It looks like the Watchtower “1914 generation”, by hook or by crook, will still be going strong long after I’m gone anyway
slimboyfat
JoinedPosts by slimboyfat
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slimboyfat
I don’t know how to reconcile the Watchtower statement that GB helpers are from the other sheep, with the fact that the two new appointees, who are described in the announcement as anointed, (plus Paul Gillies, also rumoured to partake) are listed as helpers in the Watchtower article. It appears to be a contradiction. 😮 -
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slimboyfat
The two new appointees were GB helpers listed on the website at the link I posted above. So that would seem to disprove the idea that none of the GB helpers are anointed.
Paul Gillies is also listed as a GB helper and also known to claim to be anointed. He’s probably disappointed he wasn’t selected to be on the GB and, since he’s quite a bit older than the new appointees, his opportunity has probably passed.
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slimboyfat
They were both GB helpers, listed here.
https://www.jw.org/en/jehovahs-witnesses/faq/governing-body-jw-helpers/
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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
Are the women he visits every couple of months using Patreon money enjoying life too?
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slimboyfat
Gage Fleegle is from the service department, the most common background of GB appointees, during, and since Ted Jaracz dominated that committee from the 1980s until he died in 2010.
Jeffrey Winder is from the personnel committee - I don’t recall anyone being appointed from that committee before.
They have avoided appointing people from the writing committee since the Ray Franz incident.
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slimboyfat
Herd and Lösch are the oldest and clearly struggling. Will the GB finally implement some kind of retirement policy? Some GB members probably do carry on duties until the day they die (Lloyd Barry certainly did since he died in the middle of giving a talk) but others move into care at some stage and the idea that they continue to function as part of GB is more fantasy than reality. So why not formalise the process and either implement a retirement age, or else encourage GB members to retire when they no longer feel able to continue.
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How do JWs know that millions who were martyred as Christians before the 20th century did not have the heavenly hope?
by Vanderhoven7 inas i understand it, jehovah’s witnesses believe less than 145,000 faithful christians existed prior to the twentieth century.
the other sheep christians did not start forming until after 1914. that means jehovah’s witnesses view millions martyred for their faith in christ prior to the 20th century as merely professed christians.. the question is…how do witnesses know that those millions who perished for their faith in christ were not christians at all?.
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slimboyfat
Are you sure that “millions” were martyred before the 20th century? Who counts as a martyr in this context and how are you counting them.
Scholar Candida Moss, for example, has argued that few early Christian’s were actually martyred and her argument has generally been well received.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Persecution
Current JW teaching, as I understand it, is that 1935 is no longer viewed as any kind of watershed, and both anointed and other sheep could have been selected at any time.
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What happened to Catholic church bashing.
by Hellothere ini remember back in the 80s almost every awake and watchtower magazine, think all, hade an article about how bad and evil catholic church was.
what happened to all the bashing?
was it because people in catholic countries got offended?
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slimboyfat
Franz’s parents were Protestants, and Franz was baptised in Lutheran church, but he attended a Catholic school at a young age and was surrounded by a German Catholic milieu in Cincinnati. Franz recalled corporal punishment and confession at the Catholic school. Following confession, Franz describes:
“I went down to the altar rail and kneeled there as a priest put a piece of bread in my mouth, thus serving me Communion as taught by the church, while reserving the wine for himself to drink later. This was the start of my formal religious training and my respect for God that would grow in the years to come.”
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Are the statistics out yet?
by slimboyfat inisn’t it about time they released the report for the service year?
or have they stopped publishing it?
did they released selected figures at the annual meeting as they usually do, such as the memorial attendance or record number of pioneers?
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slimboyfat
There is a difference because a lot of these independent churches have seceded from larger denominations. This is a fragmentation of the churches as part of their pattern of decline.
Say you start with a denominational church of 100. It declines by 30 and two groups of 20 each secede. Wow you’ve got two new churches with 20 members each. Such growth! In reality you’ve gone from 100 members in one church to one denominational church with 30, and two nondenominational churches with 20 members each - 70 members in total, still a decline of 30, just distributed differently.
The Tron Church makes a lot of noise about their ‘growth’ compared with the Church of Scotland. But I’ve been to a couple of their services. We are talking about a couple of hundred people, at most. Meanwhile the Church of Scotland as a whole is losing over 200 members a week.
If you’ve got examples of churches that are growing by attracting new members (not wholesale/block defections from another church) I’d be interested to know the details.