When Christians talk about the need to be "saved", they are talking about the man made concept of Sin, which men also made up, and sold to the Gullible, a "remedy" for.
That Scam almost makes Snake Oil Salesmen look respectable !
i don't think it is possible to believe in jesus and then not believe what he said.
the purpose of the watchtower organization is to take as many people to hell as possible.
they do this by tricking people into rejecting the bare minimum requirements for the free gift of salvation that jesus offered to ”whosoever”.. one of the stipulations for salvation is belief that jesus was raised from the dead:.
When Christians talk about the need to be "saved", they are talking about the man made concept of Sin, which men also made up, and sold to the Gullible, a "remedy" for.
That Scam almost makes Snake Oil Salesmen look respectable !
5 shocking reasons why elders are leaving the jehovah’s witnesses — the hidden truth!
(kingdom wisdom).
thousands of jehovah’s witness elders around the world are stepping down… and no one is talking about it.
I have read comments on other Sites by active fully believing J.W's who deny there is a steady stream of people leaving. They really are SO Mind Controlled !
When Elders leave it does have a local impact, but this does not get talked about out of the area by J.W's
When talking about this, and other matters to an old J.W guy a few months ago, he said, " But we know nothing about that ." I replied " But all of this is easily available on-line". He just shrugged.
i have this memory of a gb member once saying that there would be a lot of bodies to be buried after armageddon.. does anyone else remember who said it?.
it was probably in the last decade or so.
ive been trying to find the video i’m sure it was on lloyd evens and all the other similar channels when it was said.. i can’t remember which gb member said it.
I well remember that stupid statements were made about this, it upset me to think of a "God of love" which I believed in, who would murder so many innocent people and even children and babies , WHY ?
I said to a young guy after one such Talk that " I think we will be surprised at who survives Armageddon". Of course, that was me deluding myself, the ghastly "Jehovah" had supposedly murdered the innocents in a Global Flood, and we were told "He does not change".
I was some years later discussing about the Big "A" with a M.S. who visited me after I left, and asked what the judgement of those who were put to death was based upon, he replied " On if they rejected the truth when we told them about it".
I said " In that case, it would be more loving, when someone opened their front door, to shoot them in the head, that way they are assured of a Resurrection".
He couldn't cope with that bit of blinding logic !
over a year ago, i engaged in a discussion on a similar topic.
it was titled, "has anyone read thucydides beside the author of daniel?".
since my annotated new jerusalem bible mentions a number of reasons why the text was probably written largely in the 2nd century bce to address events happening in that period ( the seleucid occupation and desecration of the temple), i was aware of a number of arguments for the case.
What a great Thread ! Full of open-minded Scholarship. This stood out to me from your Post above Vidqun, : "Scholars were very careful not to contradict the mainstream beliefs ..."
Biblical Scholars, with a Career to protect have long been this way, even those seen as somewhat maverick at the time when they posit a new idea are VERY cautious, never stating clearly what obviously lies behind their findings, in case they upset the Old Boys in their Ivory Towers.
The big Sign that many an Establishment Scholar is troubled by a new idea is the dismissal of such ideas as "This is a very fringe view", with no supportive evidence as to why this "fringe view" is wrong. Because if this "fringe view" is in fact correct, a lot of their previous work is now redundant.
Hence Biblical Scholarship only seems to move on in small increments, and hence very slowly.
Thanks again for the Thread, and thanks to all who contributed, giving us the benefit of true open-mined Scholarship.
we who actually look at wt history know that they just changed 1874 to 1914 without a fanfare.
setting up the potential for changing any dates to new dates because "holy spirit" told them to do so.. which makes me ask, why do we bother to watch what they do?
i mean, we don't care having escaped their greedy little claws.
" JWs were consistently trounced on public forums". Of course, if any venture on to Public Forums, they are still thoroughly trounced.
I was watching one debate between a J.W. and a guy I take to be an ex-JW on "Quora", the J.W was trounced, and then went to the inevitable J.W. resort of the Ad Hominem attack, "So-and-so only Posts sophisticated things against J.W's, and never Bible Truth".
They never reply to the Post itself that trounces them, for obvious reasons, but use the Org's technique of "Shooting the Messenger". Really pathetic !
I bother to look on here frequently because I like to see what the current crafty moves of the org. are, not that they affect me much usually, as I Posted on another thread, the org's latest nasty move, about avoiding anyone that obviously disagrees with their erroneous and unscriptural teachings, may just affect me, as I meet up regularly with two J.W's who I have known all my life. I shall be interested to see.
hour quotas timeline.
back in the old days long before 1952.
“after staying in our ‘home’ for two days we decided that if we were going to meet our quota of 140 hours for the month.
I remember the quotas, from those early days, right through. It was not easy for me as a teenager and adult, as it had been inculcated in me by my Pioneer sister that we record our time honestly, subtracting the time spent on Coffee breaks or similar.
The hours I recorded were actually spent in the work.
Having got sight of some J.W's Reports once, I remarked to the Elder i was handing them to, that "here is a collection of Great Works of Fiction !".
He laughed and nodded in agreement, he was another honest one with his Report, but was well aware that most J.W's were NOT honest !
“this will be the final topic i post.
the structured fulfillment of prophecy has now been made undeniably clear, and after completing one final task—the letter to the governing body of jehovah’s witnesses—i will take my rest.
the truth has been presented, the timeline confirmed, and all that remains is the culmination of prophecy itself.” estephan leuese.
"aligns with scripture" .
It doesn't align with the Book of Daniel. Read any good Commentary on it. Also read it with care and understanding and you will see the Writer expected his actual predictions to be fulfilled shortly after the time he wrote them.
To expect a later fulfillment of predictions that have already failed is just silly.
final thoughts after 15 hours of the 2025 assembly.
after dedicating 15 hours to the 2025 assembly, i walked away with a heavy sense of spiritual emptiness.
the only part that managed to stir anything within me was a single video on day one titled “what does jesus see in you?”—a piece with sentimental appeal, but still surface-level at best.. .
Even before I woke up, I used to fall asleep, and snore !
What a Borefest those things have been , for decades !
final thoughts after 15 hours of the 2025 assembly.
after dedicating 15 hours to the 2025 assembly, i walked away with a heavy sense of spiritual emptiness.
the only part that managed to stir anything within me was a single video on day one titled “what does jesus see in you?”—a piece with sentimental appeal, but still surface-level at best.. .
Thanks gavindlt,
That is EXACTLY how I felt with the last couple or three Summer Conventions I ever attended, so after the last one I actually attended i vowed never to go to one again, that was over two decades ago, so it seems the poor quality, no real "Spiritual food", no real practical guidance on how to follow Jesus in our daily 21st Century lives, has continued since that time, and maybe got worse !
It was the same with Public Talks, given in K.H's, the outlines were dire, and contained none of the things people like you and I desired, practical spiritual guidance.
I also liked to increase my knowledge and understanding of Scripture, in an accurate way, and loved things that I had to intellectually wrestle with, difficult concepts that I could "chew on".
The Org. never has provided that it seems. The underlying reason being that they have no real Scholars in their Org. no people who really DO understand Scripture.
i just read this.
don’t know if anybody here has seen the video.. the intended result of this is to obviously scare ‘faders’ out of the shadows.
now, they are being threatened with loss of association with their loved ones and friends.
" we will make a personal decision not to associate with him for social occasions or recreation. "
We "will" make a personal decision.... ".
If it was truly a personal decision, then that would say "we may....", the fact that they have made it a command possibly in a Court could still involve Elders or the Org. itself, although this move to CALL it a personal decision is intended to remove all responsibility from the org. for such a hateful action, Shunning, being taken by an individual J.W..
I am wondering how this will affect me, as I meet up weekly with a couple of old J.W guys, one is an ex-Elder, the other is currently the Chairman of the B.O.E.
The last time I saw the first guy, he suggested we go out for a meal sometime, and I said we would.
I don't see him taking a blind bit of notice of this crap, but the second guy is a proper "Org. man" ,does it all by the Book. (The Book not being the Bible of course !)
It will be interesting to see how this works out, but I guess these guys, and my J.W family, will view it that so much time has passed since I left, decades, that none of this applies to me.
But as said above in another Post, the org. are shitting their pants at the number simply drifting away, formerly there was nothing the Org. could do about Faders who kept quiet about what they knew, and simply drifted away.
They are now trying to make that harder, good luck with that, you bastards on the G.B. I hope this comes back to bite you on the Bum !