what are your thoughts.. if god forewarned cain to change his path he must have known abel was in danger...why did he not warn abel?.
when jesus told his apostles to go into jeruselam and bring back an ass and its colt which would be tied up near the gate did he foreknow this or was his faith so strong that he knew according to the scriptures this would take place and god would make this happen as written.
the same for the fish with the coin in its mouth did he foreknow this or was it his faith in god that let him know that anything he asked would be accomplished.. what i'm getting at is...if for thousands of years the issue of gods right to rule has been played out on the earth how is it a real test if god decides to now and then manouver particular events to a phrophesied outcome.
The answer I used to receive in regard to these kinds of questions is that God uses his ability to see into the future selectively. Though he could know the outcome of all events beforehand, he deliberately chooses not to.
That never made any sense to me. It seems like you either have foreknowledge or you don't. How would one know when to selectively turn it off unless he first knew what was coming?
when you look back at it, what irked you most about being a jw?
One of the biggest issues I have with the WTS is their negative stance on higher education. Though they supposedly eased up on it back in '92 or '93, the old message is still loud and clear. To illustrate: I only attended half of one day of this year's DC, and yet I heard them emphasize their anti-college stance several times. It was the Sunday morning session, which focused on youths. I wish I could tell all of them, "don't listen to their short-sighted and selfish advice; you'll never have a better opportunity to seek education than when you're young." I know, because both my wife and I got their narrow viewpoint foisted upon us.
ok the background to this story , i wrote to the german bethel, with a screen capture of their web site, where they still promote the pre 1995 definition of the "generation".
i wrote on the premise that i fell away due to this change in 1995 and what is their stance now as i would like to start studying again lmao ( i did tell a few personal white lies, theocratic warfare right?, in order that they felt they could write back to me ).....................never thought they would write back, it took them nearly four weeks to reply, interestingly enough, there is an email address on the letter, my letter is first, so you can get the gist, then their "exact" reply, (with the help of "germanjw" for translation purposes,many thanksgjw ).
the watchtower society.
JGull, thanks for posting the reply you received from the branch office -- though it wasn't much of a reply! LOL
So, by this they're apparently implying that there's no need for the site to be updated. As long you know that the material dates back to a 1993 publication (and, therefore, old light), there is no further explanation required? I assume they bought your ruse of being someone who wants to study again, so how is this answer supposed to motivate you?
For those who haven't yet seen the material in all its glory, here's the linkage. I still can't believe how they can get away with this. I guess it just shows how few people actually read the site -- including JWs!
as i was growing up in the troof.
there were sayings used over and over again to control my behaviour.
the biblical on bad associations spoil useful habits and another on just because everyone else does it doesnt mean you have to do it to, would you jump off a cliff just because other people do what were the sayings that bugged you?
independent thinking™
no, no, the borg doesn't like that!
after taking a count of my last 3 congregation phone lists 85% of those on the lists were born as jw's.
what do you think that says about jw having the true religion?
doesn't that mean that if you were not born into a jw family your as good as dead?
I, too, was raised in the "truth". I often used to ask myself, "If I wasn't born into it, would I have listened to these people if they came to my door?" I never believed I would have.
Aside from that, those on the inside, if they have children, that'll be where most of the increases will be.
How ironic. After all the decades the borganization has spent discouraging couples from having a family, it may end up being the only way they can experience new growth.
major headway has been made.
my wife has said that she would like to read coc!
i recently bought 30 years a watchtower slave.
I recently read CoC myself, and I must say it was very convincing. I was so anxious to read it, I didn't want to wait for mail order. I was fortunate enough to get a copy from the local library, along with a copy of Steven Hassan's book Releasing the Bonds. After reading CoC, I wanted to keep it onhand so I could check out more of the extensive references. But I couldn't renew it because another hold had been placed on it. I guess the truth is in demand!
--P
just curious here <eg>.
i've heard of plenty of teenagers knock-n-running but that's rather on the dull side.
so what's the funniest bit of slapschtick you've seen or heard of witnesess pulling while getting in the time quota?
I once had a very embarrassing experience on a return visit. I was calling back on a woman, so I decided to take one of the sisters with me. We found the householder at home, and the three of us were having a nice friendly visit at the door when the sister with me decides to ask, "how many months pregnant are you?" I was so mortified because the householder, of course, was not pregnant -- just a bit round in the tummy. I don't remember how we managed to recover from that one, but we did leave on good terms. Ouch! Needless to say, I never took that sister on that call again.
what can the watchtower do to stop the influx of their flock from going to apostate web sites that expose their false doctrines?
one way would be to take down their website so no one would even have a reason to get on line.
too severe right?
I just remembered that the watchtower.org site itself is newer than the '95 change. I remember that for the longest time, that domain name had been registered, but there was nothing more than a blank page up. If memory serves, it wasn't until sometime in '96 that the site actually went live. That, of course, would mean the article was out-of-date at the time it was first posted, and they had to know that.
what can the watchtower do to stop the influx of their flock from going to apostate web sites that expose their false doctrines?
one way would be to take down their website so no one would even have a reason to get on line.
too severe right?
Thanks for the welcome, Hamas.
Johnathan, thanks for that link showing that the old "generation" explanation is still on the site. I found the exact quote in the God's Purpose Soon to Be Realized article linked from that page. Unbelievable. I'm wondering if they're even aware that this is still there. Web site content management doesn't exactly seem to be their forte. If they're going to have a web site, they've got to keep it up with present truth™. Maybe the truth is just too much of a moving target. In that case, it might be better if they took the site down; it could save some embarrassment.
what can the watchtower do to stop the influx of their flock from going to apostate web sites that expose their false doctrines?
one way would be to take down their website so no one would even have a reason to get on line.
too severe right?
My own experience is that I never really looked at any of these forbidden sites while I was an active member. I was certainly aware of them, but I dismissed them all as being of no value. The image I had of the people who ran these sites was that of some creepy protestor you'd see standing outside a district convention with a bullhorn. I was completely turned off.
It wasn't until I started having serious doubts of my own and had been inactive for a few months that I started having a more open mind about it. I started off with some fairly innocuous searches on Google -- academic issues mainly, about religion in general. I was reading some material at a site called Religious Tolerance when I came across a truly unexpected bit of information about the Winesses. One of the topics in their outline on JWs dealt with their past opposition to vaccinations. I had no idea that vaccinations were forbidden from 1931 to 1952. That seemed unbelievable, but it was backed up by ample references to The Golden Age and Watchtower magazines of the time.
That discovery got me thinking, "what else is there about the Witnesses that I don't know?" I was disgusted and, at the same time, strangely intrigued at how people like me could be raised in the organization and not know about things like this from the past. That's when I truly began to see the degree of information control the organization uses.
Since then I've read material on many sites like Freeminds and this one. And that lead me to read the biggest bombshell of them all, Crisis of Conscience.
So I definitely agree with the point that a JW has to already be thinking critically of the organization before he's willing to even consider looking at these sites. You just don't get here by mistake. I'd say the biggest immediate threat that the Internet poses to the JWs is a lower conversion rate in the ministry in regions where online access is readily available.
And I think libra_spirit makes a very good point in his post above about the possibility of JW filtering software in the future. I think that's entirely realistic. And while it probably won't be required, it's sure to be strongly encouraged among the friends.
paterfamilias -- of the newbie class
