Pete Zahut

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Posts by Pete Zahut

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  7

  Brooklyn Should Get A Thank You From the WTS

  by konceptual99 in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20151217/opinion/151219924/jehovahs-witnesses-should-leave-brooklyn-a-big-thank-you-gift.

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  Pete Zahut

  Some of the comments people have posted below the article, are quite interesting (scathing).
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  16

  Remember When Something Bad Would Happen And You Felt Its Really What They Deserved?

  by minimus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i was thinking about christmas and how celebrants may lose their home and all their possessions because a christmas candle burned down the house.. witnesses smugly would say, "well, they shouldn't have been celebrating the holidays!

  ".....yet if a jw got into a fatal car accident while going to a convention, it was clearly satan's doing..

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  Pete Zahut

  

  lovesjehovah 10 hours ago

  I've been a JW for years and years... Never once did I rejoice in the misfortunes of anybody. That is an individual characteristic, not a religions. You will meet people that are good and bad anywhere. Judging an entire group of people based on individual actions is bias and elementary.

  As a former Bethelite and lifelong JW, I agree with the above reply for the most part however I think there is still a lot of truth in the premise of the original post. The JW's who make these unloving comments, more often than not go unchallenged by the JW's around them . JW's have been trained to look down on "the world" and have condemned (in their own hearts and otherwise) virtually everyone (except themselves) to a horrendous death in the very near future and they look forward to the day it will finally happen. They claim to be going from door to door out of love of their fellow man but sometimes the comments made in the car groups about the householders are often far from loving and demonstrate that they are really out in the ministry to save their own skins rather than to accomplish anything of a humanitarian nature. They often refer to householders who don't take the magazines as "goats" and they make covetous comments about living in their nice homes after Armageddon since they've decided in their own minds that the occupants, unlike themselves, will have been destroyed . Some JW's are so conditioned and immune to their judgemental view of non Witnesses that they don't seem to view the occupants of the homes as real people deserving of compassion and find it easy to be callous about them and pigeonhole them all as doomed

  As you say, it isn't fair to judge an entire religion based on the actions of a few but I do have a problem with the way Witnesses hesitate to correct these unkind comments against worldly people for fear they will be looked upon as sympathizing with the world. The literature they leave with interested ones, is full of hateful comments about entire religious groups based on the actions of a few of their members of their leaders and in view of this, it's a testament to the people of the world that the Watchtower and Awake magazine are even still in existence (for now).
  
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  38

  New Word Coined In April 2016 WT!

  by Naoscillator in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  and the word is... .

  canaanitelike!.

  here it is in context, just in case you're curious about how to use this new word.. article: being faithful leads to god's approval.

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  Pete Zahut

  Pffft....what were they thinking?? it should have been Cannanite-esque or Cannanite-ish or even Cannanit-ey. Cannanitelike is a bit of a stretch if you ask me.
  
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  12

  Wooly Mammoths

  by Bloody Hotdogs! in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  a jw came to my door a while back and used wooly mammoths as evidence for noah's flood.

  he was a bit older, so i thought this must be some oddball out-of-date teaching of jehovah's witnesses.

  i could remember something in the insight book about frozen mammoths, but not much else.

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  Pete Zahut

  There have been other discussions about Wooly Mammoths on this site before, if you're interested.

  CLICK HERE
  
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  33

  Today is Christmas, and guess what? Witnesses's were going house to house on my block, TODAY ON CHRISTMAS!!!!!!

  by Dunedain in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i kid you not!!!!!

  my family, and i, were on our way to my wife's brothers house today, which is the families christmas tradition.

  we open presents in the morning, and at around 10:30, we head over to my brother in laws for breakfast/brunch, with all the family.. so, as we loaded some presents up in the car, and we all jumped, and drove away, at the end of my block, jehovahs witnesses!

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  Pete Zahut

  Going in Service during the Holidays was highly encouraged. The strategy was to hook em' while they're in the Holiday spirit and guilt them into listening or taking the magazines.

  I never did it....I figured it would be just too tacky to have someone wish me a Merry Christmas and then being obligated to launch into an explanation of why their participation in Christmas is displeasing to God. (gag) Lot's of JW's did it though, (the odd ones) the rest of us slacker types went skiing that day.
  
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  23

  How did you feel on Christmas as a JW child?

  by cookiemaster in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  this is obviously a question for born-ins like me.

  so, how did christmas feel to you as a child?

  to me it was awful.

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  Pete Zahut

  We live a short drive from the Mountains so lot of our Congregation and those in nearby Congregations went skiing on Christmas day. It was a beautiful drive up there and as we'd approach the ski areas it would often be snowing heavily. The whole lodge would be filled with JW's we knew or recognized from the assemblies. We had the place to ourselves until later in the day when all the Pagans showed up with their new Christmas skis and outfits. We did the same on New Years day and It was really fun and we looked forward to it.

  The hard part for me was having to hide the fact that I loved Christmas songs, the Christmas TV specials and I thought the lights on the trees and the decorations and the treats were amazing. One year my little sister innocently asked my Mom if we could stop being JW's for one year and celebrate Christmas and then come back after it was over. I could tell my Mom was suppressing a smile as she laid out all the JW guilt producing reasons why doing so would make Satan happy.

  During my elementary school years, it was not fun to have to go to the library or sit out in the hall when the class had it's Christmas party and exchanged gifts or to return to school after the holiday and not be able to talk about all the presents I got like the other kids. I could tell my teachers pitied me and felt badly about having to do this to me. That got easier as I got older. Sometimes my Mom would let us stay home on the day of the party and and she'd buy us some new clothes during the Christmas break when things were on sale. It was easier to show up at school with a new coat and some new clothes and let the kids assume they were Christmas gifts. There was guilt on my part for allowing them to think this was true instead of announcing that they weren't Christmas gifts because my family doesn't celebrate that pagan holiday and stick up for Jehovah like a good JW boy should have done. Cognitive dissonance made it possible for me to do this even though I deep down knew I was risking being destroyed at Armageddon and was not being like the 3 Hebrew boys Shadrach Meshach and Abednego .
  

  All in all however, I can't complain about the JW/Christmas aspect of my childhood. I viewed our not celebrating Christmas much the same as our not celebrating Hanukkah....I never had either of them so I didn't miss them....just could have done with out all the guilt for thinking it was nice.
  
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  34

  I have doubts... can you help me??- A new idea

  by HowTheBibleWasCreated in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i have been perplexed as to how to brung my wife out of jws and to exit the religion... but i had an idea last night.

  i know that elders will legitimantly meet with brothers who have doubts and encourage them... not df them .. this is a sheperding call etc.. thus since my wife knows i have doubt s i could say: i want to have two brother over to discuss this ... she will agree.... of course i will hit these guys with biblical textual issues, an biology to where they are stunned and still ask... "so brothers... can you solve this conflict...?".

  in this case they will not think of me as an apostate but may question their own beliefs... .

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  Pete Zahut

  You have to be very clear about your motives and what you're hoping to accomplish by doing this because with JW's, no matter what you do, there's a good chance you'll be viewed the same as the guy who announces to a room full of children on Dec 24th that there's no such thing as Santa Claus.

  People often want to be lied to and want to believe the little stories that get them through the night and they will go to great lengths to be able to continue believing them and to punish anyone who brings this to their attention.
  
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  13

  Haha! New employee has one neighbor who's a "jerk." No surprise here

  by stillin in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  the neighbor blows his leaves over onto my employee's yard, then denies it.

  the neighbor's wife calls the police about anything and everything.. of course they're witnesses.

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  Pete Zahut

  The neighbor blows his leaves over onto my employee's yard, then denies it.

  JW's are accustomed to putting leaflets on peoples doors without asking so......
  
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  32

  No Soliciting signage and JW Policy

  by Oubliette in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  does anyone have a copy of the boe letter directing publishers to not go into apartment complexes and/or condominium complexes with no soliciting signs?

  i ask because yesterday and buttheaded jw (that obviously had no idea who i am or my past) was knocking on doors in our condo complex.

  he would have had to drive past a sign which clearly states "no solicitation or material distribution.".

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  Pete Zahut

  I never ignored "No Soliciting" signs when I saw them, even though we were pretty much told from the platform and in the literature,to do so. That being said, I guess I would have had trouble being angry with this individual seeing as how I was in the same position and mindset myself not so many years ago.
  
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  32

  Peer presure to use Ipad

  by Gorbatchov in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  earlier this season i advised my retired father to ignore the use of a tablet during his kingdom hall congregational visits.

  his response was hopefull, but between the lines i could hear he had no choice.. yesterday he showed me his new 600 euro 64 gb ipad air 2. he had no clue what he has to do with it, he told me one of the elders will install the jw.org apps.. so, i feel he had to deal with presure to buy this ipad and i think he is not the only one.. do you recognize this?.

  gorby.

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  Pete Zahut

  It's all about conformity disguised as unity and all the Kool Kids have iPads and they know that to survive, modern JW's must keep up with Jehovah's celestial Segway. It's all about image and not appearing to be spiritually weak.