Good piont kenpo, very good point.
love from HM
in my life i have learned that in order to truly hate someone or even to hate something.
i have to spend so much time carrying around all the files of memories that give me the reason to fill that way.
i have to think about the person, the thing or the place.
Good piont kenpo, very good point.
love from HM
i find this on an jw site, its about the ub issu.. 1991, one of the legal corporations of the wts registered with the united nations as an ngo for the sole purpose of getting access to the extensive library of the united nations.
this enabled a writer who received an identification card, to enter the library, to enter the library for research purposes and to obtain information that has been used in writing articles in our journals about the united nations.
there was nothing secret about it.
I find this on an JW site, its about the Ub issu.
1991, one of the legal corporations of the WTS registered with the United Nations as an NGO for the sole purpose of getting access to the extensive library of the United Nations. This enabled a writer who received an identification card, to enter the library, to enter the library for research purposes and to obtain information that has been used in writing articles in our journals about the United Nations. There was nothing secret about it.
At the time of the initial application, no signature was required on the form. Years later, unbeknown to the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses, the United Nations published "Criteria for Association", stipulating that affiliated NGO's are required to support the goals of the UN.
After learning of the situation, our membership as NGO was withdrawn and the ID card was returned.
From a reader: The WT says that the UN is the unclean thing and its not to be touched.
Reply: That is not really true. The Bible and the WTS says that of Babylon the great, not the government (that is why the NWT cross-references 2 Cor 6:17 with Revelation 18). What the WTS has actually pooh-poohed is that the UN is mankinds last hope, or "God's kingdom on earth."
To defend other JW's, the Watchtower has also recently filed with the European Court, in order to protect our rights under the UN's Declaration of Human Rights. see http://www.jw-media.org/rights/european_court.htm
The original principles and goals expressed in the UN charter are: to maintain international peace and security; to suppress acts of aggression that threaten world peace; to encourage friendly relations among nations; to protect the fundamental freedoms of all peoples without discrimination based on race, sex, language, or religion; and to achieve international cooperation in solving economic, social, and cultural problems."
There isn't anything here which compromises our beliefs as Christians? Many JW's sign documents which state that we will protect the constitution or laws of the country he resides in, because there is no Christian conflict in protecting the stated principles of these governments.
God is going to use the UN to destroy false religion so why shouldn't we use it to promote religious freedom and human rights as long as we do not join it. We can promote it's "ideals" without promoting it as a replacement for God's Kingdom.
The Society has also stated:
"Registration papers filed with the United Nations that we have on file contain no statements that conflict with our Christian beliefs."
Additionally, the WTS has previously called the UN objectives "nobel." Also, there is no conflict between the WTS's purpose and the Charter's allowance for governments to take military action. The Bible clearly states that God himself has given these governments the authority to "carry the sword" and we do not deny that authority (Rom.13:4). At the same time God requires Christians to personally reject warfare. (Matt 26:52)
A 1994 UN brochure gives evidence to the fact that there was beginning to be a change in the official requirements for participation and an NGO. On page six we find this statement: "A new relationship between the UN and NGOs is now being created. We have seen this new relationship begin to mature. NGOs are taking on important new responsibilities."
Then we find the current Criteria for Association of NGOs describing the work of NGOs using language that Witnesses clearly cannot agree with; encouraging political participation, strengthening and support of the UN System etc. Also, in the latest NGO brochure we find that there was in fact an official change in the relationship and requirements of NGOs. (<http://www.un.org/MoreInfo/ngolink/brochure.htm>)
Quoting from the brochure:
"After three years of negotiation, ECOSOC reviewed its arrangements for consultation with NGOs in July 1996. One outcome was ECOSOC Resolution 1996/31, which revised the arrangements for NGO consultation with ECOSOC....A second outcome...Decision 1996/297, which recommended that the General Assembly examine, at it 51st session, the QUESTION OF THE PARTICIPATION OF NGOS IN ALL AREAS OF WORK OF THE UN...Subsequently, in the General Assembly Working Group looking into the STRENGTHENING OF THE UN SYSTEM a sub-group on NGOs was formed."
The above clearly confirms exactly what the WTS has said: That *after* they applied for NGO status there was a change in the language of the "Criteria for Association." When this was brought to their attention they *immediately* withdrew their participation.
In a nutshell: The WTS applied for a library card at the UN. After they had received this card, the requirements for holding this card changed, so they returned it. Everything was done properly, despite what our enemies say regarding the matter.
From a reader:
****There is [sic] any reason to get this library card to get access to the books because the UN has what is called Depository Library. In these places, you may found nearly all the books that you may found at the UN library. This libraries are around the world and what you need is a library card because these libraries are often found in public libraries or university libraries. But there is any political policy or other weird thing to apply for this library card.
Reply: Certainly, all the available information is not available at the depository libraries, contrary to some opposers claims. Looking closely, the WTS did not say that they registered as an NGO just to get a library card for the "main library." They also wanted to gain access to research material at the UN "library facilities" or the "extensive library of the UN." This library system includes more than just the Dag Hammarskjold library. It includes DPI photo, film and audio libraries, access to the NGO Resource Center which offers current UN documents, access to selected meetings, briefings, seminars, conferences, film screenings, and language courses. Are all these resources accesible with out an NGO pass? Probably not!
Why have access to the UN's public information anyways? JW's are often the brunt of violations of the UN's charter of Rights and Freedoms. According the Encyc;. Americana 2000, Jehovah's Witnesses have faced more persecution in the 20th Century than any other religious group, save the Jews. But when we take steps to protect our members, even this is demonized by those that hate us and make an issue out of all this. THIS IS ANOTHER FORM OF PERSECUTION. See:
Some comments??
i have been up watching saturday night fever, made in the year 1977. funny thing i noticed , the club that the tony(john travolta) dances at is called 2001 odessey.
i thought god , i was 10 or 11 when that movie came out.
i wanted to see it so bad, but good jw's would never see such a movie, the disco era right.
Gumby.
Well my dreams come trhu, when I find find a very nice and beautifull girl to married, have 3 boys 2 girls , even if some are giving mee grey hair I never want to be widhout them, I think it is very important that we see what we have, and not ponit at what we not have, like hunting ghosts.
If you want to be rich try the stockmarket Gumby, i did and los almost evrything, so what I learnd of this is se what you have, ant no twhat you dont have, and priciatie it.
Ofcourse when i read storys like Lyin eyes give abot her fadher I am very sorry, to bad widh peopel who doing such bad things, to there children , i tell her perhaps i can give him a letter from hes brother i sweden telling whats happen to hes girl, and thold him to read John cap.8.
.
http://www.davidicke.com/icke/index1a.html
this is a very disturbing site, some comments on this, is the man a nuts or has he something to say?
http://www.davidicke.com/icke/index1a.html
This is a very disturbing site, some comments on this, is the man a nuts or has he something to say?
the top ten evil
1. tomas de torquemada (pictured here) - born in spain in 1420, his name is synonymous with the christian inquisition's horror, religious bigotry, and cruel fanaticism.
he was a fan of various forms of torture including foot roasting, use of the garrucha, and suffocation.
And ten most good.
1. Buddha - Buddhism, far more than Christianity or Islam, has a very strong pacifist element. The orientation toward nonviolence has played a significant role in the political history of Buddhist countries.
2. Baha'u'llah - Baha'is believe that all the founders of the world's great religions have been manifestations of God and agents of a progressive divine plan for the education of the human race. Despite their apparent differences, the world's great religions, according to the Baha'is, teach an identical truth. Baha'is believe that Baha'ullah (d. 1892) was a manifestation of God, who in His essence is unknowable. Baha'ullah's special function was to overcome the disunity of religions and establish a universal faith. Baha'is believe in the oneness of humanity and devote themselves to the abolition of racial, class, and religious prejudices. The great bulk of Baha'i teachings is concerned with social ethics; the faith has no priesthood and does not observe ritual forms in its worship.
3. Dalai Lama - head of the dominant Dge-lugs-pa order of Tibetan Buddhists and, until 1959, both spiritual and temporal ruler of Tibet. In 1989 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in recognition of his nonviolent campaign to end Chinese domination of Tibet.
4. Jesus Christ -- for the preaching of love.
5. Moses - just the idea of "resting on the seventh day" improved the life of countless people.
6. Mother Theresa - Once Mother Theresa was asked how she could continue day after day after day, visiting the terminally ill: feeding them, wiping their brows, giving them comfort as they lay dying. And she said, "It's not hard because in each one, I see the face of Christ in one of His more distressing disguises."
7. Abraham Lincoln - for paving the way to freeing the slaves.
8. Martin Luther King -- American clergyman and Nobel Prize winner, one of the principal leaders of the American civil rights movement and a prominent advocate of nonviolent protest.
9. Mohandas Gandhi -- Indian nationalist leader, who established his country's freedom through a nonviolent revolution. |
Note that "zygotic personhood" (the idea that a fertilized egg is a person) is a recent concept. For example, before 1869, the Catholic church believed that the embryo was not a person until it was 40 days old. (Aristotle agreed with this 40-day threshold.) Thus, the church did not believe a human had a soul until day 40. Pope Innocent III in 1211 determined that the time of ensoulment was anywhere from 12 to 16 weeks. This means that the Catholic church, for centuries, did not equate abortion with murder. (Pictured at left is a two day old human embryo at four cell stage of development, magnified 260 times.) |
the top ten evil
1. tomas de torquemada (pictured here) - born in spain in 1420, his name is synonymous with the christian inquisition's horror, religious bigotry, and cruel fanaticism.
he was a fan of various forms of torture including foot roasting, use of the garrucha, and suffocation.
1. Tomas de Torquemada (pictured here) - Born in Spain in 1420, his name is synonymous with the Christian Inquisition's horror, religious bigotry, and cruel fanaticism. He was a fan of various forms of torture including foot roasting, use of the garrucha, and suffocation. He was made Grand Inquisitor by Pope Sixtus IV. Popes and kings alike praised his tireless efforts. The number of burnings at the stake during Torquemada's tenure has been estimated at about 2,000. Torquemada's hatred of Jews influenced Ferdinand and Isabella to expel all Jews who had not embraced Christianity. |
2. Vlad Tepes - Vlad the Impaler was a prince known for executing his enemies by impalement. He was a fan of various forms of torture including disemboweling and rectal and facial impalement. Vlad the Impaler tortured thousands while he ate and drunk among the corpses. He impaled every person in the city of Amlas -- 20,000 men, women and children. Vlad often ordered people to be skinned, boiled, decapitated, blinded, strangled, hanged, burned, roasted, hacked, nailed, buried alive, stabbed, etc. He also liked to cut off noses, ears, sexual organs and limbs. But his favorite method was impalement on stakes, hence the surname "Tepes" which means "The Impaler" in the Romanian language. It is this technique he used in 1457, 1459 and 1460 against Transylvanian merchants who had ignored his trade laws. He also looked upon the poor, vagrants and beggars as thieves. Consequently, he invited all the poor and sick of Wallachia to his princely court in Tirgoviste for a great feast. After the guests ate and drank, Dracula ordered the hall boarded up and set on fire. No one survived.
Note: Every Romanian who contacted me said I should remove Vlad from the list. They said he was not evil and seemed to like him. In an effort to understand how our views of evil can be so different, I reproduce an exchange I had with Marius who was born in Romania. Perhaps this will help us understand more generally how the perception of evil can differ from person to person. Other strange discussions on this same web page focus on Bill Clinton and those people who truly believe Clinton was more evil than Adolf Hitler who exterminated millions.
3. Adolph Hitler - The dictator of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler, was born on April 20, 1889, at Braunau am Inn, Austria-Hungary.
4. Ivan the Terrible - Ivan Vasilyevich, (born Aug. 25, 1530, in Kolomenskoye, near Moscow) was the grand prince of Moscow (1533-84) and the first to be proclaimed tsar of Russia (from 1547). His reign saw the completion of the construction of a centrally administered Russian state and the creation of an empire that included non-Slav states. He enjoyed burning 1000s of people in frying pans, and was fond of impaling people.
5. Adolph Eichmann - Born in March 19, 1906, Solingen, Germany he was hanged by the state of Israel for his part in the Nazi extermination of Jews during World War II. "The death of five million Jews on my conscience gives me extraordinary satisfaction."
6. Pol Pot - Pol Pot (born in 1925 in the Kompong Thom province of Cambodia) was the Khmer political leader whose totalitarian regime (1975-79) imposed severe hardships on the people of Cambodia. His radical communist government forced the mass evacuations of cities, killed or displaced millions of people, and left a legacy of disease and starvation. Under his leadership, his government caused the deaths of at least one million people from forced labor, starvation, disease, torture, or execution.
7. Mao Tse-tung - leader of the Gang of Four, who killed somewhere between 20 and 67 million (estimates vary) of his countrymen, including the elderly and intellectuals. His picture still hangs throughout many homes and businesses. Mao's own personality cult, encouraged so as to provide momentum to the movement, assumed religious proportions. The resulting anarchy, terror, and paralysis completely disrupted the urban economy. Industrial production for 1968 dipped 12 percent below that of 1966.
8. Idi Amin - Idi Amin Dada Oumee (born in 1924 in Uganda) was the military officer and president (1971-79) of Uganda. Amin also took tribalism, a long- standing problem in Uganda, to its extreme by allegedly ordering the persecution of Acholi, Lango, and other tribes. Amidst reports of the torture and murder of 100,000 to 300,000 Ugandans during Amin's presidency. |
9. Joseph Stalin - Born in 1879. During the quarter of a century preceding his death in 1953, the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin probably exercised greater political power than any other figure in history. In the 1930s, by his orders, millions of peasants were either killed or permitted to starve to death. Stalin brought about the deaths of more than 20 million of his own people while holding the Soviet Union in an iron grip for 29 years. Stalin succeeded his hero Nikolai Lenin in 1924. From then on, he induced widespread famines to enforce farm collectives, and eliminated perceived enemies through massive purges. |
10. Genghis Khan - The Mongol Temjin, known to history as Genghis Khan (born 1162) was a warrior and ruler who, starting from obscure and insignificant beginnings, brought all the nomadic tribes of Mongolia under the rule of himself and his family in a rigidly disciplined military state. Massacres of defeated populations, with the resultant terror, were weapons he regularly used. His Mongol hordes killed off countless people in Asia and Europe in the early 1200s. When attacking Volohoi, Khan convinced the city commander that Mongols would stop attacking if the city sent out 1,000 cats and several thousand swallows. When he got them, Genghis had bits of cloth tied to their tails and set the cloth on fire. The cats and birds fled back to the city and ended up setting hundreds of fires inside the city. Then Genghis attacked and won. At another time, Mongols rounded up 70,000 men, women, and children and shot them with arrows. Genghis told his comrades: "Man's greatest good fortune is to chase and defeat his enemy, seize his total possessions, leave his married women weeping and wailing, ride his gelding, use his women as a nightshirt and support, gazing upon and kissing their rosy breasts, sucking their lips which are as sweet as the berries of their breasts." |
11. H. H. Holmes - built a hundred-room mansion complete with gas chambers, trap doors, acid vats, lime pits, fake walls and secret entrances. During the 1893 World's Fair he rented rooms to visitors. He then killed most of his lodgers and continued his insurance fraud scheme. He also lured women to his "torture castle" with the promise of marriage. Instead, he would force them to sign over their savings, then throw them down an elevator shaft and gas them to death. In the basement of the castle he dismembered and skinned his prey and experimented with their corpses. He killed over 200 people. |
12. Gilles de Rais - A Fifteenth Century French war hero, Gilles was also one of medieval Europe's worst killers. He enjoyed killing mostly young boys, whom he would sodomize before and after decapitation. He enjoyed watching his servants butcher the boys and masturbated over their entrails. He killed over 140 people.
Some Runners-Up: Nicolae Ceausescu decreed that all women must bear five children. Due to terrible food shortages, many women were unable to support their "decree babies." They turned them over to state-run orphanages. More than 150,000 children were crowded into these institutions. Many died of malnutrition and disease. Others ran away becoming homeless beggars. Ceausescu also forbade testing of the nation's blood supply for AIDS. Through transfusions and shared vaccinations needles, thousands of orphans contracted AIDS. Eventually Romania had over half of Europe's cases of childhood AIDS.
Basil the Bulgar Slayer blinded 14,000 prisoners. Heinrich Himmler was the architect of the "Final Solution." Tallat Pasha decreed there must be no Armenians on the Earth. 1.5 Million Armenians were beaten, raped, robbed, and killed.
i find this intresting topic,.
last week, the bill moyers public television agency flew me to new york to join a circle of theologians and scholars discussing a baffling question: .
why is religion which universally teaches love, forgiveness and brotherhood entwined in so much murder and hate around the world?
I find this intresting topic,
Last week, the Bill Moyers public television agency flew me to New York to join a circle of theologians and scholars discussing a baffling question:
Why is religion which universally teaches love, forgiveness and brotherhood entwined in so much murder and hate around the world?
As cameras rolled, our eight-member group debated for two hours, but found few answers. At the end, we had no solutions. The contradiction cant even be explained, let alone corrected.
My role, as a news editor, was to outline the enormity of the problem, which unfolds day after day in international news reports. My outline went like this:
Since the Cold War ended, most of the horrors around the planet have involved religion, in one way or another. Americas 9/11 al-Qaida tragedy was a grotesque and spectacular example, but there are many others:
Muslims and Christians kill each other daily in Sudan.
Hindu Tamils and Buddhist Sinhalese kill each other in Sri Lanka.
Catholics and Protestants still kill each other occasionally in Ulster.
The tragic civil war that shattered Yugoslavia in the 1990s was between Orthodox Christian Serbs, Catholic Croats and Muslim Bosnians and Kosovars.
Previously, the tragic civil war that shattered Lebanon in the 1980s was between militias of Maronite Christians, Shiite Muslims, Sunni Muslims, Alawite Muslims, Druses, etc.
India is cursed by recurring bloodshed between Hindus, Muslims and occasionally Sikhs. Three of Indias Gandhis Mohandas, Indira and Rajiv were killed by zealots.
Muslim fanatics have killed about 100,000 people in Algeria since the early 1990s. True Believers shot high school girls in the face for not wearing veils.
Muslim fanatics killed defenseless tourists in Egypt, plus Coptic Christians. They assassinated President Anwar Sadat.
Muslims and Christians kill each other sporadically in Nigeria and Indonesia and Azerbaijan and the Philippines, etc.
On Cyprus, U.N. peacekeeping troops have been holding Christian Greeks and Muslim Turks apart for three decades, lest they slaughter each other.
The Ayatollah Khomeini created the worlds cruelest dictatorship in Iran then the Taliban created an even-crueler one in Afghanistan. The theocracies were stunningly evil.
Fundamentalist extremists occasionally kill doctors and nurses at American abortion clinics.
Cults add to the horror. The Waco cult massacre was somewhat a replay of the Jonestown cult massacre. Supreme Truth cultists planted nerve gas in Tokyos subway to kill commuters. Baghwan Rajneesh cultists planted salmonella germs in salad bars at Oregon restaurants.
In all these nightmares, its extremely difficult to determine whether religion is a major cause, or merely a fringe factor. Most religio-ethnic conflicts also involve politics, language, economics, power-grabbing, demagoguery and other elements. For example, Israels ghastly conflict is chiefly between Jews and Muslims, yet its basically a struggle for land. (But recruitment of suicide bombers is easier with the promise that martyrs enjoy heaven with lovely houri nymphs.) Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a fanatic Jew.
Religious tribalism is a phrase sometimes applied to the Catholic-Protestant strife in Ulster. Many of the hate-filled adversaries never attend church yet their family religious labels pit them against each other. From childhood, each Ulsterite knows whos the enemy its the people in the opposing religious neighborhoods. Religion separates them into hostile tribes.
Actually, religious killing and persecution are as old as history. A pattern can be traced through the era of human sacrifice, the Crusades, the Inquisition, jihads, Reformation wars, pogroms, etc.
Did you know that Catholic-Protestant strife caused a deadly cannon battle in Philadelphia in 1844? Or that Shiite Muslims have massacred thousands of Bahais in Iran since the offshoot religion began? Or that the worlds worst religious war, the Taiping Rebellion, killed an estimated 20 million Chinese in the 1850s?
Dont forget the West Virginia textbook war in 1974. Fundamentalists decided that new Kanawha County schoolbooks were godless. They held stormy protests, staged a school boycott and turned violent. Schools were dynamited. Two people were shot. School buses had bullet holes. A preacher and his followers went to federal prison. Court testimony said they discussed wiring dynamite caps into the gas tanks of cars in which families drove their children to school, defying the boycott. Thank heaven, the militants didnt actually burn kids to death to prove how morally superior they were.
When 200 young nightclubbers were killed in Bali this month, it was assumed that the bombs were planted by alcohol-hating, sex-hating, fun-hating, Islamic extremists.
When Chechnyan militants seized a Moscow theater last week, they carried Korans and vowed to become martyrs while killing infidels.
I wont be surprised if the Washington-area sniper proclaims that he did it for God.
The Bill Moyers discussion is expected to air later this year. But it wont settle anything. All the participants Moyers, a Muslim scholar, a Princeton philosopher, three Christian theologians, an international writer and I were at a loss to decipher the riddle.
If anyone knows why religion, which espouses kindness, is stained with so much gore, I wish youd explain it to me.- Permission to reprint from James A. Haught
SOME COMMENTS?
i was about twelve and a young "brother" invited me to stay the night at his house.
my mom wanted me to be make friends with witness families, so getting permission was not that hard to do.
his mom and dad picked me up at around five and we went back to his house.
hello kenpo.
I think your Shamanism putt you in contact widh bad things, isnt this Shamanism one form of gohst power?
whenI read Castanedas books about this i must say it is all about witchcraft or?
for several months now i have been writing back and forth to the service dept asking them to explain the difference between "those who simply leave the faith" and those who "went out" (disassociate).
the reason i am curious about this is because "those who simply leave the faith" are not shunned, however those who "went out" (disassociated) are shunned.
i have written twice and received two replies.
E.
When I read this I am very sad, i think this shunning policy is not from the Lord, and I must say, when my son was dfd, fore very minor thing, I never shunn him at all.
insted I shunn the men who did this bad thing, and putt him out.
Never say helo to them, never talk to them, they are a bitt disturbd, and I think they deserv it.
I have think a lot of this policy, and when it wa putt in charge, and why?
The KM in aug was only a reminder of old things, perhaps theGb have the same motiv as the old Sovjet regim, when they was atacked they try to kill the peopel who was the problem, never try to reform the system, we all now how this went, and I think If we not have a new light here son this gone to putt the Gb in real problem.
bill bowens attack on ray franz: .
i very seldom find time for checking the discussions going on at various debate sites, and wasnt aware of bill bowens statements about ray franz in his original post of oct. 9, 2002 at 7:26 (now evidently altered), until a friend quite recently sent my a copy of it.
i was not only surprised but was shocked at his statements.
perhaps I can give some answer to this debatt. I us to read on swed EXJW boards, and I now from ther that COJ, is wery close to what the bibel say, so perhaps he belive that this 2 wittneses thing is from the bibel and is good.
I must say myself that this is a very difficult isssu, the swed goverment have now a new polyci, it is not longer inaf widh experts testemony, they want also some proof. so they have in some way go over to JW attitud, thts beaucause some tragikal case, where fadhers was convikted wrong, and girls take back ther accusaition. It is very important that this not going to be any wichunt, condemd innocent peopel.