with their luxurious lakeside condos.
takes all the congregations funds promising new kingdom halls.
but instead starts selling off kingdom halls ..then makes faithful old brothers and sisters drive 20-30 miles to another one, and .kicks out half the bethelites for only only tech savy college educated ones.can barely afford to send out printed publications anymore.
Now as they were going along the road, someone said to him: “I will follow you wherever you go.” But Jesus said to him: “Foxes have dens and birds of heaven have nests, but the Son of man has nowhere to lay down his head.”--Luke 9:57-58
The Governing Body is willing to follow Jesus...as long as he leads them to a swanky new quarters in upstate New York and they are given comfy pillows to lay their heads. Clear to the buffet they follow! Such models of self-sacrifice and martyrdom!
a couple of years ago, i participated in a thread on this site comparing the old nwt (1984) to the new nwt (2013).
i was able to produce a nwt mash up pdf showing the side-by-side differences between the two versions of the nwt.
herethis site claims it will hold the file for download for a long time.
Amazing work!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_2640059937&feature=iv&src_vid=hv9weqlebuo&v=5gqhtlbp6iy.
Very interesting.
in the article on the guardian ( http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/14/jehovahs-witnesses-evangelism-church-god-armageddon ) mentioned in another thread, there's this quote of mark omalley, who is assigned to the public information desk at the jehovahs witness uk centre in north london.
we now have more than 165,000 [literature] carts on the streets in over 50 countries.
it gives us visibility and availability.
For some reason, I got an email solicitation for one of these signs that go with the cart. I was curious and asked how much. Evidently it is $20-25 for a sign.
most witnesses i knew were exteeemly reluctant to go out in the ministry.
but when they did, they were simply scraping by, eager to avoid conflict and just do their hour or so speaking to lonely old ladies or widowed old men.
placing magazines in a car group, doing route calls, plodding along in the utter boredom of their responsibility to get some time on a report by the last day of the month.. this was never a warning work.
Very good OP.
If only JWs actually went around warning people, the public would instantly recognize that they are an apocalyptic cult.
The message is moderated and watered down to be appealing. But even so, actions speak louder than words. JWs have made wasting time a science.
conventions always just seemed like more of a vacation to me than anything else, especially if you had to travel out of town for it, but definitely were exhausting especially toward the end of each day.
for some reason i didn't mind the special and circuit assemblies too much, probably because they seemed like more of a social event than anything else and only 1-2 days.
the memorial always was kind of boring to me.
i am curious as to what current religion is similar in beliefs and organization to jw's.
i've only come as far as christadelphians.
are there any others you know of?.
The biggest differences seem to be the Christadelphians do not believe in the preexistence of Jesus, nor do they believe in a literal Satan.
Of course, really the biggest core belief of JWs is this: In 1919, Jesus chose the Watchtower leaders as the one and only channel through which God communicates his will--salvation through the impending Armageddon depends on obeying this channel now and in the future.
Every other JW belief is window dressing.
indoctrinated into all things watchtower, i once believed the bible was true history, that evolution was false and evil, and that the bible could be trusted to be reliable when it touched on science issues.
then i got introduced to the official catholic bible translation of u.s. catholics, the new american bible revised edition (or nabre--not to be confused with the protestant nasv or new american standard version) and things changed.
i was shocked to learn that the nabre teaches.... the creation and flood stories of genesis are jewish adaptations of mesopotamian heathen creation-flood mythology, not history.
I reread the Bible using the Catholic New Jerusalem Bible and learned tons. The footnotes were extensive. Especially reading Genesis, it was interesting seeing the various sources highlighted via the Documentary hypothesis. I came away with mad props for Catholic scholarship.
Evidently, both Catholic and mainline Protestants, learn this stuff in seminary.
In contrast, JWs (especially the Governing Body) know little to nothing about the Bible.
i have done this exactly as quoted more than once.
i ask elder if it's better to hide serious sin or reveal, of course we know the answer.
then i ask them to explain elders book page 38 paragraph 19, which say it's sometimes ok for elder who has committed immorality and has kept it secret to continue serving as elder.
Had I known this when I was a JW, I would not (as a regular rank-and-file publisher) reported a matter about myself to the elders.
I was under the impression that if I did not confess:
[1] I would be destroyed at Armageddon
[2] God could not forgive me without the elder's "spiritual healing"
[3] I would impede God's bless and the "flow of holy spirit" in my congregation and be just like Achan.
*warning this is long* it all started on the last day of the "remain loyal to jehovah" convention.
a little background story, i've been raised as a jw, been in and out of the religon, never baptised but was made an unbaptized publisher about 3 years ago, always felt out of place in the congregation, blamed myself for this because if i had just went to meetings and did all the right things then i would have friends and not be in the mess that i was.
right after becoming an unbaptized publisher i met my now fiance, end up leaving my mother's house to live with him, elders haven't contacted me about my situation even though i'm sure they know as my step father is an elder...but anyway on the last day of the convention my fiance came with me as i was visiting my mother and had planned to go with her and her husband to the convention.
Welcome!
And congrats for starting to see the organization through open eyes.
You might also want to read Combatting Cult Mind Control by Steven Hassan.
