I’ve been at an assembly where there were no baptisms at all. They gave the baptism talk anyway. Automatons.
slimboyfat
JoinedPosts by slimboyfat
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53
What`s the reason some of you think JW`s are in decline ?
by smiddy3 infrom what i can see no such thing is happening.i became a jw in 1960 and remained for about 30 years and the numbers of active jw`s today in the world are far greater than they were back then.. and here in australia the numbers are much higher than they were back then .. so i don`t see that their in decline or have any worries about losing support .. don`t the numbers speak for themselves ?.
is it just wishful thinking on your part ?.
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53
What`s the reason some of you think JW`s are in decline ?
by smiddy3 infrom what i can see no such thing is happening.i became a jw in 1960 and remained for about 30 years and the numbers of active jw`s today in the world are far greater than they were back then.. and here in australia the numbers are much higher than they were back then .. so i don`t see that their in decline or have any worries about losing support .. don`t the numbers speak for themselves ?.
is it just wishful thinking on your part ?.
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slimboyfat
In 20 years it will be gone. I've noticed young couples are not having children
It takes a long, long time for churches to die out completely. The Methodist church in the UK began declining in the 1930s and has been declining steeply ever since. Even so they will likely not die out completely until the 2040s. That’s over a hundred years of steady decline before they will close their doors entirely. JWs on the other hand have not even begun to decline yet.
This is a graph of Methodist growth and decline over a 300 year period.
https://churchmodel.org.uk/2016/11/16/the-rise-and-decline-of-british-methodism/
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What`s the reason some of you think JW`s are in decline ?
by smiddy3 infrom what i can see no such thing is happening.i became a jw in 1960 and remained for about 30 years and the numbers of active jw`s today in the world are far greater than they were back then.. and here in australia the numbers are much higher than they were back then .. so i don`t see that their in decline or have any worries about losing support .. don`t the numbers speak for themselves ?.
is it just wishful thinking on your part ?.
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slimboyfat
In the UK JW numbers have fluctuated around 120,000 to 140,000 for the past 30 years. They are neither growing nor declining to any great extent. But this is in contrast with the vast majority of other churches that are in steep decline. The Church of England, Church of Scotland, and the Methodist church have all declined by well over 50% in that same period.
I thought JWs would decline after the generation teaching was dropped in 1995, and after the Internet became mainstream and ubiquitous around 2000, but it never happened. But I don’t think JWs can defy gravity forever: the same trend of secularisation that affects all other churches will eventually come to them also. That’s barring major word events such as world war, deadly plague, technological upheaval, or the like, which could disrupt long term secularisation trends unpredictably.
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It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars
by Newly Enlightened inoriginal reddit post (removed).
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slimboyfat
What a disgusting little rat. He claims Kim told “many, many lies” about him. The only “lies” he’s ever actually been specific about is his obnoxious quibble about whether visiting prostitutes every couple of months meets the definition of “regular”, and whether it is fair to point to publicly available revenue figures as an indication of income. It is beyond pathetic to claim that these are in any way relevant to the central concerns people, including survivors, have about his behaviour. If he really needs anyone to spell out the connection between using sex workers in Thailand and his so-called advocacy for abuse survivors then he needs his head examined to put it politely. I don’t think he is genuinely asking for an ‘explanation’, he just enjoys demanding an ‘explanation’ out of someone who is a survivor. She doesn’t owe him any kind of explanation at all. And again with all the talk of ‘bullying’ and his ‘mental health’ as if he is some sort of victim. The nerve of this freak is just sickening. When you think the bottom of the barrel has been scraped he scrapes deeper.
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The Org. covering up the SHUNNING POLICY !!
by Phizzy inhttps://avoidjw.org/news/jehovahs-witnesses-mysteriously-deleted-shunning-videos/?fbclid=iwar3jjfsa3zx-4kxrdtjwopmzty-5wxhrxm1-gvjtp9j20ovqfpxh.
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slimboyfat
If her mother phoned upset , begged her to answer , how did she know that it was not a bona fide emergency?
If a relative is crying and pleading for an answer I would argue that is by definition an emergency. I simply can’t understand what is going through the heads of the people producing these videos.
And then you get the Watchtower lawyer in Canada who claimed that family life is not impacted. I just can’t understand how they care barefaced lie like this. Either they should stand by the so-called “principle” of shunning, or they should abandon it. This trying to have it both ways reflects really badly on them.
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"Jehovah" In The New Testament.
by LostintheFog1999 ini see they have updated their list of translations or versions where some form of yhwh or jhvh appears in the new testament.. https://www.jw.org/en/library/bible/study-bible/appendix-c/divine-name-new-testament-2/.
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slimboyfat
The removal of the divine name from the New Testament confused the identities of the Lord God and the Lord Jesus and paved the way for the later Trinity doctrine.
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For those following the JW headquarters reaction to the UK documentary - Rebekah Vardy: Jehovah's Witnesses and Me
by jwleaks inin addition to the jws false and misleading denial that rebekah vardy was ever a jehovah's witness, a few other interesting developments occurred that are worth noting:.
1. an article in the last days newsletter reporting on how the jw[.
]org website scrubbed clean its jw 'news' page and produced an entire new glossary of jw terminally meaning for the media:.
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slimboyfat
The deleted videos have apparently been published on the ExJW Caleb channel. They are awful. But what is amazing is that Watchtower has recoiled from publishing them. Has the tide started to turn? Will they backtrack further on their shunning policies?
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Do you agree with this?
by vienne innew post to the history blog: https://truthhistory.blogspot.com/2023/05/typical-nonsense.html.
i agree that in the russell and rutherford eras there was little actual scriptural refutation.
fine!
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slimboyfat
I agree a lot of the attacks on Russell and Rutherford focussed on personality rather than theology. Because I’ve been reading church history, it reminds me of how Athanasius attacked the character of Arius, even implying that his untimely and ignominious death (possibly involving sudden gastrointestinal symptoms) was a divine, or at least just punishment. It has also been suggested Arius might have been poisoned.
I have the impression that Russell was generally a kind person who got on well with others. Hundreds of people turned out for his funeral and were genuinely upset, including apparently his ex-wife—despite their acrimonious divorce—who laid a flower on his coffin. People who knew him well, and those who met him only briefly, alike seem to have been left with favourable impressions.
Rutherford on the other hand seems to have been disliked with good reason. Even his allies tend to talk about him in terms of respect rather than affection. I think it’s possible that his experience of prison, and subsequent ill health in later years, made him a harsher person than he would otherwise have been. But plenty of people suffer adversity and still manage to treat people kindly. If there is any truth to the claims that he all but abandoned his wife and had affairs then that’s a whole other level of nastiness.
About the footnote, it sounds like it was better to stick to the scholarship, unless the criminal behaviour was directly relevant, but it’s hard to know without the full details of the situation.
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"Jehovah" In The New Testament.
by LostintheFog1999 ini see they have updated their list of translations or versions where some form of yhwh or jhvh appears in the new testament.. https://www.jw.org/en/library/bible/study-bible/appendix-c/divine-name-new-testament-2/.
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slimboyfat
John 17.25?
25Righteous Father! The world does not know you, but I know you, and these know that you sent me. (Good News Bible)
25 Righteous Father, the world has, indeed, not come to know you, but I know you, and these have come to know that you sent me. (NWT)
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JW Dogma Analysis For Lurkers & Faders to Consider
by The Fall Guy inthis post is necessarily lengthy, but my hope is that these 14 examples of wtbts dogma will be examined closely by those who either have something to gain by doing so, or those who can provide "new light" for any of the topics.. "however, you may say in your heart: “how will we know that jehovah has not spoken the word?” when the prophet speaks in the name of jehovah and the word is not....true, then jehovah did not speak that word.
you should not fear him.
" [the prophet] (deuteronomy 18:21-22) .
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slimboyfat
I wonder how steve2 is doing?