robhic

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Posts by robhic

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  9

  You Must Know it's The Truth...

  by Confession in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  do you occasionally get those stopping moments?

  y'know, when the enormity of what we've gone through strikes you?

  or when some aspect of the wts experience occurs to you?

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  robhic

  That was a really funny story you wrote! I'm LMAO at it. Good example, too. It is quite a close parallel to how shunning seems to work.
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  33

  Could satan be the good guy?

  by LtCmd.Lore in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  well i'm an atheist, so now i can feel free to think whatever i want without getting struck by lightning.

  but i've been playing with this idea for quite a while:.

  is satan just looking out for the poor little humans?

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  robhic

  Here is something I posed a good while back. It sorta fits this thread:

  Why is satan supposed to be so bad? What did he actually do? He gets the blame, sure, but what does he explicitly do? Can’t explain why you did something bad? Blame the devil! An excuse.

  He tempted Adam & Eve by telling them the truth! If they ate from the tree they would be the equal of god. Is this true? They ate from the tree. God got pissed and threw them out. (Now, did they possess the same knowledge, attributes, etc. that god had? I don’t know that part, it’s all about them getting tossed from the garden. But I digress.)

  If they did have all god’s attributes, why could he so handily bounce them from the garden? Why didn’t they fight back? There were two of them. In any case, god said if and when they ate from the tree they would die. But they lived another 900 or so years. So who lied? Not satan...

  And the bit about tempting jesus. So what? He tempted him, jesus declined the offer, no-harm-no foul as far as I can see. What does satan actually do that makes him so bad?

  Tell folks to slaughter women and children (but keeping the more attractive women for wives)? Destroy whole towns or civilizations? Kill 70,000 people because some guy took a census and a myriad of other nasty things? Sent the bear to slaughter 40 (?) children because they made fun of a bald guy? No, it was god (the one who supposedly loves everyone) doing this! Not satan...

  God does all the reprehensible things but satan gets blamed for stuff only because he seems to be a handy scape goat the way I see it. Gotta have someone or somewhere to place blame. It seems satan is just a convenient excuse for not taking responsibility oneself.

  And just for trying to make people more aware that the being they worship is an egomaniacal, self-focused, jealous, petty, vicious, capricious, mysoginistic, racist who insists that you base your whole life, without question, on his rules exclusively or he’ll kill you. Some choice. One lies yet says it is impossible for him to do so and one doesn’t lie but is called the "Father of the Lie." Say what?
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  33

  Could satan be the good guy?

  by LtCmd.Lore in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  well i'm an atheist, so now i can feel free to think whatever i want without getting struck by lightning.

  but i've been playing with this idea for quite a while:.

  is satan just looking out for the poor little humans?

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  robhic
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  12

  Yahweh Loves Children! (warning: some sarcasm present)

  by ringo5 in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  whenever i feel myself slipping into a good mood, i can always do some good ol' testament reading, and follow it up with a chaser of wts spin.

  it's a sure-fire way to fuel the apostate-fire that's a' brewing inside.. the account of david and bathsheba, while basically a good sex yarn, gets real sick and twisted at the end, and guess who is the sick and twisted surprise star?

  yahweh!

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  robhic

  This also reminded me of the Ray Stevens song from the 70's or 80's (?): Jesus loves the little children. All the little children of the world. Be they yellow, black or white they are precious in his sight, Unless it's King David's from making nasties with that girl...
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  12

  Yahweh Loves Children! (warning: some sarcasm present)

  by ringo5 in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  whenever i feel myself slipping into a good mood, i can always do some good ol' testament reading, and follow it up with a chaser of wts spin.

  it's a sure-fire way to fuel the apostate-fire that's a' brewing inside.. the account of david and bathsheba, while basically a good sex yarn, gets real sick and twisted at the end, and guess who is the sick and twisted surprise star?

  yahweh!

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  robhic

  This is very much like rock star- and professional athlete-immmunity today. They don't play by the same rules as the rest of us. Go do some petty (or even not so petty) crime. Then compare it to what hapened to ___________ (insert offending rock star or athlete name) when they did some criminal deed. Same result? No, I think not. David was the rock star of his day. Heck, even jehoobah was his biggest fan! "David, you screwing around?" "Uh, yes, but I feel really, really bad about it." "OK, well try to be a better boy. And don't do it again!" "All right, I will try not to..." "Good. Oh, and I really loved your latest album."
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  19

  Chat Rooms—How Can I Avoid the Dangers?

  by moomanchu in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  jwd is introducing moral corruption.

  "i was in a chat room with a group of people who i thought were all jehovahs witnesses," says a youth named tyler.

  "after a while, though, some of these people started disparaging our beliefs.

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  robhic

  Satan the Devil, pioneered the tactic used by some chat room visitors. He disguised his real identity before telling his first lie.

  Where, again, did satan lie? Was it when he told Eve she wouldn't die (which she didn't...) like the great truth-teller jehoobah said she would?

  Satan gets a bad rap but where exactly did he lie? Looks like someone else was doing the lying above...
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  11

  Why The Time Limit?

  by Anitar in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  hi everyone, it's good to be back.

  last thursday, as i lay on the couch stuffed full of turkey, i had the sudden idea for a discussion, and please forgive me if this has been asked before.. when my brother came back from college and we began to clean the apartment for the impending arrival of the rest of the family for thanksgiving dinner (my mom was of course not calling it that), he asked her why she had so many stacks of watchtower magazines everywhere.

  they were all organized by date in zip lock bags, not including her bound volumes and study books.

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  robhic

  3) If this is a new development by the WTS, than what is the difference between the bound volumes and the individual magazines? Can they change one or the other to suit their changing doctrine? If so, does anyone have any examples?

  I am not a JW nor is this a very sophisticated response, but below answers your question #3:

  From the Watchtower of January 1,1989, pg. 12:

  "...for a work that would be completed in our 20th century".

  Changed to "...for a work that would be completed in our day" in bound volume.

  There are scans of this example. I can't remember where they are but I know someone will.
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  16

  Who denied holidays first - WWCOG or JW's?

  by AK - Jeff in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  another thread indicated that wwcog had been ahead of jw's in saying that holidays were 'verbotten' - and that the wts then picked up on the cue as additional ammunition to keep witnesses under control and 'seperate from the world'.. can this be confirmed with dates/times ?

  .

  jeff .

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  robhic

  One of the Worldwide Church of God offshoots, the United Church of God, keeps the Sabbath and other Hebrew holy days and practices tithing.
  
  They claim to "trace their origins to the Church that Jesus founded" YET they do not celebrate Christmas or Easter either.

  Talk about a confused family! I was involved with a woman who became a JW two years after we got together. She and her family were WCoG members, although she wasn't a very good or practicing member as she got older.

  After that big split years before, her mother and father stayed in (I guess) the "original" WWCoG. Her sister and her family went into one of the new offshoots that held the customs very (suspiciously?) much like Jews did. They kept the sabbath from Friday dusk to Saturday dusk, etc. (The parents went to one long service on Saturday.)

  Then this kooky woman I latched onto (who was very non-moral, if you know what I mean..) decided that, after her previous 10 years or so of immoral behavior, to join the JW! She was going to all their meetings during the week and on Sunday.

  What a crazy time these folks had at times when they were together. 1) Basically fundamentalist-type daughter, 1) set of more quiet WWCoG parents and 1) daughter who was a newly-converted JW. It made one's head spin...
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  3

  Tacking the Truth

  by UnDisfellowshipped in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  is "tacking" for true christians?.

  the watchtower, may 15, 1976, page 298:.

  acts 17:11-12 (ncv): .

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  robhic

  The WTS' definition and use of the word "tacking" bothers me. I used to own a sailboat so know exactly what tacking is all about.

  If you want to go from point 'A' to point 'B' but the wind is not blowing from A to B, you have to tack the boat. So far, they are correct. Tacking allows you to move the boat forward toward your destination using a zig-zag route. BUT YOU NEVER CHANGE YOUR INITIAL DESTINATION.

  'A'

  a

  wind direction -------------> b

  a

  b

  'B'

  The wind direction precludes sailing directly from A to B. So you have to sail obliquely to the wind. (That's what the keel or centerboard is for but that's a different lesson... ) You, for example, sail towards 'a' and then to 'b' then back to the next 'a' then towards the next 'b' and so forth until you come upon 'B' which was your initial destination.

  Yes, it takes a lot more time due to the increase of distances you need to travel zig-zagging your way toward point 'B' but it's the only way to do it. Tacking can just be thought of as taking a winding path to reach your destination.

  You don't lose sight of your initial goal and nothing changes except the time required to travel what would be the straight-line distance "tacking" the zig-zag course. So "tacking" just doesn't seem, to me, to be a great way to portray a big doctrinal flip-flop.

  Nice try but no cigar...

  Captain Robert
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  1

  The Dead Sea Scrolls The Essenes and their Latrines

  by outoftheorg in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  i recall and i am sure some of you will recall, being told by the wbts about how jehovah gave the jewish nation a strict set of rules as to how and where to build latrines for them to use and how this lent to giving the jewish people the reputation of being a cleaner group than the other nomads in the area.. they were to dig trenches to a strict depth and distance from the camp sites and cover the trenches as they filled and how pleasing it was to see that jehovah made them safe from sickness etc.. in todays paper an article from the los angeles times by thomas h. maugh, this very item is brought to light.

  with a verry different direction as to its effects on the lives of those who lived in the manner they were told to.. "toilet practices support theory that the dead sea scrolls were written by by a small jewish sect known as the essenes" .

  archeologists have discovered the latrines used by the essenes.

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  robhic

  One can only imagine how sick EVERYONE must have been.

  Hey, I feel sick right now. Thanks a lot ... !