CyrusThePersian

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Posts by CyrusThePersian

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  12

  Do you remember Febuary 25 1990?

  by IreallydidwalkoutofaKH in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i remember it as the "great disapointment.......it was a date broadcasted during the "service and school" and was to be a moment families should be together when the "instructions were provided"!...........

  realize everyone........ reading.....this was 1 year and 56 days after the january 1st 1989 wt was in circulation.

  this had to be the "begining of doom!

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  CyrusThePersian

  I remember that meeting well. That was when the donation arrangement was instituted. I don't know about you guys but that was great news to me!

  I was the Accounts Serpent at the time and let me tell you, doing the congregation account was a nightmare what with having to keep up with literature inventories, monies coming in for literature, how much value in literature the congregation had in stock, etc. Every month you had to fill out and file seven or eight different forms for the account.

  After the donation arrangement was established, all I had to do was fill out two forms, one was a running tally of incoming donations vs. outgoing expenses, the other a final tally that was read to the congregation. Those two forms and balancing the congregation checkbook was all there was to doing the account. Whew! What a relief!

  So it might have been Ho-Hum to everybody else, but it was a banner day for me!

  It was only later that I learned that the donation arrangement was put in place because evangelist Jimmy Swaggart had lost a U.S. Supreme Court case involving making money on the sale of literature and not paying taxes on the profits. This was a case wherein the Watchtower Society filed a Amicus Curiae (Friend of the Court) brief in support of Jimmy Swaggart Ministries. When Swaggart lost the case the Society immediately launched the donation arrangement to avoid paying taxes on literature.

  CyrusThePersian
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  26

  Date results

  by B_Deserter in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i posted this as a reply but i figured i'd just make a new thread as well.. .

  the date went well, very well.

  she even asked for a second date afterwards.

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  CyrusThePersian

  I'm glad the date went well, B_Deserter!

  Myself, I haven't been on a date in thirty years. I'm assuming from the content of the posts above that the rules have changed somewhat since then...

  CyrusThePersian
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  104

  How Many Are From The South (USA)?

  by snowbird in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  thank you, professor.. you are most kind.. sylvia.

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  CyrusThePersian

  I'm from Tennessee.

  I'm of Middle-Eastern-Jewish descent.

  CyrusThePersian
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  27

  Why did David bring Golaith's head to Jerusalem?

  by VM44 in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  i samuel 17:54 - "and david took the head of the philistine and brought it to jerusalem".

  why did david do this, especially when the city of jerusalem was over 20 miles away and also under jebusite control at the time?.

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  CyrusThePersian

  Many scholars contend that the Old Testament "histories" such as Samuel, Kings and Chronicles were hodge-podged together by later scribes, basing their stories on legends and oral traditions. This might explain the anachronisms in the stories, such as David bringing Golaith's head to Jerusalem, when Jerusalem was a Jebusite city.

  Another big problem with this story is that in 1st Samuel 16:18-23 Saul hires David to be his personal musician and armour bearer, yet later, after defeating Golaith, Saul appears not to know who David is! -1st Samuel 17:55-58.

  CyrusThePersian
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  8

  list of flip flop on generation

  by wobble in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  sorry to be so useless, i know this has been on here ad infinitum.

  but i can't find a link to a good concise list of all the flip-flops on the 1914 generation.

  i wouldn't trouble you but my still-in wife,who never was a studier, has asked me for an easy to read list of changes,what they were, with refs.to articles.she will not read any comment.i'll have to slip that in verbally,but a list would be such a help,especially if it shows for sure a return to a previous beleif on this.. many tanks.

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  CyrusThePersian

  Go to jwfacts.com and scroll down to "Generation". This should give you all the references you need

  CyrusThePersian
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  14

  Holy Moses! PBS documentary suggests Exodus not real

  by ICBehindtheCurtain in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  this will be very interesting, i only wish it would make the rounds on the jw emails the same way "knocking" did, fat chance!

  we can only hope that pbs and nova will jump on this bandwagon as well, sooner than later.

  holy moses!

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  CyrusThePersian

  Much of the information in this documentary is taken from The Bible Unearthed by Isreal Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman. One of the most startling things I learned is that for decades archaeologists have been searching for evidence of the Exodus in the Sinai desert.

  Do you know what they found? Nothing, nada, zilch. There should be remains of late Bronze Age campsites, there are none. There should be the bones of more than a million people out in the desert, there are none. (Num. 14:29) There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever of a forty year sojourn in he Sinai desert! (Much less the seven plagues on Egypt, which would have left the Egyptian economy in a shambles and left the country open to invasion-an event that is nowhere recorded in the Egyptian, or in any other nation's records)

  This documentary will probably posit, like Finkelstein and Silberman, that the Exodus is a Canaanite retelling of the Egyptian story of the Hyksos invasion, as recorded by Manetho.

  It should be an interesting documentary!

  CyrusThePersian
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  43

  What Would You Like to Tell The Governing Body?

  by AK - Jeff in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  we assume that they or their dupes read this forum, or parts of it, right?

  address your comments to them.

  do so kindly, and respectfully, remembering that it is their religion, and they can run it like they like.

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  CyrusThePersian

  I would tell the Governing Body, very respectfully, to please stay out of peoples' lives. Stop telling your followers what books they should read, what movies and television programs to watch, who their friends should be and whether or not they should go to school. None of that is any of your business and people should decide those things for themselves.

  Respectfully,

  CyrusThePersian
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  19

  New York City

  by sandy in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i'll be in nyc this month (july) for a two night stay i won through a radio station here in los angeles.

  i am so excited!

  hotel and air are completely paid for.

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  CyrusThePersian

  i want to recommend a restraunt but do not know the name of it....jit prob in little italy......pretty much a stucco cave, but in the back it has boccie ball will a small gallery area to watch...what a place...anyone know the name?.........have fun oompa

  oompa, are you thinking of Mama Leone's? It had a kind of a grotto type of atmophere, kind of like a cave. It's in the theatre district though, on W. 44th St., not in Little Italy. Besides, I think they closed it down, it was too expensive to operate in that area.

  BTW congatulations on the trip, Sandy!! Have a great time!

  CyrusThePersian

  Edited to add: Mama Leone's didn't have bocce, so I'm probably thinking of a different place than you are. New York is covered with Italian and Greek restaurants (I love Greek food), just try them all!
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  20

  How is the Internet changing us?

  by Narkissos in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  open question: i really don't have any ready answer for that one.... my basic assumption is that mankind has always been different.

  every period and situation of history can be construed as a "system" involving specific political, economical, social and technical conditions and a corresponding set of ideas, or beliefs, allowing for a certain type of self-, community- and world-understanding.

  just to follow one particular line among many: .

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  CyrusThePersian

  I think that one of the internet's biggest contributions is that certain people and organisations can no longer hide things from ordinary folks.

  Just like the printing press put Bibles and other books in the hands of farmers and shopkeepers, thus sparking both the Renaissance and the Reformation, the internet has put huge amounts of data at the disposal of anyone. Now it could be argued that libraries have always had lots of information, but the internet puts it all at your fingertips instantly!

  No longer can a company say that research shows that their product is better than Brand X because now people can get online and see the actual research findings or read message boards of actual users of the product.

  No longer can a religious organisation say,"We never said that Armageddon would happen in 1975 or that the end of the world would be within the generation that was alive in 1914." because with the internet, we can retrieve the information that shows that it isn't true.

  No longer will we hear some crazy story and wonder if it's true or not. We just access snopes.com or a similar website and do five minutes worth of research to establish the veracity of the story.

  In short, we have become a much better informed generation and, as a consequence, much harder to fool.

  CyrusThePersian
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  36

  Did/Does God answer your prayers?

  by song19 in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  in my spiritual journey, which includes trying to decide if i still believe in god anymore or not i am beginning to question if god listened to my prayers or even answered them.

  i think i had a track record of praying more when i needed something.

  terrible i know.

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  CyrusThePersian

  Lincoln said, "I had a good Christian mother, and her prayers have followed me thus far through life."

  Fromthis website:

  Lincoln never joined a church nor ever made a clear profession of standard Christian beliefs. While he read the Bible in the White House, he was not in the habit of saying grace before meals. Lincoln's friend Jesse Fell noted that the president "seldom communicated to anyone his views" on religion, and he went on to suggest that those views were not orthodox: "on the innate depravity of man, the character and office of the great head of the Church, the Atonement, the infallibility of the written revelation, the performance of miracles, the nature and design of . . . future rewards and punishments . . . and many other subjects, he held opinions utterly at variance with what are usually taught in the church." It is probable that Lincoln was turned against organized Christianity by his experiences as a young man in New Salem, Illinois, where excessive emotion and bitter sectarian quarrels marked yearly camp meetings and the ministry of traveling preachers

  I didn't mean to imply that Lincoln was a total unbeliever, just that his beliefs may not be what you may think. All of which has nothing to do with the OP, which is the effectiveness of prayer.

  CyrusThePersian