James Thomas Rook Jr.

RULE NO. 1.)  ... IT'S ALL ABOUT MONEY!

RULE NO. 2.) .... SEE RULE NO. 1.)

This is true when ANY religion evolves to the point that the Leadership does not have to do hard labor in the commercial world, such as the Apostle Paul did, making tents .. and the Apostle Luke did, as a physician, or the other Apostles did as fishermen or day laborers.

It gets worse when any religion starts collecting Real Estate, and the Leaders never miss any meals, and always sleep warm at night.

In the history of the world, there have never, EVER been any exceptions ....

...and there arn't any now.

13 hours ago, BillyTheKid46 said:

This brings us to this question, what good does a person with no spirituality contribute to the church? 

money!

.... It is my understanding that the French automotive word "Carburetor" means "DON'T MESS WITH IT!".

... some nights I lay in bed thinking ... and my wife thinks I am thinking about "kingly bed warmers", but in reality, I am pondering what would happen if two people on opposite sides of the Earth both dropped a piece of bread at the same time ....

.... would the Earth briefly become a sandwich?

1 hour ago, Deaf Hear USA said:

King David “could not get warm.” (1 Ki. 1:1)

I think King David's choice of bed warmers was excellent ( 1st Kings 1 --- ). 

... better than flannel pajamas!

I could use THAT kind of aged warm support ... one under each arm!

... think they have those at Wal-Mart?

16 hours ago, Anna said:

She looks a little scary

In the story line, on her planet of origin, she was raped when she was 5, and gang-raped until 12, when she escaped, and she was the Starship Enterprise's Chief Security Officer.

She was SUPPOSED to be somewhat scary.

... but definitely NOT a Liberal Snowflake that melts at the slightest adversity.

May 5, 1961 ... Crying out loud in 7th Grade Math Class, as the First American Astronaut, Alan B. Shepard Jr.'s sub orbital flight retro-rockets failed, and it was thought he would die in space.

That ... and I wanted to be the first American in Space.

That, and on May 8, 1988, my mentor, Science Fiction Master Robert A. Heinlein died.

One thing you have to give Vladimir Lenin ... he was a relaxed, laid-back, mellow kinda guy!

In the Politburo, we used to call him "Ol' Droopy Eyes".

On 10/27/2018 at 1:57 AM, The Librarian said:

...there is a danger of stirring up competition with one another even developing hostility with one another something the bible warns against.

In what world?

I have yet to see a chess game where the contestants (players) were anything but completely civil with each other, true gentlemen, and friendly ... and I have played perhaps 400 games myself with people all over the world, with great congeniality and friendliness.

Now, if you are playing "Battle Chess", where one of the contestants has severe acne, and an eye patch covering up a sword slash scar,  and the other has a tattoo that says "Born to Kill", and before the game begins both players put their guns and knives  on the table, and the timer is a nearsighted accountant chained to a chair, and they are wagering over several bars of gold,  and the virginity of a woman tied to railroad tracks,  and there is a gallows in the parking lot ... I might want to avoid that competition.

... or play to win!

 

Miss Piggy

17 hours ago, Gone Away said:

The article in the Awake summed up (more completely than the quote above), "Surely chess is a fascinating game. But there are questions regarding it that are good for each one who plays chess to consider."

When I was in my 20's, I considered the Watchtower's "Questions", phrased in such a way as to make being COMPLETELY idiotic and clueless, and the opinions of writers living in an artificial fantasy bubble of their own construction,, plausibly deniable as the rantings of agenda driven shut-ins.

They were also against riding a motorcycle, skydiving, surfing, SCUBA diving and anything that stretched a person's mind and imagination.

To me... about such things they had absolutely NO credibility whatsoever.

Now, I am an old man, and look back with great fondness at my youth for having done such things .. and my "bucket list"is a lot shallower, and has many less items in it.

King David was most of his early life a bloodied combat soldier ... and was in the end described as "Old and satisfied with his days".

I can just see his response if some "Pharisee" told him it was a bad idea to play a game of chess.

Jesus stated that the poor would ALWAYS be with us.

He never addressed that the determined STUPID would always be with us.

CO2 is food for plants.

Most people never realize that when you buy lumber to build a home ... the carbon that makes that wood combustible, and gives it strength, and from which sugars are made ... COMES FROM CO2 IN THE AIR .... NOT the ground.

....

On 10/26/2018 at 12:31 AM, Space Merchant said:

The man is hungry for war, you can see it in his eyes, he craves it like a fresh oven cooked pizza. It is such ones like this who are ready to go on a bloodied path to control and conquer, granted with what US allies are doing and the situation with one of their allies, Saudi Arabia.

To a pusillanimous Liberal .. anybody with a hunger for Justice, Liberty, Equity, and Fairness is in their Disneyland viewpoint, hungry for war.

They would NEVER agree with Patrick Henry when he, hungry for Liberty and Freedom, exclaimed "Give me Liberty, or give me DEATH". 

Fortunately, the Colonial Legislature, meeting in St. John's Church in Richmond, Virginia, disagreed with the faint hearted of today, and sent militia to fight the British, in Massachusetts, and secured the blessings of Liberty we enjoy today,  with their precious  blood,, bodies, powder and steel.

Today, Justice is getting a million dollar settlement for accidentally pouring McDonald's hot coffee on your crotch.

It's a sword that cuts BOTH ways .......

.... and the way I used to get rid of spiders is to over-feed moths with wool socks (that had holes in them, of course ...) until they looked like little tiny watermelons with wings, and put them in the spider's web. The spider would run out of silk, trying to wrap it up, and fall to its death.

In the middle of the night you could hear them scream in their little tiny spider voices as they fell.

YOUHOO HOO OOOOOO OOOO oooo .............. EEEK!

Sometimes parents can be overly "picky" about how their children kill household pests, in the homes the parents bought and paid for..

Not having a cat, my Mom would object to my shooting mice in the house. and using an air horn to kill flies.

Here is a good analogy:

For those that want the United States Government to let all those unfortunate immigrants, criminals, and disease ridden people into the United States .....how about if I came to YOUR HOME and with a hammer and a screwdriver took the hinges off of YOUR FRONT DOOR, and took it away with me?

THEN, your altruistic penchant for hospitality could be REALLY tested, with real world considerations.

On 10/24/2018 at 12:43 PM, Shiwiii said:

Blasphemy ! Â Blasphemy !  Patooie! Shame, shame!  You are not supposed to know anything about those sick devil groups.

11 minutes ago, Anna said:

You mean like they do in the movies?

yEP!

I saw one of those old "microfiche" (?) machines being used in a recent movie (last five years or so, I think...) . 

I study movies for detail, and am amazed at the old props they dig up ... especially if they have the right camera equipment for the era or time period.  I can tell cameras and flash equipment back to the 1920's, and when they mismatch equipment ... I know.

18 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Also, for @The Librarian. The note that Brother Covington could sass back the Supreme Court Justices and get away with it I read in a Look Magazine article prior to 1970. I never forgot the factoid, but I also never kept the article. Do you have it or know where it might be found?

When I was a teenager researching Jehovah's Witnesses, I would catch the bus and go downtown to the Main Public Library, and they had a viewer that could show archived newspapers, magazines, etc.  You would sit down and run a roll of tiny negatives through a projector to a screen in front of you.  I think it was called "microfiche". They had issues of the New York Times, back to the beginning.

Make some phone calls to Main Public Libraries, ... they might still have that old technology, or something newer.

I have purchased specific issues of mid-1960's LIFE magazine off of Ebay.

Who woulda figgured?

2 hours ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

Written at a time when literally drinking the blood of fallen gladiators was the 'in thing' and when blood transfusions were not even imagined. 

Actually, by the time Jesus came upon the scene, the Egyptians had for a thousand years been giving "blood transfusions", and "brain surgery" for those soldiers wounded in combat.

I have no evidence to support the idea that the Jews had PROBABLY heard of this.

There was probably a VERY high mortality rate, as I understand (please correct me if I am wrong  ), that you can give mis-matched blood ONE TIME ONLY, and then the body produces antibodies against this foreign body, and the NEXT time the allergic reaction will kill you.

(Insert obligatory macabre humor here ... something about brain surgery with a funnel might be appropriate....)

On 10/20/2018 at 1:54 PM, JOHN BUTLER said:

So, unsettling as it might be for some,  we just will not know how long Jesus meant by "this generation"  until the end comes, and no amount of fancy footwork is going to change that. 

So why do the GB pretend to know ? 

Because knowing ... when others do not ... is what has given, scam artists, flim-flam men, shamans, priests, and ecclesiastical tap-dancers  power prestige, and money, and position in various societies, since four guys went hunting for animals, and OG, the caveman,  supposedly was the only one who knew where the best hunting grounds were.

You do not actually have to BE a wise man, or in the case of Punxsutawney Phil, a weather predicting Groundhog in Gobbler's Knob Pennsylvania .... you only need the REPUTATION !

Clergy by ANY nomenclature are trained experts at "knowing the mind of God".

It's their Busine$$.

1 hour ago, JW Insider said:

I think that the whole blood issue is entirely a matter of conscience. Due to conscience, I might personally view the matter more strongly than another believer, or less strongly. But I would not wish to impose my own conscientious view on others.

I agree .... what other people do or do not do, inside and outside of the Truth in this regard, is their business between them and God, and his Christ.

I am not their master ...

If I was given the job, I would reject it.

However, what bugs the hell out of me is rationalizing, irrational arguments of those who float like leaves on the winds of adopting specious thinking, adopting bogus philosophical arguments, BECAUSE they are afraid of dying.

Without Divine Intervention, 1,500 years from now, we ALL will have been dead approximately that long ... and that is just the beginning.

For perspective, I strongly suspect that each "Creative Day" was, and is, one-half billion years in duration.

The only thing that matters is this:

What was in the mind of everyone at the time the edicts were given, that when Jehovah God had those edicts given, it was crystal clear, without any mental gymnastics.

All these considerations, options, analysis, pondering, and mental gymnastics are complete and total unadulterated, ugly as home-made sin RATIONALIZATIONS.

WHAT?

ARE WE TRYING TO CONVINCE GOD WHAT HE REALLY HAD IN MIND?