shatters the organization.

  one intersesting site out of many is jesus-witnesses.com (the seven points of watchtower indoctrination) anyhow i never knew that rutherford smoked cigars and was a notorious alcoholic.

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  XJWBill

  Having walked away from the organization in 1977, I long ago put all that JW stuff behind me. But just recently, I've been re-reading some things and looking at all the great ex-JW sites on the Internet. With the perspective that middle age brings, it seems quite clear now that Rutherford was one of the biggest con men ever!!

  I don't think Russell was out to deliberately scam anyone--the tone of his writings *seems* to indicate that he was a religious crank who thought--at age 23, mind you--that he had uncovered God's big secret. But although he parlayed that inside info into a prosperous publishing company, still, he seems to have had a rather gentle personality, apart from whatever flaws were in his thinking (and there were plenty!).

  But Rutherford! That charlatan saw a golden opportunity and grabbed hold of the presidency to rule with an iron fist. As far as I can tell, he was just out for all he could get from the word go, and "the brothers" be damned. Just making up doctrines out of thin air (like the "other sheep" not going to heaven) and instituting DF'ing to keep the rank and file in line, and the contributions coming in. Then had the arrogance to send JW's out to picket churches and drive around in sound cars denouncing the clergy for their misdeeds. Can you say HYPOCRITE?

  I think many aspects of the organization that troubled or wounded us ex-slaves are traceable directly back to Judge Rutherford's intolerant, arrogant, and off-the-rails personality. He will have a lot to answer for when he meets the Big Judge.

  My grandparents were never JW's, but they always took some literature when Witnesses came by. They had an old bookcase with stray WT and Awake mags from long ago, including some old Consolation mags from the 1930's, written by Rutherford himself. They are something else, y'all--definitely recommended reading for the ex-slave class. It is all so clearly a con job--the rantings and ravings of one man who was out for all he could get!

  My dear late father tried to tell me that when I first got hooked by the Witnesses--I think he even remembered hearing about JW's selling their homes, etc., in 1925. But of course, like most teenagers, I just knew dear old Dad was clueless about things--while I, of course, knew it all. Sorry, Papa--thanks for trying.

  Since then, I've come to understand a lot more about human nature. There are people who have charismatic personalities--a strange kind of magnetic attraction, even when they are spouting pure hogwash. Rutherford and Hitler are two outstanding examples of the type, able to sucker in many otherwise decent, intelligent people. The scary part is, I've also seen this same phenomenon occur on a much smaller level, in a large business office. Those charismatic types are very ugly, very dangerous--wherever they pop up.

  Oh, and did the rest of you know there was ANOTHER mansion built by Rutherford in San Diego? You've heard of Beth-Sarim, but I just recently learned about Beth-Shan, on the same property. Built in 1939 by the Judge and guarded by young JW men on horseback--it had not one, but TWO bomb shelters, fully stocked with provisions to survive the world war Rutherford saw coming, I believe, and the rest of the flock be damned!

  Just another little piece of history the Society doesn't want you to know about.

  "If we all loved one another as much as we say we love God, I reckon there wouldn't be as much meanness in the world as there is."--from the movie Resurrection (1979)
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  Which is the best translation of the bible...

  by TheApostleAK in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  50 years ago respected textual critic ernest cadman colwell created an apparatus of 64 scriptures to determine which is the best new testament.

  i created a chart using the same criteria...and the results will surprise you!!.

  http://hector3000.future.easyspace.com/colwell.htm .

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  XJWBill

  Not being a Greek or Hebrew scholar, I can't say which translation is the best. But I will share this: many years after leaving the WTS, being led towards Communion for the first time ever (long story omitted here), I wanted to see what the Bible really said about it. So I dug out my old Kingdom Interlinear along with my NWT and a new NIV.

  I was still thinking even at that late date that the NWT was, as advertised, "the most accurate word-for-word literal translation ever made." Imagine my shock and consternation, then, when I discovered that even the Kingdom Interlinear shows Jesus saying "This IS my body...this IS my blood" and NOT "This means...."

  Of course, you can proceed to interpret His words from that point on--but what a betrayal, I felt, to deliberately change the plain sense of what Jesus said on this rather important occasion!

  We were such dupes.

  Bill

  "If we all loved one another as much as we say we love God, I reckon there wouldn't be as much meanness in the world as there is."--from the movie Resurrection (1979)
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  62

  The Natural Law fallacy and Homosexuality

  by JanH in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  there is a fallacy of logic that is so common that few people realize that it is, indeed, a fallacy of logic: the fallacy by appeal to nature.. one argument against homosexuality goes something like this:.

  the natural use of the reproductive organs is obviously to make children.

  using these organs in a way that cannot produce children is unnatural and thus ethically wrong.. .

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  XJWBill

  Yeru,

  I have all the respect in the world for someone who *sincerely* cannot accept homosexuality on prayerfully-considered religious grounds. Believe as you wish, and be happy.

  However, I hope you can see my point, too: that your belief leaves me no room to exist at all, except in enforced loneliness. I spent seven years in the JW's that way, secretly feeling all the time that God hated me. I wanted to die. I was miserable. I cannot live that way.

  To summarize the problem succinctly:

  1. I did not choose to be this way.

  2. I can't change the way I am.

  3. God never answered my many prayers to be changed.

  4. Suicide is a sin too, so there's no escape from this dilemma on earth or in the next world, if your view is correct.

  And all of the above will run a person stark screaming crazy--been there, done that.

  So what is to be done with me? It's easy to pass judgment on an abstract moral issue--but here I sit, 98.6 degrees, 5'10", age 45, a house mortgage, a car note, a job, a bank account, bills to pay, birthday cards to send, people who love me, a little fuzzy dog curled at my feet. Just as real as you. What is to be done with ME?

  Believe as you wish, and be happy.

  Meanwhile, what about all these many millions of divorced people nowadays, all of whom are living merrily in adultery, if Christ's own words are taken by the letter? Should they not all "reject that way of life," if they are Christians?

  Bill, who long since made his peace with God on this issue.

  "If we all loved one another as much as we say we love God, I reckon there wouldn't be as much meanness in the world as there is."--from the movie Resurrection (1979)
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  29

  Things Only a Southerner Knows: 2nd try

  by COMF in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i can't reply to the original thread, but maybe starting a new one will work.. knows what, "well i suwannee !!

  it means "i'll swear," and the quote is incorrect.

  it's actually, "i'll swannee," or "i'll swan.

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  XJWBill

  "Nothin' could be finer than to be in Carolina" with an RC Co-cola and a moon pie!

  Bill
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  Things Only a Southerner Knows: 2nd try

  by COMF in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i can't reply to the original thread, but maybe starting a new one will work.. knows what, "well i suwannee !!

  it means "i'll swear," and the quote is incorrect.

  it's actually, "i'll swannee," or "i'll swan.

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  XJWBill

  Oh, all right, Waiting--here are your Southern Naturalization papers. I reckon anybody who loves iced tea and greens can't be all bad!

  But we're withholding your membership card until you learn to love okra. (Or the alternate choice, raw oysters.)

  Drop by sometime and I'll cook up a nice mess for you.

  Peace,

  Bill

  "If we all loved one another as much as we say we love God, I reckon there wouldn't be as much meanness in the world as there is."--from the movie Resurrection (1979)
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  BigRocksFirst

  by DevilsAdvocate_DA in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  one day, an expert in time management was speaking to a group of business students and, to drive home a point, used a illustration those students will never forget.. as he stood in front of the group of high-powered overachievers he said,"okay,.

  time for a quiz.

  " and he pulled out a one-gallon, wide-mouth mason jar and set it on the table in fornt of him.. he also produced about a dozen fist-sized rocks and carefully placed them, one at a time, into the jar.

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  XJWBill

  I used to have a friend who was a recovering alcoholic, and I attended a few open AA meetings with him.

  Among other things, I learned that the basis of recovery in AA is "coming to believe that a Power greater than ourselves" can and will remove the burden of alcholism if one surrenders to it.

  The nice thing about this "Higher Power" concept is that AA is not at all dogmatic about it. In fact, AA is 180 degrees from the Witnesses on this point and others. AA says YOU CAN CHOOSE ANYTHING YOU LIKE for your Higher Power, anything at all. Here in the Deep South, of course, most folks I heard speak referred to God or Jesus as their Higher Power. But others referred to Nature, or the Universe, or the Goddess--I even heard one agnostic guy say he picked a tree as his Higher Power, because it was bigger and stronger than him! Other people smiled at that remark, but no one laughed at him.

  And from all I observed and heard, apparently the power to abstain from drinking DOES come to most folks who sincerely practice the AA program. The Higher Power apparently is not offended by being thought of as a person or thing other than the Christian God, and helps those who sincerely seek help.

  Which was a lesson to me in spirituality. After I left the JW's, I went through a long period of atheism/agnosticism, and at length felt drawn to traditional Christianity, where I am happy to be. My homepage has some tips and suggested reading for anyone who is comfortable exploring that avenue.

  But while I do devoutly believe Christ to be the fullest revelation of God, I am also willing to say that God can and does help and love people outside the Church, which is merely one of many tools at His disposal. "God so loved the world" tells me God does love all mankind--even those who disbelieve.

  So I can respect the views of just about everyone like me who left the locked-mind prison of the Watchtower--like birds leaving the nest, we scatter in all directions. But this time, we get to choose our path and where we land.

  To paraphrase Isaiah, "What does God require of you, O man, but to do justice and love kindness and walk humbly with your God, your Higher Power, your own best concept of the Ultimate Good?"

  I don't think God requires us to be correct--just loving. Notice in Matthew 24, when you present your boarding pass at the Pearly Gates, the question that will be asked is not, "What religion are you" but "What have you done for your fellow men--in effect, for Me?"

  There's my two cents worth.

  Bill

  "If we all loved one another as much as we say we love God, I reckon there wouldn't be as much meanness in the world as there is."--from the movie Resurrection (1979)
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  just for fun

  by peaceloveharmony in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  hey everyone, here is a fun little test..... : http://www.mystcweb.net/misc/smart.htm.

  enjoy .

  love.

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  XJWBill

  Very amusing, Harmony--thanks!

  Bill

  "If we all loved one another as much as we say we love God, I reckon there wouldn't be as much meanness in the world as there is."--from the movie Resurrection (1979)