Posts by Hoffnung

I will be going to Crawley next week from 3 to 5 april. I have to go there for work, so I will be occupied during the day, but free on Wednesday and Thursday night. Is someone interested to meet up with me for food and/or drink? please PM me.

Hoffnung

11

Romans 13:1 Russian opposition

by sidex in

jw
friends

.

hello, yes my question is not settled.. and i want to repeat it.

who knows about the different groups of jehovah's witnesses in the united states.. when and where were the division and what reasons..

Hoffnung

Hi Sidex,

The issue concerning the changed doctrine about the superior authorities caused many divisions in countries linked to communism. Romania was especially affected. Understandable, since saying that the "superior authorities" are state agencies and have to be obeyed, would feel like treason to them. However in the US and other western countries, this change was not viewed as problematic, and as far as I know it did not cause divisions to the point that groups would brake away.

Hoffnung

63

Are the Witnesses Really Losing Their Young People?

by What Now? in

that article about jehovah's witnesses having the lowest retention rate for born ins keeps popping up every now again ... i'm just curious if any of you have noticed that this is actually the case.

in the congregation that i grew up in, i'm going to say that 95% of the young people in their teens to mid twenties are either regular pioneering, regular auxiliary pioneering, serving in foreign language congregations or where the need is greater.

both of my younger sisters are regular pioneers - and the young people in their hall even organize 8 pm to midnight service on friday nights of their own accord.

Hoffnung

verifying retention rate objectively is not easy either, since small doubts in the late teens with some added kicks in the butt might lead to leaving the religion at 35. if i look at youngsters from around 20, about 60% is still there, but once you take this up to youngsters we still remember that are now around 30, then 70% has left, if not more. the lack of quality of the content in WT publications and the lack of social activity organized by the congregation are definitely contributing. Some just don't fit in the kind JW life, and would have left anyway, even if everything was done right. their effort to keep up the appearance of being gods only mouthpiece is going to drive 1000's away, no matter how good their mind control techniques are. most witnesses have at least once in their life the need to verify if the truth is what it claims to be, and then it is game over for the WTBS

Hoffnung

32

Part 1 of the 2013 Conti and Simons interview now on YouTube (questions posed by JWN members)

by cedars in

a while back we ran a "competition" whereby people could pose questions of candace conti and rick simons for them to answer in a video.. there were so many questions that we needed to do a series rather than just one video.

this first instalment is now on youtube.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhvfefpig4a.

here are the questions that were answered.... (to rick, asked by "exwhyzee") is there a possibility that part of the ruling, if you overcome the appeal, will be that the society must make an announcement outlining the details of the case to its members, as well as an apology to candace?.

Hoffnung

Thanks Cedars, and of course Candace and her lawyer to set time aside for this.

I loved the remark from Rick that the WT was now as polite and professional to them as they should have been to Candace to begin with

Looking forward to the next installments.

Hoffnung

24

An elder called me.

by Julia Orwell in

jw
friends

an elder who handled the minor matter with my husband a few weeks ago called to see how we were doing.

this guy genuinely is a gentle, kind, man whom the congregation loves.

he's the one everyone approaches because he never judges or condescends.

Hoffnung

And watch out for the good-cop-bad-cop game that is only designed to keep you under the influence. I am not sayinf this one is part of it, but it could very well be.

Hoffnung

51

My chat with an Elder about the UN thing! Help!

by awakening in

jw
friends

well it was a very long discussion.

the elder knew nothing about the scandal, but he stated that he had no issue with it since when the case was brought to light, the society acted immediately to right their course.

in fact he thought it was a sign that that the organisation was indeed the "truth".

Hoffnung

show the elder with the WT LIB CD-ROM the amount of occurences of "United Nations" from 1980-1990, from 1991-2000 and from 2001-2010. He will have to notice that there is a double amount of occurences from 1991-2000 than in the other 2 periods, and the tone of the articles took a definite 180 degrees turn to the positive in the 90's. This proves they knew what was requested from the UN for this membership, and they acted accordingly, thereby promoting an organization they identified just a few years earlier as "disgusting" and the thing that wants to sit on the throne of "Gods Kingdom". The contents of Watchtower and Awake articles must be approved by GB members prior to going in print, so it had received the "thumbs up" from the highest levels in the Society's hierarchy. Does somebody wants to argue that this promotion of the disgusting thing happened under the guidance of the Holy Spirit?

Obviously they did not correct it when they became aware of it, they corrected it because it started to draw a lot of negative attention from outside (newspaper article in the Guardian) and inside (a lot of letters were sent to Brooklyn about it), and started to threathen their holy papal position.

Hoffnung

27

Why did the organization stop providing food during conventions?

by redvip2000 in

i'm sure many of us still remember these times when the organization used to sell food at conventions.. i also remember that when this was stopped, the official reason was that the "brothers" were missing some of the program because of all the preparations.

typical watchtower "pretend we care" excuse.. i've wondered if there is another reason behind it, tied to perhaps finances or logistics that was the real deciding factor.

history and typical "modus operandi" of the society tells me that if there was some money to be made that way, they would not have stopped.. wonder if anybody has more info on this..

Hoffnung

Purely an after effect of the Jimmy Swaggart court case. If you sell food or anything else on a regular basis (assembly halls are used almost every weekend of the year), you cannot claim this is a rare event (rare in like once-in-a-year) that should go tax free, but is classified as a commercial activity, just as selling literature for a fix price. As the watchtower's society TAX FREE STATUS is more holy to them than anything else (including God, Christ and whatever is written in the bible), they would not risk this holy status for sandwiches and coke.

Hoffnung

14

Special Assembly in Puerto Rico Coliseum to annouce Branch Closure

by Calebs Airplane in

so, 2 weekends ago, my wife is showing an apartment to a potential buyer in the financial district of san juan and walks the buyer over to the balcony to show her the awesome views.

the buyer looks down at a crowd approaching puerto rico coliseum (aka jose miguel agrelot coliseum) and asked my wife: "are those jehovah's witnesses?

" my wife looks down from 19 stories up, notices the "pioneer pace" of the crowd and says: "yes.

Hoffnung

they did the same when they closed the Swiss branch office, standard operating procedure.

Hoffnung