James Thomas Rook Jr.

In my own experience, I was born in '57, baptized 10 years later, and had to read the "Life Everlasting" book as one of the two books assigned for baptismal candidates, along with the "Lamp" book questions. I auxiliary pioneered for several months in 1972, and quit school to regular pioneer for 3.5 years from 1973 until leaving for Brooklyn Bethel, where I worked full-time for 4 years, and then part-time, on projects, for another two while going to college in NYC.
I give this portion of my "resume" only because I can speak to the experience of being baptized prior to 1975, and was part of the Bethel build-up from the influx of workers and financial contributions that Bethel received around 1975. I pioneered for several years both before and after 1975.
Your experience may vary, but I can still tell you pretty much what I was thinking just prior to 1975, because I had to clear my plans with my parents, my school, and two circuit overseers, since I quit school while I was still 15 to begin regular pioneering in 1973.

I would say it was an unfortunate collection of events, that altogether gave the impression that the society was promoting 1975 as the date for Armageddon. There is no doubt that it was insinuated by some prominent speakers at conventions (in America mainly?) and also those who were "living out their last days of this system selling their houses so they could pioneer" were publicly praised, ( also in the KM). It is no different now, those who give their all in full time service are also praised today, however, those who did this a few years before 1975 was no coincidence, and I believe the praise was worded in such a way that it was no coincidence either. There was so much insinuation that went unchecked, that it was no wonder 1975 became a fact, instead of what it was said to be, a maybe. It didn't help that one of the prominent brothers said in reply to "is Armageddon coming in 1975?": "we're not saying, we're not saying" which sounds like: "well yes of course it is, but I don't want to sound presumptuous". And who could help but not get excited by that famous Charles Sinutko talk where the phrase "stay alive till 75" was coined.
All in all I think it has been a good lesson for most: know your Bible, and make sure of all things. And if your (Bible trained) instincts tell you something isn't quite right, then it probably isn't. 
 

I am compelled to respond to this Bollocks  that I am seeing re: "Shunning".    Get a Crying Towel, use it and move on.   Take that accusatory Angst and get busy doing something positive for a someone who needs help in some way.  Jehovah's Eyes are everywhere, some may think He is asleep, others know better.   Wow! What a bunch of cry babies. Wahhhhhhhh

Every country in the history of the world that has experimented with Socialism has gone the same route as Venezuela ...
Even wealthy oil countries  like Venezuela cannot win against the irresistible force of uneducated stupidity.

I agree about moving on ... but not forgetting the indelible lessons cruelly burned into our bodies and souls as if with  fire, by those who intended to rule wisely ... but who, above all else ... intended ....... and still intend .......  to rule.
They CANNOT be fired ... and they know it.

Meanwhile .... during construction of World HQ, at Bethel Warwick Infirmiry ....

Anna:
Oh yeah ... I had forgotten about THOSE crazy years ... because I never believed any of that .... but I did get caught, BIG TIME, in the "1975" fiasco, even though during the run-up to 1975 I openly ridiculed it ... right there at the end, I reasoned, in the fall of 1974
"How could I be right, and everybody else ... people I respected, loved  and cared about .... everybody ... be WRONG? ( About the end coming in 1975)."
It did not seem probable to me that EVERYBODY (In the Truth) was wrong so I quit the best job I ever had, in Zaire, the Congo, to be back home with my Mom and Dad in Virginia, when "the END came".
To this day, Brothers and Sisters "swear" that never happened .....  but in the  Watchtower, March 15, 1980 issue , paragraphs 17 and 18 ONE TIME admitted that they did say that ... in the book "Life Everlasting - In Freedom of the Sons of God".
I did not find out about that "soft admission of culpability" until Mr. Google and I became good friends, many, many years later ... but long before that I learned to trust my own instincts over that of anything the Society said or published.
If they are wrong, only we down here at the bottom have to pay the price for their error.
If they permanently screw up our lives ... they pay no price whatsoever.

Immorality outside of adhering to the direct commandments and underlying principles of those direct commandments is not "galactic standards morality".  It is local or personal preference.
Snowflakes think different than Warriors.
Children think different than adults.
Everybody decides what their own morality will be ... and it can be based on their own standards, or any standards.
August  6, 1945 the United States Government burned to death about 80 thousand  men, women, children and babies, one morning before noon, and three days later, August 9, 1945, burned to death another 30 thousand men, women and children and babies on another sunny morning.
Those not instantly killed lingered in agony with little or no medical care and over the next four months  approximately 100 thousand more Japanese died of their injuries sustained on those two mornings.
When civilization and liberty or tyranny is in the balance, Jack Ryan's sentiments expressed by proxy closely imitate the thought processes  of a petulant, child who has no concept of the big picture. 
May I suggest to ANYONE getting the "Big Picture", and start thinking like an adult.
Destroying the Empire of Japan's ability to wage war against the United States necessitated the deaths and torture to  death by injury,  of perhaps a quarter-million total Japanese, including infants, with two Atomic Bombs. 
That does not even count those who survived and were maimed for life.
In this theater of war, approximately 400 to 600 Americans died in this effort, most from radiation poisoning.
The alternative was to accomplish the same ends  (winning the war, and unconditional surrender of the Empire of Japan) with, based on experience in battle,  4 million Japanese killed, and 1 million American deaths in battle.
The destruction of the Japanese Empire actually freed the Japanese as well from a millennium of tyranny by their own internal Bushido code based Imperial government.  Women were treated like animals. Men were treated like slaves.
Grow up people!
Start thinking like an ADULT.
What Jehovah did in Egypt thousands of years ago, was justified, and in the best interests of all parties involved ...  a whole NATION OF GOD'S PEOPLE was freed from slavery, oppression, mistreatment and tyranny .... but like any dramatic cancer surgery ... there is a bill that has to be paid.
There is no other way .
 
 

No country on Earth considers warfare to be murder.
If I was at war, and had to kill ten thousand parents, I could see the necessity of killing the children also ... as the army I was in would become babysitters instead of soldiers. 
... and babysitters of children who would be trying to kill me and my soldiers, and later in wreck vengeance on my and their children.
If you have to "play that game"   ... those are the rules.
August 6, and August 9, 1945, the United States of America burned to death somewhere around 50,000 civilian children with two atomic bombs, and horribly maimed tens of thousands more.
War is a rough  game to play .....
The only way for a Christian to win ... is NOT PLAY.
Jehovah God had different rules for the Jews.
 
 

Soon enough .... perhaps TOO soon, we will ... each and every one of us ... will know for sure.
In the meantime, my major concern is to have common sense, a correct view of reality the way it REALLY is, and to stay sane when it seems all around me, people are going bat crap crazy, interpreting invisible things with absolutely no REAL evidence of any kind.
What that means is ... I am going to do the best I can ... and ignore all the prognostications.
In the history of civilization .... no one ... no one at all ... has so far gotten it right.
I hope it will be good enough .... but if it is not, perhaps I will die ..... but at least I will be sane.

Anna:
Oh yeah ... I had forgotten about THOSE crazy years ... because I never believed any of that .... but I did get caught, BIG TIME, in the "1975" fiasco, even though during the run-up to 1975 I openly ridiculed it ... right there at the end, I reasoned, in the fall of 1974
"How could I be right, and everybody else ... people I respected, loved  and cared about .... everybody ... be WRONG? ( About the end coming in 1975)."
It did not seem probable to me that EVERYBODY (In the Truth) was wrong so I quit the best job I ever had, in Zaire, the Congo, to be back home with my Mom and Dad in Virginia, when "the END came".
To this day, Brothers and Sisters "swear" that never happened .....  but in the  Watchtower, March 15, 1980 issue , paragraphs 17 and 18 ONE TIME admitted that they did say that ... in the book "Life Everlasting - In Freedom of the Sons of God".
I did not find out about that "soft admission of culpability" until Mr. Google and I became good friends, many, many years later ... but long before that I learned to trust my own instincts over that of anything the Society said or published.
If they are wrong, only we down here at the bottom have to pay the price for their error.
If they permanently screw up our lives ... they pay no price whatsoever.

I don't believe you! Or was it someone who had been a Witness a very loooong time ago?

I'm sorry, it's my fault, I worded it wrong. I should have said close relatives, or members of a family not living together. The only time when "shunning" is is not applied, under our current interpretation,  is with a husband and wife, or children still living at home.
I know you and I have talked about this before on here. I know the org. cannot make rules on every situation and instance, but the general principle applies, that disfellowshipped relatives are to be shunned. The convention video last year made that quite clear. I think it's the video I have a problem with more than anything. Elders are usually quite understanding when it comes to relatives. My son visits his disfellowshipped father when he is in Europe, the elders know about it, but haven't said anything. A sister on here commented a few months back that elders in her congregation were counseling her on her association with her disfellowshipped daughter, and she told them that her daughter is going to be taking care of her when she is old. They left it alone after that. From a purely practical perspective I cannot see how shunning children or parents is possible. The Bible tells the children to honor their mother and father, and it has no time limit, as in whether they are still living at home or not.
I really believe 1 Cor. 5:11 does not apply to relatives, especially parents/adult children. But of course that's just my personal opinion!
 

It has been less than an hour since I posted the above parody ... but someone from another State called me to ask "Is this FOR REAL?"
Of course it is not .... it's a PARODY .... but the very sad thing is, that things have gotten so goofy, among the Witness culture ... that a highly intelligent person is stunned ... and had to ask that question.
I mean ... after you go through the "Overlapping Generations" explanation ... ANYTHING is possible.

Dateline: Saturday,  September 1, 2018

WARWICK NY — Special Assembly Representatives of Jehovah’s Witnesses at their new World Headquarters, known as “Bethel”,  reported being surprised at Saturday afternoon’s session when they were directed to the  newly constructed balcony entrance for seating.
“We normally get there early so we can sit as close to the Governing Body as possible,” Assembly Delegate  Stephen Lett, Jr.  told reporters. “We were all like, ‘What’s going on?'”
They did not have to wonder for long.
Governing Body’s Helper Alan Cage, dressed in costume as a  regular person  took the stage under a single spotlight, and after some coy banter, he reportedly announced that it was “Baptism Saturday,” but that this was “not your Mama’s Saturday afternoon  Assembly baptism!”
 At this cue, a giant  four story high spiral water slide, stretching from the balcony down to the on-stage baptismal pool, was unveiled from behind a large curtain, to thunderous applause from assembled delegates.
Children as young as four years old, who had been ushered single file to the new entrance were directed one-by-one into the orange spiral sliding board and, with a push, sent hurtling toward baptismal pool, answering the two baptismal questions as they increased spiral velocity “Yes!” and “Yes!” . Jehovah’s Witnesses Elders  in wet swimsuits and white t-shirts asked the questions as they whizzed by to the pool below.
Anthony Morris III, one of eight Jehovah’s Witness Governing Body members wearing a leopard skin spandex leotard emblazoned with large white  initials TPT,  architect of what has been dubbed by Bethel insiders as “Splashdown  Saturday.”  told reporters “The water slide is fun for the little kiddies, but the whole reason we did this is to get the most number of people baptized in the least amount of time possible.” 
“ … we can’t count some of these baptisms because someone didn’t  say “yes” to the baptismal questions, or because someone’s head wasn’t completely submerged, then what’s the point?”
In the dry-off area next to the baptismal pool, a group of dripping four to seven year old children were being dried off behind a screened area with sacramental pillow cases  from the Bethel Laundry
At publishing time, the  JW.ORG  website reports that the church has broken its own record for the most baptisms in a single Saturday afternoon.
 
 
 
… my apologies to  “The Onion”
 

The article was OK ... until paragraphs 9 and 10, if memory serves .....
It was OK after that.
Paragraphs 9 and 10 were  the most convoluted mish-mash I ever read to try and Biblically justify .. WHICH IT DID NOT ... that the plain common sense observation that sometimes a Farmers' BEST efforts do not produce a crop ... as there may not be enough rain, or there is too much rain, or hailstones destroy the crop .... or insects eat the crop ... or perhaps rocky soil was all there was to plant on in the first place.
OK... I understand that ... "STUFF HAPPENS".  Everybody that knows about farming understands that.
It always has .... and always will.
... but to propose such convoluted and specious  reasoning to explain why globally there is a DECREASE in active Jehovahs' Witnesses by over 700,000 publishers last year, after spending about TWO BILLION hours "sewing seed", is solid evidence that they are MANIPULATING Scriptures to try and support the idea that there is a reasonable Biblical explanation of all of this going on.
It is plain common sense.
The "scriptural explanation" is pure garbage, and makes no sense at all.
If you twist ideas into pretzels with word gymnmastics in the World, it is called deception.
They have to have about 18 numbered paragraphs in every Watchtower to fill the pages of an article to meet the timing requirements of the Watchtower Study.
It is of no avail if you fill it in with paragraphs 9 and 10, which are garbage reasoning, and unadulterated lying.
It is such blatent and brazen cluelessness that I was able to write this entirely from memory.
...perhaps it was paragraphs 10 and 11 ... whichever has the least actual  "grain" of truth.
 
 
 

The problem is, that Grey Reformer is too lacking in general knowledge of what has been going on around him (or her) to reform anything.
Before you can fix a problem ... you have to know there IS a problem.

I often wonder, if one family of the 5 million Jews that left Egypt, and got stuck in the sands of the Sinai Peninsula for 40 years, had decided to head North, instead of wandering around in circles for 40 years ... if they would have been better off ... or worse off.
From the Biblical accounts, the Jews were generally a bunch of nasty, cruel, hard-headed people.

Grey Reformer:
Apparently you think that things that are WRONG, can be reformed with happy thoughts, and magic pixie dust.
For those that believe in Justice, fairness, and equity,  they come to realize that reform ALWAYS carries personal risk.
SERIOUS personal risk.
If you want to effect reform, you MUST call what is good, good ... and what is bad, bad.
Often the two are mixed together.
That's why we do not cut off a baby's head when they poop in their diaper.
Perhaps I should rephrase that .... reasonable people do not cut off baby's heads when they poop in their diapers.
Ultimately, we will all live or die at the will of Jehovah God and his Christ.
NOT where arbitrary and cruel Big Org protectionist policy hits the fan.
They can ONLY make your life a joy when they are right ... and completely miserable when they are wrong.
 

... reflecting back on what I just wrote .... it is an embarrassment, and a crying shame that concerning wisdom and common sense .... and justice and mercy .... that the average people living in Las Vegas, Nevada, the self proclaimed "Sin Capitol of the World" ... have the moral high ground.

..sometimes I think we are living in a cartoon world, controlled by imitation comedians, and  Caleb and Sophia.

This is known as a "Semantics Trap", where you are chained by a false premise and the chain of logic is too short to allow you to reach the proper conclusion.
If "the law" states that you will be hung by the neck until dead, if you park your car in a handicapped parking place ... and you DO park your car in a handicapped parking place without that little handicapped sign on your car, or whatever is required, you are "rightfully" executed for doing what you are doing.
Anyone with a true sense of justice knows the punishment does not fit the crime, but in some societies, there is no such thing as common sense or mercy, or even "extenuating circumstances" such as perhaps your car engine failed, and that was the only spot you could roll your car to, to get it out of the main traffic or travel-way.
Last year, October 1, 2017 in Las Vegas, while a mass murderer was shooting  from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel, at people at a concert in the street below.........
(In approximately ten minutes he killed 58 people, and left 851 people injured)
....... One man below decided to steal a truck inside a Company parking lot (he knew they kept their keys in the trucks), and with that stolen truck he  went into the line of gunfire, and amid the dead and dying,  loaded it up with wounded, and took them to the hospitals.
He confessed to deliberately stealing the truck (grand theft/auto ... a felony), and it became world wide news.  A self confessed and globally notorious car thief.
Yes he was a thief.
A self confessed and globally notorious car thief.
No ... he was NOT repentant ... and would do it again, in similar circumstances.
The law stated that he could be sentenced to two or more years in a Nevada prison.
He was not charged as a felony thief, although he was absolutely guilty.
It was NOT the right thing to do, and NO REASONABLE PERSON, not the Utility Company that owned the truck, not the police, not the stupidest man wandering the streets of Las Vegas even imagined charging him with vehicle theft.
If he would have been one of Jehovah's Witnesses, under current rules as commonly practiced EVERYWHERE by the current system, only three things would have been considered.
1.) Did he steal someone's vehicle?  -  (yes, he did).
2.) Did the public find out about it, and know he was one of Jehovah's Witnesses?  -  (yes, and yes).
3.) Was he truly repentant of his crime, and firmly resolved never to do it again? - (no, he was not and could NEVER be).
Therefore, as night follows day, BIG ORG would have had him disfellowshipped, and without repentance ( perhaps even some begging and tears, and rending of clothes ...) he would be forever disfellowshipped. No mercy would be shown ... just the blind application of ORG policy. 
In righteous indignation he may even pleaded for real  for JUSTICE ... but his pleas would be laughed at. (I have actually heard this, of first hand knowledge, as a couple sat in the darkened Kingdom Hall awaiting judgement ... ).
This is what happens when simple common sense is foreign to the minds of those who seek to consolidate their authority, and not be removed from their positions of authority. ...........
According to Big Org law, the thief would have been rightfully convicted of being an unrepentant thief.
And NO ONE would have "spoken up" for him, for fear they also would be disfellowshipped for disturbing the unity of the Congregation, for they, themselves also would for a certainty also be disfellowshipped, for questioning the decisions of the Elders, for Apostasy, or "brazen conduct" (which covers nothing and everything at the same time) .... or in any way indicating Big Org's  judgement was anything else but, as George Orwell in his book "1984"  put it ... "Doubleplusgood".
..........
Such devotion to "law" would have made the Pharisees of Jesus' day very proud.
 

( it is now Saturday afternoon ... and the sound of crickets chirping in the silence is all that is heard ...)

If you were a  real sheep, that's a VERY good idea.
When you get invited to dinner ... YOU are on the menu.
With THE WAY that we are doing disfellowshipping today ... we ARE ... eating our own.
(Baaaaaa!)

Dec. 2018 WT's Shocking advice re: domestic violence

It is very interesting that Watchtower always paints an abusive or violent mate as being an unbeliever. They always make it about the wife converting the unbeliever into a JW, and that will somehow fix the problem. There is no reality in these articles. They never talk about the abusive mate who is a JW, perhaps and elder or MS. It is totally fabricated scenarios that perpetuate the fairytale of happy JW marriages.
They forgot to mention the abusive "brothers" that have beaten their wives to death. One of the two witnesses at the Russian Supreme Court hearing last year was a woman who had enough of the abuse and left her JW husband. She was not going to hang around until he killed her. The fact that she was dfd for divorcing the asshole and remarrying served as proof that the JW religion is extremist. From a women's rights perspective, it is indeed extremist and deadly.