on february 22, 2023, anthony morris iii was officially removed from the governing body of jehovah's witnesses.
a few months later it was revealed that the watchtower bought him a house in lumberton, north carolina.. however, and correct me if i am wrong, since leaving the gb nobody has reported seeing tony attending jw meetings or participating in field service.
in fact nobody has reported seeing him anywhere, not even at a local liquor store.
"I'm shocked to see the tax bill in their personal names as I would have expected WT to hold the deed."
Perhaps Tony was too clever to allow that situation, where they can just whip it out from under him. Full title may have been part of the deal that saw him walk with no subsequent controversy.
on friday, i walked to my doctor's to pick up a couple of prescriptions*.
from there i walked in to town to the chemist's (pharmacy) to get the scripts filled.
it's winter here, and my town can get get colder than is average for my state**.
An interesting point came up in this encounter:
https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/6240050866552832/am-return-visit
I mentioned the two trolleys/carts being set up at different ends of the main street and being manned by three men each, and my interlocutor didn't seem to have much knowledge of how the trolley/cart ministry worked.
on friday, i walked to my doctor's to pick up a couple of prescriptions*.
from there i walked in to town to the chemist's (pharmacy) to get the scripts filled.
it's winter here, and my town can get get colder than is average for my state**.
"Soup kitchens, clothing drives and the like never interested them… an attitude dating back to Russel, in fact."
That's an interesting assertion. Do old quotes exist from Russell about charitable works being ineffective? I feel like there's an old memory here, tapping me on the back of the head... 🤔
well, i'm still processing this one.
saturday morning just gone.
my wife says: "there's a man in a suit at the door!
Well, I'm still processing this one. Saturday morning just gone. My wife says: "There's a man in a suit at the door!" I was about to say "Why don't you answer it?" when I realised that she wasn't dressed for receiving visitors, so I thought I had better do it, groaning internally, knowing who it would be. To be fair, I wasn't dressed for company, either: pyjamas, dressing gown and socks, hair a dishevelled mess.
The last time I went to the door, it went something like this (more about that later):
https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/5144704300089344/they-came-door
Actually, now remembering, the last time was actually this one, but I couldn't summon the mental and emotional energy needed that particular time:
https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/5993895939276800/there-some-sort-campaign-going-on
Anyway, the gentleman at the door was somewhat elderly and affable. He didn't try any sneaky opening questions designed to get you discussing their area of interest, but introduced himself as a Jehovah's Witness going door to door. He said something about putting in hours that prompted me to ask if he was a pioneer but referencing the old joke, something like: "So you're being Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett in your 'Coonskin Hat?" He didn't seem to get the joke or what I was getting at so I asked "Are you an auxiliary pioneer?" Often when you show too much knowledge of the WT structures, they can get nervous and start heading for the gate. He turned out to actually be an auxiliary pioneer and seemed very cheerful to talk, letting me know that he was generally expected to put in 35(?) hours per month.
He did get one of their leading questions in about "What is God's name?" and got "Jehovah" in, but admitted that that was the anglicised version. I said to him: "Do you realise that the older edition of your own New World Translation, in the introduction, said that the original pronunciation would have been closer to 'Yahweh'"? He said something like, well yes, it probably did, and you can use 'Yahweh' if you like, but that doesn't take into account that the Tetragrammaton has three syllables". I said, "That's as may be, but 'Jehovah' is a 12th century Catholic scribe's transliteration error; why would you use that?"
Anyway, that opened the door to something I've been wanting to do for years:
https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/5282419645612032/new-nwt
We got to talking about how I once was able to get a Kingdom Interlinear from a gentleman who manned a literature stand many years ago (the gentleman at the door said he had a copy of that himself), and how, in this day and age, might I go about getting a hard copy of the revised NWT? He offered to get me one! None of the grilling and other argey-bargey suggested in the above thread. Apparently there are copies kept at the Kingdom Hall for handing out as necessary. He actually drove to the Kingdom Hall and got me a copy, still wrapped in plastic. I had a chance to get properly dressed in that time, although I still didn't get a chance to run a comb through my hair. We discussed the differences in translational approach between the editions (dynamic versus formal equivalence) and he had to go (probably to catch up with his field service group; there were a bunch of 'em loose in my street).
During the conversations, I had him chuckling to some of the old "You might be a Jehovah's Witness if:" jokes. And we were also discussing Dorothy L. Sayers and Lord Peter Wimsey at one point, but that's not super relevant.
After he left, my family came out and said "Who was he?" I said "A Jehovah's Witness, of course!" They said "But you had a long, friendly conversation and didn't chase him out the gate! We thought he must have been an old friend!"
That got me thinking: if you don't come to my door as a pair, effectively ganging up on me and activating my "fight or flight" response, but come on your own, you might find me to be a (somewhat) charming conversationalist! Perhaps. 🤔
Anyway, he said he'd be back in two weeks, so I suppose that I'm officially a "return visit"? I did warn him about my mild form of bipolar disorder and that I couldn't guarantee that I'd be the same friendly chap next time. That's when it emerged that one of the ladies from a previous visit had apparently said something about me being aggressive and argumentative. So it seems that they do keep some sort of record about what the households are like, if only a mental note. I'm wondering if the kindly old auxiliary pioneer drew the short straw and got to knock on my door.
Anyway, this time, for once, I was "a sweetheart of a guy". 🙄😊
now that there is new light on reporting hours in field service, it's raised a few questions for me, who was never in the jws.
did any of you ever have fun with the field service report slips, by finding creative ways of reporting time without raising suspicions in those who oversaw the collection of those slips?.
also, can anyone upload an image of what the slips looked like, or point me to a post that gives uploaded examples of the sort of paperwork that was familiar to jws in good standing?.
"Now, we all know that JWs eagerly desire to serve Jehovah by going door to door their whole lives.
"That's one of the key things that distinguishes them from the do nothings of Christendom."
And yet they dropped their dogma of a hundred years like a hot potato when the Covid mandates went out. I was genuinely shocked when I found that out, probably on here. That the GB had so quickly dropped such a mainstay of the JWism. And I gave the first JWs back in field service both barrels over it. Saying something like*: "Your cowardly governing body folded like a seven high hand of poker in the face of a government mandate", also pointing out that the JWs had fearlessly resisted government mandates before.
* Something like that; I've only been using the poker hand analogy since after this encounter, but it does capture the spirit of what I said.
there are 1/2 of the jehovah’s witnesses that there were 30 years ago in my area.
some have left but i think that many have died and none of their kids stayed being jehovah’s witnesses.
7 congregations have been dissolved over the years.
Paradoxically, or at least anecdotally, I can't comment on the demise of the local JW congregation in my small regional city. I'm a recent blow-in, and my arrival here coincided with the JW's post-Covid resumption of the door to door work. We've had at least one visit per year from the JWs. Just last Friday I saw not one but two trolleys/carts in town to which "encounter" I devoted a thread:
https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/6545528670650368/there-some-sort-campaign-on
On a Tuesday evening, ironically while on my way to another church's Bible study, I see the Kingdom Hall carpark on the edge of town quite full. From my perspective, the local Kingdom Hall may well be in quite a healthy state. Of course, they could well be down to one healthy congregation, where once they had two. It would be great to be able to engage in the sorts of conversations that would yield such information, but I find that the JWs of today are not the robust engagers in conversation and debate that their ancestors of a mere two or three decades ago were. They disappear very quickly, drawing from my experiences with them since I've moved here.
My apologies for the above: that was a lot of waffle to basically say very little 😔 🙄
the governing body just doesn't let up on encouraging the young children to reach out to do free labor for the organization.
so another generation of young people with ruined lives.
another generation of young people that will get old and wake up in their 50s to realize they were in a religious doomsday cult.. and they are getting rid of some old workers that ran the branches of the organization, and giving them different assignments or maybe they are just sending them home, who knows.
"First of all, anybody that age probably has no family left!! Everybody has passed away. Maybe there’s a niece or nephew(?) and when was the last time they saw them. So, the elderly bethelite is supposed to land on their doorstep? Right?? 😮"
That's pretty well the plot of Futurama. Farnsworth takes in his great-uncle (by thirty generations) Fry. That such a solution should be forced on them by a pragmatic and uncaring government makes an interesting allegorical point, in the case which we're discussing. Or at least, I can see 🙈 an allegorical point 👉 ☝️.
by their own standards, they are no longer "jehovah's witnesses”.
.. i finally got a hold of the "od book" (organized to do jehovah's will), the book that replaced the other "organized" book for field service and congregational arrangements.
i was reading through this and noticed an irony starting on page 155. this section deals with "disassociation"... (i'm sure others have already seen or discussed this, but i've been running behind lately).. "a person might renounce his place in the christian congregation by his actions, such as by becoming part of a secular organization that has objectives contrary to the bible and, hence, is under judgment by jehovah god.
Well, as the old joke says: "Were it not for their double standards..."
on friday, i walked to my doctor's to pick up a couple of prescriptions*.
from there i walked in to town to the chemist's (pharmacy) to get the scripts filled.
it's winter here, and my town can get get colder than is average for my state**.
Bribie: 19° C?? That's summer weather here! 😳
Balaamsass2: I'd happily do that swap for a couple of days! 🤝🤝🤝 Yes, two trolleys at each end of a block, on the main St, seems a bit excessive. The blokes manning them seemed somewhat elderish already, to my untrained eye. A CO visit might be the reason. That was suggested when last I asked about a seeming increase in JW activity. That time it was a couple of car group's worth of JWs campaigning my street.
Biahi: Large country town here. I've been thinking about it a bit and I think they might be doing it on a Friday afternoon to get their hours in because Saturday would be hard for them to stand out in the main street. On Saturday morning, there is a literature stand manned by the Open Brethren, a Marxist book stall, often a Pentecostal handing out poorly written and photocopied literature about the Vaxx being the Number of the Beast, and possibly a different Pentecostal group. The JWs would hardly stand out amongst all that. So I guess the JWs do it the day before so they can exclusively ignore passersby and chat among themselves, as alluded to by punkofnice. 🙄
punkofnice: Like you, I'm not sure what their business model is. To be seen, but not to be actually doing anything of substance?
Beth Sarim: those talking points sound familiar... 🤔
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.
St George of England, it's never the self-styled leaders who have to put in the work, in their fantasies, is it! 🙄
