first off, i'd like to state that i currently have "privileges" in the congregation and volunteer at bethel on and off throughout the year.
that's as much information as i will currently give about myself.. starting off, i think something big is coming in the form of lawsuits and bad pr.
they seem to be batting down the hatches in preparation for something the last few years and even more so the last few months.
Cannot happen, unless there is a complete change of business model.
Interesting. I wonder where that line is set. What if they were to set suggested donation amounts? Seems like mainstream churches get away with "suggesting" their members give them ten percent. Admittedly, I'm not an expert in 501(c)(3) organizations.
first off, i'd like to state that i currently have "privileges" in the congregation and volunteer at bethel on and off throughout the year.
that's as much information as i will currently give about myself.. starting off, i think something big is coming in the form of lawsuits and bad pr.
they seem to be batting down the hatches in preparation for something the last few years and even more so the last few months.
The wildcard in all of this is the following:
If things get dire enough, do they accept having a tax imposed on them and go back to charging for everything, a quarter for digital downloads, a dollar per magazine, etc.?
Seems like a lot of their money woes were self-inflicted. Revenues plummeted after they went to the donation-only model.
first off, i'd like to state that i currently have "privileges" in the congregation and volunteer at bethel on and off throughout the year.
that's as much information as i will currently give about myself.. starting off, i think something big is coming in the form of lawsuits and bad pr.
they seem to be batting down the hatches in preparation for something the last few years and even more so the last few months.
They believe their own BS. If the top hand guys actually believed their own BS, that Jah would provide, the end was so close, that their was going to be huge growth at Jah's hand, they are in deep, deep trouble. It could be panic mode up there. People's heads spinning as to how their financials are falling apart, how Jah hasn't stepped in. They could have made huge financial decisions based on their interpretation of the bible. They are a doomsday cult, they could have been heavily invested in OIL or Gold thinking currency would die or that oil would always go up because of greed and other things. Who knows what big decisions they made based off of their interpretation of scriptures.
This point cannot be overstated.
a good source just just told me that at morning worship today that the governing body announced that a total of 1600 bethelites will be let get go and not transferred to warwich when the last property is sold in brooklyn and all kingdom hall building projects are on hold for at least a year so that all the focus will be on the preaching work.
Did people donate more back then?
They just charged for everything back then. The food was for sale. The literature was for sale. The donation-only arrangement ate into the bottom line tremendously.
a good source just just told me that at morning worship today that the governing body announced that a total of 1600 bethelites will be let get go and not transferred to warwich when the last property is sold in brooklyn and all kingdom hall building projects are on hold for at least a year so that all the focus will be on the preaching work.
I feel bad for most of the people who'll be laid off. Many of them sacrificed a lot in service of what they sincerely felt was right.
However, one of the most arrogant people I know is a Bethel elder who gets sent to conventions to give talks. I knew him 20 years ago before he ever went to Bethel. I won't feel sorry for him at all if he doesn't make the cut. He can go to hell.
...in the jwtalk thread covering the september broadcast re: "generation".. http://jwtalk.net/forums/topic/22665-september-broadcast/page-5.
poor neil, he comes on this forum, he gets hammered.. goes on the virulently pro-jw forum, gets hammered.. you'd almost think he was a troll.....no, couldn't be..... .
His repeated use of his "celebrated Watchtower scholars" catchphrase indicates his intent is, at least in part, to troll.
Seriously, even if he believes his own reasoning, who talks that way in real life?
yes, i have returned.. a short recap of major events since my inactivity began: i finally revealed to my parents that i do not believe the same thing they believe in (after i was caught smooching my girlfriend by a family of good-for-nothing pieces of human feces), and of course they view themselves as failed parents who were unable to brainwash their children.
that is, of course, the reason why they are much more controlling over what i do in my life now (my mom even tried having a "bible study" with me).
i told them everything and i was unable to dent their jw imposed mind force field, while also exposing a clear jw misunderstanding of probability, evolution, history, logic/reason, and the big bang theory.. in a conversation i had with my mother a few weeks back (i also heard this rumor before, but my mother told me it again), she mentioned how the un held a summit of all religions and when the jws presented themselves and mentioned their preaching work warning of the coming un ban on religion (referring to an international organization who can't even prevent genocide, much less impose human rights), a un official came up to the jw who presented the cult and told him to "speed up the preaching work", because they plan on doing the ban soon.. it saddens me to think of how ignorant jws are in relation to the principles upon which the un was founded and being unaware that the un at least has some sense as to not ban religion, but this rumor, as ridiculous as it is, needs to be put at rest.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aau_btbn7s
I never studied physics much in depth in when I was in school, but I've read a lot on the subject over the years. Relativity is fascinating in ways that my mind can't fully comprehend.
For instance, since space and time are intertwined, if you could somehow catch a ride on a photon of light and travel at light speed, you could travel the length of the universe and it would seem instantaneous to you, but to an observer on Earth billions of years would have passed.
Time and distances aren't fixed quantities but can vary based on motion. Weird yet fascinating stuff.
so, here i am again....asking more questions to help me understand my wife.
she was brought up in the cult in the 70's and 80's.
so i can only imagine what kind of indoctrination she deals with.
that interesting, did the BORG push that alot in the 70's and 80's?
My mother had us read an Awake! published in the early 80s that described a woman's supposed ordeal with a particular demon that stalked and killed her family members one by one. I remember the descriptions quite vividly. The demon left her alone, of course, once she discovered "the truth" and learned all about Jehovah.
It was like showing a child The Exorcist and telling him it was real.
evening folks, so as some of you may know we have recently decided to leave the witnesses and can see it for the man made organisation it is.
so, why do i get the urge to go back and feel guilty for not being there!
it's like my mind is telling me to be logical about it all but then something keeps pulling me back.. don't get me wrong i really want to break free from it all and i'm resisting the urge to go back as i have been miserable in the truth for a long time as i've known it's not right and want to do the best by my daughter.
The programming runs deep, much deeper that we imagine.
After I found this website and did online research I knew I would never go back. Yet every time I broke a new rule, I'd feel immensely guilty, the kind of guilt that wakes you up at night. The first time I got drunk, the first time I smoked marijuana, the first time I had sex, each of those instances was followed by feelings of incredible guilt even though I no longer believed in the Witnesses. It was programming pure and simple and I knew it, but it didn't make the feelings any less real.
Eight years after I left the Witnesses I found myself on a business trip in a foreign country. We went to dinner and my boss wanted to order blood sausage. Even though it'd been eight years since I left the Witnesses an unsettling sense of panic came over me. After all that time the indoctrination was still there.
As others have mentioned, it gets better with time, but there's a very real re-wiring of the brain process that takes place at a physiological level that's simply part of unplugging from the Watchtower.
Best of luck to you.
