Indian Larry

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Posts by Indian Larry

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  43

  Blondie is awesome!!!

  by Sheep2slaughter in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i'm just sayin... blondie...are you a lawyer or investigator or what!?

  her/your weekly watchtower comments we won't hear at the watchtower indoctrination are amazing.

  so much work.

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  Indian Larry

  I agree. Thank you Blondie for all the work you put into your research. It is very helpful!
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  56

  Greetings! My first post

  by BU2B in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  hello all at jwn!

  i have been a lurker here the last few months and have been going through the process of researching both sides of the story of jehovahs witnesses.

  i was raised in the borg, got married and now have a young child.. my wife is very much dedicated to the organization and will justify anything the "slave" does putting it off on the borgs imperfection.

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  Indian Larry

  Hi BU2B,

  Welcome to the forum. I too am struggleing with a wife that just can not see that the faithful and discrete slave lies. I also have to agree with Black Sheep. Do not try to "tell" her anything, believe me it just does not work. Ask questions, help her to think. For yourself I highly reccomend In Search of Christian Freedom by Ray Franz. If you look on P2P sites it is available as a .mp3 so you can listen to it in the car when you are alone.

  There is also a guy named Wilbur Lingle. Just Google his name and see if you can get any of his stuff. He has some pretty good ideas on helping your family.

  Good luck
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  9

  2012 Convention "Their Spiritual Mother" on YouTube (48 min. w/commentor) - ugh

  by Gayle in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  motivating right hearted ones to love their spiritual mother.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0zxvfheesk.

  mr. brock makes good comments along the way pointing out watchtower methodology to twist & control.. .

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  Indian Larry

  Not to hijack this thread, but the "mother" analogy brings to mind another problem they have. The UN NGO issue. If the org is "mother" then that would go something like this:
  
  Father is away for a long time. He leaves mother in charge of all the kids. One of the children finds out that mom is spending every Wednesday down at a coffe house flirting with Fathers biggest enemy. She knows how the children would feel abou this, so she does it on the sly. What happens though when one of the children finds out. Perhaps you confront Mom and say, "Look, what you are doing is wrong, and dad would not approve" The mother then says "Ok, ok, we were just having coffee, it is not like I was actually sleeping with him, I will stop having coffee with him, but you better drop it, if you don't let it go I will turn all your brothers and sisters against you. Who do you think they will believe, me their loving mom, or you? Consider yourself warned!

  To me if you are going to call the org, mother that analogy fits the UN/NGO mess to a tee.
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  9

  2012 Convention "Their Spiritual Mother" on YouTube (48 min. w/commentor) - ugh

  by Gayle in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  motivating right hearted ones to love their spiritual mother.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0zxvfheesk.

  mr. brock makes good comments along the way pointing out watchtower methodology to twist & control.. .

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  Indian Larry

  So if we are all a family, then we should listen to both our Father (Jehovah) and our Mother (the Org.), where does that leave the son?
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  47

  Credit card machines at district conventions

  by OneDayillBeFree in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  so it's true they are real.

  i never thought i'd see the day when the org.

  would be so desperate for money that they would do this.

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  Indian Larry

  I remember a cartoon that was in the "Watching the World" section of Awake!. It was cracking on churches that used ATMs for donations. I believe it had a caption something to the effect of: "do I get to go to heaven with my airline points?" or something like that. Does anybody have a .jpeg of that cartoon? I would love to share it with my wife.

  I don't really have a huge problem with them using a card reader since it is true that not as many people carry cash as used to. However I do have a HUGE PROBLEM with the hypocricy of running down evil "Christendom" for doing the exact same thing.
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  7

  Sounds like a "trouble-shooter" circuit overseer?

  by Gayle in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  http://www.heraldsun.com/view/full_story/19123926/article-on-the-jehovah%e2%80%99s-witness-circuit?.

  he states they were sent in just for a year as previous c.o.

  was reassigned before the normal 3yr time.

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  Indian Larry

  Ditto to doinmypart. It has to do with syncing up rotation schedules.
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  16

  My thoughts on the pedophile mess

  by Indian Larry in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  i am a former ms and i in the middle of a a several year fade and am still working on my wife.

  she is totally snowed by the organizaiton.

  i will say up front that i do still belive the bible, i know many on this board no longer do, however i do.

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  Indian Larry

  @JWFacts > Unfortunately I no longer have that book. I believe I mentioned earlier that I had almost lost her back in February. It is a long story but we had a big disagreement and I ended up burning a bunch of books, probably 2 or 3 hundred dollars worth. I also deleted all of the research I had on my laptop (which was quite considerable and very well organized) Fortunately I have a Macbook and I had set that folder to backup on Apples servers automatically thank goodness.

  Anyway, I don’t have the book any longer but I did find an article online that has a decent synopsis. Basically it says:

  A model of cognitive dissonance in the face of failed prophecy is examined in a study by Festinger, Riecken and Schacter in their book, When Prophecy Fails. 3 It is their hypothesis that under certain conditions, increased proselytizing by a group follows disconfirmation of a prophecy associated with the group. This soci­ological principle has been borne out by subsequent studies with some modification and explanation necessary to accommodate vari­ations. Nonetheless, the Festinger model of failed prophecy is the standard. It requires the presence of the five following conditions:

  1. There is a belief with conviction.
  2. The believers are committed to the conviction.
  3. The belief is susceptible to unequivocal failure.
  4. There is undeniable evidence disconfirming the belief.
  5. The believers have social support. 4

  To the extent that these conditions are present, Festinger & company hypothesize that there will be recovery and outreach of the belief system. Because the model is one paradigm, it must be altered to fit a variety of factual scenarios and movements of failed prophecies that have occurred in the real world. However, some­times the factual scenario is a perfect fit, and needs no modification.

  The study was conducted by observers who infiltrated a group of flying saucer believers, who received mes­sages, primarily through Marian Keech, a suburban housewife, that there would be a cataclysmic flood on a certain date, and that the "believers" would be "taken up" by space aliens before that date. She received this knowledge through auto-handwritten messages from Sananda, a "space medium," who was later confirmed by a "believer" to be Jesus. A number of followers within the small group of believers changed their position by quitting their jobs, dropping out of school and taking a public stand while waiting to be picked up by the "boys upstairs." When these prophecies failed, a core of believers rationalized the failure, and the authors' hypothesis was proved. The believers in Lake City, who had social support, increased their evangelistic fervor after the disconfirmation and rationalization. The believers in Collegeville who had less social support, did not evangelize, and quickly fell away from the faith.

  I do know that the greater the commitment to the prophecy or belief the harder it will be to change them - even in the face of obvious disconfirmation. Basically the more a person is invested, the greater the probability of rationalization when failure occurs and a renewal of the belief.

  Another factor in his theory is that the prophecy or prediction be susceptible to objective disconfirmation. For example the early witnesses had objective disconfirmation of 1914 and 1918. By the time 1925 turned out to be a lie as well a large percentage of the Bible Students left. That tends to confirm his theory to me.

  Social support also helps their mind to continue tricking them into belief.

  I thing the biggest thing is the level of commitment that most witnesses have. They have settled for less education, vacations spent knocking on doors, lower general income all of these things make them MORE likely to continue belief not less.

  Of course the biggest commitment of all is friends and family. If you stand to lose your family and 90% of your friends, your mind will do anything it can to justify their mistakes. Even if those mistakes are as serious as blatant hypocrisy (UN-NGO) clear false prophecy (1914, 1918, 1925, 1975) Stating something different then what the bible clearly states (Jeremiah 25:12, WTBS states the 70 years ended 2 years after Jehovah God did!), and it goes on and on.

  Unfortunately it also seems to be true for those at the top as well. I think a lot (not all) of the governing body actually believes that the Bible is written only for the "Faithful and Discreet Slave", they believe Christ is the mediator ONLY for them, they believe they have done nothing wrong as far as pedophiles in the org. The don’t see someone like Barbara Anderson as helping children and trying for progressive change, the truly see her as a vile apostate. Their whole life is invested in the world view that they have. It will take many major “disconfirmations” for one of them to really see the truth. Of course that happened with Brother Ray Franz and that was a very good thing. Who knows maybe one of them will finally realize the TATT and write another book like Franz did. That would be nice.

  There is always hope I guess. I used to be real gung ho. I have a close friend who did a fade 15 years ago. I went to his house one weekend and really was a jerk. I was literally thumping my bible, I was judgmental, and I was a total idiot. I did all this research to prove him wrong and finally it got through to me. Now I will spend the next several years trying to undo what I did before. Oh well.

  The good thing for me is now I feel like I finally am starting to really understand the Bible better. I am not saying I understand everything, but I do see the good news as actually good news now, not the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society good news which is not good at all for 99.99% of humanity. I no longer look at my neighbors as bird feed, and best of all I feel a lot better than before.

  Sorry for writing such a long post, I do want to thank you for the Website JWFacts.com. If I am not mistaken, (and again I am NOT looking for a discussion re. atheism/agnostic vs. belief) you may hold a different world view than I do as far as existence of a God etc., but I do appreciate very much that you keep the site to verifiable facts to help get myself and loved ones out of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. Even if you don't believe in a God the fact that you don't push that view makes your site much more effective to those of us trying to escape from the WT. Thank you.
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  16

  My thoughts on the pedophile mess

  by Indian Larry in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  i am a former ms and i in the middle of a a several year fade and am still working on my wife.

  she is totally snowed by the organizaiton.

  i will say up front that i do still belive the bible, i know many on this board no longer do, however i do.

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  Indian Larry

  I think you are a lot closer with your husband than I am with my wife. I tried my best to get her to listen to part of In Search of Christian Freedom as an audio book. She will not do it. She said if I want to tell her what it says she will listen but she will NOT listen to "In Search" or "Crisis of Conscience". I did prep her WT for her a couple of weeks ago (she uses an iPad for the WT) I posted parts of "In Search" as notes under the part about disfellowshipping. She did read it but said that "it did not build her up" and it is one sided and you don't know the rest of the story. Anyway we were in the car yesterday for a while and since she said she would listen to the info if I did not read it, I shared it that way.

  She was visibly sick by the time we got home. She was 3 hours late for word today with a splitting headache. Cognitvie dissonance is no joke that is for sure.
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  16

  My thoughts on the pedophile mess

  by Indian Larry in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  i am a former ms and i in the middle of a a several year fade and am still working on my wife.

  she is totally snowed by the organizaiton.

  i will say up front that i do still belive the bible, i know many on this board no longer do, however i do.

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  Indian Larry

  Quendi, thank you for your kind thoughts. They are appreciated.
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  9

  Pickle Omelet

  by BizzyBee in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  funny how childhood food remains a touchstone for comfort as we grow older.

  my mother used to make us sandwiches thusly:.

  toasted bread, one piece spread with mayonnaise, one spread with mustard.

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  Indian Larry

  How about a saltine cracker with a slice of cheddar, a pickle slice, and a little shot of mustard. mmmmmmmm. Also when I was a kid I used to eat the bakers chocolate that my mom kept. A lot of times that was the only chocolate in the house. To this day I like bitter chocolate.