Thanks, Intro, but I have the loose ones and am looking for the BV.
AlanF
Posts by AlanF
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28Looking For 1998 Watchtower Bound Volume
by AlanF ini'm looking to buy or trade to get a 1998 watchtower bound volume for my collection.
if anyone has one to trade or sell, please email me at [email protected] .. thanks,.
alanf
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17
Jumping from one cult to another?
by amused1 ini stumbled across this site doing research for a paper.
you all have much greater problems and common mental flaws than just being "former" jw's.. let me explain.
many (i won't generalize all of you) of you are on here ranting and raving about the jw's did this and the wt did that.
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AlanF
To Amused1:
I'm glad you removed the dumb signature, because it was neither funny nor creative. It was actually something that a goodly number of braindead trolls have posted for years.
Now, since I don't know what your research paper is all about, I can't provide you an appropriate link. Given that you don't seem to have figured this out on your own, I think you're liable to have trouble completing whatever research you're trying to do.
AlanF
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28
Looking For 1998 Watchtower Bound Volume
by AlanF ini'm looking to buy or trade to get a 1998 watchtower bound volume for my collection.
if anyone has one to trade or sell, please email me at [email protected] .. thanks,.
alanf
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AlanF
Hey there Yadirf, old buddy!
A man's accomplishments are a measure of the man. Your biggest accomplishment in life appears to be the one you trumpet the most: By telling me a flat-out lie you once got me to call on the phone someone I thought was you, but wasn't.
Wow.
What will you do for an encore? Post your picture on the Net?
I hope you do. It'd show that Mike Myers' Fat Bastard isn't fiction.
AlanF
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28
Looking For 1998 Watchtower Bound Volume
by AlanF ini'm looking to buy or trade to get a 1998 watchtower bound volume for my collection.
if anyone has one to trade or sell, please email me at [email protected] .. thanks,.
alanf
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AlanF
Hey, thanks, Ven!
AlanF
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WTB&T DOESN'T USE MIND CONTROL???
by Liberty ini was stunned to see that one of our new posters doesn't believe that the society uses mind control on its members.
i think that the fact that they don't see it is evidence of just how deep the control really goes.
have they never read 1984 by george orwell?
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AlanF
You Know's comments are the usual repetition of the mind-numbing bullshit that the typical Orwellianly braindead JW must come up with to explain away the fact that intelligent, sincere people don't go along with them in their self-deception.
The trauma that many ex-JWs go through is exactly the same as one would go through upon learning that one's mother is a street whore, and that she doesn't know who the father of any of her children is.
The pity of You Know is that he knows his mother is a whore, and welcomes it.
AlanF
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AlanF
What?
AlanF
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28
Looking For 1998 Watchtower Bound Volume
by AlanF ini'm looking to buy or trade to get a 1998 watchtower bound volume for my collection.
if anyone has one to trade or sell, please email me at [email protected] .. thanks,.
alanf
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AlanF
I'm looking to buy or trade to get a 1998 Watchtower bound volume for my collection. If anyone has one to trade or sell, please email me at [email protected] .
Thanks,
AlanF -
2
Barbour 1874/1914: Part 2
by beroea inbarbour 1874/1914: part 2. .
thank for information received from some of your mainly alanf.
it answer some questions but not all.
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AlanF
To Beroea:
I don't know that anyone can say for sure that N. H. Barbour borrowed his 'gentile times' doctrine directly from John Aquila Brown. Brown was certainly the first (that anyone can find in 19th century literature) one that used a period of 2,520 years that began in the 7th century B.C. and ended in the 20th century A.D. However, contrary to what the Society says on page 134 of the Proclaimers book, Brown did not equate the 2,520 years with the 'gentile times'. For Brown, the 'gentile times' were a period of 1260 years and had a completely different application than the '2,520 years' (I don't remember off the top of my head what his ideas were). It was some commentator in the late 1820s, if I remember right, who began equating the 'gentile times' with the '2,520 years'. See Carl Jonsson's The Gentile Times Reconsidered for details.
Barbour seems to have gotten his ideas from a number of sources, and he apparently made his own original contributions as well. A likely major source was E. B. Elliott's Horae Apocalypticae, a huge multi-volume tome on "sacred revelation" published in five different editions from about 1844 through the early 1860s. In the first two editions Elliott mentioned the notion of 2,520 years ending in 1914, but by the 3rd edition (1847?) he had dropped it, so it's not clear how influential Elliott was on Barbour. In the Proclaimers book the Society says that one Reverend Bowen from England originated the revised chronology that Barbour ultimately adopted, but it's not at all clear what Barbour's source for this was. There were many, many books, pamphlets and periodicals published in the mid-19th century that are now lost, which could have been Barbour's sources.
From the fragmentary available writings of Barbour, it appears that he first made a prediction of 'the end of the world' for 1873 in 1869, in a paper he circulated through the Adventist community. He published a revised paper in 1871, which is available from several sources, reaffirming his prediction. After 1873 passed without incident, Barbour revised the prediction (I don't know if there are any extant sources where this revision was printed) to 1874. I believe that these predictions were published in one or more Adventist publications, as well as in Barbour's own periodical which went by several names over the years, including The Midnight Cry and Herald of the Morning. After the failure of his 1874 prediction, Barbour ceased publication of any periodicals for a short time. In the publications printed through 1874, I don't believe Barbour made any mentions of 1914, and I don't remember any references to the '2,520 years' (check Jonsson to be sure).
In June 1875 Barbour restarted his periodical under the name Herald of the Morning. Over the next several months he developed the theme that "the gentile times are a period of 2,520 years that will end in 1914". He finalized this, I think, in the October issue. From a reading of the material in the June through October issues, it's not clear whether these ideas were completely new with Barbour, or were partly borrowed from earlier sources. What he did do was to develop notions like "there was a prophetic period called 'the gentile times' ", that this period was 2,520 years long, and that Babylon fell to Cyrus the Great in 536 B.C. (this was wrong). When C. T. Russell read Barbour's periodical in early 1876, these ideas were fully developed, and Russell eventually adopted all of them without any changes.
John Aquila Brown used 604 B.C. as the start of the '2,520 years' because that was Nebuchadnezzar's first year. That happens to have been a correct date, but Brown was apparently not aware that the Babylonians also used the "accession year dating system" for dating the reigns of their kings. Thus, Nebuchadnezzar's accession year was 605 B.C., but Brown didn't know it.
Brown and later commentators used a chronology that was the most popular during their time. It was fairly accurate, but not completely accurate by today's reckoning, since certain important dates were off by a year or two, and important pieces of archaeological information were not discovered and published until well into the latter half of the 19th century.
In this "standard" chronology (which not all scholars accepted without reservation), Babylon fell to Cyrus the Great in 538 B.C., and the Jews returned to Judah in 536 B.C. (these dates are one year too late by today's most popular reckoning). However, for unknown reasons Barbour adopted 536 B.C. for both events. In any event, Reverend Bowen used 536 B.C. as the date for return of the Jews from exile in Babylon.
From the 536 B.C. date, Bowen and Barbour calculated back 70 years and arrived at 606 B.C. This was based on the incorrect assumption that the "70 years" mentioned by Jeremiah and other Bible writers were years of total desolation of Judah, so that if this total desolation ended in 536 B.C., it must have begun 70 years earlier in 606 B.C.
Note that this chronology of the time between Nebuchadnezzar's accession to the throne of Babyon and Babylon's fall was a major departure from the chronology that Brown used. While Brown used the correct date for Nebuchadnezzar's accession year, Bowen and Barbour had to move it back 20 years to 624 B.C.
Also note that the events that Brown and Bowen/Barbour used as the beginning of the period of 2,520 years were different. For various reasons Brown thought that Nebuchadnezzar's accession to the throne was the event that began the 2,520 year period. However, Barbour thought that the initiating event was the beginning of the period of total desolation of Judah that began the 2,520 years. This is a subtle but important point in understanding just what these people taught. Nebuchadnezzar ascended the throne in August, 605 B.C., whereas the complete desolation of Judah began in early September, 587/6 B.C.
Hope this helps.
AlanF
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17
Jumping from one cult to another?
by amused1 ini stumbled across this site doing research for a paper.
you all have much greater problems and common mental flaws than just being "former" jw's.. let me explain.
many (i won't generalize all of you) of you are on here ranting and raving about the jw's did this and the wt did that.
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AlanF
To Amused1:
Yes, you have displayed arrogance, and no, you don't know nearly as much about Jehovah's Witnesses as you think you do.
Pay attention to what Seeker said; he's dead nuts on.
While you make a number of good points, your overall presentation shows that you're not reasoning clearly. You say that you don't want to generalize, but then you proceed to do exactly that. You say that "you jumped straight from being a Jehovah's Witness to being a Jehovah's Witness hater." That's a ridiculous generalization, and illogical to boot. It's illogical because JWs constitute an organization, while the people who frequent this board are about as far from an organization as one can get. It's ridiculous because the majority of posters on this board certainly don't hate JWs, or even the Mother Organization. Indeed, most people find the JWs very sad and take pity on them. While you do see bashing, that's only to be expected from people who have had to seal up their mouths for years and who now have the freedom to express themselves. A lot of the result is just venting.
You never saw "mind control" in the JWs? Well, I never did either when I was your age, and frankly, it took a long time for me to understand just how great the subtle mind control really is. That's the pity of it. JWs are so good at it that they don't even know that the leaders and followers are all victims of a subtle community mind control that is so subtle that even good outside researchers have difficulty seeing it. Yet, a careful study of how JWs react to criticism, and of how they react to internal dissent, proves that it is very real. That subtley is what makes it so dangerous.
You still don't believe this? Well consider this: Suppose today a religious leader told his followers that having a kidney transplant was identical to murdering a fellow human and cooking up his kidneys in a stew and enjoying them with a nice Chianti. Would you consider the leader a nut? You'd better! And would you consider the people who followed him to be religious fanatics or even lunatics? I have no doubt that you would. And that is just about what the Watchtower Society did with its followers in 1967: it convinced them that all organ transplants were exactly the same as chewing and swallowing another person's organs! How did it do this? By the same mind control techniques that it used for decades and still uses today: pretending that everything that comes from JW leaders originates with God. You don't argue with God, and so you don't dispute what comes from JW leaders. That is the essence of the mind control.
I have no doubt that if JW leaders issued a carefully worded sequence of "reasoning" and instructions, they could convince a large fraction of JW to go out and kill dissidents. Would you like to see an example of such instructions?
Another big mistake you make is to generalize that everyone who posts on this board is reveling in having been a fool and now being smart enough to have gotten out. That may be true of some, but in my experience most of those are simply on an extended journey of healing, and it takes a lot of venting and discussing to heal. Not everyone is as bright as you, in seeing through "the Truth" at a young age. Many were caught up in it well into adulthood and so were hooked far deeper than you ever were. The deeper you were hooked the longer it generally takes to dig the hooks out. Your notion of "if I can do it, so can anyone else" is simply naive.
Many posters are quite settled with their past JW experience, but have enough concern for new people coming out, and for the many JWs still stuck in the organization, to provide a forum for discussion. Others are involved in activities that go far beyond just talking up a storm on a discussion forum.
For example, some are involved in exposing the Society's massive dereliction of duty with respect to child molesters in the JW organization. A major TV presentation on NBC's Dateline program is in the making. Others are involved in pressuring the Society to drop its disgusting policy on blood transfusions. Others are involved in research that exposes the Watchtower's dishonesty in just about everything it touches.
You point out that JWs are among the nicest people around. Well I have news for you: that's true of everyone else, too. Furthermore, those nice JWs will turn around and rip you open if you give a hint of criticizing the JW organization, and they will shun their closest friends and relatives. Do try to understand that an organization that can make a mother turn against daughter, son against father, brother against sister, merely because of insignificant differences of religious opinion, is a cult -- bigtime. You might not have experience that for any number of reasons, but others have.
Do you realize that today, THE litmus test for whether JWs will have anything to do with people who leave is their attitude towards "the faithful and discreet slave"? JWs in general will barely tolerate someone who waffles about it; they will actively shun or even act against someone who explicitly criticizes the doctrine. Again, this shunning is a direct mark of a cult mentality.
Your arrogance is partly in assuming that you, by observing a few comments in a few threads for a few days on just one discussion board, can generalize to the extent that you have. This particular board is just a drop in the bucket.
Your arrogance is also displayed when you "laugh" at posters. Your naivete in this is stunning, and shows the impetuousness and callowness of youth. Your reference to this discussion board as a "new cult" is too stupid for words and shows that, if you want to produce a decent research paper, you have a long way to go.
It's admirable that you posted a sort of apology, but for it to hold water, you'll have to remove that incredibly stupid signature.
Now, if you'd like to see some proof that JWs are a true cult, I can refer you to several books and essays. You might even find some fodder for your research paper.
AlanF
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Blood, The Watchtower and Deceit
by Maximus inwhile much attention is given to doctrine in sites such as this, very little is noted about the watchtower societys intellectual dishonesty in its publications, especially when it comes to quotations.. oftentimes the societys writers will cite a scholar or author of some repute: "professor blank observes that blah, blah, blah.
" the reader assumes from the quotation that professor blank is in agreement with the organizations position, of course, and that the quotation chosen accurately depicts the authors thoughts.. heres the catch: the words between the quotation marks may be accurate, but the snippet may not at all faithfully represent someones actual thesis or position.
much like a newspaper ad for a movie that quotes a reviewer as saying "monumental!
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AlanF
Excellent presentations from Maximus and Marvin!
This illustrates something I discovered upon delving deep into JW literature and 'reasoning': the deeper you go the more deception you find. The originators of the deception -- people like Fred Franz, Fred Rusk and Harry Peloyan -- depend on their subordinates not to recheck their research, and so the deceptions propagate. When the deceptions are ultimately brought to light, the people who have wittingly or unwittingly participated in them are always too arrogant in their cocksureness that God is backing them to admit their errors. Thus, what might even have been a simple mistake at first, becomes a deliberate lie, because the Society's men knowingly propagate it.
AlanF