Posts by days of future passed

42

"World conditions have never been as bad as they are now"

by Sour Grapes in

i went to a funeral yesterday and ran into a jdub.

of course, he approached me and it didn't take more than a minute into the conversation for him to get into the jdub gloom and doom mode.

he said that world conditions have never been as bad as they are now.. i looked straight into his eyes and said, "i think that world conditions were a lot worse during world war two.".

days of future passed

The last time the JW at work said it, I just said, well go back and in the Roman times. End of conversation.

19

Hospitality - How not to.....March 2018 study article.

by punkofnice in

what do you make of this part of the march 2018 watchtower study edition?.

2 among other things, peter urged his brothers: “be hospitable to one another.” (1 pet.

4:9) the word “hospitality” in greek literally means “fondness for, or kindness to, strangers.” note, however, that peter urged his christian brothers and sisters to be hospitable “to one another,” to those whom they already knew and associated with.

days of future passed

The WT likes to point out how the "worldly" people are nice to them. Because of course, they recognize God is with them or that they are extra special people.

When Paul was shipwrecked, "the people of Malta showed them extraordinary kindness" Imagine today if a disaster hit Malta. Would the natives say that the JW's showed them kindness by rebuilding houses for them? No because it would be good enough for them to watch the loving kindness of the JW's towards one another, or a dog.

Matthew 5:46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Do not even tax collectors do the same?

I think the Tax Collectors are their Besties.

27

CO asked for everyone 20 years old & younger for a group photo

by LevelThePlayingField in

there was a co visit in ohio a couple weeks ago.

when he was finishing up his sunday talk he said that he would like if "all the children that are from this congregation, not if you're just visiting, but from this congregation to come on up on the stage right after the meeting because i want to get a picture of you.".

i thought to myself, why?

days of future passed

Over 30 years ago, the elders were always trying to involve children in feeling special about being a witness. For the CO i'm guessing, children were encouraged to draw a paradise picture. At the end of the meeting they came up to the stage and stood with their pictures. Parents took photos.

This was at a time when several wives started having babies in spite of the "it's too close to the end" and "this world is too bad to have children" spin. Have to make sure they stay in the fold you know.

18

What makes you---YOU?

by eyeuse2badub in

of course this is an open ended question but have you ever really thought about what makes you who you are?.

is it our looks, our personality, our physique, our intelligence, our experiences and subsequent memories, our beliefs?

is it a combination of all these things and even more?

days of future passed

I think people have a basic personality but that can be altered with life experiences. Although I have always been very mindful of animals and bugs, I've had to become a little more ruthless towards spiders.

And tho for the most part, I'm not the naive and easily manipulated person I once was before the WT and a family member screwed me over - I still want to be kind and generous - unless you cross me

46

Paranormal stuff: is it a cultural thing? Rant ahead

by Whynot in

paranormal stuff is common where my family is from it's almost expected.

native american background, my great grandmother was a witch doctor a damn good one too, my non witness relatives dabble in it.

so i have seen stuff and experienced stuff.

days of future passed

About 8 years ago, when I was still living with one of my younger sisters (I unfortunately bought a house with her) I had this experience.

My work didn't start till 10, so in the mornings, I would do things on the computer or garden outside. My part of the house consisted of a small living room, bathroom and bedroom. The kitchen was shared. On Thursday of that week, I'd just been sitting at the computer reading stuff. It was getting close to work time so I turned it off. It was then that I realized that I'd been hearing a noise for quite some time. It wasn't loud but consistent. A soft rustling noise, almost like the pages of a magazine being flipped in a breeze. But it wasn't quite that either. Just a rolling, fluttering soft muttering of a noise. I got up and walked to the bedroom door - and it stopped.

I looked ahead into the living room, but my cat wasn't there, no magazine was blowing in a breeze from the open patio door. In fact when I looked outside, there wasn't a breeze at all. Aha I thought, it's the cat from up the street poking around in our house again. So I started clapping my hands together to startle it out of hiding. I went from my side, through the kitchen and into my sisters side of the house making noise and looking for the cat. Nothing. I stood silently listening but heard nothing. I shrugged my shoulders and figured it must have snuck out.

I completely forgot about it until I was once again sitting at my computer the next day. Just as I turned it off, I recognized the same fluttery noise going on. So I quietly got up and slowly walked to the bedroom door, expecting to catch my cat or the neighbors cat messing around. Just as I got near the door, it stopped. I stood listening and looking but there was nothing. No breeze outside. Everything was quiet. I walked silently through the house. Nothing moved, no thing was there.

Have you ever smelled something and tried to figure out exactly what it was that you were smelling? Well this noise had no reference in my mind as to what it was. Not a magazine, not leaves, not a cat batting papers, not a mouse scuttling thru the walls - there just wasn't anything I could pick and say it was "this" making the noise. At this point, I was suspicious because I'd had previous experiences and this seemed to be shaping up into another "demon" thing. Which annoyed me no end. You know growing up as a JW, demon's always came from second hand things etc. I liked shopping thrift stores and garage sales, so what it could be was a long list. Oh man, I just hated the thought of it all. Stupid demons, didn't they have anything better to do? Really really annoying. So annoying I just left for work and didn't think about it again.

Saturday and no work. I went out in the backyard and followed my cat around. Sat down at the computer. Read stuff, did some artwork on it. Heard that crappy noise again.

I just sat listening for a minute or so. The soft muttering noise. I got up, walked to the door, it stopped. Nothing there. I could hear some kids out on the school yard faintly. No wind. No cat. How annoying.

I went into the kitchen and leaned against the counter and thought. Everything I knew about demons, my own experiences. Things in the bible like Jesus and the pig herd. And I thought, what an incredibly stupid thing it was if it was true, that demons become bound to an object and you have to toss it out to get rid of them. I then imagined several people finding a demon infested object, throwing it out into the trash. The trash goes to a landfill and the demons are trapped in layers and layers of crap. I then imagined a cut away of the dump and all the demons with word bubbles saying "Help! I'm stuck in a dump and can't get out!" Jeesh, why would God then need an Angel with a key to an abyss to bind them, if he could just toss them into a landfill?

So it didn't make any sense. I pondered even more about why would a "demon" or whatever it is, create a noise just to bug someone? I thought about the chess piece from long ago. Why was the queen used and not just a pawn or any other piece? There was some intelligence or "knowing" about the fact the queen was used in the game. But I didn't know until the owner told me. So why pull these tricks? Didn't they have anything better to do? I thought of Loki the trickster. Maybe whatever these things are, have played around with people through the centuries and so myths, gods are made. Or maybe not. I will probably never know.

So I stood thinking about it for a long time. And then my sister came home from field service and saw me there. She went into her room and came back out. "Have you brought anything home lately? Like from a thrift store or anything?" she asked. I said Why? She then relates that last night, she heard her phone ring but didn't get up to answer it. She heard a man leave a message on the machine, but there was none when she played it back this morning. Now my sister is a demon freak. She's afraid of them and attributes lots of things to them. So this could be one of those cases where the message logs on her phone machine were full and so didn't record the message. But whatever. I didn't want to be bugged by this noise again so I played the game and put some things out by the garbage can.

Surprise, no more noises. Never happened again. Really, it could have been a random entity passing by and none of the objects were "possessed" but made me play the game they have going. Who makes these rules anyway? My older sister said later, Why didn't you bring them all back in the next day and see what would happen? I said the next time it does happen, I'll bring them to your house and you can entertain them.

Really. Annoying.

46

Paranormal stuff: is it a cultural thing? Rant ahead

by Whynot in

paranormal stuff is common where my family is from it's almost expected.

native american background, my great grandmother was a witch doctor a damn good one too, my non witness relatives dabble in it.

so i have seen stuff and experienced stuff.

days of future passed

A funny after story about the chess piece.

Since you grow up in JW land believing that demons are as real as angels, I told that chess piece story to a couple out in service one time. I had babysat him years before so it wasn't like he didn't know me. His wife knew me too.

So it was a surprise to me, their reactions. I told it in a very casual way. No exaggerated gestures or over the top OMG! And yet, their eyes looked like they were going to pop out of their heads and roll on the ground.

It was then I realized that, even if they say they believe that there are demons, they don't believe it. Or at least, they think everyone that has an experience, is crazy. The things you find out in service. Priceless.

46

Paranormal stuff: is it a cultural thing? Rant ahead

by Whynot in

paranormal stuff is common where my family is from it's almost expected.

native american background, my great grandmother was a witch doctor a damn good one too, my non witness relatives dabble in it.

so i have seen stuff and experienced stuff.

days of future passed

No mind bending drugs. No marijuana.

Some people are demon this and demon that, but not me. Although I grew up reading the WT's demon stories, things in the closet that wanted to get me were

witches
monsters

Surprised I didn't suffocate from hiding under the covers.

My top nightmares were

the twister from the Wizard of Oz
radioactive dinosaurs
giant octopus
very tall bridges

Although an Armaggedon dream would scare me for a solid week.

46

Paranormal stuff: is it a cultural thing? Rant ahead

by Whynot in

paranormal stuff is common where my family is from it's almost expected.

native american background, my great grandmother was a witch doctor a damn good one too, my non witness relatives dabble in it.

so i have seen stuff and experienced stuff.

days of future passed

Close to 35 years ago, I missed one memorial going to a SciFi convention. Being that I always expected God to kill me at Armageddon, that put the last nail in the coffin for me. So I decided with what little time I had left, I would try to have some fun in life.

So I got some art jobs working in the gaming industry. Since that wasn't much of an income, I got a job working in a game store. I worked there mainly because one of the art jobs I had, involved the man that owned the store.

In an upstairs loft at the store, he would run role playing games after the store closed. One day he invited me to play along with a rather motley crew of guys. I didn't want to play D&D cause of it's Oh No! demon image, but also cause it's just about "Go into room, Kill Monsters, Take Treasure" Boring.

So we played a more story telling type of game, Runequest. I loved it. I guess the ham in me came out. I also loved the puzzle solving aspect.

Although the owner was great at running the games, he was a lousy store owner. I think he had the store to support his gaming. So at this time, we'd had a sale going on for about a week on chess sets and pieces. My display case was pretty empty and so I started rummaging around the bottom of it hoping to find something. I found a brown wood box that contained the typical creamy white wood pieces and ebony black ones. The glass shelves in the case, were long and narrow so when I displayed a set, I would make them have a long gentle curve. The named pieces of course, where in the back with the pawns in the front, all according to how they were on a board.

So I started with the black set. From right to left I placed the castle, rook, bishop, queen. After getting them nicely curved, I turned back to the box that was laying on the carpet in front of the case. And there in the box, was the black queen.

But I had just put it in the case. I looked in the case and it wasn't there. I looked at the box and there it was. If anyone had come in, they would have seen me frozen with one hand over the box, the other still in mid air ready to descend into the box to pick up more pieces. Back and forth my mind went to what I knew I had done - put the queen on the shelf- to that "I must have been mistaken" because it was in the box. After awhile, I decided that even tho I knew I had put it on the shelf, I could have been preoccupied with other thoughts and so didn't.

So I made a plan. I would pick up the queen and the king and place them on the shelf. I would stare at the queen while I did this to be absolutely sure that I was placing it there. So although I was going along with explanation that I was wrong in believing I had put it on the shelf, it was disturbing to me.

This is what I thought as I moved the queen and king to the shelf. Here I am, I have the queen in my hand. I am moving it. It is going to the shelf. The queen is here and it is now on the shelf. I see the queen.

Once the two pieces were there, I sighed in relief. Now it was just a normal day. I must have not have paid attention to what I was doing I thought. Well time to put the rest up. I turned around to pick up some more, and there in the box, laying diagonal in it, ..was.. the.. queen... Bottom end in the left bottom corner, the top pointed towards the top right corner.

As I looked without a thought at the queen, my brain, like it was someone else's, started talking. Oh you didn't really put the queen on the shelf. You were completely mistaken. You didn't put it there at all!

I started laughing. It was ridiculous. And yet, I wanted to believe that I didn't put it on the shelf. I started to doubt that I had even given a step by step commentary on putting it on there. So I just scooped up all the pieces and crammed them on the shelf. Closed the display and turned off my brain. I didn't think about it until the owner came walking in a few hours later.

Hey he said, how's business? (Well there wasn't much to say about the business cause not a single person had come in all morning.) But I did say that we were running low on chess pieces and boards.

He nodded. I said "Where did that box of chess pieces come from? I found it on the bottom of the display case"

He looked up and thought a while. "Oh you mean that brown box?" He laughed and said "I ran a game last night. I let the guys bring all their heavy duty weapons and spells. The chess board was the castle and the Black Queen was a witch." He laughed some more and shook his head. "Haha I killed some of them off. It was a tough game and the Black Queen was really Evil"

I didn't say anything about the queen. I figured at the time, that the demons were mocking me about playing the games. But I loved playing the games so much, I didn't stop. I don' know what happened to the set. I guess if I was a good JW, I would have thrown them away or quit work and quit playing the games. But I didn't. That is the only unnatural thing that happened when I strayed from the "truth". I regret that a few years later, I went back to the meetings over the fear of Armageddon. Lost all those guy friends.

46

Paranormal stuff: is it a cultural thing? Rant ahead

by Whynot in

paranormal stuff is common where my family is from it's almost expected.

native american background, my great grandmother was a witch doctor a damn good one too, my non witness relatives dabble in it.

so i have seen stuff and experienced stuff.

days of future passed

To be sure, there are people who do imagine things. A jw friend that I had, believed there were demons lurking in a closet and had the elders come over and pray to get rid of them. But in knowing this person, I knew that her fears and sensitivity to that fear, was probably the cause. The more she thought of it, the more it became a reality.

I also knew someone who was schizophrenic. Although I knew something wasn't quite right, I wasn't sure what was going on. He finally told me. The stories he'd tell - I never could figure out if he was making them up or that they actually occurred. This had nothing to do with demons etc. I just worked on the assumption they weren't true until proven otherwise.

But as for myself, I'm as puzzled as the next person as to why I've experienced some things. After leaving JW land, I've tried to drop the "demon" aspect and simply viewed them as unknowable occurrences. If there wasn't something called religion tainting peoples viewpoints, it might be viewed in a more open minded way. But no one really knows me here. I'm just words typed on a forum. But I will tell you the first "out of the ordinary" event that happened to me.

26

My mom is haunted by the ghost of Fred Franz... now we have gotten to the root of this problem

by silentbuddha in

so last night at around 11 while me and the wife were watching netflix and my cellphone rings.

i didn't make it in time and saw it was my mother who never speaks to me.

i decided to call back fearing something happened with my dad.

days of future passed

This religion makes all of the followers believe every misstep will result in eternal destruction. Here your mom is worried about you breaking a promise to one of "Christ's brothers". Well Peter lied about knowing Christ and Jesus forgave him.

But tell that to the GB and they will still impose upon the followers the strictest of the strict, without lifting a little finger of their's. The cruel religion keeps giving.