as i intimate in the words below, i like autumn and winter, but there's a downward spiral in my emotions.
i'm in control, yet, .
rain, at long last, has touched both our land and my soul.
CC
Rain??!! That would be wonderful….Here in Sweden we have almost total darkness, and snowstorm….Light will not be seen from 16:00 till 09:00… No wonder that lamps, D,C vitamin are sold in large quantities. But of course many of us escape to Thailand, The Canaries and other more sunny places. Myself,,, I am hiding in a bears nest, waiting to come out till the end of April….No depression symptom yet???!!!
i understand that cults and religious groups will always exist.
but why do jehovah’s witnesses continue as a religion that people will join?.
I joined 45 years ago. I was just over 20 and newly divorced. Then I met I girl that I fell in love with. It turned out that she was a JW. She said that she never ever would consider marriage with a non JW man. I was very ignorant when It comes to religion (in fact an atheist). Therefore an easy target when she asked me to take on a Bible study. Of course I accepted and the love bombing from the congregation, and a promise that she would marry me if I become a “brother”……
When you are week (newly divorced), and in love, you do a lot of stupid things. In her congregation (she is still in) I haven´t seen more than 1 newcomers in 10 years. Obviously the few newcomers that come from outside are mentally very unstable. Many of them (according to my wife) suffer from various diagnoses. And her cong. has in 15 years been reduced from 60 members to around 25. I think this is the situation over all in Sweden. All the enthusiasm we had back in 75 is gone. When I meet an old friend (JW.s) they all look very gloomy and sad. They never mention anything about “the future paradise”. They never ever take up their Bibles and try to show be some scripture as they used to do. In fact they look scared to even mention that they once had a hope…… Pitifully, they now realize that there is no hope, no comfort, and that all their good friends all have been buried and forgotten.
i have been sadly watching as the number of jws in other countries are decreasing (for the most part), while the numbers in the us are strangely increasing.
while i question the organization's self reporting numbers, i think 2018 may be the year for another mass us exodus.
leah remini's show will be focusing on jws in her show on a&e.
I think the number of registered JW,s will decrease slowly. The org. will keep even people that haven’t been active for years registered as “members”. (Once a Mormon – always a Mormon). This partly depending on the fact that certain states give subsidies to religious organization depending on the numbers of members they can show. But the wallet will talk….
this assembly hall in denmark was designed and built by the watchtower bible and track society before drones and google earth were around.
the governing body did not count on this being exposed from the arial view.
according to the 1993 year book on denmark assembly hall.
gorby
the increase of the property value....
please tell me how not to think too much and get a good night sleep.
when i was a jw i didn't think too much because i knew everything, but now my mind works overtime.
how in the hell can i shut it down and stop the anxiety???
James Mixon and neat blue dog..and others,
It looks like many of us are in the 70 ties. My story is very similar to many of yours. I was an elder, with big doubt’s. But I kept on holding speeches, sheep herding , smiling, doing the service. Studding with my family..this until I totally mentally collapsed. Doctor told me I must “no man can under a longer time keep up with so many missions” it will end in a catastrophe! So I resigned “temporarily” , as un elder, and started to fade…. Missed meetings, slowed down service hours, all with regard to my situation. But my doubts grow. The more time you release for your own thinking, the more you realize the impossibility of soc. teaching. During a period of five years I got 4 hart strokes. This definitively stopped me attending any meeting at all. What a relief. No more high blood pressure..
Today I spend 2 hours daily obligatory walking in e nearby forests. I count my eagles, my foxes, my moose. Then home, and then spend 2 hours of reading from historical literature, that I can obtain from a nearby university. I have spent 3 years of university studies within the fields of History of Ideas and science. Philosophy and history, exactly the subjects that the socs. thinks no witness should pay any attention to….(I do understand that know)
But I got my peace in mind, no more hart attacks, no more depression, no mental collaps……but I also got free from a mind prison that unfortunately my wife still is in…
and I don´t need no sleeping pills anylonger
it is not “preach the good news” nor is it “believe in jesus and get saved” neither is it “believe in the governing body of jehovah’s witnesses and get saved” although in practice they do teach this.
no, everything they claim depends on a belief in another doctrine which logic decrees cannot be found in the bible.
the leadership of jehovah’s witnesses put absolute faith in a protestant doctrine which is given a latin name, sola scriptura, meaning “by scripture alone”.. good evidence of the governing body believing in the primacy of this doctrine was when being questioned by the australian royal commission, they resorted to the ‘authority’ of scripture to defend their stance on having “two witnesses” when they are investigating child abuse cases.throughout the hearing they paraded their naive trust in the bible as the highest possible authority proudly ignoring the fact that most people regard it as having been superseded by modern scientific evaluations of what is true.. .
Half Banana
It looks like you are still looking into some comfort in believing that there are some thoughts in what is said in the “Bible”…Science has shown that there is not. It is only a collection of old ancient “iron age” stories that all of them contradict each other of them. I suggest that you on YouTube, look up Bart Ehrman, to find what the really tell us. Bart is a distinguish Professor I the old Greek language and he knows what is said in all these Papyrus and Pergamum scriptures are. Sorry to say that none of them seems to bee accurate.
to the majority of people who investigate the activities of the wts from its beginning history there were obvious false proclamations and doctrines propagated by the wts.. a matter of fact the wts produced a long list of literature that posted proclamations on the front cover and went into detail of things that were suppose to happen, from jesus returning changing the world in which we live and so on.. wonderful things one might say but not factual or either theologically correct .
.
Finkelstein
There is no such thing as theological or philosophical facts! It is only emotional or social behavior “facts” that counts. At least for JW dub´s. It is more important to be accepted in your own “group” then to tell the truth.
last night my wife prepared dinner.
chicken and veg.
as she was cooking the chicken it gave off the most vile smell.
Zeb
Haven´t you learned the most simple lesson yet,
Never ever let your wife do the cooking for you, that’s men’s work…
www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2015/02/13/six-and-a-half-reasons-why-the-bible-is-not-divinely-inspired/.
Good article
So you could say quite simple that God failed in his most important dissertation, sorry God no examine try again, do something better next time and study more. By the way your last try, wasn´t it just before the flood?
lett announce to his braindead indoctrinated rank and file masses the wt corporation is short on funds and so they have money problems.
he made light of his role and the rest of management's predicament by saying on a public broadcast: "in doing the math we found that the amount of money flowing out will be much greater than the amount of money coming in at this time".
clearly the guys on the gb have very little business sense to let things get so out of hand with tons of projects in the works and having to close all of them except for warwick, and one in england.. i have to wonder just what type of math these dead heads on the gb even know or consider when making all their plans for the future of the corporation they have leadership over.
I think that good old Italian bookkeeping is the principle here. There are two sides of the business. The first side is income statement, and the other is balance sheet. The first is showing cash coming in and going out.. The other shows the overall result and the total assets that the Company/business has achieved during a longer period.
I think that the money from all these “sell outs” is immediately transferred to The Watchtower INC. in Pennsylvania (the off shore bank accounts where it can be hidden in the Cayman Islandsis not needed here, WT inc. is already registrated as a tax liberated Inc. ) , and their capital trustees specialists, consolidating the watchtower treasure funds such as the Henrietta Riley fond and others. These people are eager to increase their fond values, because they normally get paid in percent of the increasing value.
I don´t know if any of the GB members is invited to eat a bit of this good cake, but I do know that this corporation is registered as a none profitable organization and therefore tax exempted according to US law. This is the same layout as those in Panama papers and recently the Malta/paradise papers.
