Posts by Liberty

36

1914 & Generation What change?

by johnnyc in

i have read through many posts on this website that refer to the fact wtbts changed their viewpoint on generation and its relevance to 1914. there was just an article out in the wt (last six months) that reiterated the fact this viewpoint did not change, and that the wtbts still expects the generation who were around in 1914 to physically see the conclusion of this system and the visible second coming of jesus here on earth.

the wtbts did state they consider anyone being born in 1914 would be applicable, which is a change from earlier discussions, but they have not (from what i have seen) said that generation could pass away altogether.

sincerely i ask: if anyone has that information i would love to see it.

Liberty

Hi johnnyc,

I think you may be confused by the fact that the Watch Tower Society is way too dishonest to admit outright that they were totally wrong about understanding what the Generation is and issued false man-made opinions passed off as the "True inspired words of God" to millions of followers who are not allowed to dispute them.

They pulled the same stunt with 1975. In 1976 you CAN'T find an honest policy change statement to the effect that "WE, the LEADERSHIP of the Watch Tower Society stated our faulty opinions and conjectures about 1975 falsly represented by us as God inspired facts and now admit we were totally wrong about 1975 or any End Times predictions we pulled out of our asses. Sorry for screwing up your lives, so please don't listen to us because we are idiots." You will never see it clearly stated this way. They would loose their authority and control of the membership if they admitted that they know even less than your average Bible reader about "God's Divine Plan". Policy changes and weak admissions forced by clear events that don't add up or don't come true are always hidden in tricky and confusing language and or buck passing so that there is no clear revelation of the monument to falsehood that the Watch Tower is.

Their entire claim to fame and authority derives from them being "God's only true spirit inspired channel on earth today" if they start admitting honestly that they don't have a clue when it comes to understanding the Bible they cease to be authoritative leaders installed by God and become just another group of men with opinions.

It is really as simple as that.

87

WHAT if we're wrong?

by shell69 in

jw
friends

i mean, i know i'm bitter.. normally these days quite strong, not feeling so much so much the last few days though.. what i'd give to do the things i was used to.

going doing the weekly shop with my mum, her popping round for a brew in the morning.. a hug from her, just to to know from the way she communicated with me, that she loved me.

i miss her so much.. and what if i'm wrong?.

Liberty

If ex-JW Apostates are wrong then the Universe is a very sick and twisted place. Jehovah is a complete wacko, inconsistant, illogical, and a demading egotist. Such a being would not be capable of creating a Universe. The Watch Tower salvation plan is complete nonsense when looked at calmly and reasonably and couldn't possibly be true for all the reasons enumerated here by the other posters. Never let guilt cloud your reason. Why would God destroy billions of people who never had a chance to hear the Watch Tower message even if it was "real"? The whole concept falls like a house of cards if even the most simple concept of fairness is applied. How can anyone be executed by God just because his government didn't allow him to even hear his choices?

Why would a just God give false warning after false warning until people stop listening (the cry wolf-problem). If the Watch Tower Society was really God's channel why do they always get it wrong? They have never predicted ONE correct thing ever in their entire history. Why would God choose such a flawed organization?

Use your reasoning to see the lie behind the Watch Tower. The facts just don't add up to, and if the system doesn't make any sense then our salvation or destruction would be completely random and beyond our control anyway.

18

Are we too cynical?

by Princess Daisy Boo in

jw
friends

is it a good thing to look for fault in everything the borg does?

.

are we clutching at straws sometimes in our efforts to strengthen our fight and fuel our anger?.

Liberty

I don't think it is at all cynical since the facts are very clear that every aspect of the Watch Tower Society is false and based upon pure delusional fantasy. There is nothing good or nice about this cult of lies, false hopes, and misery.

32

The end is so close...

by sspo in

jw
friends

received email from a friend- enjoy it- the end is always around the corner.

a man is in the mountains, it's night time, he wanders off the road and .

falls off a cliff.

Liberty

If there was a God why would He promote or endorse those who promote false dates over and over again? What purpose is served by the advertizement of nonevents which would humiliate normal humans let alone God on a regular basis? This alone proves that the Watch Tower Society has never recieved any "spirit guidence" in it's constant supply of false predictions. It is mind boggeling just how big of a failure they have been at predicting anything for well over 100 years. A 100% failure rate for well over a century and yet we believed and new victims are always ready to believe it any way.

42

I Am Legend JW email

by Descender in

jw
friends

so my sister-in-law, who is a pretty hardcore jw, showed me an email that looked like it had been passed around quite a bit, so i figured someone on here had probably seen it.

supposedley it's a picture from the movie "i am legend" where will smith is walking through new york and all the buildings in the background are in ruins except for the bethel building, which stands out, undamaged and clean.

i watched the movie and don't remember seeing anything like that so i just figured that some jw photoshopped it and sent it out to the jw community to show that the bethel building is protected by god even in a post apocaliptical world run over with zombie vampires.

Liberty

None of the buildings are destroyed in the movie except the ones Will Smith blows up fighting vampires at the end. The bridges were blown by the military to seal the city off for quarantine but there was no war to destroy the buildings. This was a virus emergency (as someone else pointed out) not a war so the Watch Tower buildings look like all the other buildings. JWs need to actually see the movie before they jump to these idiotic conclusions.

15

NEW "annointed" since 1935 - hilarious!!!

by hamsterbait in

jw
friends

i counted up the deaths/ new partakers over the 71years 1936 to 2007.. i assumed 70 as the average lifespan, which means we can reasonably expect a decline of 1.43% each year.. those dead: 14 707 new partakers: 52 312. .

average deaths each year: 207. average new partakers each year: 737.. this gives a combined total of memorial partakers between 1936 - 2007 of 66 839. according to the witchtower of 1988 15/12 there were 27 006 partakers in 1936. smell anything yet?.

1: where those dying (3 figures) exceeded new partakers (2 or single figure) 16 years out of 71.. 2: at no point did the number of deaths in a year exceed 561.. 3: lowest number of deaths 122 in 2003. lowest number of new partakers 3 in 1988.. 4: highest deaths 561 in 1938. highest number of new partakers 10 677 in 1937.

Liberty

I looked up the population for the Roman Empire at the same time as early Christianity and it was around 65,000,000. I took just .01 of population being Christian and got 650,000. I then used 10% (based on "real" anointed old faithfuls from my congregation in the early 1970's) and got 65,000 anointed. This is very conservative but still fills almost 1/2 the slots in just the very early years of Christianity.

44

Atheists Bible Quiz - True Believers Beware - You'll Love It...

by besty in

http://ffrf.org/quiz/bquiz.php.

we found this quiz after reading the book parenting beyond belief and sweetpea and i decided to take the challenge - afterall how difficult can 50 bible questions be for us born and brought up as jw's?.

our results were enlightening to say the least - we both scored 28/50 - not exactly brilliant although apparently above average.. take the quiz and post your results and comments..

Liberty

I got 37 out of 50. It helps us to see that the Bible, like Mormonism, is dumb dumb dumb dumb.

15

NEW "annointed" since 1935 - hilarious!!!

by hamsterbait in

jw
friends

i counted up the deaths/ new partakers over the 71years 1936 to 2007.. i assumed 70 as the average lifespan, which means we can reasonably expect a decline of 1.43% each year.. those dead: 14 707 new partakers: 52 312. .

average deaths each year: 207. average new partakers each year: 737.. this gives a combined total of memorial partakers between 1936 - 2007 of 66 839. according to the witchtower of 1988 15/12 there were 27 006 partakers in 1936. smell anything yet?.

1: where those dying (3 figures) exceeded new partakers (2 or single figure) 16 years out of 71.. 2: at no point did the number of deaths in a year exceed 561.. 3: lowest number of deaths 122 in 2003. lowest number of new partakers 3 in 1988.. 4: highest deaths 561 in 1938. highest number of new partakers 10 677 in 1937.

Liberty

Like all Watch Tower math the "anointed" scheme just doesn't add up no matter how you slice it. Without any "apostate" knowledge or influence simple math proves that Watch Towerism is plainly false on many fronts. The 144,000 as a literal number would have been filled long ago considering three centuries of what even the Watch Tower admits was true Christianity before the establishment of an apostate Roman state church. Many of these early Christians were tortured to death for their faith making them prime candidates for being of the "anointed class". The Watch Tower further admits that "true Christians", though small in number, existed throughout the 15 centuries which followed until the resestablishment of "pure worship" by Russel in the late 1800's. Many of these too died horrible deaths as heritics and would have a percentage who were of the "anointed class" as well.

Once Russel "restored" "true Christianity" all of his followers considered themselves worthy of the "heavenly hope" up until 1936. The WT Society made 1936 a cut off point precisley because the then membership was already exceeding 144,000 in number and needed an out to explain the growth beyond this point, hence the "earthly hope" class invented for the overflow. If the average "annointed" in 1936 was 30 years old (many were much older) then they would be 103 years old today or most likely long dead. Add to this all of the "anointed" since then and those still hovering at 8,000 or 9,000 at each memorial and you get a ridiculously large count which even if 50% were false would still exceed any reasonable estimates.

The math involved in reaching the world's population now in the billions with the WT salvation message using just 7 or 8 million JWs before Armageddon doesn't add up either. In fact a new generation of people who will never be reached grows exponentially every year Jehoobie postpones Armageddon needlessly killing uncontacted millions who need never have been born. In short, according to the Watch Towers own salvation scheme Armageddon can never come since only a small percentage of the world's population can realistically be contacted at all. Numbers don't lie and you don't need "apostates" to do the math and we haven't even gotten to "Armageddon any day now for over 100 years" numbers games.

33

Four years late. Just watched Passions of the Christ. I have a question

by shopaholic in

as you know this movie was banned for jws.

any faithful witness would not watched a non-jw bible movie (even though they do it all the time but that's a different subject.

) i watched it this pass week over a couple of days.

Liberty

I appreciate your comments inkling. The Passion is such a testimate to self hate and a loathing for humanity in general that it becomes difficult for me to understand how seeing it could provide any one with a spiritual experience. The very unhealthy guilt-ridden traditional Christian concept that humans are unworthy of a saviour and where gross sin and degradation are considered normal human atributes flies in the face of the real world I have come to know since leaving the Watch Tower Cult. Gibson illustrates in this film what this sickness can do to a person's perception of reality.

The vast majority of human beings are kind and cooperative with only a tiny fraction being deviant and evil. This is a spiritual triumph in my opinion, considering the horrifically cruel natural environment which spawned us. Gibson has it all back wards, if there was a God He would be responsible for the horrors present in the Universe and not humanity. That we consistantly overcome the nightmarish and struggle with great success to make the world better is the real story of humanity. It is the traditional religions of self-hate which retard our progress and I am frightened that so many of my otherwise very nice friends and nieghbors would find such a primitive throwback emotion generated by the Passion to be spiritual. This film should be seen as a bizarre primeval curiosity and not as a spiritual ralllying point.

33

Four years late. Just watched Passions of the Christ. I have a question

by shopaholic in

as you know this movie was banned for jws.

any faithful witness would not watched a non-jw bible movie (even though they do it all the time but that's a different subject.

) i watched it this pass week over a couple of days.

Liberty

Mel Gibson is deeply troubled but a genius film maker. Passion of the Christ is a brilliant horror movie but ridiculously over-the-top as a Bible movie. The visuals are beautifully crafted and fantastical in a nightmarish surealism but lacks any resemblence to historical reality. Passion makes the Robe look like a documentary, and the Robe was as campy as Bible movies could get until Passion.

Gibson never attempted to make this film realistic. It was shot on sets in Italy and looks nothing like the environment where the Bible stories take place. Monty Python's Life of Brian does a far better job of presenting a realistic Christ story even though it is a parody. Life of Brian is as brilliant in it's clean sparten simplicity as Passion is in it's European mystical theatrical fakery.

I never once felt like I was being transported to Roman occupied Palestine in the 1st Century in the Passion. It was more like seeing centuries of Catholic art works and icons being brought to life in a horrible nightmare. I enjoyed the Passion as a horror film filled with Gibson's guilt ridden demons and the hellish violence they spawn. But it is terriable as a realistic "Bible" film trying to bring the Gospels to life. The Passion appeals to the dark and primitive emotions and not the intellect. The entire dialogues spoken in ancient languages prove just how meaningless the words are in this story which is designed to appeal to the senses and emotions and not the mind. The drone of the languages became an hypnotic part of the soundtrack isolating the viewer ever deeper into the nightmare.

No human, no matter how perfect, could lose so much flesh and blood and live at all let alone stand up and still carry heavy beams to the execution site. The flipping of the cross over to bend the huge nails under was especially over-the-top in a movie of constant theatrical exaggerations. The maggot filled donkey, the silver toothed female Devil, the Devil-dwarf baby, the literal buckets of blood, the clots of torn bloody flesh flinging through the air, the brutal and ugly human faces smothering the viewer, the darkened sepia skies, and the clanking of heavy chains and wierd soundtrack noises all speak of bad dreams and not reality.

I find it odd that such an art house, R rated, Catholic flavored horror film could resonate so well with mainstream American Protestants. The fact that it did just proves to me how much raw emotion is really involved in even modern Christian belief. Sadism, fear, and guilt are such major components of these beliefs that they transend time and sects.