has anyone else heard of these situations with congregations and halls in your area?
i thought the ground breaking mandatory pledge a little while ago was to keep up with "immense" growth?
how soon they forget... looks really bleak for the future of the wbats, the jw gravy train seems to be coming to a slow and agonizing yet inevitable stop.
They published I think in 2016 only 11,000 new baptized ones in the USA for 2015. If only 11k new baptisms and who knows how many left that year, were DFD, and died. Now factor in to the scenario that the 11k were mostly born ins already attending and it's easy to see a decline.
In my hall I know of two who died and three who left , that's a total of 5 out. Imagine if 5 left every hall in the US in one way or another every year and no new ones from outside the Borg joined.
so had to check it out to see what it's all about.. what i got was more cloudiness.
as in luke 2:9.... suddenly jehovah’s angel stood before them, and jehovah’s glory gleamed around them, and they became very fearful.
the notes point out.... jehovah’s angel: this expression occurs many times in the hebrew scriptures, starting at ge 16:7. when it occurs in early copies of the septuagint, the greek word agʹge·los (angel; messenger) is followed by the divine name written in hebrew characters.
What's also funny is they say many other bible translations say this , so I guess thier not the only ones using gods name after all.
four years ago the watchtower made the following demand.
all of us must be ready to obey any instructions we may receive, whether these appear sound from a strategic or human standpoint or not.
they are not content with obedience and in the upcoming june watchtower they have this to say -15. how does respect for theocratic headship reveal our love for jehovah’s way of ruling?15 what is our response to divinely authorized headship?
They must be loosing a lot of members to try to condition people this way.
so a friend of mine will start with him.
he's a typical jw goes to meeting helps out a lot uses his truck to move stuff around for the cult etc.. his wife gets bored with life and goes on a fornication spree and then gets dfd.
he didn't like the way it was handled and himself during this time of emotional chaos has a minor indiscretion and gets privately reproved.
So a friend of mine will start with him. He's a typical JW goes to meeting helps out a lot uses his truck to move stuff around for the cult etc.. His wife gets bored with life and goes on a fornication spree and then gets DFD. He didn't like the way it was handled and himself during this time of emotional chaos has a minor indiscretion and gets privately reproved.
About this time I help him to wake up so now he stops going especially after because he wasn't going one elder of his hall accuses him of doing something wrong again.
So now his youngest kid stops going because no one from the hall is paying her any attention it's as if they don't even care. His second youngest stops going because her parents don't go and neither does her new husband, typical young newlywed behavior.
So then my friend finds out one of his sisters is having and affair in another state and she is really not going either, the affair is do to being married to a typical JW husband that doesn't do anything not motivated doesn't treat her well and is just a air breather etc and she in her 40s is just trying to be happy for once.
So recently his mother in her late 80s gets sick and in the hospital makes the comment that she wished she had never studied with the JWs seeing how all her kids have had it pretty hard being married to losers and one being DFD more the once mostly for petty stuff and thier elders are just overboard. This comment pushes the one sibling that's been DFD to go off the rails and calls my friend letting loose on the whole thing.
So in the end 7 family members are mentally done with the cult, 6 aren't even attending meetings anymore. These people were long time members the original parents joined in the 60s. None were on apostate websites and only one was influenced by an apostate but only after he was already waking up so to the things that happened in his life and how the elders treated him.
I think a lot more people are leaving then we realize and it's oh so nice! Anyone else have any nice stories of ones waking up?
PS. my second oldest child is no longer wants anything to do with the cult except to go for social reasons. One down in my family and it feels great, I'll get the rest out I know I will!!!
i know this was probably covered before in some post, but i was curious.
what is the jw stance on recreational marijuana use in the states where it has been legalized?.
i would suspect smoking it, like cigarettes, would probably still be against the rules, but there are ways to use it that aren't damaging to your lungs.
I know of several JWs smoking pot or taking it in other ways for medical use in washington state and the elders of thier congregations are ok with it.
sorry if this was posted before but if it was then it is worth repeating and discussing.
the hypocrisy of the jw cult knows no bounds.
supposedly, the reason jw's are not allowed to vote is because they must not be a part of this world.
Was not the cult lobbying to stop a reporting law from going in to affect in Delaware or some place near there and what about the two year fight to stop the U.K. from going ahead with a commission similar to that in Australia?
haven't read this book but i guess it the watered down version of thier history.
what did the leave out and lie about in this publication?
?.
Haven't read this book but I guess it the watered down version of thier history. What did the leave out and lie about in this publication??
i know that at some point i have to tell my parents that i'm planning to go to college.
i basically have two options:.
1. tell them early.
You know your parents better then we do, what would they probably do should be the question and answer to which one you choose.
i have assigned myself a probably impossible task: i want to see if i can pick out the highlights of the evolution of judaeo/christian soteriology (doctrine of salvation).
i am making available the first draft very rough ideas of two chapters at:.
http://www.jwstudies.com/take_a_look_over_my_shoulder.pdf .
I just think it important to point out that all these books people think are holy are plagerized. The Book of Mormon stole some of it material from another author the Bible and a Egyptian manuscript. The Quran stole some of it stuff from the Torah some Indian and Iranian writings etc. the Bible stole its writings from Sumerian, Egypt, Babylon, Syria and Greece. So my point is if we're going to try to understand the Bible we need to look at these earlier works why they were written and why the Bible writers chose to put these verses in the Bible etc.. Keep up the good work Doug you've done a lot in the passed!
i have assigned myself a probably impossible task: i want to see if i can pick out the highlights of the evolution of judaeo/christian soteriology (doctrine of salvation).
i am making available the first draft very rough ideas of two chapters at:.
http://www.jwstudies.com/take_a_look_over_my_shoulder.pdf .
What's your end game or hope to achieve? So much of what the bible stories say is the belief of the Jews is actually originally from Egypt. The Hebrew word for anointed is borrowed as an example from the Egyptian word. The temple which you show in your document is a copy of how the Egyptians made thier temples including the inner sanctuary being called the holy of holies. So if your wanting a more accurate idea of what the Jews were getting at with the idea of salvation maybe you should consider looking into the Egyptian religion.
