Pudgy

I think one of the major problems here is that people do not know the difference between what a heretic is, and an apostate.
Calling someone an “apostate” here so frequently about everybody that doesn’t think exactly like the person calling the other an apostate has become like a “yo mama” joke.

Peter get away from these nasty individuals - it is not worth wasting your time on them. 

You are so ridiculous, just listen to yourself...
 

Witness:
Most everything you say is true, but my perspective is quite different.
I was for many years a strong advocate of the Confederate States of America … and grew up with a 6 foot long Confederate battle flag above my bed headboard, and worked for a guy that had a civil war cannon in front of his business … and when traveling would frequent places where (for a large tip) the band would play “Dixie” for me. I was a great admirer of General Robert E. Lee, and still am.
The point being, “Church Ideas” are like battles being fought in the “Arena of Ideas”, and as in any war, the best battle plans often crumble with first contact.
Even General Lee, a superior man by any estimation, and an excellent General, made serious mistakes where tens of thousands of soldiers under his command were needlessly slaughtered. The attempt to take Cemetery Ridge in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania is a good example, and a fascinating study of what happens when ego and error are multiplied.
Yeah, the GB creeps me out with their self serving egotism, and don’t get me started on Caleb and Sophia, or “Overlapping Generations”, or three dozen other topics, but if I was an atheist, and did an analysis of which group on this earth had the best chance of advancing mankind’s progress toward honor, virtue, discipline and responsibility ….. not just survival …. but advancement ….. I would choose Jehovah’s Witnesses.
It’s like a “weighted” test score in school …. Getting the most IMPORTANT things right counts for more than things of actual, practical, lesser importance.
To understand my viewpoint you will need to get at least 4 beers, and read the third chapter of Isaac Asimov’s classic “I, Robot” in one sitting ….. and THINK about it!

I agree 100% with JWI’s assessment and post, above, and I am very critical of the Governing Body, and temporarily not one of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
A study and understanding of History gives a person a better perspective of the importance of the infinite elements of why today ….. is the way it is.
   —> SNAFU IS WITH US ALWAYS! <—
It’s like a drunkard stumbling down the street, weaving, falling down, crashing into stuff, being helped by another drunk.
Realistically, the most we can hope for is to make it to the corner, and home, without getting hit by a bus.
Such is the nature of ALL fragile, carbon based DNA life forms. There are no exceptions, as the concept of self-righteousness alludes to.
As we have seen, and today is day 100 in the “Special Military Operation” war between the Russian Federation and the Ukraine, wars are not fought with the leadership and resources you want …. wars are fought with the leadership and resources you  HAVE!
All else is self-righteous fantasy.
 

I agree 100% with JWI’s assessment and post, above, and I am very critical of the Governing Body, and temporarily not one of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
A study and understanding of History gives a person a better perspective of the importance of the infinite elements of why today ….. is the way it is.
   —> SNAFU IS WITH US ALWAYS! <—
It’s like a drunkard stumbling down the street, weaving, falling down, crashing into stuff, being helped by another drunk.
Realistically, the most we can hope for is to make it to the corner, and home, without getting hit by a bus.
Such is the nature of ALL fragile, carbon based DNA life forms. There are no exceptions, as the concept of self-righteousness alludes to.
As we have seen, and today is day 100 in the “Special Military Operation” war between the Russian Federation and the Ukraine, wars are not fought with the leadership and resources you want …. wars are fought with the leadership and resources you  HAVE!
All else is self-righteous fantasy.
 

I don't follow the "Org," I appreciate the organization for how it has been instrumental in currently helping millions of people build their faith on a solid foundation: faith in Jehovah, Christ Jesus, and the words and teachings of the Bible. I appreciate that it very efficiently and effectively has been instrumental in teaching tens of millions more, and getting the word out to hundreds of millions. (I.e., setting an example for preaching and teaching "good news" about a time under the Kingdom when there will be no more war, no more divisive politics, no more racism, and a time when Jehovah's provisions will make all things new, returning heaven and earth to His original purpose.)
I don't believe we need worry too much about the history of an organization, as if that is what Jesus meant by building on a solid foundation. What the organization was back between, say, 1884 and 1935, or even between 1935 and 2021 is also not of such great concern to me. I'm interested in the history mostly to the extent that I want to make sure that what we currently teach about that history is accurate and not distorted.
I have other interests in history, more generally, because I find it fascinating. Not just religious history, but all kinds of history. I always learn about various mundane themes (sociology, class, leadership, politics, psychology) that seem relevant as historical situations tend to be repeated.
Also, my great-grandfather was a "Pilgrim" in the Chicago Bible Students who traveled with Russell to speak at conventions, and he continued on under Rutherford. He said that most of the Chicago Bible Students were "Russellites," as he himself had been, and most of them left under Rutherford. Some of his "brethren" had left even earlier. Some had left in 1909 over doctrinal issues (New Covenant, "The Vow") some in 1914 and 1915 over failed predictions and expectations. So I admit that some family stories and "artifacts" of the Bible Student era hold my interest for more mundane reasons, too.
Even if the original organization had been no more than another faction of Catholicism or Protestantism that didn't believe in Trinity, Hellfire or War, that would be more than enough of a good start. My only expectation, historically, is that it would continue to progress, to put off more and more false teachings. Then we should find some evidence of Jehovah's blessing as it should attract more people who are looking for a kind of Christianity with a reasonable core of Biblical values and therefore find a brotherhood that encourages and promotes Christian conduct and activities. But the foundation is Christ, not the Organization. 

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I definitely can agree there's a lot of that going on. There are apostates who think that they can go back and find past mistakes and predictions and former beliefs, and they think we should all just conclude that we must have no reason to go on because of some issues in the past. But progress means there will always be some of this. The persons who should be more embarrassed are those churches whose own scholars have seen doctrinal problems for hundreds of years, but they are so stuck in tradition, that they will hardly change a thing. And then the things that they will gladly change are simply compromises with the world to make it easier to keep their following. 
As you say, it must be a sad life for people like this. When I look at the number of years some people have put into their own pet projects, it often seems like such a sad waste. Even those persons in Christendom of the last century who spent years doing the tedious work of making a Bible concordance, or working out the grammar of an ancient language, or even those who spend a lifetime cataloguing all the insects of a tropical jungle. Even though it's sad for them, we can still sometimes find some benefit in the works of others in gathering and presenting information, no matter what their personal beliefs are. 

I could ask you the same, as you appear to have a much stronger interest in all this old past history than I ever will. My interest is not related to tracing the many break-off groups, or worry about what they taught or didn't teach. Or what embarrassing mistakes were made. My interest is to look at whether information we currently teach about our history might have been distorted. I don't want to learn only biased, one-sided information if there is a lot of evidence to consider that I hadn't considered before. I like to learn about all the evidence before I judge something as right, wrong or somewhere in between.
I don't blame anyone, however, for jumping to the conclusion that all books by former Witnesses are going to be worthless. Plenty of them are. And plenty of them appear to discuss material that I have absolutely no interest in. I'm not interested in anecdotes that highlight embarrassments and mistakes of the past. As I said above, my interest is in what we are teaching currently about this time period.
I learned a lot from the book. Not directly from Persson, but from the sources, resources, material and evidence that he presents.

I couldn't care less about his perception of Rutherford's time, just the specific (verifiable) details reported. It's the documentation that is substantiated. It's the fact that someone else went to the trouble of culling through hundreds of pages of this documentation and made lists of all the major resources used, and gives us the page numbers in those resources that we can find and look up ourselves. This is something you rarely get from simple biased presentations of any kind of history. These include the resources that are pro-Rutherford and resources that were anti-Rutherford.
Persson's perception of it all might be wrong. But we can make up our own minds because many of his resources are re-printed in full in the books appendixes. Some of these are valuable Watchtower resources were never re-printed in any Watchtower versions of our history. So most of us have never seen some of our own resources.
Exactly!
You gave the impression earlier that because some apostate books are inaccurate that all of them are. If there were 100 apostate books in the world, and half of them were terrible, it doesn't necessarily mean that the other half are just as terrible. It's not possible to generalize this way about "all those apostate books."
Besides, you are quoting above from "apostate" resources, too. Rutherford referred to several of the breakaway groups as "the evil slave." But it didn't mean that ALL of what they said and did was wrong. For example the Standfasters were also considered "the evil slave." Yet they broke away because the Watchtower Society was compromising on political issues, war, war bonds, etc. Yet, the Standfasters, began taking a stand against "flag salute" years before Rutherford began defending this same stance. The Standfasters also came up with an earthly class of non-anointed Christians many years before Rutherford began teaching the existence of such a class. So it's not like everything that apostates said and did must always be rejected. Rutherford himself was able to correctly apostasize from Russellite teachings, so that he had abandoned almost all of Russell's unique teachings before 1930.
(1 Corinthians 11:19) For there will certainly also be sects among you, so that those of you who are approved may also become evident.

This is interesting even though i have no idea who the 'Standfasters' were.  Interesting because JWs here seem to think that the Watchtower leaders were the first to teach many things, because (they say) the W/t leaders are guided by God's Holy spirit. 
It would be nice to know of any other spiritual things that the Watchtower leaders / JW leaders coppied from others. 

Pudgy may have noticed that Thinking has posted a lengthy comment on the closed forum that touches on this discussion. She notes that Witness has asked her to unblock. ‘No way,’ she says. She considers Witness demon inspired and likens communicating with her to playing with the ouji board or the tarot cards.

I tagged her. That’s enough. She’s chosen not to respond. She has participated since on the closed forum. For whatever personal reason, she said it took boldness for her to stand up to Witness. She also said that, in person, Witness is a very nice lady. You’d never know it from what she posts.
If it were a matter of some importance, I might pursue it further. But its not. It is also possible that Witness is Pearl Doxey. The way she kisses up to that woman makes me wonder.
You would.
and it used to be such a Mona Lisa.
 
WHOA! White knight Walter to the rescue!

I remember the 1st time I came to a KH w/my GF. I was an atheist at the time and this one family I didn't even know gave me the creeps. Like they all had cooties. I didn't even know who they were and hadn't been introduced and it's not like they did or said anything I can recall, but they just gave me the willies.
Later they all bailed. They were all creepy, creepy. Even the kids were creepy, like in a "we do weird sh*t at our house that no one knows about" creepy.
My thinking is that people who have some creepy demonic stuff going on with them can't handle being at a KH for long. It's like they're vampires and the holy spirit in the KH burns their skin or something.

That reminds me…… In New York City you’ll see people walking down the street waving their arms and yelling out into the air, with loud expositions.

Why not get two of them and tie them together, then they will appear to be talking to each other!

That’s pretty sad, when you have to up-vote yourself.

If Thinking knows me, then she would know what congregation/congregations I was in as a JW.

All schools in the United States are “no gun zones“, and that’s why responsible people are not allowed to defend themselves when some crazy comes to school and starts shooting the place up.
 
I would comfort the parents by saying it Is not God that is responsible for the evil in the world, but locally it’s the insane legislature that has no concept of reality, and the insane Shooters.

All schools in the United States are “no gun zones“, and that’s why responsible people are not allowed to defend themselves when some crazy comes to school and starts shooting the place up.
 
I would comfort the parents by saying it Is not God that is responsible for the evil in the world, but locally it’s the insane legislature that has no concept of reality, and the insane Shooters.

All schools in the United States are “no gun zones“, and that’s why responsible people are not allowed to defend themselves when some crazy comes to school and starts shooting the place up.
 
I would comfort the parents by saying it Is not God that is responsible for the evil in the world, but locally it’s the insane legislature that has no concept of reality, and the insane Shooters.

A person is “assigned” a Kingdom Hall. Some go there, others do not. I have never seen or heard of anyone who was ever sanctioned or criticized for going where they wanted to, at whatever times they normally met. As a young man I and my friends used to go “sister hunting” for wives all over various States.

A person is “assigned” a Kingdom Hall. Some go there, others do not. I have never seen or heard of anyone who was ever sanctioned or criticized for going where they wanted to, at whatever times they normally met. As a young man I and my friends used to go “sister hunting” for wives all over various States.

A person is “assigned” a Kingdom Hall. Some go there, others do not. I have never seen or heard of anyone who was ever sanctioned or criticized for going where they wanted to, at whatever times they normally met. As a young man I and my friends used to go “sister hunting” for wives all over various States.

A person is “assigned” a Kingdom Hall. Some go there, others do not. I have never seen or heard of anyone who was ever sanctioned or criticized for going where they wanted to, at whatever times they normally met. As a young man I and my friends used to go “sister hunting” for wives all over various States.