so i got a text from an elder who i consider one of the good guys and a friend in his own way.. he asked if he could bring the co by for a visit.
he said it would be "just a pleasant call and visit and will hopefully encourage my wife".
he says that "he knows she is dealing with a ton of pressure".. in all my years around the organization, i never had a visit from the circuit overseer.
What ShirleyW & DJS said.
When the CO comes to town, elders scramble to do what they haven't done in the last 6 months. And they also find "calls" to take the CO on.
If they insist on coming, if you know when, get out of the house for a few hours. The CO is too busy with so many matters and probably has bigger fish to fry.
well beards are still a no no!!!!!!.
in a new letter from the branch/gb nut's, beards are not acceptable in the us branch area!!!!!!.
my eldub brother in law, shared this today.
I'm not a bit surprised that the answer is no.
Anyone who read between the lines of the paragraph about beard should have come to that conclusion. It read, "It's okay", but meant, "Don't!"
wife read me the daily text this morning out of the blue this morning and a couple of sentences stuck out in my head.. all of jehovah’s promises are dynamic, not static, because he is constantly working toward their fulfillment.
(isa.
46:10; 55:11) once a person realizes this about jehovah’s word, what he reads in the bible can exert a powerful force in his life.. .
Underlying message: why aren’t YOU more dynamic? Get moving. Do more!
Question for the writer of this article: Why would something dynamic wait for a person’s realization before it exerts ‘a powerful force’. That doesn’t seem that dynamic.
that's a comment i heard from an elder i haven't seen in over a decade, yesterday.
i mentioned it all on my other thread.
i responded that i knew of no one that was crawling back to the meetings and gave him an incredulous hearty chuckle.
It could be that the ramping up of shunning, even on the inactive, might be having an effect of a few.
my sarcasm will get me df'd one day.
after being disgusted by the bs of the sunday meeting, i chatted with one inactive brother came back for that one meeting.
i can't exactly remember how it came up, but he told me and a sister whose a close friend of mine that she shouldn't be so uptight, we're no longer under the mosaic law.
It becomes a matter of interpretation of what 'principles' the Mosaic law was getting at...and the only ones that are allowed to derive those principles are the Governing Body
And as Ray Franz said the difference in Watchtower theology because principles and law are a "distinction without a difference". After all, people can be disfellowshipped and shunned for not adhering to the principles the Governing Body comes up with.
can jws read publications by other churches?
or by atheists?
i've always heard these are apostate materials.
It's called Information Control.
i bet most witnesses could not explain their blood policy, their understanding of the slave, and even simple biblical doctrines....they are an embarrassment to any old timer..
They've gone from 'solid food' to 'milk'.
Not that it any of it was healthy to begin with.
their fundamental beliefs are much like jehovah's witnesses sans the paranoia, authoritarianism, stifling rules, and end-times enthusiasm.
you don't even have to become a bible student to be saved, you could be an idol worshipping heathen and still get resurrected in the milenium.
if i still believed in the divine inspiration of the scriptures, i would be a bible student.
I was on a train that once made a temporary stop around Washington DC. A Bible Student come aboard briefly to hand out tracks. I was a JW then and tried to pretend to be listening to my IPOD. He was quiet persistent and I took a track to get rid of him. I felt guilty about it because: (1) Watchtower said not to take literature (2) The Bible Students were somehow related to the "evil slave".
i attended a sunday meeting today after missing a couple due to a bout of chronic apathy.
out of 74 publishers we had a grand total of 33. wonderful.
for those that attend, how are you finding the numbers?.
As has been mentioned, this is the exact reason for the congregation re-orgs. They will fill the Kingdom Halls by mergers and then sell the rest. This will give the illusion of growth.
It is possible that Believer has been to a Kingdom Hall that has been through a re-org.
back in the "good old days", i would look for people in my territory, especially ministers in order to debate the trinity with them.
it was my pet subject that i had spent many hours over several years researching.
i was such a good anti-trinity apologist that i was actually disappointed with the trinity brochure when it came out.
There is more scriptural “evidence” to argue for a Trinity then there is for the Overlapping Generation.
The key thing to understand is different Bible writers had different ideas of who Jesus was. The writer of Mark had believed a very human messiah adopted as God’s son, whereas the writer of John clearly believed that Jesus was fully divine, while a distinct person from the Father and the Holy Spirit.
To 'disprove' the Trinity, or to 'prove' it, one must span different Bible books written by different writers.
To discount the Overlapping Generation of Matthew 24:34, one simply goes to Matthew 1, within the same book of the Bible, by the same writer.
