http://www.ultimatebiblereferencelibrary.com/haiti_disaster__17.1.10_.pdf .
two paragraphs were really bad:.
"we suspect not a few of our young brothers and sisters attending universities may have died when those buildings crashed to the grounds with everyone in them.
This is probably the kind of stuff that contributed to my awakening--bending the rules of logic and arbitrarily saying higher education is evil. But this one just goes way, way too far. It's immoral. You wonder why JWs get banned in other countries? This is why! Extremist, warped thinking! The Society victimizes them, and they in turn victimize others. Disgusting.
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romans 10:9 (new international version)9that if you confess with your mouth, "jesus is lord," and believe in your heart that god raised him from the dead, you will be saved.. ever hear a jw utter this statement?.
ever seen a jw live like jesus their lord?.
here's a couple of verses on this theme.
To the average Witness--at least to me--saying "Jesus is Lord" seemed too synonymous with saying "Jesus is God", so it was a phrase I preferred to avoid. But in my private thoughts I noticed how little Jehovah was actually mentioned in the New Testament, and I knew for sure that the first century Christians definitely were not Jehovah's Witnesses.
The irony of this, a huge irony, is the fact that this is a very, very scriptural teaching. To be nervous about glorifying Jesus is an awfully odd thing if you're a Christian. Oh, of course. Being a Christian isn't good enough...one has to be the kind of CHRISTian that Jehovah would approve of. Yeah. Nothing like bad logic.
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just looked through some of the largest populations in the world and ten of them add up to 3,500,000,000. how many witnesses serve these 10 countries.
no more than 60,000. the largest are china and india which together have around 2.5 billion people.
so is the jw good news being spread earthwide.
It calls to mind the words of the Joker. "Does it depress you, to know just how alone you really are?" Isolated in this belief, sadly Jehovah's Witnesses have an exaggerated perception of their relevance.
I suppose beneath the surface I always knew that what we did, our approach, seemed so...irrelevant. A cheap sales pitch, a ploy. Something done to keep the parents or elders off one's back. Now, not every Witness necessarily feels that way. But even if they don't, it's still tragic that they believe the end can come with billions of people never having heard their message even once. The thought that God could destroy that many based on something they never even heard of flies in the face of everything the idealist believes about God--justice, love, mercy, good old common sense.
Well, glad that illusion's over.
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"i believe in one god, and no more; and i hope for happiness beyond this life.
i believe the equality of man, and i believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.
but, lest it should be supposed that i believe many other things in addition to these, i shall, in the progress of this work, declare the things i do not believe, and my reasons for not believing them.
Best post ever. Brilliantly written. Inspiring.
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at weddings or partys, when the lights go down and the music gets turned up?.
in my experiance they normaly did a slow motion walk on the spot or a kinda rigor mortis.
i think i was a rare one as i tended to wiggle and move my body like a woman can;) .... and yes i got "spoken" to about it.... what was your experiance?.
When I was in school, someone told me that JWs don't dance and they don't wear makeup, either. Meh. Close enough. But in my experience, they dance with a respectful distance from one another, the looser ones dance a little closer, or a lot closer and end up on the young people's rumor mill for doing so. But I've little experience to go on, as the indoctrination made me dark, brooding, terrified of women, and decidedly anti-social.
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many here have stopped going to the kh and many have just reduced activity to some degree.
while today is not that day for me, i have had the "screw it all" attitude every now and again and was ready to tell the wt off, call the p.o.
or whoever, call my mother and tell her all about the "god-damned cult" she's in and why it's just wrong.
Every day. Every second of every day. But two things stopped me. One, it'll take more than that to stop the Society. Knowing how you thought when you believed it, you know that. Two, isn't it more satisfying to know that they pride themselves in having a 'clean organization' while the 'poison of apostasy' maintains a firm hold in thousands of their congregations around the world?
Even if they could find all of us, we've already proven we can defeat them with their own sword. That is the ultimate humiliation. They, like so many other demi-gods before them, will never admit defeat, of course. But their maneuvers every day make clear that they are afraid, insecure, incapable of keeping the minds of all their subjects under their spell. They are afraid. Afraid of us. Whatever they may have on our family members, they have it because they are afraid.
We have become more than just men and women. We are symbols. We have turned fear upon those who prey on the fearful, and they use their propaganda to try to counter us. And it only wakes more people up each time. Victory is already in our hands. It may not seem that way sometimes, but knowing what they don't want you to know is enough in itself. It's not always a comfort to be in this position. But one battle at a time, we reclaim our minds and the minds of others. Why throw grenades when you can simply watch the monster eat itself? Painful as it can be, in the end, I hope, it will be infinitely more satisfying.
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i was checking up on the references regarding the great pyramid of giza as found on jwfacts.com.
it's not that i doubt people who mention that issue, but i needed to see it with my own eyes, what with the whole not trusting anyone on spiritual matters thing.. 1922, 1925: pyramid is god's witness.
studies in the scriptures volume iii spells out that the pyramid is not considered as on par with the bible, but is merely an extra witness to god's plan.
I was checking up on the references regarding the Great Pyramid of Giza as found on jwfacts.com. It's not that I doubt people who mention that issue, but I needed to see it with my own eyes, what with the whole not trusting anyone on spiritual matters thing.
1922, 1925: Pyramid is God's witness. Studies in the Scriptures Volume III spells out that the Pyramid is not considered as on par with the Bible, but is merely an extra witness to God's plan. (Ironically, the introduction to this same volume actually praises "independent thinking". Truly, the organizational apple has fallen FAR from the tree!)
1928: Pyramid is from Satan, Satan's Bible, that sort of thing. Huge article in the Watchtower about it. I can't imagine suffering through articles like that one during an actual meeting. Wow.
Anyway, my issue here--and jwfacts.com has the specific page numbers and details (archive.org, search "Watchtower pubs" to find .pdfs of the WTs involved so you can read it in context)--is just that...well...
HOW CAN GOD'S ORGANIZATION BE TEACHING SATANIC DOCTRINE? EVEN FOR A SECOND, MUCH LESS FOR YEARS AFTER BEING APPOINTED AS 'THE FAITHFUL SLAVE'?
This is no light matter, and Jesus Christ would not have looked upon it lightly. I would expect that such a doctrine, along with The Finished Mystery and other vastly unscriptural stuff being taught then, would surely result in Jesus merely ignoring such men, rejecting them as a useful channel of communication.
It's not particularly relevant that it's no longer taught or talked about by Jehovah's Witnesses. Why? Because the belief that God is using the Governing Body to communicate his truth has to be established by tracing that Body to its origin. Its origin is Charles Taze Russell. If God would never have used him, based on teachings like this, then he would never have used Rutherford either, who not only continued publicizing such admittedly satanic falsehoods worldwide as Present Truth, but demanded that people accept Russell's chronological mess or end up repudiating God and Jesus!
Ray Franz addressed a similar point, of course--I was also checking his references, too--and I appreciated that he did so. I just wanted to add my own eyewitness testimony. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it in black and white. Speaking of weird, how about those Masonic, Knights Templar logos on the Watchtower back in the 20s? Weird. Hard to imagine anyone wanting to read it. I'd be expecting to read about knights and kings and swords and stuff.
Well, enough out of me. Take care.
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for those who need a refresher, here is the latest redefinition of "generation" from the 4/15/2010 wt:.
understand jesus words about this generation?.
he evidently meant that the lives of the anointed.
I believe the term is "nuked the fridge". But, just as with Indiana Jones, if you like Indiana Jones (or if you like stuff made by the guy who made Indiana Jones, more specifically), you probably don't care that the fridge has been nuked--if anything, you think it's cool! And nobody can convince you that it's not! Same deal here. If you haven't, up until this point in time, noticed that anything at all was wrong with the Society's teachings or methods, then this won't make you notice anything either.
"People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy." And so long as such examples don't exist, status quo will be maintained.
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a few months ago there was a thread about a couple of elders at the mill hill bethel being disfellowshipped because they disagreed with some wt doctrine (i can't recall exactly what it was) and that several other betheliteswere under 'investigation'.
i haven't heard anything since, does anyone know anything more about this?.
borghater xx.
This is a very profound discussion, paulapollos. I totally identify with your statements on the average Witness. I don't think Witnesses are intentionally selfish, but really, one elder I knew gave a comment that told it like it is: "Would we really be serving Jehovah if we weren't offered the chance to live forever? Sure, that would be a noble gesture, but..." He indicated that obviously the answer was no. Which undercuts the very core doctrine of 'sovereignty and man's integrity'. Supposedly Satan makes the accusation that we serve God only for what we get from him. But isn't that what we're doing? We're serving him because we want to live forever, right? And obviously, nobody wants to be killed by God, right? So whether because it's by the threat of force, or belief in the paradise, or maybe even genuine love for God, we're still out to save our own skins, like it or not.
And I certainly recognized even when I was a true believer that Jehovah, the God in the Bible, was ruthless. He ordered grisly deaths for men, women and children, destroyed entire cities, nations all because they were living in the wrong spot. And the assumption I gathered from my own study of WT literature was, "Well, if you disobey us, he'll kill you, too. Just like he did them." I had trouble praying to that God and believing that he cared in the slightest way about me. I always pictured him as he is in the publications, on a throne, unapproachable, immune to the cries of millions and millions of suffering people, interested only in proving a point about his name, no matter the cost to mankind.
But that's just my opinion. Anyway, I'm sorry you had to go through such an experience. Love for real truth is something that is sadly missing in the organization. It is very true that people are content to let someone else do the thinking and research for them and blindly trust the results. Bible reading is encouraged, but coming to any conclusion that's not in a Watchtower publication is strictly forbidden, no matter what you may read in the scriptures. That alone encourages people to have a veil covering their hearts, as Paul said.
It's always good to have those who are morally upright who take a stand, like yourself. Unimpeachable testimony for the Bible's truth is a real treasure. I hope the Lord Jesus will be with you in these tough times.
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here is what i am getting at with that subject title:.
this sunday's wt study article really hit home for me what many have been talking about on the forum.. when i was growing up, there was a big deal made about the identity of each gb member - people would wax poetically about working with them at bethel, meeting them at a convention, etc.it wasn't unusual for them to be frequently named in articles, pictured in books, and somewhat glorified.. the president of the wtbs was practically on par with christ - he was viewed as practically a deity.. i had friends who could not only name the 12 apostles, but could rattle off the names of the gb members!
now, it seems like the tactic has changed, starting with the reduction of the presidents' role of a few years ago - place massive emphasis on the gb itself as a unit, but keep the profile of the members lower.
Was just recently reading the...May 15, 1922 Watchtower, I think it was. The tactics are identical to Rutherford's. In 90 years, nothing's changed but the name of the person or 'channel' to be obeyed. Just reading that article showed me how grossly misguided this religion is. The demands for obedience or belief in things that would be regarded as completely absurd (and something many JWs wouldn't believe we ever taught!) today--it makes you think. Obviously, we have to assume that a few decades from now, everything in the WT today will be regarding as absurd and stuff many JWs won't believe we ever taught. It's "an endless present in which the [Governing Body] is always right," to paraphrase '1984'.
What do I think? I think it sucks. I think people need to fight the men who turn the wheels of this machine. To provide and publicize factual, honest information to refute the methods and teachings of these men. That's what I think.
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