To me it would seem like organizational suicide to stop the meetings....
Correct , sociological engagement is valuable and necessary in religious organizations like this, it creates an awareness and perception of support to the believers.
Finkelstein
JoinedPosts by Finkelstein
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37
Weekly Meeting Importance Being Reduced - Your Thoughts?
by JWTom ini am pimo, but now have 40+ years of being a jw as i was raised in a 3rd generation family of witnesses and continue to fake my way through things - fading as i can.. for the vast majority of my time as a jw, the meetings were the central focus for all jws to get teaching, association, information and so on.
nothing was more important than being at the meetings!
over the last 20 years starting with the elimination of the weekly book study in homes and continuing down to today - my opinion is that the value/purpose of the weekly meetings continues to be diluted or minimized.
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Finkelstein
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Have you ever known elders who were more into being and elder than really being a believer?
by phoenixrising ini have known many elders who were much more into the idea of being an elder and getting all the old ladies to tell them what wonderful talks they give and the power then really being a believer.
i had one elder tell me that when he became an elder he was on top dog on top of the heap.
i knew some who were really all about the religion and following the cult.
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Finkelstein
Simon says ......
possibly the only one they have ever had and will ever get in their life, and they can bully people with it.
The psychological engagement of power and a uplift in personal stature or self identity is what drives many men to be JWS elders, to bask in the power of god is a glorious thing indeed.
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Weekly Meeting Importance Being Reduced - Your Thoughts?
by JWTom ini am pimo, but now have 40+ years of being a jw as i was raised in a 3rd generation family of witnesses and continue to fake my way through things - fading as i can.. for the vast majority of my time as a jw, the meetings were the central focus for all jws to get teaching, association, information and so on.
nothing was more important than being at the meetings!
over the last 20 years starting with the elimination of the weekly book study in homes and continuing down to today - my opinion is that the value/purpose of the weekly meetings continues to be diluted or minimized.
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Finkelstein
Becasue the JWS religion was framed upon a false commercialized gospel created by men who ran their own publishing house, this is the real reason this relgoius organization is starting to fade away, add in corrupt self serving tactics of non discloser of pedophilia within their organization and its eventual decline is not surprising.
People have access via the inter-net to do some research about the organization , noting the deaths, the suicides, the questionable doctrines, the fact that the original leaders of the organization were not highly trained bible theologians.
As Millie210 said the organization's decline is starting in spite of the GB leaders saying more and more Kingdom Halls are going to be needed because of the growth in numbers.
Pretentious dishonest lying has been an integral part of this organization for a very long time, people are starting to "Witness" that .
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The Great Crowd Fallacy
by Vanderhoven7 inthe great crowd of other sheep witnesses allegedly first began forming early on in the 20th century.
rutherford was totally unaware of this crowds existence until 1935. it was revealed to him in 1932 that the great crowd members were heaven-bound.
then light flashed from heaven in 1935 showing that this group was an earthly class.
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Finkelstein
That's because 1874 and 1914 was a theological fraud created mostly to attract attention to the literature the WTS published.
Strange is it not that Jehovah god would choose corrupt apostate false prophets as his chosen organization here on earth ???
Loyal followers of these men (JWS) are just sharing the sins of what these men have committed. The gospel of what these men perpetrated for over century was really a tainted preaching of the Gospel of Jesus.
Mayby that's why most christian based faiths never pointed out a certain time of Christ's return and date setting as the WTS did ?
They had respect to Jesus and his words that no one knows not even he and not to try and set a time on god's own sacred time ???
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Trying to get my head around these go bags
by phoenixrising inwhen i was looking at prepping back in the 90s i was told by several elders that we needed to just rely on the org and jehovah and not prep.
i started to put away vacuum sealed bags of rice beans and spices anyway.
now they have this go bag crap.
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Finkelstein
But what about the great persecution to come upon Jehovah's chosen people which the JWS heads say they are that organization ?
You better have your go bags packed and ready brothers and sisters.
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Update again
by Akid48 ini don't know if anyone remembers me on here but i'm here to do an update again.. well, i'm 15 going on 16 soon i still remember watching my first video on youtube and learning that all the jw teachings are false and everything that follows.
crazy times, i have chosen to just focus on school and just trying to be a kid well a teen now but you get the point.
i'm not really mad about all the jw stuff i've come to accept that i couldn't have done anything to prevent it i was born into a family that was already into the religion.
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Finkelstein
Truth, knowledge and integrity kills all religoius cults, it takes some responsibility to each of us as individuals and the betterment toward humanity as well.
Be careful to all things presented and sold to you, this includes things not related to religion too.
Keep going Akid48 , your on the right track.
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Jehovah? Oh dear.
by Giordano insome recent new friends on this forum like friend kosonen are fixated with god's name being jehovah...unfortunately they are wrong:.
a quick bit of history:.
"about the 13th century the term “jehovah” appeared when christian scholars took the consonants of “yahweh” and pronounced it with the vowels of “adonai.” this resulted in the sound “yahowah,” which has a latinized spelling of “jehovah.” the first recorded use of this spelling was made by a spanish dominican monk, raymundus martini, in 1270.. interestingly, this fact is admitted in much jehovah’s witness literature, such as their aid to bible understanding (p. 885).
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Finkelstein
Yes it is kind of ironic that the JWS named their organization from a source they describe as false religion ( Catholicism ) .When a certain sect of people separated from the Canaanite civilization and went into a monotheistic style of worship from polytheism, Elyon was used as a formulation name of their god and later associated with Yahweh..
Elyon (Biblical Hebrew עליון; Masoretic ʿElyōn) is an epithet of the God of the Israelites in the Hebrew Bible. ʾĒl ʿElyōn is usually rendered in English as "God Most High", and similarly in the Septuagint as ὁ Θεός ὁ ὕψιστος ("God the highest").
The term also has mundane uses, such as "upper" (where the ending in both roots is a locative, not superlative or comparative), "top", or "uppermost", referring simply to the position of objects (e.g. applied to a basket in Genesis 40.17 or to a chamber in Ezekiel 42.5).
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Hebrew Bible[edit]
The compound ʼĒl ʻElyōn[edit]
The compound name ʼĒl ʻElyōn 'God Most High' occurs in Genesis 14:18–20 as the God whose priest was Melchizedek, king of Salem. The form appears again almost immediately in verse 22, used by Abraham in an oath to the king of Sodom. In this verse the name of God also occurs in apposition to ʼĒl ʻElyōn in the Masoretic Text but is absent in the Samaritan version, in the Septuagint translation, and in Symmachus.[citation needed]
Its occurrence here was one foundation of a theory first espoused by Julius Wellhausen that ʼĒl ʻElyōn was an ancient god of Salem (for other reasons understood here to mean Jerusalem), later equated with God.[citation needed]
The only other occurrence of the compound expression is in Psalms 78:35: "And they remembered that God [ʼĒlōhīm] was their rock, and the high God [ʼĒl ʻElyōn] their redeemer."
The name is repeated later in the chapter, but with a variation: verse fifty-six says ʼElohim ʻElyōn.
It has been suggested that the reference to "ʼĒl ʻElyōn, maker of heaven and earth" in Genesis 14:19 and 22 reflects a Canaanite background. The phrasing in Genesis resembles a retelling of Canaanite religious traditions in Philo of Byblos's account of Phoenician history, in which ʻElyōn was the progenitor of Ouranos ("Sky") and Gaia ("Earth").[1]
ʽElyōn standing alone[edit]
The name ʽElyōn 'Most High' standing alone is found in many poetic passages, especially in the Psalms.
It appears in Balaam's verse oracle in Numbers 24:16 as a separate name parallel to Ēl.
It appears in Moses' final song in Deuteronomy 32:8 (a much discussed verse). A translation of the Masoretic text:
When the Most High (ʽElyōn) divided nations,
he separated the sons of man (Ādām);
he set the bounds of the massesaccording to the number of the sons of Israel
Many Septuagint manuscripts have in place of "sons of Israel", angelōn theou 'angels of God' and a few have huiōn theou 'sons of God'. The Dead Sea Scrolls fragment 4QDeutj reads bny ’lwhm 'sons of God' ('sons of ’Elohim'). The New Revised Standard Version translates this as "he fixed the boundaries … according to the number of the gods".[2]
This passage appears to identify ʽElyōn with ’Elohim, but not necessarily with Yahweh. It can be read to mean that ʽElyōn separated mankind into 70 nations according to his 70 sons (the 70 sons of Ēl being mentioned in the Ugaritic texts), each of these sons to be the tutelary deity over one of the 70 nations, one of them being the god of Israel, Yahweh. Alternatively, it may mean that ʽElyōn, having given the other nations to his sons, now takes Israel for himself under the name of the Tetragrammaton. Both interpretations have supporters.[citation needed]
In Isaiah 14:13–14 ʽElyōn is used in a very mystical context in the passage providing the basis for later speculation on the fall of Satan where the rebellious prince of Babylon is pictured as boasting:
I shall be enthroned in the mount of the council in the farthest north [or farthest Zaphon]
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;
I will be like the Most High.
But ’Elyōn is in other places firmly identified with Yahweh, as in 2 Samuel 22:14:
The Lord [YHWH] thundered from heaven,
and the Most High [ʽElyōn] uttered his voice.Also Psalm 97:9: "For you, Lord [YHWH], are Most High [ʽelyōn] over all the earth; you are raised high over all the gods."
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Trying to get my head around these go bags
by phoenixrising inwhen i was looking at prepping back in the 90s i was told by several elders that we needed to just rely on the org and jehovah and not prep.
i started to put away vacuum sealed bags of rice beans and spices anyway.
now they have this go bag crap.
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Finkelstein
It helps in making people believe, when that occurs the WTS/JWorg can sustain the membership and cultivate more money and support.
The provocation of fear is pretty much the core catalyst of what frames the JW cult.
For example a recent statement by one the GB members .......
"Brothers and sisters we are now at the end of the end of this system of things"
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Will Governor Cuomo be the Next President?
by RubaDub intrying to put politics aside (even though that won't really work), but ny governor andrew cuomo is blowing the other politicians out out the water (orange man [trump] and the lizard [biden]).. i don't know if cuomo has a usb port in the back of his head plugged into a hard drive but the guy speaks, analyzes and talks coherently.
the orange man always passes difficult questions to someone else.
the lizard can't comprehend what the question is but tries to answer something.. cuomo comes out with facts, analysis and direction on what needs to be done.
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Finkelstein
Just off the press ........
Patients in New York hospitals must now test negative for the coronavirus before they can be discharged to nursing homes, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Sunday — partially reversing a policy that forced sickened seniors into facilities housing those most vulnerable.
“We’re just not going to send a person who is positive to a nursing home after a hospital visit,” said Cuomo during an Albany press briefing. “Period.”
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What Did You Choose Jehovah Over?
by minimus insome jws believe they have the truth.
they alone understand god, jehovah.
they are very happy being jehovah’s witnesses.👍👌..... many others realize what they have given up for jehovah, to belong to the jehovah’s witness religion.
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Finkelstein
I left the WTS/JWs because I could see he (Jehovah) wasn't there or his son, just some sinning, lying, apostates running their own publishing house.