Good to study JW past .... New "Writing Archives" under direction of the Writing Committee

by wannabefree 85 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Teary Oberon

  And besides all of those points, there still remains the fact that a lot of the information being discussed here is public domain and is already readily available on various archive sites (like archive.org). The Watchtower Magazines from 1879-1949 are so abundant and easy to find online that even an 80 year old grandmother with little computing experience could get them. Heck, I myself have a Watchtower PDF library of over 800 publications that I found entirely on my own! If you really want them, you can find them.

  So what is the point of expanding the WT Library CD then? It would be superfluous.
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  JonathanH

  You can find them teary, because clearly you don't fear the internet. But just about any witness I've ever known would hesitate to put "watchtower" into google, lest they end up in a place like this. And whether or not you mind being here, the society is not exactly ambiguous with their instructions about going to any website other than their own to look up anything related to JWs.
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  transhuman68

  You know that Witnesses are discouraged from using the internet, Teary.

  How could they possibly disobey the "faithful and discreet slave", to research the slave's own publications?
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  transhuman68

  I think that these words of C.T.Russell from the October 1 1907 Watchtower should be reprinted:

  A sister in the Truth who was at one time a spirit medium assures us that not long since in the parlor of her own home, the door being shut, a spirit materialized before her in the form of a man who spoke to her. His request being refused he threateningly caught her by the arm with a firm grasp, but at that instant her brother opened the parlor door and the materialization instantly dissolved. Another sister in the Truth, who had been less directly connected with Spiritism, informed us that recently one of the demons personating her deceased sister,opening the spring lock, walked into her room while she was wide awake and tried to choke her, afterwards leaving, as she had come, through the door. Another case was that of a brother who at one time had made some slight investigations of Spiritism, but ceased when he obtained light as to its demon origin. An apparition representing his wife appeared to him in his room as he was walking toward his bed, and reached out a hand while walking by his side. He, recognizing the source of such manifestations, and remaining firm to his resolution to have nothing further to do with the spirits in any sense or degree, refused to take the hand, and instead turned his heart to the Lord in prayer for deliverance from the Adversary's power; then the apparition vanished.

  And this, in the same issue:

  Our surmise is that this loosing and liberating from the chains of darkness will increase, perhaps very rapidly; that these fallen spirits are permitted to gradually invent a method by which they can accomplish such materializations, and that the knowledge of this and their proficiency in it will be permitted to develope during the remaining seven years of this harvest time, and constitute not only a trial for them, but have much to do also with the perilous times for the Church and the world which the Scriptures indicate should now be expected. These fallen angels (demons), still in opposition to God, will doubtless ignore the Lord's restraints and use their discovery of the new power or new method of materialization. Those having respect to the Lord and his will would of course refuse to use such powers as he had condemned and forbidden and restrained, and thus their loyalty to the Lord would be demonstrated. Indeed we may be sure that whichever of these fallen angels have repented of their wrong course have abstained from all attempts to communicate with humanity in harmony with the Lord's prohibitions.
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  factfinder

  My brother would be one of those too afraid to google "Jehovah's Witnesses". he does not use the internet and used to doubt the authenticity of the jw-media .org site I would give him information from years ago. Finally the site was mentioned in a yb along with jw.org and watchtower.org. But when I mentioned to him there were other "official" sites such as the one from Germany and from the UK he told me they were fake and run by apostates!

  Most witnesses would have no interest in the older publications even if the society put them all on a wt library cd. Personally I have no interest in reading the older ones .
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  Teary Oberon

  "You know that Witnesses are discouraged from using the internet, Teary. How could they possibly disobey the "faithful and discreet slave", to research the slave's own publications?"

  They are given warning about the internet (and rightly so, since there is no end of weirdos and obsessed ex-Witnesses that spend 24 hours a day, 7 days a week creating thousands of spam sites and spamming the comments every news article from anywhere in the world that contains "Jehovah" in it, e.g., that nutjob Danny Hazard). But they are not forbidden from using the internet. And besides, if they are wanting a specific, 100 year old publication so badly that they can't just use a physical copy in one of the Halls, then the odds are that they are wanting it for a specific reason, and that they are already familiar with the anti-Witness spam on the internet.
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  Teary Oberon

  Here is an example of the kind of obsessed nut jobs that Witnesses have to deal with when using the internet:

  WARNING TO THE WATCHTOWER RELIGIOUS RACKET
  
  To the best of my knowledge their is only ONE unique ~ in cyberspace the ~ clan is all over the world we go back to medieval old English.

  The point is any search pages shown here and there are TENS OF THOUSANDS are going to be 98% anti-Watchtower cult pages, as this is my (~) primary mission.

  These are links made by me in a 5 1/2 year period all pages created individually and loaded up on the net by hand.

  ~

  YAHOO SHOWS 75,000 PAGES

  ~

  GOOGLE SHOWS 31,000 PAGES

  Theses results are INCOMPLETE and UNDERRATED as the indexing is slow keeping up with me

  I make dozens more everyday and NETWORK with other apostates ( this is the real scary part for you Watchtower) I actually promote other colleague links like ~, ~ and ~, ahead of my own home page ~

  Theses pages are on countless different servers and are cached forever as long as the Internet exist as long as civilization continues.

  We have IMMORTALITY yes the Watchtower lied when they promised me everlasting life, but I will get it anyway!

  Watchtower I will haunt you from beyond the grave!
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  JonathanH

  You some how think the ranting of looney's is what the society is afraid of teary? It's not the looney's they are afraid of, it's the perfectly sane ones like you're talking to now. They aren't warning against people that are obviously off their rocker, no witness would be convinced by barely comprehensible ranting. What they are afraid of is that a witness is going to want to know something about "the finished mystery" and in a quick google search they find Barbara Anderson, Paul Grundy, or Ray Franz. People that are polite, articulate, well spoken, and with mountains of evidence and reason and experience at their back. They aren't afraid of spambots showing pyramids next to russel, they are afraid of "http://jwfacts.com" and with good reason.
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  Quendi

  I've said this in an earlier post on this thread but I will repeat it here. The only reason there will be an "Archives" feature in The Watchtower is so the WTS and the Governing Body can make rank and file Witnesses believe there is no need to go on the Internet to research the history of Jehovah's Witnesses or read old publications. The Society knows about websites like JWN, jwfacts.org, etc. They know that the old publications are available online. They fear what will happen if Witnesses read the unvarnished teachings of Russell and Rutherford, steeped as they are in mysticism, Masonism, racism, and wild, unfulfilled predictions about the future. They will grow disillusioned and leave, taking their friends and families with them. They also know that many Witnesses are hungry for information about the organization's past and don't want to read the ponderous Proclaimers book to learn it so they go online to find it.

  The solution to the dilemma is the old "bait and switch" routine. Tease the membership with the annoucement that in selected issues of The Watchtower, excerpts from old publications or recountings of past events in the organization's history will be published in the "Archives" feature. Since the rank and file have always trusted the Governing Body and the Society, the hope is that many will take the bait. When they do, the switch is employed. The information disclosed will be just enough to give the illusion of honesty and transparency when in fact it will do just the opposite. But the illusion will hopefully be enough to keep the rank and file away from the Internet and focused only, wholly and solely on the organization for the information they want. Will it work? Time will tell but I believe this is another evidence that the WTS definitely believes it is under siege.

  Quendi
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  MrDarkKnight

  @factfinder...I know for a fact that they have scanned in everything ever written all the way back to Russell, Grew and Storrs! It is only available to the Writing Department, not the rank and file. I personally know the individual who headed up this effort. Upon its completion he was downsized in 2006. He was very bitter and unhappy, but I was not surprised.

  They will NEVER let the rank and file have access to anything prior to 1950. And since the Awake/Golden Age/Consolation is WAY WACKY they will never let the rank and file see it before 1970.

  They will release what they when they want to and spin incorrect material as "old light". The rank and file will eat it up. I can tell you that most of the people I know read/scanned or listend to on tape, the 607 BCE stuff and it just accepted it without question.