for those who have heard this comment, check out aron ra's great site.. http://www.aronra.com/.
I do have issues when a debate ends up with generalisations on both sides. I would be grateful if people could cite sources when stating something is what most people are thought to believe. I think it is important to educate people on academic argument and the criteria for this rather than lazy personal opinions bandied about as robust researched theories.
If you are going to make a staement then the evidence behind that statement should be cited too. Otherwise it is just he said she said.
this website has been mentioned on previous topics but i just happened onto this current article "elijah" has posted.
you have to scroll down to get to thursday's article (yesterday), titled jehovah's witnesses child abuse policy.
it's at defending jehovahs witnesses dot blogspot dot com and there's no where to comment that i could find.
This article relfects what witnesses think happens but not what actually happens. There are enough victims to show that they do not protect the members from molesters just the organisation from bad publicity.
i was 13yo and largely clueless to what was going on.
i think i remember hearing something about an apostate being weeded out of bethel but really couldn't have cared less.
i didn't start getting zealous until a couple of years later.. .
I was 15 it barely made a blip on my conciousness.
besides a cult, everyone knows the watchtower is a business disguised as a religion.
from a business viewpoint, i would certainly hate or lobby against those who dislike my product and warn other people of my product.. i made a calculation based on information from jwfacts, and the results are just astounding!.
http://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/statistics.php.
I agree with the original premise that the society is a business and Apostates inhibit growth and thus reduce money coming in. I have noticed that the amount of time and attention devoted to financial matters seems to have increased of late. The society has reduced talk of expanding since the number of Branch offices has reduced. Despite this reduction in buildings the society never has the money to fund new buiulding projects but instead keeps calling on the Brothers and sisters to provide parts and labour. It has stopped talk about never begging for money because quite frankly all it ever does is beg for money. It has gone from widows mites to personnal pledges and monthly commitments.
It has kept it's members ignorant and ill informed so in the main they have lower earning potential, this means that every member has to be milked to get the maximum return. Since the return on each member is low then each loss is significant.
Apostates are tenacious, they are out there and often driven by a zeal that witnesses lack. Because they are often treated unjustly and cruely by their old religion their stories have an impact. The society has created it's own demons and has only themselves to blame.
it seems like it is one huge contradiction.
but are they doing it for the purpose to try to guess exactly who in the congregation is on ex jw sites?
.
Not just elders but any self righteous witness on a witch hunt can stalk you here or on Facebook. With this in mind think about what you post if you don't want the elders to turn up at your home with printouts of your posts.
It happened to us. Now I see the funny side back then I was more irritated than fearful.
the jw date-worshipped memorial has just completed its bleak worldwide commemoration.
that wasn't a dust cloud you saw; it was a millionfold hearts limply beating themselves into another round of great tribulation expectations.
i was knocked into a deep, deep sleep by the imagined experience of being at several thousand consecutive kingdom halls as the platformed drones spat forth the predictable sludge that, once released, hits and stains white clothing and bleach is useless.. we know that memorial attendance worldwide has dipped for two consecutive years since 2011 when it reached a high of 19,374,737 and for the promised land, obama's usa, the all time memorial attendance high was also 2011 when it hit over 2.5million (2,563,518) but shrunk in shame back to 2,502,055 in 2012 and spluttered upwards a handful or two to 2,504,114 last year.. so, what was attendance at the date-obsessed bore-fest this year in your neck of the woods?
Since the number of casual lies told by the society are so many I seriously doubt that there has been an accurate memorial figure published for years and this year will be no different.
do members of the congregation usually have a meal together after the memorial?
does the fact that my wife has decided not to travel across town to her filipino congregation and is going to the local one instead and wants to be picked up when it finishes at 8 pm mean that she hasn't been invited to a meal with her filipino congregation and that she is being socially excluded by them?
i think this is good news but i don't want her to get caught up with the local congregatin because i don't want them coming around to pressure her to attend when she is irregular.
It is probably a cultural thing. I was a witness for 40 years plus and was never invited anywhere after a memorial. Everyone went home, we weren't encouraged to socialise as there was often another congregation coming into the hall after us.
Never do not even my mum invites me or asks if I am going.
I get so few it is no burden to reply.
just read a post on jwsurvey about the new donation arrangement.
congregations are to pledge a monthly amount to be sent to the society to fund the building of assembly halls and kingdom halls.
congregations who already have a loan from the society will no longer have to pay back the loan but the amount pledged should not be less than the current monthly repayments to the society.
I think that time has changed the Watchtower a great deal, what we once did not believe was possible has proven to be business a usual. this organisation has changed radically since I was baptised and will continue to do so. The rumours of today are possibly closer to the truth than we could imagine.
