James Thomas Rook Jr.

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.

Does that take into account the 73% of all Jehovah's Witnesses who do not stay?
 (PEW survey on Religion in America)
I believe in the Life Insurance business this is called "churn".
 

By the way, Billy, are you and Foreigner the same person ? 
I notice he or she never makes any comments, and downvotes everything everybody else says, EXCEPT YOU,   You get an upvote!
....sort of like getting a Telly Award and not having to pay $85 for it.
This will be a good test of your basic integrity, as there are several people here ( not me ) who can determine from your Internet Cyber trail exactly where both logins are coming from, and even your operating system and Browser. They ALREADY have all that information.
You going to weasel out of this honest, straightforward, and pertinent question ....
..... or reply  with an honest YES or NO answer?

THREE REASONS:
I think that because I believe that NO ONE has the slightest idea when Armageddon will come, and having been burned in 1974-1975 by peer pressure and constant propaganda to react as if it would have come in 1975 ... ( I was a coward, and caved ...), and because globally we are living in the very best times that have ever existed in the history of all civilization ... by ANY metric, possibly ALL of them, perhaps I was trying to say what Newton said about that.
I certainly did not believe it would be in 2060, or as early as 2032, etc. only that of all the sources available anywhere in humanity, past or present, if he had published his thoughts on this matter, I would SERIOUSLY be inclined to believe whatever Newton said, over any other human source, because of his track record of ALWAYS being right about what he published.
It's amazing about how much pure, clean intense white light you can get from just plain common sense.
.... which is not all that common, as we have repeatedly seen.

When you get 72, life is stroboscopic nap time.

I am still looking for Newton's notes and drawings on his Electric Yo-Yo.

Recognizing satire is not one of your strong points, is it Billy?
... and,  you're welcome !
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at first glance what you posted looked like Newton's handwriting, but he must have been sick or something. At any rate, here is a transcript, and anyone can attach whatever importance to it they see fit, or none at all.
But it to me is like Spock telling Captain Kirk that he will have to make a guess, the Captain swallows hard and commits to action, under the theory that it's a very GOOD "guess". And since everyone else, without exception, has been wrong ( and we are still here ...) it's worth considering.
*****************************************************
 
 

 
Prop. 1. The 2300 prophetick days did not commence before the rise of the little horn of the He Goat.
2 Those day did not commence ater the destruction of Jerusalem & ye Temple by the Romans A. 70.
3 The time times & half a time did not commence before the year 800 in wch the Popes supremacy commenced
4 They did not commence after the rene of Gregory the 7th. 1084
5 The 1290 days did not commence bfore the year 842.
6 They did not commence after the reigne of Pope Greg. 7th. 1084
7 The diffence  between the 1290 & 1335 days are a parts of the seven weeks.
Therefore the 2300 years do not end before ye year 2132 nor after 2370.
The time times & half time do n[o]t end before 2060 nor after
The 1290 days do not begin [this should read: end] before 2090 nor after 1374 
( My guess that is a typo, and might be 2374 – jtr )
 

HahHAHHAHHaaahahahaha!
... and yet, ..... here you are!

BTK46:
I am not going to bother correcting your perspectives on Sir Isaac Newton with someone like yourself with zero credibility, unless you provide checkable references for your specific  assertions. 
You can legitimately, and very reasonably be summarily disregarded.
Try again when you have checkable references.
Here is a very reasonable question.
Why haven't you joined the "JW Closed Club" here on this forum?
If you are a JW in "good standing" it would make sense that you would want to affiliate yourself with the "Closed Club", to get away from all the nasty, irreparable, vile, diseased minded people here, and go to the mirror club, where the air is fresh and clean.
Perhaps you prefer wallowing in the mire of this wretched hive of scum and villainy.
I would like to extend an invitation for you to join the JW Closed Club, and hereby do so.
Don't ferget da question  now, ya heah.
 

The thing about Sir Isaac Newton, is that he never cared about sharing his brilliance ... he was goaded into it by friends who were totally stunned by the things he was perceiving ... but when sharing them with "the public", he was careful that every jot and tittle mentioned would be accurate, and checkable ... and RIGHT!.
He invented the reflecting mirror telescope to eliminate refractive telescopes' spectral aberration ( colors focusing at different focal lengths) ... and it just sat on a table in his room until he casually mentioned it when discussing light with someone.
I suspect he did not publish  his conclusions that Armageddon might probably occur in 2060, or as early as 2032, because it didn't matter that much to him ... he would be safely dead, and he cared little about sharing his theology, although he did write over a million words about that ... now archived at the Hebrew National Museum, in Jerusalem ...... AFTER his death.
It has been my observation that the smarter a person is ... the less they care about invisible things that may or may not have occurred in the past, for which there is no real evidence whatsoever, or may occur in the future, for which there is no real evidence whatsoever.
If you want to really feel stupid ... try to figure out how Penguins got from Antarctica, to the middle east to Noah's Ark.
If you figure it out, PLEASE, let me know !
 

If you really believe something is the case, and you tell someone else ... and what you tell them is NOT true ...  you are NOT a  liar ... you are merely wrong.
If you KNOW something is NOT true, and tell someone else, only THEN is it a lie.
That is why credibility is so very important ... so the one receiving the information can correctly evaluate MOTIVE.
If it is difficult to determine what is truth... what is merely wrong ... and what is an outright lie ... FOLLOW THE MONEY..
The tracks money leaves, always tells the truth.
If someone is hiding their tracks ... they are hiding the truth.
They are lying about something.
.... perhaps everything.

...  to understand the above photograph, you have to know all the things that occurred Organizationally, from July, thru November 2015, that makes the caption make sense.
That's why we have a JW-Archive ... but I can no longer find anything. I miss the old "thumbnails" format, by date.

He actually never published that ... after his death, those conjectures were found in his notes.  He also thought that Armageddon may be as early as 2032.
I suppose it is a matter of credibility.
Would you be inclined to believe someone who was never wrong in what they published ?... or
someone who was never right in what they published.?
..... even if you are just looking over their posthumous notes.
It's all about credibility, and gullibility.
..... and money.

Even Einstein stood on the shoulders of giants that went before him ... notably Sir Isaac Newton .... arguably the smartest natural man who ever lived, and whose theology was almost EXACTLY the very best of what Jehovah's Witnesses teach today.

No, under U.S. copyright law it is legal to use derivative works if the intent is instruction, or satire, and I am always satirizing something.
It's called the "Fair Use Doctrine".
I extract cartoons from the Internet, and "file off the serial numbers", and modify them with my own text.  This is known as a "mashup".

I have no idea .... (almost) never use it. It comes, and it goes.

Anna: I have not been getting any private messages.
If anyone wants to email me:
James.Rook@Technik-SA.US.
I am not concerned about any vulnerability to letting out my email address ... I need the target practice, and Luigi from South Chicago, with facial injuries that never heal, owes me some favors.
JTR

If the crime is completely invisible to everyone except the Elders ... and only one or two people who keep their mouths shut outside of the Judicial Committee know of what happened ... or the sinner is obviously mentally retarded, and deserves special consideration (really), expulsion is  usually 6 months.
This assumes that when they "announce", everyone else in the Congregation is completely clueless.
We had a Brother who in a City Park restroom, next to a playground, sexually propositioned an undercover police officer, was arrested for that, had his picture in the newspaper with a full account, and was disfellowshipped for six months. 
My best guess is that he was IMMEDIATELY genuinely repentant ... but his error was openly notorious.
He got six months.
His mental capacity, at best, was less than 40 watts.  I could easily imagine that he could be fully and genuinely repentant, and his genes were the extenuating circumstances.
Otherwise, if there is public notoriety, there is the unwritten and never officially acknowledged "three year rule", for reinstatement.
Officially, it does not exist, but I can tell you from many others' accounts, AND my personal experience ... it does.
Because to be open about it (usually I don't care ..) would open old wounds in others that have apparently healed over, that's all I am going to say about that.
 
 
 
 

That is a WHOLE different issue.
There are cults that are harmless .... and cults that are dangerous.

Very simple.
"A cult is the church down the street from YOUR church."

Well, John, perhaps next time you and your children will be brutalized, worked to death, and ground into blood sausage, and you will be happier for it.

.... and that, dear genteel souls, is why everyone reading this today are not slaves of the thousand year reign of Adolph Hitler, and his Third Reich, DAILY facing extreme hardship, deprivation, and death.

One day it occurred to me that people that face extreme hardship, deprivation, and death with a sure and solid hope in the resurrection have FAR less courage and convictions than the atheist who acting on his convictions, faces extreme hardship, deprivation and death.
I think I came to this realization watching a documentary in the "Battle of Britain" where the English Air force was hopelessly outnumbered by the German Luftwaffe, and as the English pilots rose into the sky to meet the enemy, they had no expectation of surviving the encounter ... and they did it anyway, because it was the right thing to do.
As atheists, they knew what was the right thing to do, and in doing it THEY WOULD BE DEAD FOREVER.
.... now THAT'S courage.

Things like this are a good test of peoples' integrity.  
ESPECIALLY when the test has a simple YES or NO answer, and they are aware that they will answer to Almighty God, for lying.  Honest questions deserve honest answers, and unless life or liberty are at stake, are appropriate.
Especially in a discussion room where credibility is so very important ... as we are casually discussing life and death matters.
 


so here goes.....
1.) BillyTheKid46, ... are you now or have you ever been one of Jehovah's Witnesses ? ... and,
2.) are you now, or have ever been a Watchtower Lawyer, or anything similar?
3.) Space Merchant:  Are you now or have you ever been one of Jehovah's Witnesses?
Working on the exchange of information theory of Steven Covey, in "The Seven Habits of Successful People", about emotional "bank accounts" ... that it is immoral to try and make a withdrawal without having enough "deposits" to cover it ... please consider all the personal information about myself I have freely given here, to try and contribute to general understanding ... including my real name, and real picture, ad nauseaum, as enough "deposit" to cover the request for a withdrawal from YOUR emotional bank accounts, for information not already volunteered.
Of course this only works between men of integrity, and will be ridiculed and/or ignored by weasels.
 

Fortunately, Dilbert anticipates your every word BTK46 .....