Srecko Sostar

The GB has allowed what the Bible has never forbidden. Truly unprecedented! GB's personal arbitrariness in forbidding believers to wear beards came because of the alleged alignment with the "heavenly chariot"??
Can anyone in their right mind believe this? As if to say, "The angels have started wearing beards, or have for a while, so it is time to level the playing field for JWs on earth too". 
How a GB member explains the turnaround in doctrine? Yes, you read correctly, this is about doctrine. Like every other instruction and order published in the WTJWorg.
So we have these elements that prompted the GB meeting and its discussion:
1. frequently asked questions about beards (implying that JW men want to be like people in the world who wear beards by choice) Why is this question important to JW men, anyway?
2. doctrinal change is related to the "scene of this world is changing" (i.e. adapting to the "low" standards of this "satanic" world, which is "getting "worse" by the day, is an acceptable price for the coexistence of "believers" and "non-believers") How about firm GB claims, "We shall never change" our doctrine/rule about this and that?
3. responsible people from politics and business wear beards (i.e. the external differences between those who "serve "God" and those who "serve "Satan" are to be eliminated)They compare themselves to the people of the "worldly elements" who, they say, will be destroyed because they are "God's enemies".
The instruction manual for the new doctrine reads:
A JW person should not take a stand for or against a new doctrine. Although some JWs have faithfully followed the former prohibition against wearing beards, no one should regret this today, because it is an indicator of spiritual immaturity. And most importantly, JWs should not have their own opinion on this new issue of beards, nor should they promote anything that contradicts the new GB instructions.
We can conclude that the elders should have prevented any promotion of beards in the past. From now on, they should prevent any attempt to promote the regular shaving of the beard.
We also conclude that this is just a preparation to finally allow the sisters to wear pants whenever they want.
 God bless you all with this new ...something.
 
 

George88; You OBVIOUSLY did not recognize that Stephen Lett gave as the reason  for the  change is that THE WORLD APPROVED.
Watch the Video.
Three times.

Read carefully the following. Print it out if you have to .
What it is being admitting to is that the GB had been terribly WRONG since the time of Judge Rutherford, and persecuted the Brotherhood and exiled them and chastised them publicly and privately since then.
How many thousands, or tens of thousands of Brothers have been chased away AND had their lives ruined because they could not tolerate this irrational tyranny?

I just found the remark about keeping up with Jehovah's chariot a little strange, and not quite sure what was meant by that.
"All of us need to remember that the earthly part of Jehovah's organization is always striving to reflect the heavenly part-to keep up with it, as it were. Remember how fast the chariot in Ezekiel's vision moved? Like flashes of lightning! (Ezek. 1:14) Any who seek to run ahead of that chariot, trying to force change prematurely,.."
It is obvious that the no wearing beards policy was never from Jehovah in the first place,, obviously not as he created men with the DNA to grow one. 
But somehow we have now compared this new decision  to the issue of circumcision in the 1st Century. Jehovah also created men with foreskins, but he was also the one to give the law about circumcision. But he never gave a law about needing to be clean shaven. That was a purely a man made law. So how was that trying to keep up with Jehovah's chariot and striving to reflect the heavenly part? Are they saying they failed in this regard? I think I would have probably left that part out....

Obviously because he was 6'5!

https://www.jw.org/en/library/videos/#en/mediaitems/StudioFeatured/docid-702023024_1_VIDEO

Of course, for 40 years and more I believed that Cain married a sister, because I never thought of it that there could be another explanation that made a lot more sense.
At the time he was exiled, besides Adam and Eve he was the only direct created man on earth … “Homo Theocraticus” if you will … and since there is hard fossil evidence … hundreds of tons of hard fossil evidence from all over the world of “homo sapien” civilizations that predate Eden … enough that Cain was afraid of being killed WHEREVER HE ROAMED, there is no need to assume incest with his imaginary “sisters” who did not yet exist.

WTJWorg is not government!
 
A marriage between Tamara and Amnon would be incest by today's moral standards. In the culture of the Jews of that time, it would have been normal. Rape is another part of the story of Tamara and Amnon, so I don't know how you came to the conclusion that it is something I approve of. Rape as a crime has nothing to do with whether people are related or not. You are strange when you draw wrong conclusions about my comments.
The problem that arises from the fact that the Bible is silent is a problem that is not mine. I have the right to my interpretation, regardless of whether my opinion is wrong or right or something else. The positive side is that I do not impose my point of view on anyone, and on other side, GB implements its interpretations as a dogma that you JWs are obliged to obey.
 

What to Know
Prosecute is most often used to refer to bringing legal action against someone else, and is related to the Latin word for "pursue." It is often confused with persecute which means "to harass, torment, or punish, especially for one's beliefs." If you find yourself frequently one the wrong side of prosecution, you might end up feeling persecuted.

…. kinda makes you wonder if Santa Clause and Jesus got into a fist fight … who would the children root for?

Well, in order to get the straight story and an accurate explanation of what is going on, simply go to the JW. org website and read the current news about this.
Let’s ALL of us curious about this do that, and get this explained and cleared up immediately!

This is what happens when a thread gets worn out. Everyone starts mucking about, with no more meaningful contributions to add. It's a sign.
Tacos anyone?

I wouldn't presume they did or didn't. According to the biblical presentation everyone after the flood was a descendant of one family, all of whom knew the story. It's fairly safe to say everything around that event was passed along one way or another. (Think: Melchizedek "priest of the Most High God")
Also, we have the testimony of God inside Mosaic Law. He had no reason to specifically stipulate the selling of carcasses dead of natural cause to descendants of Noah, but He did. This would suggest God had no particular aversion to the notion aside from what He demanded of Jews under Mosaic law. But people of the nations, though descendants of Noah, were not Jews under Mosaic Law. Did I read something earlier about God not departing from His character? How does that fit here?

Take two of whatever makes you feel better, and call me in the morning. 

Going back on topic, (of a post that hasn't been on topic, lol) in reading everyone's comments I see the reasoning behind both the against and the for blood. Personally I can see why someone would abstain (which means both eating and transfusing). My main issue is that the organization says this is a conscience matter, whereas in practice this is not true. It is the societies conscience we are told to obey. We were always taught to tell the doctors that our conscience will not allow us to break God's law on blood. But what if someone's conscience did allow them, for whatever reason? This is why I think the blood issue (whole blood) should be something between them and Jehovah only. (Someone said well then we could say the same about fornication. Well, if no one in the congregation finds out about it, then it will still be between them and Jehovah, and they will have to answer to Jehovah for it in the end.
In line with this, I have noticed that elders on the HLC no longer "interfere" or are privy to a person's medical decision. In the USA hippa laws are strict, and absolutely no one should be able to find out if someone has had a blood transfusion, even relatives. So if someone does get a blood transfusion, it remains between them and Jehovah.
I think Tom's handling of the situation with the young brother in hospital was very good. No elder should be persuading another person to follow his (the elder's) conscience, or anybody else's conscience for that matter. The conscience is each person's their own. (This is why the conscientious objection to alternative service was a farce because the brothers who objected, for the most part, didn't know why they were objecting, they were just following the societies conscience). 
The stance now is we do not fight the Superior Authorities when it comes to transfusing children. Which makes me wonder where the principle "obey God as ruler rather than men" went to? Did we decide this because we do not want to make a spectacle of ourselves, fighting court battles and making it look like JW parents want their children to die? Don't get me wrong, I am glad about it, but where in truth does it leave  "obey God as ruler rather than man?" It seems like the organization has compromised... or not? Same with the fractions becoming  a conscience matter. I get why this was so, they "didn't want to get "dogmatic" (a phrase we will probably be hearing a lot more). But how much of this was also for practical reasons? The guidance about blood fractions itself says that people should realize that many vaccines (which members of Bethel used) and other therapeutic medicines contains blood fractions. So the person who says no to blood fractions should realize this, and then make an informed decision. I wonder if the covid vaccines had been based on blood fractions, or contained blood fractions, how would the organization have handled that? Probably they wouldn't have been able to "push" it like they did, and would have just had to say it's each person's decision, based on their own conscience. 
For me, when it comes to the question of blood, we don't want to be putting our life at risk just for man made rules. We have to be sure it is Jehovah's law, and by the looks of it this camp is split into two. Some say yes and some say no. 
I feel like we should apply Occam's razor and go with the simplest and clearest explanation. 
It's all giving me a headache...
 

I developed this understanding when I started integrating information from all sources, and STOPPED ignoring hard evidence.
It explains who Cain was afraid of and why they would want to kill him on sight, even if he wandered a thousand miles away.
It even explains who Cain “married” in exile.
It even explains the Aborigines in Australia, whose culture is 60,000 years old.
Genesis 4 even explains how God considered the blood and lives of his direct created “Homo Theocraticus”  in Eden his personal property as a special possession.
Learn all you can about “Punctuated Evolution”, then substitute the term “Punctuated Creation”
Then TEST your conclusions against the Bible. They should be consistent.
It’s like the Genesis account of Creation. It makes no sense from a Space based reference point, but from an observer standing on the Earth, it does.
(  … assuming you already understand the last 4 billion or so years of Earth’s geological and atmospheric development …)
 
 

Not sure how that follows.
There is NO mention in Gen 9 of flesh dead of natural cause.
If x then y
Not x then not y because of x
"Every moving animal that is alive" is the antecedent.
 

It's because I believe that if a non-Jewish person could eat an unbled animal that died naturally, then they could also trap or hunt or net an animal (mammal/fish/bird/etc) and eat it unbled. But even if it were only animals that died naturally, which might have been ideal, then it was still OK for people of the nations to eat unbled animals. Narrowing it down to distinguish which kinds were OK doesn't change that overall fact.
With the Jews, they had Moses read in their synagogues week after week so they would know the Mosaic Law. Did all the nations have Noah (Gen 6-9) read to them every week, so they would know the Noahide Law?
(Acts 15:20, 21) . . .but to write them to abstain from things polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from what is strangled, and from blood. 21  For from ancient times Moses has had those who preach him in city after city, because he is read aloud in the synagogues on every sabbath.”
 
Also, the lines can get blurred. If I create a grazing path for bison at a precarious edge of a cliff, is it NATURAL that one might slip and fall to its death now and then? If a dog is trained to bring back a duck that I didn't quite kill when I hit it with a slingshot, but the dog kills it by holding it by the neck, did it die naturally? What if the dog brings me one that it caught on its own? What about the chipmunk the cat brought to my doorstep that dies after several hours of torture by the cat? If I take an animal from the mouth of a lion that just killed it by chasing away the lion, did it die naturally? 
I don't know the taboo you mean, but the above could just as well mean that Noah could NOT eat carrion. He could not eat an animal found dead of natural causes. And he couldn't eat an animal that still had blood (or breath) flowing in it. So he could only eat meat he purposely killed. He just couldn't eat it with the blood.
Blood made it taboo, and therefore blood WAS considered a sacred substance by decree of God himself. 

I can confidently completely ignore what “some” influential Jews of any rank or ilk thought about the character or nature or substance of Jehovah.
Moses brother Aaron saw with his own eyes the column of smoke and the pillar of fire, and STILL made a golden calf and said  paraphrased “See, this is jehovah your god, who brought you out of the land of Egypt!”.
Sometimes … most of the times … almost all the time … “church” authorities are dumber than rocks.
It seems to be a job requirement.

The “Neolithic Period” STARTED about 12,000 years ago.
Before that, people were living all over the Earth, before God directly created a NEW specis, in Eden, that had an opportunity to live forever.
Their blood was sacred to him, for the first time in history, and He considered these people, and their signature blood, his personal property.
Much like the Jews later became a “Special Possession”, and if you were not a Jew, you were SOL.
Pre-Neolithic, human societies were primarily characterized by a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. While they didn't develop complex civilizations, several notable cultures and groups existed during the Paleolithic and Mesolithic periods. Some examples include:
1. **Paleo-Indians:** Early human inhabitants of the Americas during the last stages of the Pleistocene epoch, known for nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyles.
2. **Upper Paleolithic Cultures:** Various cultures in Europe, Asia, and Africa known for sophisticated tools, art, and symbolic expression, such as the Aurignacian and Magdalenian cultures.
3. **Maglemosian Culture:** Inhabited parts of Northern Europe during the Mesolithic, known for microlithic tools and hunting.
4. **Natufian Culture:** In the Levant, a pre-agricultural society that practiced sedentary living and some early forms of cultivation around 12,000 BCE.
5. **Jomon Culture:** In ancient Japan, known for pottery and a hunter-gatherer lifestyle during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene.
6. **Hoabinhian:** A term used to describe various cultures in Southeast Asia during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene, characterized by tool technologies.
7. **Mesolithic Cultures in Europe:** Including the Azilian, Tardenoisian, and others, marked by continued hunter-gatherer lifestyles and regional variations.
While these groups did not form complex civilizations, they developed unique technologies, artistic expressions, and social structures that laid the groundwork for the transitions into more settled agricultural societies during the Neolithic period, which STARTED about 12,000 years ago.

Maybe. Maybe not. The Jews of the Hebrew Bible did not necessarily consider Jehovah to be an invisible Spirit the way we do. They considered Jehovah to have a body that could see and hear and EAT and SMELL. (FWIW, ancient Jewish rabbis had no trouble agreeing that Jehovah was circumcised!!!) The idea that smoke from "incinerated" meat created a kind of smoky incense that ascended upwards toward heaven was likely an indication of this consumption by God, leaving only a few ashes. And this idea was spelled out even more clearly in other nearby cultures.
When the Jews would be scattered, they would have to serve gods that were not real and therefore could NOT eat and smell.
(Deuteronomy 4:27, 28) 27 Jehovah will scatter you among the peoples, and just a few of you will survive among the nations to which Jehovah will have driven you. 28 There you will have to serve gods of wood and stone made by human hands, gods that cannot see or hear or eat or smell.
(Leviticus 26:31) . . .I will give your cities to the sword and make your sanctuaries desolate, and I will not smell the pleasing aromas of your sacrifices.
 
I agree that the intent of Leviticus 3 and similar passages was probably to identify ALL the major fatty places for sacrificed animals. It can also be read as: "Don't eat any of the fat, sacrifice all of it, and this INCLUDES the fatty pieces of the inner organs and intestines." That's why I quoted the passage about animala that died naturally or were killed by another animal. In that case, it was NOT about a sacrifice or a priest's portion. 

That’s why Cain was terrified of being banished …. outside the Garden the whole world was filled with proto-people that were not direct creations from God … “the land of exiles”, where life was hard and dangerous, and NO ONE lived forever.
They would naturally want to kill Cain on sight, because his family would have lived forever in a protected Paradise …. and they did not.
A modern day example is “everybody” hates and wants to kill the Jews because they suspect they might REALLY be God’s chosen people, and suspect that they, themselves,  are not.
Grrrrrrrr ….
 

Of the notion that God would need to change His very character in relation to the substance of blood presumes God has always held blood as a sacred substance, what is the evidence of that?
In Eden, there was one thing and one thing only that God held sacred to Himself. The tree of knowledge. Mess with that tree and you die. Are we to presume Adam would have also died had he ate blood, and that God would have held that a secret without telling him until it was too late? God gave Adam dominion over animals just like He gave him dominion over vegetation and all the earth, and only of ONE of these did he carve out an exception.
Humans were given dominion of all animals, vegetation and the earth. The one thing not mentioned in the giving of dominion to humans was dominion over humankind. And, there was the one carve out regarding vegetation, which was the tree of knowledge.
After Eden we have Cain murdering Abel. So whoever said a human could exercise dominion over another human life? Of the record we have, no one. Though there was no existing prohibition on murder God took the moment to express His disapproval of what Cain had done. But this had nothing to do with the substance of blood. It had to do with taking innocent life of a human by a human. God didn't care if humans killed animal or botanical life. But humans had not been given dominion over humankind.
Later, to Noah, God made it clear that humans could take human life but it had to be justified based on murder. Though God  had removed human dominion over animal life temporarily through the flood, afterward he again gave humans dominion over animals (and vegetation) which meant humans could kill either for their needs. But as God did in Eden He did again after the flood. He carved out a single thing by telling humans they could not eat blood of animals alive under their dominion when they killed them as food, and they could not eat animal flesh without killing it first. But none of this required Noah to treat blood as a sacred substance. Of blood from animals Noah killed to eat their flesh, God left him totally free to use that blood for anything else.
It was only when Mosaic Law came along that the substance of blood was required to be treated as a sacred substance.
The whole notion that God has somehow always held blood as a sacred substance is nonsense. There is no evidence for such a broad claim.

First she gets perceived condescension from MM, and now you are going to give her a superiority complex.