James Thomas Rook Jr.

Let's put this in the proper perspective, shall we?
No, actually ... the "Pale Horse" is just contemplating its navel, and laughing at our panicking over the Coronavirus.
From the World Health Organization:
" Of all disease-transmitting insects, the mosquito is the greatest menace, spreading malaria, dengue and yellow fever, which together are responsible for several million deaths and hundreds of millions of cases every year. Mosquitos also transmit lymphatic filariasis and Japanese encephalitis. Other insect species carry a variety of diseases. Sleeping sickness is spread by the tsetse fly, with 55 million people at risk. The leishmaniasis group of diseases is spread by sandflies, with 350 million people at risk. Another 100 million in Latin America are at risk of Chagas disease, spread by household bugs. Onchocerciasis, or river blindness, is carried by blackflies, and plague by fleas.
Malaria is endemic in 91 countries, with about 40% of the world's population at risk. By undermining the health and working capacity of hundreds of millions, it is closely linked to poverty and stunts social and economic development. Up to 500 million cases occur every year, 90% of them in Africa, and there are up to 2.7 million deaths annually.
Dengue is the world's most important mosquito-borne virus disease, with 2500 million people worldwide at risk of infection and 20 million cases a year in more than 100 countries. In 1995, the worst dengue epidemic in Latin America and the Caribbean for 15 years struck at least 14 countries, causing more than 200 000 cases of dengue fever and almost 6000 cases of the more serious dengue haemorrhagic fever.
Many major cities of the world, especially in the Americas, are at risk of potentially devastating epidemics of yellow fever because they are infested with Aedes aegypti mosquitos which can transmit the disease. Lymphatic filariasis (elephantiasis) infects about 120 million people in tropical areas of Africa, India, South-East Asia, the Pacific Islands and South and Central America.
Among diseases spread by other insects, leishmaniasis occurs in 88 countries, and its spread is accelerated by road building, dam construction, mining and other development programmes that bring more people into contact with the sandflies that transmit the causative parasite. Sleeping sickness affects 36 countries of sub-Saharan Africa. Onchocerciasis affects some 17.6 million people in Africa, and a smaller number in Central and South America. At least 16 million people in Latin America are infected with Chagas disease. Plague continues to strike relatively small numbers of people in Africa, the Americas and Asia."
The "Pale Horse" trots at a pretty devastating steady pace already, hardly breaking a sweat.
...this MAY change dramatically .... or not.
 

One day while out in Field Service with the smartest brother at our Kingdom Hall, a long time Elder and an extremely dedicated man, I asked him if he understood the overlapping generation dogma, and could explain it to me.  (He was driving, I was riding "shotgun", and there were two Sisters in the back seat).
He was very thoughtful, for a few moments, and replied "I think they are trying to do the best they can ...."
He could not explain it to me.
Perhaps he needed to see this video!
It's so CLEAR to me now!

I DON'T KNOW WHO "THESE PEOPLE" ARE THAT BELIEVE THE END OF THE WORLD IS COMING IN 2020?
People from "Blue States"?
 

Something my young children taught me, is that a peanut butter and jelly sandwich will fit PERFECTLY into the slot of a VCR.

I was raised in Richmond, Virginia, the former Capitol of the Confederacy, and was taught that Yankees had pointed teeth, and ate babies.
I knew this was not true ... but suspected it MIGHT be.

I was raised in Richmond, Virginia, the former Capitol of the Confederacy, and was taught that Yankees had pointed teeth, and ate babies.
I knew this was not true ... but suspected it MIGHT be.

“For their own good” the true believers among them would have said.

The true test of any association of people, be it a Nation, a Tribe, a Family, or a religious organization is this:
How many people are trying hard to get in ... and how many people are trying hard to get out.
The Soviets knew their "iron curtain" was not a protective wall to try and keep people out ... it was a prison wall to try and keep people in.

The true test of any association of people, be it a Nation, a Tribe, a Family, or a religious organization is this:
How many people are trying hard to get in ... and how many people are trying hard to get out.
The Soviets knew their "iron curtain" was not a protective wall to try and keep people out ... it was a prison wall to try and keep people in.

The true test of any association of people, be it a Nation, a Tribe, a Family, or a religious organization is this:
How many people are trying hard to get in ... and how many people are trying hard to get out.
The Soviets knew their "iron curtain" was not a protective wall to try and keep people out ... it was a prison wall to try and keep people in.

I suppose it sounds strange or not, depending on the custom of a particular language and culture.
No one know how Jehovah's name is pronounced, but to me, "Yahweh", which might be more accurate, sounds very strange.
...like Kermit The Frog eating dragonfly ice cream ... it all depends on what you are used to.

I suppose it sounds strange or not, depending on the custom of a particular language and culture.
No one know how Jehovah's name is pronounced, but to me, "Yahweh", which might be more accurate, sounds very strange.
...like Kermit The Frog eating dragonfly ice cream ... it all depends on what you are used to.

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Thanks, you are kind....   I have been spending way too much time on here.... I will start to wrap up.... 
I like these topics and they are a little irresistible....because iron sharpens iron ..... but reality calls.  

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Extreme socialism does become communism. But extreme capitalism does not look like communism, it's the definition of fascism. Capitalism defended by a militaristic state is fascism.
You have likely been listening to a lot of the same propaganda that now has most of the world in its thrall. I listened to it, too, for most of my life. The problem with your theory is that the United States, through dozens of once-secret sources, which are now in the open, prove definitively that the United States was deathly afraid of communism because it brings poor people out of poverty much quicker than capitalism ever has. This is the reason that communism is a "threat" and has to be interfered with and sabotaged constantly. It's the reason that the United States has chosen to destroy nations like North Korea and Vietnam and Libya and Syria and Venezuela and Nicaragua and even much smaller nations, more defenseless than those.
The United States has been running scared for decades, because of the theory that people might notice that communism, at least Marxist communism, is a scientific approach to the economy such that more poor in the population rise above the poverty level.
Russian communism, in spite of two world wars, and a couple of very paranoid leaders, managed to build itself up from a very poor economy with most of the population in poverty, to the second biggest economy in the world in just the 40 years from about 1917 to 1957. US Capitalism, for example, though a much richer country, barely moved the bar on the percentage of people it could bring out of poverty in any 40 year period.
China's communism is creating an economy that has now very likely become the number one economy in the world. And it was and still is a poor, overpopulated country.  In the years since its revolution in the late 1940's it has managed to bring more persons out of poverty than all other nations put together. There is a rumor that they might have completely raised virtually everyone above the poverty line by late 2020 or 2021. And this is what's reported by Western journalists, not just Chinese sources. And China has done this without bombing countries for their resources or using the US/IMF/WorldBank tactics of creating loans to be defaulted on so that the leverage on those loans allows rampant stealing of resources, trade for military bases, pipelines, etc. In fact, John Bolton was angry at China for using tactics in Africa that made local populations "prefer" China over America when it came to doing business for their valuable resources (rare earth metals, etc). Those "tactics" include NOT using loans for leverage, NOT using military proxies to murder uncooperative local populations, NOT promoting civil war to weaken the country, NOT attempting regime changes, NOT building infrastructure that is clearly for the purpose of American military bases, NOT using a majority of Chinese persons as workers in these lands to hurt the local economies, etc.
These "tactics" have worked so well, that almost everything the United States has done to make themselves unpopular in the world is projected onto China to try to make China look worse. Even the surveillance initiatives that you have often brought up are only in the testing stages and are still chaotic and experimental. They have been tried in only a few test areas and cities in China and they are not nearly as pervasive as such surveillance systems are in the United States.
Don't get the idea that I think Communism is a proper solution for the world, or that I think that these countries can do no wrong. They are led by humans, influenced by Satan, and will make dangerous mistakes just like every other nation. The only true solution to human governments is a government by God, God's Kingdom under Christ.

I was not there, Wednesday night, as my wife and I started attending a different congregation that attends the same Kingdom Hall about three weeks ago, but the Sister was shot at...not shot.
The report I got when I asked a Gastonia police officer this Thursday night, was that the Sister had just gotten into her car, and closed the door, when one of three suspects who had just robbed a nearby store, and were escaping on foot, tried to hijack her car, and shot the car twice, attempting to get her to relinquish it, which she did not, and she was hit with "shrapnel", which was not specified, but which might have been fragments of bullets, or broken glass.
Very minor injuries.
The front door of the Kingdom Hall is a plate glass door, in a steel frame, and inside are normally stationed two Brothers who sit in chairs, one directly inside the door, which is locked during the meetings, as a doorman, to open it for congregants coming late, etc.,(he can of course, see who is on the other side ...), and another Brother in a chair, just inside the auditorium. 
I have referred to them as "Brothers Bullet Catchers", in the past.
The door is NOT "bullet proof", according to an Elder I asked, about  six months ago.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To paraphrase a common saying,
"Stuff Happens"".
........................................................................................................................................
" You only need four things to win a gunfight.
Excellent reflexes and a working handgun of appropriate caliber,
To be able to hit what you aim at, and
The will to take another man's life.
The rest is up to divine providence, and pure dumb luck."
James B. Hickok,  1874
.........................................................................................................................................
But then again, Four Sisters were killed in an automobile accident in Grand Prairie, Texas, WHILE ENGAGED IN FIELD SERVICE, Texas, years ago, when a vehicle ran a stop light and T-boned their car in an intersection.
Jehovah does not interfere with ANYTHING in the modern day.
"chance and circumstance befall us all. ..."
....... be careful out there, if you can manage it, and decide to do so.
Even at least several of the  Apostles were armed with their personal weapons, in an upstairs room, in downtown Jerusalem at the last congregational meeting, and the Memorial of Christ's impending execution, and it was not to defend against rogue bears that climb stairs.
Luke 22:36
"Stuff Happens".
.... be careful out there .....
 

UPDATE: Friday, Jan 17, 2020
I just talked to an Elder at my old congregation, and he said that the assailant fired two bullets into the car of the Congregation Coordinator, Lance Keel, and his wife threw her daughter to the seat as a bullet passed over her head.  She was grazed by one bullet on her rib area, .... "merely a flesh wound", that created a groove, but not a hole.
The Elder said that the whole congregation was, and continues to be  traumatized (the police kept them in place at the Kingdom Hall until 11PM, to try and find the assailant, who got away.) This Saturday they are having a special needs meeting with the whole congregation to decide on new cameras and lighting to put up, as this event happened in the middle of the parking lot, away from the Kingdom Hall.
I mentioned that I knew the glass door was NOT bullet resistant, but he said one of the Brothers was putting a layer of plastic film on the glass (?)  I mentioned to him that they make transparent aluminum now (mostly nitrogen, actually..)  which will stop a 50 caliber machine gun bullet at point blank range, at which his eyes glazed over.
I suppose they will also formulate a plan (satire alert!) so that if anything like this happens again, the congregation will throw their cell phones at the shooter.

I was not there, Wednesday night, as my wife and I started attending a different congregation that attends the same Kingdom Hall about three weeks ago, but the Sister was shot at...not shot.
The report I got when I asked a Gastonia police officer this Thursday night, was that the Sister had just gotten into her car, and closed the door, when one of three suspects who had just robbed a nearby store, and were escaping on foot, tried to hijack her car, and shot the car twice, attempting to get her to relinquish it, which she did not, and she was hit with "shrapnel", which was not specified, but which might have been fragments of bullets, or broken glass.
Very minor injuries.
The front door of the Kingdom Hall is a plate glass door, in a steel frame, and inside are normally stationed two Brothers who sit in chairs, one directly inside the door, which is locked during the meetings, as a doorman, to open it for congregants coming late, etc.,(he can of course, see who is on the other side ...), and another Brother in a chair, just inside the auditorium. 
I have referred to them as "Brothers Bullet Catchers", in the past.
The door is NOT "bullet proof", according to an Elder I asked, about  six months ago.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To paraphrase a common saying,
"Stuff Happens"".
........................................................................................................................................
" You only need four things to win a gunfight.
Excellent reflexes and a working handgun of appropriate caliber,
To be able to hit what you aim at, and
The will to take another man's life.
The rest is up to divine providence, and pure dumb luck."
James B. Hickok,  1874
.........................................................................................................................................
But then again, Four Sisters were killed in an automobile accident in Grand Prairie, Texas, WHILE ENGAGED IN FIELD SERVICE, Texas, years ago, when a vehicle ran a stop light and T-boned their car in an intersection.
Jehovah does not interfere with ANYTHING in the modern day.
"chance and circumstance befall us all. ..."
....... be careful out there, if you can manage it, and decide to do so.
Even at least several of the  Apostles were armed with their personal weapons, in an upstairs room, in downtown Jerusalem at the last congregational meeting, and the Memorial of Christ's impending execution, and it was not to defend against rogue bears that climb stairs.
Luke 22:36
"Stuff Happens".
.... be careful out there .....
 

The mission statement of Tom Irregardless and Me appears directly on the title page: “For we have become a theatrical spectacle to the world,” Paul writes to the Corinthians. “That being the case, let’s show them some theater!” is my addition.
It is the greatest show on earth, with actors playing characters good and bad, strutting their stuff, playing out their roles under the big tent. For the longest time I was frustrated that The Watchtower seldom names names—“one politician said” is the vagueness that they continually served up. Then I realized the underlying truth: it is a play that we are watching. You don’t have to name the actors of the play—it can even be a distraction if you do. Name a villain and you create the illusion that holding that villain accountable and making him take responsibility solves the problem. Instead, cart him off to the hoosegow and another actor instantly steps into his shoes—the show goes on with barely a hiccup. 
As the greatest showman on earth—Cecil B. DeMille—and every showman worth his salt before of after well knows, every show needs not just a hero. It needs a villain! The show will tank in popular estimation without a villain—it simply becomes too dull to hold interest. “There’s a great villain in that Bond movie,” people will say as they change channels. Fortunately, in the Greatest Show of Earth, there are villains galore! Who are they? Apostates! “Taste and see that Jehovah is good,” says the verse. They have tasted and seen that he is bad. They are the villains.
Let us assign them a theme song, taking inspiration from Queen’s ‘We Are the Champions:’
We’re the apostates, my friends
And we’ll keep on fighting ‘til the end
We’re the apostates
We’re the apostates
No way we’ll lose this
We hope you choose us
‘Cause we’re the apostates of the world!
There! Isn’t that nice? What! Do you think only the Israelites can come marching to battle singing their song? No! They came marching for battle that day, but they didn’t expect to draw a sword! Singers were out in front! (2 Chronicles 20:17-21) But if they listened very closely, they might have heard the approaching enemy also singing—the Queen song!
See the scoundrels attacking what they always attack—the divine/human interface. Has that not always been the case? It was the case with Moses and the rebellious Israelites. It was the case with the apostles and the malcontents that they strove with all their might to restrain. It was even true with the one who turned on Jesus—Judas. He and God were tight—there we no problems there! But this imposter claiming to be the Messiah! He was not at all what Judas had come to expect. And those yo-yos that he was attracting! “Untaught and ignorant,” Acts 4:13 (KJV) calls their head ones—don’t even go there!
See the apostates diving into the archives! ‘Have Witnesses predicted the end before?’ they mutter their empty thing. ‘Yes! They have—several times! And now they would cover it up!! Well, we won’t let them! Aha ha ha ha!!!!!’
Witnesses want to cover it up? Really? Anybody see Gerrit Losch speaking to hundreds at the Gilead graduation—it being broadcasted to millions? He’s the one noted for digging up stats. He must have referred to a couple dozen predictions for the end—starting with one in the year 400. Christopher Columbus even had one! I hadn’t known that. Isaac Newton as well, who wrote more on religion than he did on mathematics and science combined. That’s one that he didn’t mention, perhaps because the date is yet ahead: 2060.
Our brothers, too, have made some, he said, pointing to two in the 1800’s and a gaggle of them around 1914, so many that I thought he might not even slap me down for when I characterized them as that time you missed the nail with the hammer, and in frustration swung several times more, again missing each time!
Did he soft-peddle 1925 or 1975? He doubled down on them! He did not even use for an out the two perfect ones he had—that the early Christians, too, were obsessed over the end date: “Lord, are you restoring the kingdom to Israel at this time?” they asked the resurrected Jesus the moment they laid eyes upon him. What godly person doesn’t want to see the end of this experiment with human rule? But Losch doesn’t even go there.
He’s trying to cover something up, is he? Doesn’t sound that way to me. Who knew that the stiff old German had it in him? When the blaggard throws a punch that he expects to smash in your face, you simply step aside, admit everything, fill in a few details he doesn’t know, and the slob’s own momentum sends him hurling past you head over heals! ‘The Governing Body humbly admits its mistakes and moves on,’ Losch states.
See the apostates reframing obviously good works as bad! Is it actually possible to characterize the Witnesses’ disaster relief mobilizations as evil? They find a way! One vile character says it is one of Satan’s lying signs and wonders, proving he can transform himself into an angel of light! When that doesn’t work, she says, ‘Big deal. Everybody does it!’ When that doesn’t work, she says, ‘Witnesses only help themselves—why don’t they rebuild everybody?’ They don’t because they are in no position to. They are volunteers, for the most part, using vacation time. What they can do is show others how it is done, show them the model that makes it possible for them to do likewise if they wish to or are capable of. 
Then she says—it’s unbelievable! it’s her fourth tactic!—if the homeowner has insurance, they suggest donating the check! Duh! They commence repairs without knowing or caring whether there is insurance. What! She would accept $100K worth of work, and when the friends suggest donation, tell them to take a hike? Are you kidding me? What does she plan on doing with that check, anyway? Doesn’t she come mighty close to suggesting insurance fraud, which she doesn’t notice in her quest to make it hot for her former friends? I can’t imagine it happening very frequently because Witnesses are decent folk who would never dream of so taking advantage of others’ generosity. But she has no problem with it.
See them try to reframe reality—turning the good into evil that Jehovah’s Witnesses police their own as few others do so that they may best ‘practice what they preach.’ See how they deliberately sow confusion that leaving the reporting to child abuse to the parties involved is the same as ‘covering it up.’ When the gold standard of child abuse is to “go beyond the law,” impossible situations arise with regard to persons who, not surprisingly, expect you to abide by the law. Change the law! as Geoffrey Jackson pleaded, and everyone will be happy. It will make the Witnesses’ job “so much easier.” Few others undertake that job—of self-policing—so if the laws are screwed up it affects them not at all. 
Who are these “apostates”—and I usually call them malcontents, detractors, or some like word, because outside of the Witness community, and even inside it, people tire of the term. 
From the meta-data of ‘TrueTom vs the Apostates!’—
“No New Testament writer fails to deal with then-rampant apostasy—a movement which finds its counterpart today. Two Bible chapters are entirely dedicated to it. Apostates of that time would “despise authority.” How could that become a problem unless there was authority? They loved “lawlessness.” How could that become a problem unless there was law? They favored acts of “brazen conduct,” had “eyes full of adultery,” and were “unable to desist from sin.” How could that become a problem unless there was someone to tell them that they could not carry on in that way? Not only is the nature of apostates revealed in the above Bible verses, but also the nature of the Christian organization.”
Any faith too bland to have quality apostates—I am almost proud of ours—is too bland to be given the time of day. They validate us. The more “respectable” churches where anything goes—what would people apostatize from?
See them snarling in their lairs! What accounts for their discontent? Well—let us not get too flippant (as we have several places in this post)—some of them genuinely caught the short end of the stick and then declined congregation efforts to restore them. But in general, whenever one discards a scenario in which there is discipline for one in which there is not, it will be like releasing a compressed spring—it rebounds wildly, delirious with its newfound freedom, caring not where it goes. This will be true when one leaves behind the school, the military, or the job. It will especially be true if one quit or was expelled from that institution—and that is the case of most on the anti-JW site. Many of them have come out as gay. Witnesses may not gay-bash as do some evangelicals, plenty of whom froth on the subject and tirelessly prod legislators to make it hot for gays in general society—Witnesses don’t do that—still, there is no place for gay sex relations within the Witness organization—and that hardly endears them to former members who have gone that way. There is a plain backdrop of ‘settling the score’ to be detected in many posts. It is anything but easy to hold the line on Bible morality in a quickly changing world.“
to be continued.....maybe

Fake pork is Solyent Green ...
..otherwise known as "long pig".
...long a staple among the Pacific Islanders.
 

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