I "made a stand for the truth" is the most economical way of describing it. Anyone else in that position?
slimboyfat
JoinedPosts by slimboyfat
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18
How/when did you become a jehovas witness?
by Lewis1998 inso i've been a protestant for most of my life, it's how i was raised, but recently i started questioning my faith more and more and now i feel like my beliefs resemble that of a jehovas witness rather than a protestant.
i don't know any jehovas witnesses, so i was just wondering how a lot of you found the religion and adapted to it?.
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In memory of a lost doctrine - the vindication of Jehovah's name
by slimboyfat ini start this thread in response to a comment by a jw apologist called simonsays on another thread.
he claimed to have read all three volumes of vindication by rutherford (my sympathy if true).
he further implied that it didn't matter that old jw literature said wrong and stupid things, saying:.
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slimboyfat
Klein argued that Jehovah's name can't be "vindicated" because it has not been degraded. The new statement at the AGM is apparently a reversal of Klein's position which was published in the Watchtower from 1995 until (so it seems) 2017.
See the full history of the change here:
It's hard to overstate how important the "vindication" doctrine was to JWs at one time. It was their central message, motivation and focus. For example, for most Christians the main reason for Jesus coming to Earth was to save mankind. But for JWs the main reason Jesus came to Earth was to vindicate Jehovah's name. Saving mankind was said to be second place to the more important goal of vindication.
I wonder if "vindication" will return to its former prominence.
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The Watchtower's Real Crisis
by JeffT inwhen discussing the watchtowers financial problems, i've generally been of the opinion that they probably are not in a real financial crisis.
i've come to believe that money may be something of an issue, but its wrapped up in a much larger problem.
this came to me this morning when reading about the annual meeting.. i think the society's leadership is just plain out of ideas.
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slimboyfat
EyesOpen, publishing produced huge revenues for Watchtower until the 1990s. Broadcasting produces no revenue, all it does is cost money.
Saying that broadcasting has replaced publishing as Watchtower's business model is a bit like saying I've replaced my job at the factory with regular visits to the cafe during the afternoon instead. Pleasant while it lasts, no doubt, but it's not making any money, and the money will soon run out.
Interested to know when snipers like careful will show us, where's the beef?
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74
The Watchtower's Real Crisis
by JeffT inwhen discussing the watchtowers financial problems, i've generally been of the opinion that they probably are not in a real financial crisis.
i've come to believe that money may be something of an issue, but its wrapped up in a much larger problem.
this came to me this morning when reading about the annual meeting.. i think the society's leadership is just plain out of ideas.
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slimboyfat
Cessation of yearbooks is not a "non-happening", it shows an organisation in serious trouble.
Seriously I do wonder, how much evidence would it take to convince you?
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74
The Watchtower's Real Crisis
by JeffT inwhen discussing the watchtowers financial problems, i've generally been of the opinion that they probably are not in a real financial crisis.
i've come to believe that money may be something of an issue, but its wrapped up in a much larger problem.
this came to me this morning when reading about the annual meeting.. i think the society's leadership is just plain out of ideas.
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slimboyfat
Wow are you still a collapse denier? How much evidence will it take? They could sure use you on the (newly amalgamated for cost reasons) service/writing/teaching/propaganda committee at Watchtower. Comical Ali eat you heart out.
Like I said above, it's intriguing that some former JWs seem to share with Watchtower's staunchest defenders an unshakable belief in the organisation's invincibility - despite all evidence to the contrary.
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Do They Still do Door-to-Door as Much as Before?
by cofty insince the advent of the trolleys do the majority of jws still go door to door like we used to?.
do they still have meetings for field service on sat mornings and sun afternoons where most head off to the local territory while one or two go to do trolley work or has the importance of door to door work reduced?.
with the reduction of printing wts and awakes what will they offer at the doors?.
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slimboyfat
Logically they can't be doing as much door to door work as before. Because each congregation runs one or two carts for around 30 hours a week, two publishers on each. That's a lot of hours. And yet the overall hours reported has not increased by very much in recent years. So therefore that's a lot less hours spent on the doors.
Cart witnessing has been an absolute disaster from start to finish, because it's totally ineffective for making converts and totally demoralising as a JW. On top of that it's got a lot of JWs out of the habit of regular door to door preaching, which they may never return to.
It's just one small but significant part in the larger story of Watchtower's current crisis/collapse
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74
The Watchtower's Real Crisis
by JeffT inwhen discussing the watchtowers financial problems, i've generally been of the opinion that they probably are not in a real financial crisis.
i've come to believe that money may be something of an issue, but its wrapped up in a much larger problem.
this came to me this morning when reading about the annual meeting.. i think the society's leadership is just plain out of ideas.
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slimboyfat
Yes the parallel with Plymouth Brethen is interesting: rejection of the world, inward looking, shunning former members, and now giving up or demoting the significance of proselytism. The major difference is the closed brethren reject the Internet totally, last I heard.
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JW Rumor: End of the Traveling Overseer
by Edison Trent ina friend of mine has contacts to a family with several circuit overseers and special pioneers.
they have good connections to bethel.. he told me that the latest rumor from bethel states that the cos should be abolished in their present form.
they have also recently begun to take cos back to bethel.. over the same channel i have already heard of the car fleet program and that the dos should be abolished.. has anyone else already heard of it?
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slimboyfat
Maybe so. No news on this front so far anyway.
Have you inside info or is that a guess stilla?
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74
The Watchtower's Real Crisis
by JeffT inwhen discussing the watchtowers financial problems, i've generally been of the opinion that they probably are not in a real financial crisis.
i've come to believe that money may be something of an issue, but its wrapped up in a much larger problem.
this came to me this morning when reading about the annual meeting.. i think the society's leadership is just plain out of ideas.
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slimboyfat
If a business is changing direction it's normal/prudent to roll out the new business model before/during the process of cutting back the old operation. Otherwise you're in a limbo of expenditure with no revenue.
In Watchtower's case they have abandoned publishing and replaced it with nothing. The idea that they have something up their sleeve is pure speculation. It also seems to rest on a curiously naive notion of Watchtower invincibility that some Watchtower critics oddly seem to share with Watchtower's staunchest supporters.
Watchtower looks like they have run out of ideas and money. And sometimes what looks and sounds like a duck is in fact a duck. Watchtower is clearly in serious crisis. What more evidence do we need?
That's crisis in terms of finances, leadership, ideas, credibility: everything all at once. And it looks like no gentle landing either!
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74
The Watchtower's Real Crisis
by JeffT inwhen discussing the watchtowers financial problems, i've generally been of the opinion that they probably are not in a real financial crisis.
i've come to believe that money may be something of an issue, but its wrapped up in a much larger problem.
this came to me this morning when reading about the annual meeting.. i think the society's leadership is just plain out of ideas.
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slimboyfat
It's not either/or. They have run out of ideas and they have run out of money. The evidence is quite clear.
I think they're cutting back on magazines, not to save money, but because nobody can think of anything to put in them.
True, but they are also clearly extremely short of money and this is why they are not even printing the new content that they are still producing.
For example they produced a new Bible stories book this year, with new pictures and some new/reworked content. Yet having produced this new book they didn't even hand out copies at the convention. It is download only, unless publishers make a special request, in which case a copy will be sent "when available". This is clearly an issue to do with the cost of printing, because the writing and editing had already been done.
The fact that they've run out of ideas is demonstrated by the main "doctrinal" announcement of the meeting which was simply a return of the old "vindication of Jehovah's name", a teaching they were crazy to dump in the first place. And was only scrapped to keep Karl Klein happy, so the story goes.
Running out of money may be connected to running out of ideas in another important way. It's a well known facet of psychology that material difficulty adversely affects cognitive and creative abilities. In other words the stress of money trouble is probably occupying so much of their thoughts that it's difficult to focus on other things, such as producing coherent and interesting content for their literature.