i loathed giving talks and doing meeting parts.
i dreaded all assignments.
i was intelligent enough and always did a good job, but all my jw life (born in to mid-30's) i enjoyed giving talks about as much as a visit to the dentist.. i am sure that 90% of all jw's similarly dislike it.
I believe the TMS was introduced primarily to be able to substantiate the claim that JW were qualified to be ministers. In 1943 they were desperately trying to get the draft boards to accept that claim. Especially for Bethelites, as the TMS was started at first just for them. I first came to this conclusion reading the WAlsh case, where they spec ifically testified that the TMS was minister training.
draft
i have never heard of it before this video..
Tuxedo site is about 5-6 miles away from Warwick. It has mostly a big residence building, and storage areas for building supplies
you don't need to post them !!.
people can see if they have a pm.. topics like this are simply noise and just make work to clean up so please don't post them..
I have a 'you have a message envelope' that wont go away. I have read all my messages, yet it remains. How do you get it to disappear?
i've noticed something that is very odd even by wt/gb standards.
why is mark sanderson suddenly so prominent in all things wt/jw?.
others have commented on the obvious narcissism of the gb pushing themselves to the fore recently, in particular after their huge doctrinal change at proclaiming themselves and only themselves as the faithful and discreet slave.. this is clearly true as evidenced at the agm, not only throughout the agm, but also in the video that was featured as part of that meeting.
I am with some of the comments that Sanderson is not particularly prominent, any more than the others. But I do think that we are looking at a conscious change. In years past most Witnesses would have had difficulty naming the GB members, let alone identify them by sight. They were seldom pictured in the literature at all, and you might only see their names a time or two a year, maybe in the Gilead graduation article. But now it is almost like they are deliberately creating a PR image for them. Hero worship of prominent people is common in the world-- just watch the news-- but the WT has studiously avoided it until now.
did someone post this already?.
the list of the watchtower farms cementery.... http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gsr&gscid=2403939.
gorby.
Giovanni DeCecca
1879-1965
When I visited Bethel in abt 1976, Sister DeCecca was still living and was one of the highlights to be able to meet. She was quite old and had little to say except simple greetings. Believe it or not, she had a Bethel job even at that age and was working in the Bethel laundry, though honestly she didn't seem to be doing anything.
Her husband Giovanni DeCecca was one of the 7 people sent with Rutherford to the Atlanta Pen in 1918. He was of very short stature, and was born in Italy. In 1918 he was not one of the directors of the Society, contrary to some of the published accounts, but I think he was a director in the later years.
I am surprised to see his name listed as buried at WT farms, at the same time I wonder where his wife is.
did someone post this already?.
the list of the watchtower farms cementery.... http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gsr&gscid=2403939.
gorby.
bump, in case anyone else cares to comment
did someone post this already?.
the list of the watchtower farms cementery.... http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gsr&gscid=2403939.
gorby.
How about compiling a brief bio of each of the 160 names at the WT cemetery. Here's one that I remember meeting back in the day.
John Kurzen 1913-1980
Mr Kurzen was a longtime Bethelite. He had his brother Russell had both been there since the 30's when I met them in the late 70's. John was a bit of an inventor and tinkerer. He had supposedly designed the Fisher body emblem and received royalties for each car that Chrysler made. He had enough money to have his own car (a Citroen). He was the man who designed the folding phonograph that the JW's carried door to door to play Rutherford's sermons. Both the Kurzens were friendly and pleasant to talk to.
did someone post this already?.
the list of the watchtower farms cementery.... http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gsr&gscid=2403939.
gorby.
Here's a question. I thought I would look to see which of the burials was the oldest, and found A H MacMillan who died in 1966. But the attached obit says "He was buried August 29, 1966 at the Bethel Family plot in Staten Island. " Were his remains removed or is the obit in error?
in 1984 a revised nwt was released.. i lived in jw fundieland at the time and i believe thats the year i got baptized.
this was the tail end of the great apostasy scare and a great gearing up for armageddon because we were told, in print, that it would come in the 20th century.
we were positively whipped up into a fervor.
I agree, this is a very different release than the '84 version. That one had almost no change to the wording of the text, only single words changed here and there. Also added were cross references, appendix, etc. This time they have actually reworded large parts for the sake of readability. While the way the NWT had been translated (literal, which retains some of the original flavor) has some merit, overall it was so difficult to read for any period of time that it discouraged Bible reading. This time it is actually readable. It is a very significant change in the intent of the translation.
some of this will not be new to those of you who read other people's notes, but i bet there are a few new bits for you here, so i've provided a user-friendly table of contents, as an homage to the contents that appear before each book of the bible in the new nwt.
i might remember more highlights later, as i'm rather tired right now, but this is what i can recall off the top of my head.. contents (use of quote marks in this section is facetious; these are not actual quotes).
"say, did you notice that 2014 is the 100th anniversary, people?".
Thanks Apog and all for the comments and insights.
I'm a little confused by this one:
Have they changed John 8:58. Apart from the disputed theology, "I was" has been criticised as simply poor English. Has it been altered to "I have been" or rephrased altogether?
Good guess, slimboyfat. This verse now indeed ends "I have been"!
because in the NWT I have it has always read 'I have been'. The one I have is the 1984 study version.
