James Thomas Rook Jr.

You seem to be saying that there should be no prohibition unless it is specifically mentioned in scripture. Would you say that tobacco smoking should be viewed similarly?

Please watch your racism checker!

If this thesis is wrong ? What then? You have premise. But if you handle with wrong premise all your conclusions based on wrong premise will be questionable or useless. 

Sorry don't understand. The scriptures say 'Keep knocking and it will be opened to you'. So i keep knocking by regular prayer. 

I have often said to my wife, that I wish I had enough money to use a small portion of it to buy a shiny new helicopter.
II would buy about 3,000 of these pillows and load them on the helicopter.
Then I would go to the geographic coordinates of Warwick Bethel World Headquarters, at about 500 feet altitude, push them out the door.
Perhaps I should start a GOFUNDME site ....
Frankly, I wonder how rich people EVER get bored!

I hope they don't start supplying Caleb and Sophia dolls to the bethelites.

It's like those that fear if their children play a Beatles Vinyl Album backwards , they will hear the words "Worship Satan".
If that is what they and/or their kids hear ( .... and how do you even play a vinyl record backwards? ...) they have VASTLY more critical real world problems than ".... I wanna hold your hand ...." , which backwards is " .... dnah ruoy dloh annaw I ...."
wah de do DAH!
Hubba Bubba Bubba
Zip, Blip, CHING!
 

Here is a thought I just had ... different races are affected differently by different practices .... could it be that this is a very severe problem for some races, leading them to criminal activity and degradation, yet other races it does not affect in an adverse way at all?
I mean .... white people are very susceptible to cystic fibrosis, and malaria, but black people have more of a natural immunity to malaria, and as far as I know, cystic fibrosis is completely unknown (?) in black people. American Indians are said to be completely made crazy by "firewater", or whiskey as known today, but other races , not so much. Jewish people have Tay-Sachs disease, but white people and blacks, and Indians do not (presumably ... I may have gotten some facts mixed up ...)
All people and races are NOT the same .... this is a liberal fantasy.
I did math for 45 years for a living, but I probably could not compete with the average Asian teenager. There is a REASON why the best basketball players are black,  and the best Physicists are Jewish and India Indian ( ...long story there ...).
All people are all equal in the eyes of Jehovah and the Christ.... but NOBODY is equal to anybody else ... and there is a reason why there are NO Japanese Sumo Ballerinas, or 6'-7" Fighter Pilots.
There is a famous joke, with several variations floating around,  that sums this up .... about "Heaven", and "Hell", and the reason it is funny is that there is a basis in truth to it.
Heaven:
The police are British The cooks are French The engineers are German The administrators are Swiss The lovers are Italian Hell:
The police are German The cooks are British The engineers are Italian The administrators are French The lovers are Swiss   Perhaps the reason Jehovah God NEVER mentioned this subject at all, with a view to prohibition.... EVER ... was that with the Jews, it was a simple matter of stress relief ... like a boiling tea kettle letting off  steam ..... or like after a large Mexican Dinner, a round of flatulence, later.
( Think about this ... the human body is 90% water, and when full of digesting food and fermentation or gas pressure builds up ... the gas pressure relief valve is at the BOTTOM of a tank of liquid.  WOW! )
I do not know , but I suspect that like a drunk American Indian, masturbation among some individuals and/or races can be devastating mentally and socially, while for others merely a form of very private relaxation.
Whatever the case is, or perhaps some version I did not think about .... there is ONE THING that ALL CHRISTIANS ARE ABSOLUTELY AND UNAMBIGUOUSLY ORDERED NOT TO DO, UNDER PENALTY OF DEATH!
"Do not go beyond the things Written"
 
 

Although Tokyo Bethel has found a way to deal with the situation.

Recently (like this last week), I was attending to our JW publication cart at our local library.  We (the sister with me) were approached by a guy dressed like a country music wannabe with cowboy hat and a plaid shirt with the arms torn off.  His arms were flaying around as he talked about a Youtube vid about our "black dude" leader saying we need to cast our children out of our homes if they aren't following JW rules.  The sister and I were perplexed since we didn't know what he was talking about and tried to reason with him.  Now I know what got him fired up.   The recording of Bro Herd is very hard to decipher what he is saying but I know from previous broadcasts he and Bro Morris can express their personal opinion like its scripture.  They mean well but I feel they go too far sometimes.  
Casting out demons is totally different than dealing with a disfellowshipped child.  The demons had been in Jehovah's presence as fully functioning perfect beings.   They chose a course of rebellion with full knowledge and understanding not subjected to the influence of Adamic sin.    A imperfect child does make their own choices but who knows what influences those choices.   Being an imperfect human gets complicated.    Every country on earth that I can think of has a prison system to protect their good citizens from the bad.  As with Russia we can see that system has a hidden agenda to do just the opposite.   As humans in or out of the Truth, we can have a hidden agenda and I suspect the BoE is not exempt if they are not careful.   I pray for Jehovah to repair any damage done and to cause corrections to be made.  

Oh come on, this seems to have started as a joke, pillow gate. SM has made it serious as he seems to have some interest in the problem. Either you or someone said, that either the GB or others, are trying to give instruction where God Himself has given none. Is it therefore right for the GB, the elders or anyone to judge those that have this 'problem', if God himself and Jesus Christ have not mentioned it.  I can see it as a way for  'shrinks' to earn money by making people feel guilty and then pretending to 'help' them... But if God shows no interest in it then should we even be bothering to worry about it ? Of course the GB could be using it to make the young ones feel guilty. Like the Pharisees loading burdens on the people. 

SM you seem to be the only one on here worrying about it all. I have just re-read the first three pages and it seems to have started off as a joke... Pillow gate. These people that you say are trying to 'help' others. Do they get paid for doing so ? Are they what i call 'shrinks' ? Messing with people's heads. Telling people what is right and wrong even though God Himself gives no direction on such matters. God will judge each of us through Jesus Christ, when the time comes. Let us not be like the Pharisees who put extra burdens on the people. 

Having never claimed to be anything but a Barbarian, it should be as no surprise that I might use real fire .... if it was up to me.
After a fair trial ... not allowing any witnesses ... no recordings ... no transcripts .... at night, in a darkened Kingdom Hall, in the back room ... with the front door locked ....  of course.
I mean ...... fair is fair.

(flip)   .... zing .... zing .... zing .... I gotta get some new flints for this thing ....

I seem to remember that Fred Rogers was a Presbyterian Minister.
Never knew about the Pretzels, but just in case the WTB&TS might decide to ban "hot cross buns", I started eating "Cool Contented Buns".
 

I personally don't remember anyone mentioning that rumor until near the end of his TV show run.
I do remember a controversy in the 1980's about an episode where Mr.Rogers visits a pretzel factory and the episode presented the idea that the pretzel was initially a treat for children who said their prayers and it was twisted into a shape that supposedly represented a child saying his prayers, and when completed, the final shape had three "separate but equal" spaces (not his words) to represent the Trinity. I vaguely remember that this caused some controversy not just among local Witnesses, but that some Mid-Western church had brought it up.
I didn't see the episode until my own children watched it in the 1990's. To their credit the WTS did not ban pretzels, although now I always look at them a bit like "hot cross buns."

This is what happens when you wake sleeping giants !
Be careful when you pray for Justice.
You might get it !

Having never claimed to be anything but a Barbarian, it should be as no surprise that I might use real fire .... if it was up to me.
After a fair trial ... not allowing any witnesses ... no recordings ... no transcripts .... at night, in a darkened Kingdom Hall, in the back room ... with the front door locked ....  of course.
I mean ...... fair is fair.

Thanks for remembering!!
I am glad to say that it is all still there. http://www.jw-archive.org/
I thought Tumblr platform that it was built on was going to disappear awhile back but it is still running.
I think Google has it's own agenda though. I remember someone saying that Watchtower pays Google to suppress certain websites in searches. 
Google only indexes a portion of many websites and has really deteriorated in search over the years. They themselves want to be the "aggregator" of content for people instead of leading people to the sources.
I think the search world is ripe for disruption soon.
 

Well.. at least a few remember it. I guess we normally didn't take photos at such events. It's not like we had cell phones with cameras back then.
How time flies by....
Not many people will remember such times (even less as the next 30 years flies by)
I know the @admin hates "Link Rot" but I can only imagine how in 30 years all of these websites and even jw.org will be gone just like many of the early internet conversations are rarely ever seen or indexed by Google. (that is if they even exist at all anymore)
 
Listserv
Google Groups
Yahoo forums (I can't remember what they used to be called) . Maybe Yahoo 360?
Or even the huge email conversations we used to have and exchange on certain topics.... 
 
All gone.....
 
Maybe that is why I like Books so much?
 

Yes, that's your opinion. My opinion is the video is embarrassing and would not impress the public.
That's a whole different topic and a very complex one. Unless you've been directly involved in this issue or have had several personal experiences you can't really know what you're talking about. This topic is discussed elsewhere if you want to comment there.

My comment which you are twisting was about whether a true servant of God would need a 'mans law' to tell them what action to take. That is, should they report Child Abuse or not. Any true servant of God would know that all Child Abuse should be reported to the Police and the other authorities such as Child welfare whether its compulsory or not. The Pedophile needs to be caught and dealt with by a legal court. You do know don't you that there were courts and judges and prisons in Jesus' time ? 


I liked at the meeting Thursday, Proverbs 21:2, one of the support scriptures cited on the gem point of how Jehovah draws people: 
All of a man’s ways seem right to him, But Jehovah examines the hearts.
Everybody is right. Nobody states a fact that is wrong. Everybody states facts that are right. These are all matters of the head.
But how they are combined and how they are prioritized are matters of the heart, which Jehovah examines.

Jehovah's Witnesses were not fond of letting their children watch Mr. Rogers back in the day since there was a rumor he was a reverend or priest of some denomination. Anyone remember more details about this?
Maybe @JW Insider?

Fred Rogers/Quotes
When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”
Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.
Knowing that we can be loved exactly as we are gives us all the best opportunity for growing into the healthiest of people.
How sad it is that we give up on people who are just like us.
Parents are like shuttles on a loom. They join the threads of the past with threads of the future and leave their own bright patterns as they go.
I think of discipline as the continual everyday process of helping a child learn self-discipline.