i've got $500.00 on taylor hicks to win american idol.
at 10 to one odds ( pinnacle sports ) !
normally i'm not a gambling man.
I like Katherine McPhee, but I don't think she'll win. I think Chris Daughtry is the fave at the mo' but I can't think of anything america needs less than an MOR rockband reject doing covers of NIN & Nirvana songs.
I was surprised that Gideon got voted off too. I thought he had a lot of talent.. but then I think his over self-confidence put people off a bit.
I'll be happy if Kelly Pickler wins cos she seems like a sweet kid.
while you were jws, when the wts was saying that in a soon to come armageddon all non jws were to be exterminated, that was hard to stomach by many especially concerning innocent children.
however did that make you feel very anxious about the killing of close non jw relatives, parents, brothers, children etc and their eternal loss?
did that make you work extra hard to bring them in?
Yes I did worry about relatives dying at armageddon. Just like I now worry about my JW relatives dying in ignorance.
the dubs condem all other denominations professing faith in christ as apostates.
they teach that christendom will suffer destruction as a part of babylon the great by the hands of god.. however, here is the thing.
my recent findings suggest jehovah witness falsely interpret and bend scriptures out of context more than any other religion i have come in to contact with.
A friend I used to work with was a mormom and their teachings were pretty far out! They did seem to have a good social life though and the religion was pragmatic about most secular subjects like education, careers etc.
The JW's are more sinister imo. Their teachings aren't wacky on the face of it, in fact they're designed to be appealing, but beneath the surface they're controlling and devious.
I haven't taken a count but I bet there are more web sites like this one to help ex-JW's than for any other denomination cos the JW lies and dogma impact on every part of your life.
i'm sure this will have been discussed before..but i am new here, so i was wondering how many of you when you where active jw's actually beleived you were going to survive armageddon.
i personally being brought up in the 'truth' used to lie in bed frightened of it coming or world events always thinking i was too bad a person to survive, and even as an adult i always felt i was never doing enough or good enough to be 'chosen' for survival when the end came u were always made to feel like you should be doing more as though you could earn your salvation.
i have talked to someone else who i know has left and they felt the same, i was wondering how many of you guys actually beleived you would make it through armageddon
I thought I had a good chance of surviving armageddon cos I was a bit of a goody2shoes JW. I always had doubts though cos I was never sure what the benchmark was or if I was doing enough, like you mentioned.
Funnily enough I always hated the artists impression of the new world in the WTS publications. I never thought I'd like to be in a place like that with your wooden house in 2 acres of land living like a country hick, ignorant of science, philosophy, art etc. I knew a few bros who thought cars, telephones, tv etc might make it through armageddon. While they were clinging to the new world hope they didn't want to let go of 6000 years of civilisation and learning.
meeting survival guide games we play
one doesn't grow up religiously attending '5 meetings a week' without developing a strategy for survival.
mine started at about ten years of age and gradually grew more sophisticated as the years assemblies rolled by.
I remember when I was little to pass the time on I used to pretend my hands were two spiders and make them crawl down my legs and then fight!
No wonder I got slapped on the head for doing it.
I used to go chair caving by sliding off my chair onto the floor and crawling under the chairs as far as I could before I was spotted. I had to quit this when I was 22 cos I was getting strange looks.
Me and my brother also used to do caricatures of people in the cong. My bro is a superb artist and some of his drawings were so funny I felt I was gonna burst and had to run out to the toilet to laugh.
Putting people off when they were on the platform was a good one too like unclebruce mentioned. We used to bend down and put polo mints in our eyes and then look up and pull a stupid face.
thirty years a watchtower slave, by william schnell, was publishied in the mid 1950s, and is still in print.
.
however, the version currently available is an abridged version of the book.. so one might wonder what was cut or removed from the orignial, and also why was it removed?.
Looking at the number of pages of the abridged version there's 214. My copy doesn't say abridged and has 224 pages but it's the same publisher, Baker Books, and it's the same size and I assume the same format. Mmm 10 pages missing...
Having said that I was a bit disappointed by the book and I can't imagine what could be so inflammatory in it as to warrant being removed. There were some interesting passages but it doesn't compare with CoC.
my husband mentioned to me this morning that he was glad i had this resource and some support to help me through this.
he also made the comment: can you imagine trying to leave without the internet?
that got me thinking, it is hard now, how much harder was it back then, before the internet.
I don't think I could have properly left without the internet and sites like this one and freeminds etc. I had already started the fade before I researched on the internet but it was a one foot in the org & one out sort of thing. The stuff I found out subsequently on the web put the tin lid on it so to speak and made sure which side of the fence I was standing. Knowledge is the key to freedom.
okay, this is even confusing for me, so please try to bear with me.. i am working on a "presentation" to give to a jw family member to defend myself when the fade comes up.
i want it to be something that will make them think and this is what i have come up with.. this person believes in the whole 1914 chronology bible prophecy crap and can't believe this isn't the truth when they are so right about the date.
but i see a flaw with the way it was calculated and i need input to tell me whether i'm cracked or this might really work- get him to think.. according to the wts, "in prophecy, a year averages 360 days, or 12 months of 30 days each... so the kings "seven times," or seven years, were 360 days multiplied by 7, or 2,520 days.
I know what you're saying with the calculations but I think the problem lies in that when the WTS calculate the prophecy once they get to 2,520 years after the day for a year stuff they don't break down that figure any further. 2,520 years is the final figure to count forward from 607 regardless of how many days are in those years.
I'd say to them that trying to divine dates from ancient texts, including the bible, is defined as occultism.
i have not read the other posts yet.
i'm assuming, before reading, that this an anti-jehovah's witness site.
i would just like to make a couple of points, and would be interested in responses to them.
I would post a reply to your evidence but you haven't provided any. The only evidence you have given is evidence of your own faith in the scriptures and of God establishing theoctratic rule on earth.
Also if it's the same statement I heard recently by a prominent clergyman the context in which he said he didn't advocate a theocracy was that he didn't advocate men setting up a theocracy on behalf of God.
bart began as a fundamentalist like ourselves but in time his studious nature led him to critical bible scholarship.
his books are viewed as authoritative.
in an interesting interview he recounts this transformation and hints that he has finally left the conviction that there ever was a historical jesus, or that personage/s whose lives are reflected in certain episodes in the legend served merely as sources for the jesus character.
His experience is very much like Joseph Wheless, an ex-minister, who lost his faith in the bible after indepth study of it. He wrote his book 'Is It God's Word?' early last century and it was banned for quite a few decades. If you've got an ebook reader you can get it here http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ataru/ebooks.htm
Most of the authors like Ehrman have trod ground already furrowed by Wheless. Writings by Robert Ingersoll are also excellent, especially considering the time they were written.
