Rutherford seemed bent on bringing persecution down on the Witnesses, and some of his moves were stated to be made to prepare for the supposed persecution which he believed would come. One was the building of their own printing factory. Previously they had hired outside printers, and he wanted the ability to print his own without relying on outside firms. Another was the building of a bomb-shelter in San Diego (Beth Shan). A third was the building of the South Lansing facility, which cannot be described as a bomb shelter, but was definitely out of the way and could be viewed as a 'retreat' for the Bethel family of the time. We drove by the site this summer and snapped a couple of photos. The building has been sold some time ago (to the State of NY, if I remember correctly). You can still read 'Gilead' in the bricks over the main entrance. The area is really beautiful, just about a mile or so off the east side of Cayuga Lake, one of the Finger Lakes of upstate NY. An awesome place to visit and to vacation! Directly across the road is another farm called 'Kingdom' Farm which I believe the WT still owns and operates. There is one residence building and a few large barns. It doesn't appear to be a very large operation; there couldn't be more than 15-20 people living there.
dropoffyourkeylee
JoinedPosts by dropoffyourkeylee
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Why was Gilead originally made into a Bombshelter!!!!
by Witness 007 inrutherford's book "enemies" 1937: "will great britain and america become fascist under catholic control?
the scriptures and the facts support that conclusion.
" where do you hide the bethel family from fascist catholics?.
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In what KM or literature were JW's told to not put the WT logo on podium or buildings?
by Wasanelder Once inin the 80's it became a trend to put the wt logo on the front of the speakers podium where others put a cross.
i always hated that and spoke against it to the body of elders.
i shut up and it was put there anyway untill a km came down that said not to do it.
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dropoffyourkeylee
Another angle is that if a KH has Watchtower-style bricks built into the facade, it detracts from re-sale value
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Where did Russell steal 606/7 BCE from ?
by Phizzy inthis is something i have wondered about, and our great poster stillin posed the question on another thread .
russell get the idea that jerusalem was destroyed in 606/7 bce?
(he adjusted 606 to 607 when it was pointed out there was no year "0").. as in the main a plagiarist, rather than an original thinker, i guess he got it from someone else ?.
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dropoffyourkeylee
I've seen the 606 BC date in other pre-1900 non-Russell literature. It was commonly accepted chronology at that time. It didn't originate with Russell, but at that time is was not an unusual belief. I seem to remember it appeared in an old copy of Scofield's reference Bible I used to have.
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Read rare, historic letters about the draft from WT attorney, Hayden Covington, written to a young JW man.
by AndersonsInfo infor those who are interested in this subject, especially researchers and historians, i posted on my website extremely rare material dealing with one man's struggle to avoid being drafted into the us military for religious reasons.. this is a huge downloadable collection of correspondence between richard rawe, his draft board and government officials after he was ordered to report for military duty.
richard saved every letter and even the envelopes from the time he was called up for military duty when he was 18 in 1952 until 1960 when he was 26 and too old to be drafted.. what makes this collection unique and special is that there are many, many important private letters from watchtower attorney, hayden covington to richard containing instructions and advice.
this is historical material that allows us to peer into the legal mind of covington with regards to the draft situation during that time period.
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dropoffyourkeylee
Fascinating. One striking thing that is surprising is the sheer amount of time that Covington's office spent on this individual case, answering specific questions for a single individual. If they did that for each and every one of the draft-age men it would have been a fulltime job for many people. Things are different now.
Another thing that is interesting is how often the individual is instructed to maintain his records of how much time he spends in 'ministry' to his 'congregation of laymen' (not the local congregation, but rather the people in the community who are visited), with specific recording of their names, the times they are visited, and almost all the details of the calls. I have always wondered if the initial purpose of the time records of the WT and the door-to-door records was exactly for this, to provide documentation in court for the draft board requirements, and that the use of the time records for JW control came in later.
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New Bethel Facility - Fort Lauderdale Remote Translation Office (RTO)
by daniel-p inhey all, it's been a long time since i've posted anything here.
this may be of interest to some people, or not.
and i'm not sure if this has been announced in the congregations, even, because thankfully i have not attended any meetings in quite some time.
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dropoffyourkeylee
Do we know for sure that this story about Ft Lauderdale isn't perhaps the same place as the Palm Coast purchase recently which is a bit north of Ft. Lauderdale? You know how rumours spread, and facts get distorted. We know the Palm Coast story is true from news reports, but so far nothing that I have seen about Ft. Lauderdale.
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Is the Watchtower Intentionally Trying to Force People to Leave the Organization?
by kneehighmiah inthe leaks from the new november watchtower are alarming.
they will disturb even longtime jws who haven't surrendered all rational thought.
it's become so cult like its scary.
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dropoffyourkeylee
The WT writers (or whoever it is that decides what the subject matter will be) are always reactionary. So what this article tells me is that there a lot of JWs who associate with their DFd children and relatives, go to weddings etc at other churches, take blood, donate blood, don't hold a family study night, etc. The articles are written because the writers perceive there being a problem. A lot of people deep down simply don't agree with the WT.
But the tone of the 11/14 WT comes across as harsh, at least to me. An interested thinking person who is exploring jw.org for the first time who may read the Nov 14 WT would no doubt be disillusioned quickly.
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Read rare, historic letters about the draft from WT attorney, Hayden Covington, written to a young JW man.
by AndersonsInfo infor those who are interested in this subject, especially researchers and historians, i posted on my website extremely rare material dealing with one man's struggle to avoid being drafted into the us military for religious reasons.. this is a huge downloadable collection of correspondence between richard rawe, his draft board and government officials after he was ordered to report for military duty.
richard saved every letter and even the envelopes from the time he was called up for military duty when he was 18 in 1952 until 1960 when he was 26 and too old to be drafted.. what makes this collection unique and special is that there are many, many important private letters from watchtower attorney, hayden covington to richard containing instructions and advice.
this is historical material that allows us to peer into the legal mind of covington with regards to the draft situation during that time period.
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dropoffyourkeylee
Excellent, I will definitely read all of these
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"Jehovah may be frowning" - Ohio newspaper sticks it to JWs over assembly hall
by sir82 inhttp://www.theharrison-press.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5918:jehovah-may-be-frowning&catid=79:columns&itemid=141.
brief summary:.
the jws, backed by county commissioners, contend they have a legal right to build an assembly hall in the jedd.
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dropoffyourkeylee
This assembly hall was first proposed in 2011, and the congregations around were told it was their responsibility to pay for it (8 million dollars). They then passed pledge cards around and each congregation promised to contribute through a separate contribution box. Interestingly, although the local congregation dutifully put in about 300-400 each and every month, as of May 1 the special box was taken away and no accounting was done as to how much they had contributed, and no promise made that the past contributions would be put toward the SW Ohio assembly hall project.
I presume they have already bought the property (or else why the lawsuit), and have been spending some of the money fighting a lawsuit over the right to build. Go figure. Now maybe they will start to build something. Meanwhile the two existing assembly halls which are due for replacement (one in Indianapolis and one in London Ohio) are still unsold. The one in London is probably unsaleable, as it is in a location desirable to no one.
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why did they have to butcher the kingdom melodies?
by purrpurr inits not like there was anything wrong with them was there?
i used to love the old ones.
these new ones feel like the equivalent of a deflated balloon.. does anyone have the answer?.
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dropoffyourkeylee
The pink songbook is the earliest I remember. The songs were similar in many ways to the hymns in the Protestant US churches, which was the heartland from which the JWs came. The songs were good ones, piano accompaniment was well suited to leading a congregation of amateur singers, and the songs written in four part harmony made harmonizing easy for more advanced singers.
The last two songbooks haved moved away from the church- sound, probably intentionally. The WT is not alone in this, as contemporary Christian music has done the same.
The WT has also changed many of the songs to be more palatable to other cultures (less marching, militaristic wording, suggestive wording ( ie Shulamite maiden), KJ- isms (Calvary), and definitely no more molesting.!
Overall, I really dislike the new book ,except one song (he will call) .
my two cents,
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Poignant Statistics Summary for Comment at This Sunday WT Study! (Aug. 3, 2014)
by SAHS inthe watchtower study to be considered this sunday, august 3, 2014 (using the magazine dated may 15, 2014), titled are you moving ahead with jehovahs organization?, in paragraph seven (on pages 27-28), talks about the number of people baptized in recent years:.
7 where do those making up the great crowd come from?
they are being brought together because of what jesus foretold as part of the sign of his presence.
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dropoffyourkeylee
The difficulty with these statistics is that the ' number baptized' and the increase in number of 'publishers' do not measure the same thing. However, over time you would expect the two figures to move in the same direction and at a similar magnitude, after accounting for natural deaths. What is apparent is that there are a lot of people who 1) start publishing, 2) get baptized, 3) quit publishing. Since the time period between 2) and 3) varies a lot (over ten years in my case) it requires a lot of years data to support a trend.
The percent of baptized / publishers has dropped to about a quarter of what it used to be back in the heydays of 70's thru early 90's. This is even more indicative of decline.