Posts by james

19

Is China just Satan's home and his people?

by free2beme in

jw
friends

i remember being told that the end would not come until everyone has had a chance to hear god's message.

yet as we know, the witnesses have not been able to get into china with any real organized movement.

for a long time, we expected some amazing change to happen there, much like we saw when the soviet union fell.

james_woods

I once heard a Circuit Overseer make the over-the-top observation that the scripture should be interpreted to mean the good news would be preached in "each nation" but not necessarily to "each person". This would absolve them of collective guilt in places like Red China.

He also went on to say that there were probably people even in the United States that had never personally been contacted, but that was OK because of the above rule.

His main point was that the big A could come ahead and happen in 1975, even if we had obviously never covered China, North VietNam, North Korea, most of USSR, and many others.

And then concluded it all with the time-honored "Jehovah knows what is in their hearts, of course". Some of the more irreverant younger guys asked one another "OK, so what is the point of MAKING US do all this door to door time, if he knows peoples hearts, already?"

28

DC in Ireland: Warning about groups of bros who want to modernise the WT

by truthseeker in

jw
friends

.

i just heard this from someone who attended a district convention in ireland.. the brother told me that the speaker said that there were brothers forming groups to try and modernise the watchtower society.

has anyone heard anything like this in the usa?

james_woods

Don't forget the Ray Franz issue with chronology and the 607 date. He started out hoping for honest reform.

And, the ridiculous situation where a majority of the Governing Body wanted a reform issue validated, but they couldn't make the 2/3 quorum because of a few stubborn old farts...didn't people go to prison and get severely persecuted for that issue?

As to the 1914; yes, if it is ever admitted that this was not the second coming, then all things WT fall down intellectually. However, this organization does not operate on intellectual honesty. It is a control cult and most of the members today probably could not even give you a decent history of what 1874/1914 and so on actually meant over the years.

I think anybody for honest reform gets booted - even if they are a Governing Body member in good standing. Let alone some individual elders...

27

Did you think that you knew more ?

by A Paduan in

.

as a jw, were you convinced that you knew more theologically than "those in christendom", yet hadn't really even read the bible ?

more than say, a monk who over a thousand years ago hand wrote one, and read it everyday ?

james_woods

Good quote to remember this little bit of bible pride:

Sure, had the books of the Bible memorized, the order I mean. Was a Bible expert.

I remember how this was almost a stated requirement for all the young kids before baptizm. Also, how there was a sort of foolish race to see who could look up the scripture the fastest when the conductor asked for someone to read a verse. We got a lot of practise, what with the way they loved to jump all around and just read one verse, or even a part, and then jump somewhere else.

Got the Bible Pride wind taken out of my sails when a Church of Christ college professor told me how I pronounced and applied "parousia" was probably wrong. Also when he challenged me to research up the reasons for sticking "Jehovah" all through the Greek testament.

James

21

why won't witnesses use tv or radio?

by moomanchu in

the radio was used extensively in the 1920's and 1930's.

by 1933 the society was using 403 radio stations to broadcast bible lectures.

later, the use of the radio was largely replaced by increased house-to-house visits by witnesses with portable phonographs and recorded bible talks.

james_woods

There was a JW-produced 30-min TV show in the 1960's. There was also a taped radio version of it. I remember that it was my job to try to take the tape around to the radio stations and try to get them to play it.

One DJ guy that I knew from flying told me "off the record" that this program was so primitive a self-promotion that it was an embarrassment. He was of the opinion that religious broadcasts on their station needed to have at least a veneer of "community benefit".

The TV program was also a torture to watch, even though we were JWs.

I think this kind of thing is sporadically repeated, but they never had the media sophistication to carry it off.

James

60

What did the Watchtower Soceity REALLY say about 1975?

by Elsewhere in

jw
friends

well, read for yourself!.

click here to download the oct 8th, 1968 awake!

magazine that talks about the year 1975.

james_woods

And is it not worth mentioning the silly and phony little abandonment of the 7000 year creative day idea?

As near as I can make it out, the 6000 years of man's existence + 1000 year rule of Christ only adds up if you start with 7000...which WTS apparantly does not teach anymore. "Several" thousand, not "Seven" thousand.

And, come to think of it - I never even understood where they got that 7000 year creative day theory from in the first place. Yeah - so a day with YHWH is 1000 years; but how did that get transmuted into "seven thousand"?

Of course, new light may come at any moment.

60

What did the Watchtower Soceity REALLY say about 1975?

by Elsewhere in

jw
friends

well, read for yourself!.

click here to download the oct 8th, 1968 awake!

magazine that talks about the year 1975.

james_woods

Well, of course we have to remember that Adam lived over 900 years. So, it would be reasonable to assume that he could very well have been hangin around with Lilith (the WitchWoman that the demons provided before the gift of Eve) probably for maybe 40 years or so. His own personal midlife crazy may not have happened until he was about 450 or so.

This kind of reasoning would make it possible to bring back the "generation" of 1914 and still have your 1975 cake and eat it too.

I have always pictured Lilith as a super-hot brunette who went on to be an assistant DA on Law & Order, but Eve as sort of an over-the-hill and over-the-weight blonde like an ageing Brittany Spears...

Did they actually print this stuff about Eve's creation? I think they did, but for sure this was talked up at all the assemblies and by the circuit and district overseers of the day.

3

An ironic 1975 blast from the past...

by james_woods in

we had a thread yesterday on the 1975 lies...so, what should i find last night in some old papers?.

the background: my manager asked me to go back into some old software architecture i had done for the company about ten years ago, and so i dug up the big old fat loose-leaf binder with the state diagrams, the object model, etc.etc.. right there in the front of it was this: issue #1, september 1975, of byte magazine.

inside the front cover was the business card of h. edward roberts, president of mits.

james_woods

It is OK to be snidey, crumpet... as long as you are not a whiplash!

With apologies to Dudley Do-Right, famous mountie of the Royal Canadian Police.

3

An ironic 1975 blast from the past...

by james_woods in

we had a thread yesterday on the 1975 lies...so, what should i find last night in some old papers?.

the background: my manager asked me to go back into some old software architecture i had done for the company about ten years ago, and so i dug up the big old fat loose-leaf binder with the state diagrams, the object model, etc.etc.. right there in the front of it was this: issue #1, september 1975, of byte magazine.

inside the front cover was the business card of h. edward roberts, president of mits.

james_woods

We had a thread yesterday on the 1975 lies...so, what should I find last night in some old papers?

The background: my manager asked me to go back into some old software architecture I had done for the company about ten years ago, and so I dug up the big old fat loose-leaf binder with the state diagrams, the object model, etc.etc.

Right there in the front of it was this: Issue #1, September 1975, of Byte magazine. Inside the front cover was the business card of H. Edward Roberts, president of MITS. I had these there to show the small team of engineers ten years ago when we kicked off our (Gateway) project.

Ed Roberts was the creator of the Altair 8800 microcomputer. I met him at a promotional event that September he was doing for the Altair computer kit. My Altair was one of the very early models and was probably about the second or third in Oklahoma City. The guys that wrote that Basic interpreter for the Altair were Bill Gates and Paul Allen. I learned to program machine language from that computer kit. Some may remember Ed from that educational TV program "revenge of the nerds" about the PC industry. He later went back to practise medicine as a good simple old country doctor, while Gates and Allen became multimillionaires.

My point is this: At the exact time frame while Ed created the personal computer industry, and Gates and Allen were planting the seeds of Microsoft, and this poster was at the point of learning something which would allow him to have a career not involved with the cleaning of toilets...

What was the Watchtower Society doing and writing? As usual, prophecy of the immediate end of the world...and cooking up the cover story to follow when nothing happened.

So, who was the true prophet? (and who was the false one?)... In my books, old Ed Roberts rang true, and Franz and the WT were the phonies. It is sad to think that so many current witnesses do not know this or cannot remember it about their own history - 1975 now being so long ago.

James - (of the I have really soldered all those 100 control wires together and clicked all those toggle switches up and down class).

15

WTS keeps number of memorial partakers secret

by headmath in

the wts at times prefers to not publish the memorial partaker numbers for certain years.

the wts knows what the actual numbers are as can be seen in this quote from the "babylon (booboolon) the great has fallen " book.

quote.

james_woods

The really incredible thing about "great crowd" is simply that witnesses have picked and chosen this stupid two-class 144000 doctrine out of all the raving lunatic Rutherford crap from the early thirties. And held on to just that one little piece of it.

If Rutherford was right about the 144000, and it was so sacrosanct as to be preserved to this day, then how in the hell did he get it wrong about Beth-Sarim, the princes of the earth, 1925, Hitler, the Catholic Church, and all the rest of the stuff that they put out into the morning trash?

Disgusting.

15

WTS keeps number of memorial partakers secret

by headmath in

the wts at times prefers to not publish the memorial partaker numbers for certain years.

the wts knows what the actual numbers are as can be seen in this quote from the "babylon (booboolon) the great has fallen " book.

quote.

james_woods

Leolai, pardon the ignorance - (you seem to have some authority on this subject) but -

Don't a lot of the mainstream evangelicals associate the 144,000 with the special status of martyrs within the church?

And, how does that nonsense of Daniel and the other Judges of old getting brought back to earth in the 20s and 30s fit in?

james_woods

Posts by james_woods