it appears the the commonwealth government is bringing in a national compensation scheme for victims of institutional child sexual abuse with individuals able to claim up to $150,000 each.
it's clear that the australian government will not be able to fund this program without serious money from the offending churches.
so it's bad news for the organization today.. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-04/government-announces-redress-for-abuse-victims/7996092.
It appears the the Commonwealth Government is bringing in a national compensation scheme for victims of institutional child sexual abuse with individuals able to claim up to $150,000 each. It's clear that the Australian Government will not be able to fund this program without serious money from the offending churches. So it's bad news for the Organization today.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-04/government-announces-redress-for-abuse-victims/7996092
the statement in the article "who is leading gods people today?
" in the feb 17th study edition of the wt is very interesting.. it states: ""the g.b.
is neither inspired nor infallible" ..we can err .in doctrinal matters....".
Seeing we are all having a go, i'll add my penny's worth.
There are only two doctrines that would effect the whole brotherhood; Christ's arrival in 1914 and the blood teaching. Who really cares these days if there is a literal 144,000 heavenly class or not. Its totally irreverent for the rank and file. No, without a doubt, dumping either 1914 or the blood ban would be a 1975 event. But like what has been mentioned in the past, its not going to cost the GB much by waiting for medical science to catch up and develop a proper blood substitute. And there could be hidden financial problems if the family of our 'martyrs' find a legal case to sue the organization for their loved one's deaths. However time marches on, its become more and more ridiculous holding on to the 1914 teaching. Now that GB have dumped Russel from the ranks of the 'Faithful and Discrete Slave', they have given themselves the authority to edit or remove his Adventist based 1914 ideas. We all know that it will have to done one day because its beginning to look really stupid as the years mount up since the 'Last Days' began. But when it happens, it will not be pretty.
i was at my assembly when this was discussed last week.
of course i hadn't prepared and i heard "no rules about limits", or at least i thought i did.. here's the direct quote from the watchtower study article.. "although the bible does not provide specific rules about the kinds and limits of love play that might be associated with natural sexual intimacy, it mentions displays of affection.
the watchtower (study edition) august 2016 : making christian marriage a success, paragraph 8.. what say you?.
The simple answer to the question of this topic is ... no. As an ex-elder, nothing changes until the elder body receives a letter from the society. So until then, its just double speak. And remember no-one gets undisfellowshiped if the Governing Body changes the rules.
the wt teaches that there's no part of a human being that survives the death of the body.
if the anointed do not have an immortal soul/ some immaterial part of them that survives death, then whoever will be in heaven won't be the original anointed person but their clone since once a person dies, according to wt theology, they cease to exist; so god will have to create a spirit body from nothing for that person and that created body by definition will therefore not be the original person but their clone.. so it will be a person's clone that will get to live forever in heaven and rule with christ, and not the original person.............one can now see why other religions teach the doctrine of the immortality of the soul..
The same issue applies to the earthly resurrection also. It did my head in when I realized it. The resurrected person will truly believe that he's the same one, but because the is no physical/spiritual connections to the person who lived before ... he is in actuality a clone. And the original is dead.
what is getting me down are the difficult and troubling experiences posted by some of the forum users.
in a number of cases i cannot believe the injustice inflicted on the person.
how, forgive the wording, in god’s name can this be happening?
For myself I need these horror stories to continually remind myself that something is drastically wrong with the organization. I still go the the meetings (for my family) and the mindless happy-happy propaganda does work to convince people everything in great in the Kingdom Hall. I personally need that counter balance. Additionally, we may know or hear of things a congregation or two away from ours, but bad news in the society does not travel very far. As a result, the deliberately cultivated "cones of silence" effectively pre-filters what really going on making us dependent to what's coming from the platform. So sites like like provide information that is just not available elsewhere.
as all witnesses know, the opening gambit of the great tribulation will occur when the united nations turns on organized religion to devastate them and leave them naked of people and resources.
however, as jehovah's judgement day has been spoken of as being "imminent", the question that can be fairly asked ... 'is the united nations organization actually in a position to act as god's destroyer of false religion?
while i have no doubt that most within that organization had in the past tried to make the lives of the desperate better, the united nations has unfortunately now become a weak and underfunded political eunuch.
I started this topic mainly to provide some evidence to counter the constant scaremongering and pseudoscience we get at the KH. All to often, that's all we get. But If you just do a light bit of scratching around on the net or read on past the sport pages of the paper, then whats really going on is not that hard to find. Sadly the world is going to get worse and I believe that world war is quite likely. Not because of God's judgement or anything like that, but because of the exact opposite. By I mean, if all the so called prophesies and teachings of the Organization are not inspired, if the Jehovah's Witness faith itself is just another man made religion ... then global conflict is inevitable. Its just deductive logic and a matter of time.
as all witnesses know, the opening gambit of the great tribulation will occur when the united nations turns on organized religion to devastate them and leave them naked of people and resources.
however, as jehovah's judgement day has been spoken of as being "imminent", the question that can be fairly asked ... 'is the united nations organization actually in a position to act as god's destroyer of false religion?
while i have no doubt that most within that organization had in the past tried to make the lives of the desperate better, the united nations has unfortunately now become a weak and underfunded political eunuch.
As all Witnesses know, the opening gambit of the Great Tribulation will occur when the United Nations turns on organized religion to devastate them and leave them naked of people and resources. However, as Jehovah's Judgement Day has been spoken of as being "imminent", the question that can be fairly asked ... 'Is the United Nations Organization actually in a position to act as God's destroyer of false religion?'
While I have no doubt that most within that organization had in the past tried to make the lives of the desperate better, the United Nations has unfortunately now become a weak and underfunded political eunuch. This is because, the real power of the UN lies within the Security Council but by the very rules of it; namely the powers of veto, nothing of substance can be done unless all member countries agree. Which it never does due to the competing nature of the super powers within. As a result, even if the blue helmets are moved into a hot spot, they are generally so limited by their rules of engagement that they can barely able to defend themselves, let alone help others even in the face of clear ethnic or religious fueled atrocities.
This has not gone unnoticed by those in the know, who have publicly stated that the UN’s days may actually be numbered and that it might disappear as did the League of Nations. Some have even openly wondered whether the peace the globe has generally enjoyed was more a product of the Truman Doctrine rather than the lofty ideals of the United Nations.
Either way, the UN is far from the Beast portrayed in Watchtower articles. And in a very real sense, as the world becomes more and more focused on people’s individual human rights, the United Nations has less and less a mandate or the real political power, to imposed the draconian laws expected by the Governing Body.
This being the case, we needn’t worry about the UN bulldozing our Kingdom Halls anytime soon. Rather, the reality is that it’s more likely we’ll see them bulldozed by property developers … sold off on the cheap for a string of houses.
PS - Witnesses may counter argue that miracles do happen and the UN could still grow some teeth. But even when Biblical empires fought according to prophecy, armies like those of Cyrus didn’t grow overnight. Rather it took decades to build them, even if the wars they fought were rather short. That being so, the facts are that the faithful are not in “imminent” threat from the United Nations, even if it had the intention to do so.
REFERENCES
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/the-collapse-the-un-security-council-17800
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/09/united-nations-rudd/498464/
if you were part of a judicial committee, and knowing what you know now, what was it like for you to sit on jc’s?
how did you feel if someone was reproved or df’d?
were you ever on a jc and you disagreed with someone being reproved or df’d and were overruled – how did you feel?
There wasn't that many problems where I served as an elder, however when I was on a JC and we DF'd someone, I felt more sad for the person involved than anything else. While I was a true believer throughout my eldership, at the time I just saw those committees more as a logical legal process, reacting to 'sin' as per the KS book, I guess. I suppose I was lucky though, that I was with a body that was slightly more lenient than others too, as we were as fair and gentile as we could be seeing most of my cases involved some form of mental illness as an additional factor. However knowing what I know now, I would have definitely call the cops myself on this one guy who was a manipulative pedophile. We DF'd him, but unfortunately he got a way with it because none of the people directly involved or relatives wanted it to go public. Happily Karma fixed him pretty good, with that person dying rather badly not long later.
the jws could survive as an organization due to one vital human need: recognition.
for decades this religion glorified the older ones and really didn't do much for the younger folks, hence the younger people left in droves.
if you're middle-aged or older, what was the average age of the elders in your congregation or your circuit overseer, as you were growing up?
It's a nice comment Socrateswannabe, I had though about making a similar one myself because in Australia there has been a clear push by the organization to replace the older Elders with others 20-25 years younger which is particularly noticeable with conventions speakers and the Bethel representatives sent over. Gone are the ones who had real Bible knowledge and experience on their side. I think thought, its got to do more with the new hipster image of JW.(you know what) than anything else. But I believe that the main reason why things are going south for the society is the very real decline of the western fertility rate. Of course the other issues like the child abuse scandals, fail prophesies, higher education and just plain bat shi* boring meetings haven't helped either. And due to the internet, very few witness kids are ignorant of what's going on, unlike the zombie generations of before.
while i may be wrong, i believe that today's wt study article was the first one to say the deu.
6:4 was not written to refute the trinity.
i found it odd to say the least, since for all the years i've being going to meetings (over 50+ in actuality) the verse written by moses, has always been used to counter the trinitarian gods of the egyptians and the trinity today.
While it's clear that weasel words were used in this context, the sentence didn't really have to be included as part of the writing committee's reasoning in that paragraph. This was why I felt that is just odd that they included it. As if was a genuine change and the GB was just softening us up by dropping a one line statement, as I have seen before.
And in regards to the comment on higher education ... well I knew that someone else for sure would pick up on it. But it's a really stupid view, that's for sure.
