http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=potrr2qxhue.
.. if armageddon is "imminent", why is wt focused on sight-seeing, entertainment, travel, etc.
instead of preaching and saving people??.
To suggest the convention attendees drive all that way around Atlanta on 285 to the "official" Marta station is absurd when the red line is TWO MILES away!
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Yeah, but it's a "test of obedience to Theocratic™ direction".
Jehovah will kill anyone at Armageddon who doesn't use the 'assigned' MARTA station- these things are very important to god.
Use logic, practicality, free will and common sense at your own risk....
breaking news :charity commission takes watchtower to charity tribunal in britain.
two weeks ago we run an article about the abuse case in moston manchester congregation .it would seem that the coverage from the main local newspaper manchester evening news and two national newspapers has alarmed the charity commission the official regulator for charities in england and wales and now for the first time !
they opened an official investigation on both charities ,the local one ,moston congragation and the central one jehovah's witnesses of britain indicating that in their eyes these two are connected and liable for any misconduct .this is the time for a concentrated campaign from all of us to inform the charity commission why the watchtower should not be a called a charity .the article above has a link for the charity commission complaint page .follow it!.
It always baffles me how WT can make statements like this with a straight face.
When allegations of abuse are brought to the elders, typically this is what happens:
1. contact WT Legal, not the authorities
2. blame the child
3. blame the parents
4. dismiss the allegations because there was not a witness to the rape
5. tell the parents if they go to the authorities they'll be disfellowshipped
6. rally around the pedophile and let him know how much the congregation will support him in his time of need
7. the elders will run interference for the rapist for as long as possible
8. when the case ends up in court, the entire cong. will sit on the rapist's side of the courtroom in support; the victim and their family will be summarily shunned.
9. WT will piss and moan about Satan's wicked system and how it continually persecutes god's people
10. WT will pay $ millions in under-the-table settlements and finance it through "bring the missionaries home for the Regional Convention" programs, new "kingdom hall" and "assembly hall" donation arrangements, $10,000/day rent for using a WT assembly hall, and looting of congregation bank accounts under the guise of "we'll keep your money safe for you, don't worry about it".
11. keep 8 million JWs completely in the dark, pretend there are no pedophiles in the WT organization.
who else thinks something is afoot with this?
is the gb deciding to go back to pre-1971 times with perhaps the cobe as the man in charge and the rest just ministerial servants.
so for this reason they want younger men in those postitions?
@ Magnum: Why won't they just say what the reason is?
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Because WT doesn't exactly have an admirable record of candor and transparency.
When it comes to things like why WT needs all of a JWs money even though Armageddon is coming "soon"; why it's going to sell your KH and make you finance a new one even though the one you have is just fine; why it demands $10,000 a day to rent an Assembly Hall that has no mortgage; why a congregation is allowed to keep only $5,000 of its own money in a bank acct. and give the balance to WT; why WT sells over a $billion worth of Brooklyn real estate yet acts like it's broke; or why an 80 y.o. elder cannot be the COBE, WT's attitude is that it's none of the R&F's damn business! There is only one thing a JW needs to remember:
"Listen, obey and be fleeced blessed"
if i remember right(unlikely, lol) it was a one-page article about the tetragrammaton which concluded by saying that even though "jehovah" was 'probably' not an accurate pronunciation, it is a widely-recognized and accepted english transliteration of the divine name.
i was thinking it was on the last page or maybe the back cover of a wt pub - maybe a watchtower.. can someone please direct me to the publication it was in?
i read it when i was still 'in' and it made me stop and think about how much emphasis the wt puts on that name, all while knowing it's not the name.
About the 13th century the term "Jehovah" appeared when Christian scholars took the consonants of "Yahweh" and pronounced it with the vowels of "Adonai." This resulted in the sound "Yahowah," which has a Latinized spelling of "Jehovah." The first recorded use of this spelling was made by a Spanish Dominican monk, Raymundus Martini, in 1270.
Interestingly, this fact is admitted in much Jehovah's Witness literature, such as their Aid to Bible Understanding (p. 885). This is surprising because Jehovah's Witnesses loathe the Catholic Church and have done everything in their power to strip their church of traces of Catholicism. Despite this, their group's very name contains a Catholic "invention," the name "Jehovah."
Jehovah's Witnesses blast orthodox Christendom for "hiding the name of God" by replacing "Jehovah" with "the Lord" whenever "Jehovah" appears in Scripture. They charge this is a Jewish "superstition" that dishonors God (which it does not). Yet their own organization has a name that was invented as a result of the same thinking that produced use of "the Lord."
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*** rs p. 202 Jehovah’s Witnesses ***
How old is the religion of Jehovah’s Witnesses?
"According to the Bible, the line of witnesses of Jehovah reaches back to faithful Abel"
Qu: how could there be witnesses of "Jehovah" beginning with Abel if that name wasn't fabricated until the 13th century a.d.?
if i remember right(unlikely, lol) it was a one-page article about the tetragrammaton which concluded by saying that even though "jehovah" was 'probably' not an accurate pronunciation, it is a widely-recognized and accepted english transliteration of the divine name.
i was thinking it was on the last page or maybe the back cover of a wt pub - maybe a watchtower.. can someone please direct me to the publication it was in?
i read it when i was still 'in' and it made me stop and think about how much emphasis the wt puts on that name, all while knowing it's not the name.
We know the Hebrew pronunciations of these: Yehoshua (Joshua), Moshe, Daveed, Ahvrahm. But we all use the English pronounciation.
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The difference is, WT has made what is essentially a hard-and-fast rule regarding what form of god's name can be used in the Org. I know of JWs who were blacklisted as apostates simply because, after doing thorough research, they felt more comfortable using the form "Yahweh" instead of "Jehovah". Even WT admits Yahweh is most likely the more correct form, so why isn't WT using it? Answer: tradition.
WT has no basis for being dogmatic about whatever form a JW prefers to use, but in true WT fashion, it has unilaterally decided on the 'official' rendering to the exclusion of any other choices. For as much as WT condemns the Catholic Church for just about everything it does, it also has no trepidation about relying on the CC for support whenever WT hypocritically requires it in order to prop up it's own theology:
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w80 2/1 p. 11 The Divine Name in Later Times THE NAME “JEHOVAH” BECOMES WIDELY KNOWN
Interestingly, Raymundus Martini, a Spanish monk of the Dominican order, first rendered the divine name as “Jehova.” This form appeared in his book Pugeo Fidei, published in 1270 C.E.—over 700 years ago.
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is An American Translation (by Smith and Goodspeed) with a slight variation of using “Yahweh” instead of “Jehovah.”
“The word ‘Jehovah’ does not accurately represent any form of the Name ever used in Hebrew,” says the Preface of the Revised Standard Version. But what word does “accurately represent” the divine name in Hebrew? Some prefer “Yahweh,” others “Yehwah,” others “Jave,” and so on. The problem is that when writing ancient Hebrew only consonants were used, and even experts admit that it is a matter of conjecture as to which vowels made up the complete divine name.
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W 12-1-1950, pp. 472-473
"Thank you for this opportunity to present some facts to you and to the public. We do not say that “Jehovah” is the correct pronunciation of God’s name. For that matter, neither is “Jesus” the correct pronunciation of Christ’s name. But according to the Aramaic language which Christ and his apostles spoke, his name was pronounced “Yeshu′a” (the a representing a gutteral ending). But “Jesus” is only our colloquial way of pronouncing his name, and we do not find fault with you for using it instead of Yeshu′a. However, if you call it shallow scholarship for the Committee to use the word Jehovah in the New World Translation, then you will have to admit that it is due to the shallow scholarship of the Roman Catholic clergy of the thirteenth century, for in that century the word historically appears among them."
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Regardless of what god's name actually is, the elephant in the room on this subject is this: if god's name is so important that everyone is supposed to know what it is in order to please him and be saved, then why did he not see fit to preserve its correct rendering in his very own book??!
(I'm not saying I believe in god or the Bible...just using the information it contains to expose the absurdity of it all).
my mom has not been to any meetings or participated in field service since august 2013. she cannot walk due to all her medical conditions.
she is either in bed or sitting in a wheel chair.. our family hired a caretaker monday - friday to help her eat, take her to the bathroom and sit with her in case she needs anything.
in the evenings and weekends, we have family members take care of her.
sir82: But her family is adamant that she remain a "regular publisher". They dutifully report 15 minutes for her per month, even though she is literally incapable of uttering a coherent sentence or writing anything resembling words.
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Another example contrasting the difference between what WT puts in print and what it actually requires in practice:
“Fully,” however, means not only quantity—not only being concerned with hour quotas*—but also with quality." --w63 4/1 p. 221
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* or, in the case of modern WT, 15 minute quotas
assume that all 'visions' in the bible, including revelation, etc, were actually real and they happened while those people were lucid dreaming or in a lucid state.
assume that if god or angels were to speak to you, that is the way in which they would do it.
the 3 questions are about anything and the proof question is asking him something so you can verify the answer or the answer will give you absolute proof that it was him you were speaking to and it was not just in your subconscious making him up and the answers.
@ MadGiant: lol ! Your questions cut right to the point. It doesn't take much to expose the absurdity that is 'god':
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1. Why you are such an asshole? (Yes, yes you are) Come on, A naked lady eat a piece of fruit, and doomed humanity for generations to come, please.
What, you can think of a better reason not to condemn billions of people to a life of misery and eventual death spanning eons of time?
2. If you know the outcome of the game (us humans), why keep playing?
See point #1, "asshole".
3. Why you had to sacrifice (you/your son), don't you think that a simple "I forgive you all" would suffice?
Just forgive? With no blood? No death? No pain and misery? Are you kidding? What planet are you from?
john 2:9-11-anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister[a] is still in the darkness.
10 anyone who loves their brother and sister[b] lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble.
11 but anyone who hates a brother or sister is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness.
Punkie: So, where is the scripture that states you should shun family because 3 men in a back room that work for watchtower corporation say so?
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It's most likely in the rNWT somewhere....
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On this subject, one might as well start out by saying, "I was reading a quote from Peter Pan about shunning, so that's my basis for doing it too...."
It has about as much validity as quoting the Bible as a basis for any argument.
my mom has not been to any meetings or participated in field service since august 2013. she cannot walk due to all her medical conditions.
she is either in bed or sitting in a wheel chair.. our family hired a caretaker monday - friday to help her eat, take her to the bathroom and sit with her in case she needs anything.
in the evenings and weekends, we have family members take care of her.
Numbers are so important to the WT Corporation because it is shrinking every year. Demanding 15 minutes of FS time from a sickly elderly JW is still 15 minutes on the WT's monthly spreadsheet.
To the WT, individual JWs are just 'worker units', not people. They exist solely to serve the interests of the Corporation, nothing more.
#1 rajesh koothrappali.
#2 amy farrah fowler.
rajesh because he's got sheldon's number.. amy because she reminds me so much of me.. when i was in school, i was never part of the "in" crowd.. i was viewed as weird and nerdish.. lol..
My favorite big bang actor is Jenna Jameson...
