after contemplating whether or not to attend the memorial this year i finally went.
this time last year i had been reinstated and within weeks the elders summoned me to the kh to interrogate me about my past and place of residence.
i was angry with them and lost my temper and stood up to them.
Each Congregation has a constant battle going on for dominance. You are not local, so they are all fawning over you, potentially as part of their personal power base. Once you would settle there, and not fully support their rule, you will get the "bottom of the sole of your shoes " treatment/look , (that stepped into something) there too.
Do not take it personally, that is how wt operates on local level.
did anybody (who went to the memorial) notice the opening song?.
keep in mind that this is the most important night of the year for the witnesses.
it is supposed to be all about jesus christ.
Dear Drearyeather: The New Covenant is for forgiveness of sins. potentially for all sinners. It is not the kingdom covenant for just a few.
The Old law Covenant was with all. They all partook of the passover "emblems". The priests, kings had their separate covenants.
Unless you eat and drink, you will have no eternal life. (Jesus in John six)
That song is an idolatrous self praise that the R&F is conned to participate in. stand upright, read and sing.
what i noticed during the memorial is the over organised ritual aspect.
for a non jw is must be hard to follow.. for me, i noticed that during the memorial there is no attention for the historical jesus and the historical events.
it's all about the kingdom arrangement with it's central point, the governing body of jw.. do you noticed this also?.
I always dislked this event. It just came across as you mentioned as a ritual. If I was ever going to invite someone to a meeting, the memorial would definetly NOT be it.
FTB, I know an old dedicated missionary that would never invite an interested "study" to the memorial as the first meeting, it would disillusion them. It is not proper worship. It could even spoil the polish springtime.
Even more so if the talk is delivered by a pompous, peacock type personality.
this was the first memorial that i declined to do any work for the memorial.
i was assigned as a parking attendant after getting downgraded from doing the sound and had no intention of doing either task but i had to attend for my family and continuation of my fade.
i sat there last night listening to the talk and couldn't help but shake my head as my brain attempted to process the bs.
Like the illustrations on the screens, from the invitation? casually dressed people going down into paradise, it was down, all the way. not up, not into the new Jerusalem,
which world is this?_________________when the doctor pulled my screaming body out of mom all those 7 decades ago, i landed in a post-wwii world.it was--compared to today's world--an alien planet.. the world i live in today has nothing in common with the world in which i grew up.. there were no cell phones back then--there were black telephones with a dial-tone and an operator who placed your call.
everywhere you found telephone booths!
a call was a nickle.where did all those telephone booths go?i dunno.where did my whole world go?i dunno.. tv sets were huge boxes with tubes and small screens.
if you care/can turn to page 426 of the "Proclaimers" book' " The World has ended"
"Millions now living will never die" "-- nie sterben" in german. In the left corner photo, on the floor, among the wood shavings, "hobelspaene". you can see a wooden C lamp, that in 1918 already was an antique. In 1946 I traded two of these identical ones for my tobacco- rations. I still have them. Ready to show all comers. Theses clamps survived the end of the world that came (invisibly, symbolically, wt style, ), but nobody noticed. and are noe the two silent witnesses to the authenticity of photos like that. ) I also have a desk that I made that served as a cramped quarters study base for a Member of the GB.
While the coast is shrouded in mist, and the waves are almost too boisterous for beginner surfing in the winter, there is a lot of sunshine on the pacific coast, on a yearly basis. The Ocean is blue only under a blue sky, and seeing snow capped mountains, in the distance, year round , adds so much to the beauty. ( on a clear day you can see forever)
Having been conceived to the distant sound of the white noise of the ever crashing waves, like mating salmons, i am ever attracted to the water's edge, not sprinkled with amber, like in my Old World youth, but really grateful i can watch the sunset in salt water in June from my house each summer.
Pacific coast? do not miss the great Oregon Shadow on August 21, 2017 ~ 9 am.
perhaps i missed the comments, but i did not see a lot of comments from, or about, the memorial.
it happened last night, right?.
in years past the jwn board was hot with comments.
great comment Perry. Jeremiah 31: 31-34. alluded to be Jesus: : New Covenant, no more teaching "know Jehovah, each one will know. "their sins I will remember no more," not at all what the memorial talk had: I will remember them (sins and resulting imperfection) for a thousand years, and you work off that debt.
paul has allowed me to write up two articles for jwfacts: iglesia ni cristo, and why russell was not a mason.here is my iglesia ni cristo article.
“we believe that there is only one true god, the father, and no one else besides him”.
thus, faith alone is not enough.. about baptism.
INC are strict tithers, not forking money over could be a disfellowshipping offence? Have the greatest public auditorium in the Philippines, (North Manila). have the most prolific Mormon-Utah- temple like churches all over the place ( I mistook them for a breakaway mormon sect). Vote in block, great political power.
perhaps i missed the comments, but i did not see a lot of comments from, or about, the memorial.
it happened last night, right?.
in years past the jwn board was hot with comments.
This years talk, if adhering to the outline, did not stress the New Covenant at all, or the unrelated Kingdom Covenant that was affirmed by Jesus after the party had left the venue.
It felt like a new celebration, linking it as little as possible to what actually happened at the last supper.
Jesus being the Key man, not the Catholic Peter with the keys to paradise.
Work hard for wt to get into paradise.
in other words, what good works have the 144000 done to be secured a place in heaven?
i am told they have already been chosen.
does that mean that jehovah also knows our future?
Revelation 20 limits those ruling for a thousand years to those killed by the axe.
from "fiddler on the roof" : why not choose somebody else for a change?
