Geez does the WTS EVER just run with any standard secular dates or reasoning on anything?? Why do they always have to do every blardy little thing so different from everyone else? They must be the world's biggest contrarians.
Must obey!
JoinedPosts by Must obey!
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2008 Memorial...How will Brooklyn fix this MASSIVE blunder?
by A-Team in....brooklyn forgot that this year is a leap year in the hebrew calendar, and passover begins @ sundown on april 20th of 2008. now, will they fix this mistake, or come up with some crap excuse on why its not on nissan 14th this year?
either way, they are in a massive jam.
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144 000 blasted by the MATH (WT lying again)
by hamsterbait ini just took nathan natas chart for numbers of memorial partakers since 1935.. i worked out that on average 823 new partakers have been added every year since 1936, whilst on average 716 have been dying each year.. what is especially interesting, is that when the total of new partaker numbers almost exactly matches that given in w96 15/8 p31 for 1935, is in the year 1995 - they year they began to deliberately create the fog around the "generation" teaching.
(i used actual figures, not averages here).
i am now convinced that they have been paving the way for the feb 15 noolite since then.. i disregarded the figure for 1935 itself, since the witchtower gives two figures for partakers -.
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Must obey!
LOL John 10:30 doesn't simply state Jesus is God. Read the context for pity sake.
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are they saying jesus came back now or not......
by grewupJWnoselfesteem78-95 ini want to know if they have changed thier stance on weather jesus came back "invisibly" in 1914......?
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are they sticking to this or slowley distancing themselves from it................. for all you km insiders [please expand] .
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Must obey!
That's a great quote from the Proclaimers book Garrybuss, thanks. How totally farcical to pervert the meaning of "presence" to merely mean "turned his attention to the earth". Disgusting abuse of Jesus' words.
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Destroy any JW's faith that they are the only true religion in 5 easy steps
by Must obey! intry this on the next jw you meet:.
1. ask the jw what religious group jesus selected in 1919 to be his faithful and discreet slave organisation?
the jw will answer: "pastor russell & the bible students"good!!.
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Must obey!
You're not grasping the logic. As I've said, it is quite easy to show that C T Russell must have been an "evil slave" then if those slaves were already in operation while he was still alive because there are many quotes where Russell was ideologically opposed to most things Rutherford changed in the organisation. To think that Russell could have been an evil slave is anathema to every JW, and the point can have a powerful effect on their thinking.
No it won't work with every JW Drewsagan but it will work with some because it certainly has worked on some JW's I've used it on. After reasoning with one of my friends on all this he went away and did some research on the internet about the history of the organisatioin and is now inactive.
I've said enough on the subject. Most posters seem to want to nitpick and resist it. Oh well, if you never try it on JW's then that is your opportunity lost.
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Destroy any JW's faith that they are the only true religion in 5 easy steps
by Must obey! intry this on the next jw you meet:.
1. ask the jw what religious group jesus selected in 1919 to be his faithful and discreet slave organisation?
the jw will answer: "pastor russell & the bible students"good!!.
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Must obey!
Yes this does work best with those who already have some doubts, but it can cause doubts for those who aren't already doubting. And yes, its a matter of planting seeds. Its not a case of saying this reasoning "won't work" or it "definitely will". It can just be a powerful way of opening the door to their thinking, in my experience, and cause them to at least back off in being so smugly self-righteous about the org.
If the JW quibbles about 'new light' and the organisation of today having things more accurate than the bible students of 1919, then bring out how the Society has changed a lot since, say, the 1940's, for example, smoking was allowed back then and disfellowshipping was way more lenient and their was no blood policy and what were divorceable sex acts were different, etc. Then ask the JW "Was it Jehovah's organisation back in the 1940's"? Of course they will say yes. So all you have to do is ask them to apply the same perspective today and allow for the possibility that perhaps Jehovah is not very concerned about all these relatively minor errors so long as any group has got the main doctrines right? The JW may feel that only they have got the main doctrines right, but when they learn that there are still thousands of Bible Students who still believe JW's main doctrines, they often pause and think.....
If they want to hark on about Rutherford's reasons for branding the fallen away Bible Students as "evil slaves" then that leaves prime opportunity for you to analyse Rutherford's reasons and ask how could it be that tens of thousands of Bible Students, who the Society says were all anointed in 1919, suddenly turn from being the only approved Christians on planet earth into "evil slaves" in 15 short years or so. A reasonable minded JW (which most of my relatives and friends have been, thank goodness) can see this can seem rather unreasonable. Point out that if Russell had lived for a few more years and Rutherford had taken control, then Russell would undoubtedly have been one who would have left along with all the other tens of thousands of Bible Students? If the JW doesn't agree with this hypothetical proposition, then pull out some quotes of Russells was opposed to highly centralised control and the entire concept of "organisation", so he would have been opposed to Rutherford's new strict control and increasing ruthlessness. If you produce the exact quotes of Russell on this to make it clear that Russell would have been disturbed at the new direction Rutherford was taking.
If all else fails then pull out this trump card: If C T Russell was alive today he would be summarily disfellowshipped for apostasy! This point can really hit home with a JW who is already experiencing some doubts. At least in my experience.
Just a suggestion anyway. In my experience it is a waste of time trying to argue with JW's over their doctrines as a way of causing doubts...it is better to focus on the organisation and help them get a more balanced, objective perspective of it. This is one approach to do that.
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JW.. a Broke A$$ Loving People.
by Confucious injust telling it like it is.... so you have the mormons.. like there are a lot of rich mormons.
mitt romney being one of them.. then there's the scientology people.
yes... also an alternative religion like jw and mormons.. like there are tons of rich scientologists in tom cruise world.. and i know that in jw there are some wealthy people.. but i tell you, in jw the overall feel is that being poor is glorified.. my experience is there is a ton of descrimination in the organization.
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Must obey!
Good point about the good samaritan Confucious. Never thought of it like that. And along the same lines, the scriptures say that money can be like a protective wall, and that a person who does not look after his own properly is worse than a person without much. And there is the principle that Paul established that those with a surplus should be willing to share it with the needy. And Paul also worked and said he did not want to be a burden on others, financially. Some good principles come out there.
So yes the bible does encourage economic self sufficiency, as you note.
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Destroy any JW's faith that they are the only true religion in 5 easy steps
by Must obey! intry this on the next jw you meet:.
1. ask the jw what religious group jesus selected in 1919 to be his faithful and discreet slave organisation?
the jw will answer: "pastor russell & the bible students"good!!.
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Must obey!
Ah come on Alan I'm talking about the bible students from 1879 right through to 1919, which group Russell started & lead right until 1916. U honestly think a JW would quibble that I'm totally wrong cause Russell died in 1916, not 1919. How many JW's even know the year he died!
If it's completely "not the way to go" then please tell me what is? And tell me why has this seriously worked for me in the past and caused a number of JW's to back off from trying to get me to return to the org.
Yes, they will try and throw the "new light" thing at you, but they will go away pondering about it as long as you emphasize that all that must have mattered to Jesus is that they had the main doctrines correct, as still taught by JW's, because otherwise Jesus would not have selected the Bible Students in the first place. Remind them that they still celebrated Christmas, birthdays, used the cross, etc, but it didn't matter that much cause they had the main things right! So same with the Bible Students today. When they hear you say that they nod their head in understanding.
It's just a suggestion that's worked for me. I didn't say it was a silver bullet.
Can't believe how stingy with their comments some posters are.
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Could the widespread belief in God be evidence that he doesn't exist?
by DT infirst of all, i'm an agnostic and don't know if there is a god or not.
however, i do think it possible to intelligently review the evidence and come to some reasonable conclusions, even if we can't have absolute certainty.
it's a big topic, so i'll just discuss the main reason that many people believe in god.
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Must obey!
Why does everyone keep spelling THEIST wrong?
I completely understand why people struggle to believe in God because where has he been for thousands of years? Like the Dalai Lama said "If there is a God, he appears to be sleeping at the other end of the universe".
But at the same time the materialist/evolutionary explanations for the existence of matter and life are entirely unsatisfactory also.
Both require leaps of faith.
At the end of the day, there is some great mystery and answer to it all, and we are simply not in a position to answer it because we don't have all the jigsaw pieces yet. Atheism and biblical fundamentalism are both logically indefensible positions when you think about it, flip sides of the same arrogant and unreasonable coin.
It is ridiculous to say that the evidence says God doesn't exist Alltimejeff. That is just projecting the same kind of anthropomorphistic expectations onto what we imagine God must demonstrate or do for us to believe in him. It's a rather bratish attitude to reject a higher beings existence just because he hasn't been in our neck of the woods for a while. The irony of this attitude is that evolutionists are happy to accept countless millions of years for things to myseriously (and without any scientific proof) have "evolved" but they reject the idea of a Creator just because no one has seen any miracles for hundreds of years. Just because God is silent and hasn't performed miracles for millennia (if ever) doesn't mean he doesn't exist. Logically all we could reasonably say in such a situation is that the absence of direct revelatory proof of his existence for so long indicates that he doesn't seem to care or be interested in us at the present time (and for millennia), not that he absolutely doesn't exist. It's rather arrogant to demand that God must keep performing special miracles to prove to every sceptical generation that he exists, just as it's arrogant for fundamentalist Christians to expect us to believe God made everything in 7 literal days.
We just don't really know enough to say if there is a God or there isn't. My personal view is that the sheer mathematical improbability of life in all its abundance and variety having come about through blind chance indicates there most likely is some unfathomably powerful and stupendous design/mind behind it all, way beyond our comprehension. But apart from that, agnosticism/suspension of belief seems the only rational and reasonable explanation at this point in our search for the truth.
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JW.. a Broke A$$ Loving People.
by Confucious injust telling it like it is.... so you have the mormons.. like there are a lot of rich mormons.
mitt romney being one of them.. then there's the scientology people.
yes... also an alternative religion like jw and mormons.. like there are tons of rich scientologists in tom cruise world.. and i know that in jw there are some wealthy people.. but i tell you, in jw the overall feel is that being poor is glorified.. my experience is there is a ton of descrimination in the organization.
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Must obey!
Yes but Jesus practically 'glorified' poverty didn't he. The entire NT encourages living a simple life without love of money or riches.
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are they saying jesus came back now or not......
by grewupJWnoselfesteem78-95 ini want to know if they have changed thier stance on weather jesus came back "invisibly" in 1914......?
.
are they sticking to this or slowley distancing themselves from it................. for all you km insiders [please expand] .
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Must obey!
Dude, where did you get the idea they were ever moving away from this? They have made some changes recently about what the 'generation' is and they've abandoned the 1935 cut-off for new anointed ones, that's all. That's the best the Writing Department can come up in the last 10 years bwahaha. Nothing else has changed.