so apparently the new watchtower russia exhibition features a pretend cell for jws to take pretend "persecution selfies' and wallow in the glorious suffering that is essential for watchtower theology to work - yet is strikingly missing from the lives of 99% of witnesses.. in fact most governments go to great lengths to protect the rights of witnesses, spending millions in public funds either directly to watchtower - in the form of grants ( norway, germany etc) - in various types of tax relief, or in the money spent in court cases establishing watchtowers rights and freedoms (& protecting their kids, whether they know it or not).. i'm interested to know how everyone feels about this...particularly terry walstrom and other guys who have spent time in jail in the name of watchtower's freedom of conscience.
personally i think it reeks of desperation by watchtower and is another example of the type of fantasizing that witnesses regularly indulge in.. also....funny how the end is soooo close that they've had time to build a museum of watchtower history!!
anyone else see the irony in that?!
It's an odd one - just seems to be in bad taste. I think I would be a bit hacked off if I was a JW in South Korea , for example , imprisoned for refusing military service and seeing instagram shots of JWs pretending to be in prison and having a good laugh.
It just feeds into the same narrative including garish videos of SWAT squads and JWs huddled in bunkers that the Society tries to promote which is that JWs are hated by the world and under imminent threat of severe persecution etc.
2019-10-08 boe.
supporting the congregation as a pioneer.
https://docdro.id/sf2rkwx.
Thanks Atlantis. This brings back a few memories! I remember ( as a service overseer ) having to implement the "Pioneer Assistance Program". It was a total nightmare.
Pioneers hated it because they were very much into their routines and their cliques with the other pioneers and hated having a "tag along" that they were supposed to train. Most pioneers are pretty selfish as far as their ministry is concerned - the last thing they want is to be under an obligation to train somebody else.
Most of those being assisted hated it as well as they saw it as patronising and being singled out as "weak" etc. I remember that we had a few publishers who simply refused to go onto the program.
The whole scheme was a disaster and usually pairing arrangements broke down very quickly. Unfortunately the Society tried to keep the scheme going with occasional meeting items and COs had references in their outlines and in the pioneer meeting outline and would ask questions about how the program was going. It was a huge relief when the Society eventually stopped the whole program.
i have been looking for one and they go for a lot when i do find them.
to the tune of 200 bucks.
are they that rare?.
There are collectors , particularly in the USA , who pay big money for older Watchtower publications. I guess with Yearbooks - people are filling empty spots in their libraries.
matt 28: 19 is the year text.
new understanding on joel ch 2 who are the locusts?.
there is a new building addition to warwick in the works.
The building will house 1000 audiovisual and art production volunteers.
1000 - that just seems a huge number of "volunteers". Does it really take that many people , in addition to whom they already have , to produce the Societies videos? To what degree are they scaling up? A 24 hour JW TV station , or something?
I googled to see how many employees it takes to produce a Hollywood movie , which is vastly more sophisticated than JW dot org video output , and it seems to be approx 2,000 - 3,000 https://stephenfollows.com/how-many-people-work-on-a-hollywood-film/
https://www.thereminder.ca/news/local-news/new-home-under-construction-for-jehovah-s-witnesses-1.23964617.
flin flon, ca.
according to statistics supplied by jehovah’s witnesses canada, about 85 jehovah’s witnesses live in flin flon, with around 100 people coming to each of the group’s biweekly meetings.. “we needed a new hall because the congregation has outgrown the old hall,” said congregation elder kelly flodell in a press release..
About 85 Jehovah’s Witnesses live in Flin Flon, with around 100 people coming to each of the group’s biweekly meetings.
Is it just me , or does that figure sound suspiciously high. Usually attendances are about 70% - 80% of publishers , so a congregation that has 85 publishers would normally have perhaps 70 or so in attendance.
Are they talking about 85 baptised JWs ( ie excluding kids who are publishers but not baptised , the (very few ) unbaptised publishers who are studying etc )?
i am finally at the point in my life i no longer believe in the tales of the bible.
my husband feels for the most part that it too is stuff made up.
there are just a few things that he wants to get cleared up, and one of those being the story of adam and eve.
The "Atheists book of Bible Stories" is an excellent reference. Written by an ex-JW , he dissects some of the bible accounts ( including Adam & Eve )
Free PDF download here https://app.box.com/s/uclytd91jd
it actually took me a few years to finally leave the organization so i was mentally out for a while before i simply stopped all meetings altogether.. how long did it take you to finally make the break?
?.
Probably took 6 months or so - the process was drawn out because I have a lot of family as JWs ( including elderly parents ) and to go "cold turkey" & leave in a very short time period would have been difficult logistically.
I eventually came off as an elder & the plan was to stay and intermittently attend meetings for a few months and then fade completely but that step only took 6 weeks or so. I had always been involved in the meetings and invariably had an item ( or two ) every week and was the TMS overseer - I hadn't realised that the meetings are so boring and pointless when you aren't involved in any way and I just hated them & my kids didn't want to attend either. I went on a vacation abroad & decided while I was away to never go back.
for nearly two years i have not seen any jehovah's witnesses going door to door in my neighborhood.
that was not the case when my wife and i first moved here (north central oregon).
in fact, our neighborhood was visited at least once every 4 to 5 months - even in the coldest winter months.
One of our elders was one of the biggest ministry time wasters that I knew - he actually made our pioneers who had long mastered the "pioneer plod" look industrious - he was the type who would assign the territory ( eventually ) and then spend whole mornings driving around the territory making sure "everybody is OK" and basically using every dodge under the sun to knock on as few doors as humanly possible yet still count his time in full.
He had an evening insurance / loans door-to-door collection round and a couple of times he had car trouble so I drove him around in my car. What a contrast - he virtually would run from door to door - knocked loudly - no hanging about at all - shouted out directions to me & kept asking me to speed up. He wouldn't even stop for a take out coffee or toilet break ( the round took about 3 1/2 hours ). I couldn't help but think about the incredible contrast with his apathetic attitude to the "lifesaving work" and when he was doing something that actually was productive.
it’s interesting how i have actually passed so many people who teach gods bible.
from jw.
today i met diane and alesha, in manchester on my lunch hour, we talked for a good while about a number of topics and i was interested to know more.. i have no idea if i will ever meet them again, i showed alesha something i wrote about 9 years ago.. perhaps i may share it again.. we be nice to talk to people, and perhaps meet up in manchester uk for a coffee.
Hi John - there isn't really any official public forum that JWs use to talk to each other - JWs are generally discouraged by their leadership from forming or joining such groups. That's not to say that there are are a few that exist - https://jwtalk.net/ for example , but these tend to be heavily "policed" to stop ex JWs getting involved , so you might have trouble signing up.
You might want to do some general research before getting too involved ( JWs do kind of "love bomb" the ( very ) few people who show an interest - especially people who are lonely and don't have many friends ). Look at www.jwfacts.com for example.
For your information , JW is basically an American MLM style religious publishing / property development business. It is not dissimilar to the Mormons - a group of generally nice , sincere people who are very busy doing a lot of religious and other organisational activity thinking that this is "God's work" and controlled by a USA based group of men who are regarded as God's sole representatives on earth. Many view it as a cult - it certainly has a lot of the characteristics. Be careful.
i’ve struggled for some time with this question.
why would the elders, cos, branch committee, helpers to gb and the gb themselves devote their lives to progressing in the organization, if the whole thing is one big sham?
i have 3 ideas so far.. 1) money.
Ray Franz discussed this in his books. While the original poster is correct in saying there are other motivations , essentially the GB believe in it 100%. They have a belief system that is constantly confirmed and very rarely challenged. Franz coined the term "victims of victims".
