Looking up scriptures during meetings

by Stealth 25 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Stealth

  Recently I attended a JW funeral after a 12 year fade. I did not bring a bible to the talk.

  I found it somewhat odd and distracting to the flow of the talk at how much time was spent by all the JWs looking up scriptures in the bible that they have all have read 1,000s of times before. The dead air with nothing but the sound of pages flipping seemed odd to me, yet, at one time I did the same and never thought anything about it.

  Then again, maybe it felt odd because I was the only one in the room not doing it.

  This made me wonder how JW elders might react to a publisher if they just flat out refused to bring and use a bible to the meeting, but instead just sat and listened.
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  NomadSoul

  I could find scriptures very quikly, but my problem was that I would space out and then I heard rustling of pages and I had to figure out which scripture to look for or at least which part as to look the part.
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  blondie

  There were a few nitpickers that would make it their business to notice you weren't looking them up (even if you hadn't underlined your WT). They tended to be brothers who wandered all over the hall during the meetings and never looked up the scriptures themselves.

  I would bring a different translation and read from it, looking up scriptures out of sync with the speaker or study. I even made list of scriptures that gave me an aha moment to look up later.

  Sometimes I wandered back to the restroom and overheard the elders discussing deep things, whether their favorite team would go to the Super Bowl. Sports is a religion to some. I knew one that would go out to his truck and listen to the games during the assemblies.
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  frogonmytoe

  Yes, it always was the familiar scriptures wasn't it?! Very true about that dead time. But then we were checking what the word of God said, so time well spent
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  I Made Jehovah Sad

  I hated to be the one still looking for the scripture after it had already been read. lol
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  Barrold Bonds

  If you want to shock people, just bring a tablet and look up the scriptures on an electronic version. Somehow the bible paper is sacred and it's not the same to use a tablet or computer or whatever.
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  NomadSoul

  Lol Barrold. That would be something.
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  Roberta804

  Oh I know exactly what you mean. My sister and I (both ex-jws) attended a cousins funeral. We were sitting a row apart from each other. I turned back and smiled at my sister at the sound of all the pages turning in bibles and we both ended up laughing. You think you have forgot it all until something like a hundred people turning pages brings back memories.
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  WTWizard

  I had my LIE-ble marked with colored dots on the front. Each dot represented one book. I took a red pen and put dots on the pages of one book, moved to the next book and put the dot for that book lower on the front, and kept up until I reached the next major section. From there, I took an orange marker and started back at the top, working down again. Each of the books of the LIE-ble were thus marked. This made it easy to find the book quickly, so I could be there before those with more advanced LIE-ble skills got there.

  The result is that I would have a few seconds after finding the scripture to actually do what they didn't want me doing. Or, I could fake find the scriptures by going to the scripture and then sitting there. As it was always the same scriptures, I didn't miss anything. Also, since it was always the same tiny collection of themes, I didn't miss anything at the boasting session by snake-studying or snake-looking up the scriptures.
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  Jude77

  They have no real issues to discuss and nothing that's actually worthwhile to say. If they didn't do the entire "look up the scriptures together" routine they'd have to come up with a lot more empty BS to talk about.