JW Insider

I have been to your country and seen first hand the very very strong family bond and decency between you all..it made me sad….and when I came home I could see our arrogance and lack of love between all ….I love the respect you all seem to give automatically to the aged…..

Yeah, that is why a family bond needs to be strong. Some family members have differences but at the end of the day the bond needs to be there so there needs to be a compromise. 

He cultivates off the land because how he was raised, in his eyes it is better to not be tied down by things that majority of people are attached to, like debt. Even in my case there's Student Loan debt which isn't fun depending on how high you go up the Educational Food Chain. My Dad is similar in a way but he learned Trades at an early age so he eas able to manage, he prefers to live a simple life. Although he gives examples to me and others in my family of Bible Principles to apply, he was very clear on how debt and other things can push you down hard. Something I work to apply. I can't speak for my other peers tho because there's some who pay an insane amount of money for college, some of them can't pay it back and Interest creeps around d the corner. 

That is why I firmly believe in vocational training. This is still the best education to prepare for life in a cheap effective way.  University is a brainwashing farce these days.  Even science is no longer science as we knew it.
Most of the best science research is done by the top echelons and is done almost in secret by university departments who are doing outsourced work for DARPA and similar organizations. They are heavily funded by interests who patent their findings immediately and keep it secret.
Tell me, what is 100 labs in other countries doing when they are secretly funded by USA government ? Is if a form of outsourcing of experiments not allowed under US law? Or is it done to hide US involvement? 
The generic degrees are useless....real science is outsourced or secret ... so rather take a vocational course.

I do this all the time. It is a Famila thing, well a Latino thing. But visiting tends to be more than just checking up on someone's health but to keep them company, even reaching out if need be. Since I am among the youngest of my family, we've been taught that we jot only respect and honor our elders but to visit and talk with them. My father has taught us this and encourage myself and my relatives to do the same because he wants the family and their inner circle to be well connected. He isn't a fan of how some Families in America operate. So regardless if someone is a brother or not, we make the effort to visit physically or over the phone even run errands if anything. In my case family and friends live in the same area very close.
Also not sure if anyone mentioned this, it is also good to visit even younger ones too because mentally they're fragile.
 
The only person tough to visit is my other uncle who lives in the middle of nowhere, like Log Cabin life. You can only reach him by phone. This guy jokes that he fights bears lol 😆 

A few of them are right here, methinks. Let’s see—a snake, a dodo, an albatross, a sloth….  Yeah, some of them are right here.  

At one time in history most of the people on Earth thought that the Earth was flat.
And they thought that if you went out into the Atlantic Ocean far enough, “there be dragons”.
Where did they learn this from?
They learned It from people who sincerely believed it, and told them. Were the generation of teachers liars, each and everyone, to the up-and-coming generation?
No, they were wrong based on sincere belief, regardless of the fact that it was not based on anything rational except their observations and conclusions, AND UNSOPHISTICATED THINKING ABILITY.
In order to be a liar, you have to know that what you are telling is not true.
…… like when one child who firmly believes in Santa Claus tells another child the whole complicated story of the North Pole, Santa‘s elves, etc. he is not lying, BECAUSE HE BELIEVES IT HIMSELF ….. he’s just perpetuating a fantasy.
Such is the nature of delusions.
Most peoples’ lives are so hard and miserable and lonely, that their delusions are the only comfort they have.
Jury trials by “12 men good and true”, are based on the falsehood that you can vote on Truth, and many totally innocent men have died in prison, or been executed.
”STUFF HAPPENS”
If you can do better, do so.
The sad truth is most of what EVERYBODY BELIEVES …….
……. Is WRONG.
 

I am fragile but not so old.   I will only need attention when I am unable to walk.  Many elderly people go through the same with their children popping in every other day or so.  My children are in other countries due to circumstances - me being a refugee from my own country. 
MY mum's best friend died after she was lying on the floor a whole day with a stroke injury.  This pandemic has made matters worse as people who are not family are supposed to distance themselves.  I would feel mad if it was my friend.... but I would calm down afterward and realize that the person is no longer suffering and is in the long arms of Jehovah. Jehovah's hand will not be short during the resurrection.

Some news has just come to me about a JW man (whom I would have once called a brother) that I spent a lot of time with, until he was told not to spend time with me. He was in his mid 80's and on lots of meds' for heart problems etc. He has died in hospital. But if the information is correct, he fell down at his home, was unable to get up, and was not discovered for some time. He was 'old', he was ill, and death happens. But if he had still been in contact with me I may have found him much sooner and he may have lived longer. 
I'm not angry, I'm not sad, even with all his health problems, he had a good long life and kept himself happy even after his wife had died a few years before..
What this topic is for is to ask ALL of you. If you know of someone that may be 'fragile' in any way, or may just need comfort, Please visit them. Please help them to feel safe and wanted.
 

I watched the whole video (and I had seen it before) but I saw nothing really wrong in what Brother Splane was saying. Can you clarify what is so wrong about making sure that everything fits?

I watched the whole video (and I had seen it before) but I saw nothing really wrong in what Brother Splane was saying. Can you clarify what is so wrong about making sure that everything fits?

It may be they fear you will be one of those who, if attending in person, will forget to lower your hand after comments, a carryover from Zoom days.

I believe the only name you have mentioned is Pearl Doxsey. (Doesn't she have a brother named Ortho?)
Just a quick (but serious) question: Do you think that a "true anointed" like Pearl in your opinion, serves "perfect" spiritual food?

Yes. I see your point. It becomes difficult to keep trying to see who the original characters were, and then making them only the OBJECT LESSONS of the time of the end.
The only way to do that is to spiritualize the lesson. By "spiritualizing," I mean that these enemies to Jehovah's people really are dead to us, because we have warred with Jehovah's enemies and "conquered the world" according to scripture. Of course, we must also continue to conquer, but Christians are in effect already raised up, and his enemies are already condemned to death. In other words there is a sense in which the King of the North already "came to his end in the land of decoration."
And the reason I'm looking into spiritualizing the lesson would be because I think we know (deep down) that this is also the way to understand Revelation, Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21. We know that Jesus had in mind the destruction of Jerusalem in 70, and called it, in effect, "a time of distress such as has not occurred since there came to be a nation until that time." When Jesus added, "nor will ever occur again," now we must move it forward again to the final parousia, not just the time of judgment on literal Jerusalem.
Also, Revelation says that Daniel wasn't really in the time of the end, and thus the scrolls were sealed up, but it's because Revelation was written in the time of the end that it was then time to unseal Daniel's words. We resolve that in the WT publications by saying that John wasn't really in the time of the end, but that he was moved in a vision to the 1914 era. But this does not fit the introduction to Revelation before John is swept away in vision, and it does not resolve the issue of what almost every letter in the Christian Greek Scriptures includes (plus Acts): the fact that they also were written in what had just become the time of the end, the last days. It's even in the quote from 1 Cor 10, above:
they were written for a warning to us upon whom the ends of the systems of things have come.

But that's a bit beside the point, which is that Daniel 11 clearly has a very specific set of kings in mind. I have not yet figured out exactly why so many Bible commentators have decided that they should apply new and different kings to these kings of the north and south.
Why do we do this for the KON and KOS, but not for any of the predecessor kings like Alexander the Great. If Daniel 11 referred to the Seleucid and Ptolemaic empire/kingdoms which were two of the four generals split from Alexander's empire when he died, then why do we say that it has changed its meaning over the years?

Under another topic "Dmitar" quoted from material that matches Wilmington's Bible Handbook, p439, about Daniel 11:

Then Dmitar quoted material that matches the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia about Antiochus, p.143-4 in the edition I'm referencing (1979):
ANTIOCHUS
2. The favorite name of the Seleucid kings, whose history with reference to Jewish affairs is contained particularly in the books of Maccabees, and is predicted with remarkable minuteness in Dan 11. The name was first borne by one of the generals of Philip, whose son SELEUCUS , by the hold of the first Ptolemy, established himself as ruler of Babylon. In the Macedonian calendar the Seleucid era began with Dios 1 (Oct. 7), 321 B.C.; in the Babylonian it began with Nisanu 1 (Apr. 3), 311 B.C. Parker and Dubberstein cautioned: "The beginnings and ends of their reigns cannot always be determined with exactitude" (Babylonian Chronology [1956], p. 20). When Ptolemy, son of Lagus, became master of Southern Syria, the line dividing Seleucus and his successors from the Ptolemies (cf. "king of the north" and "king of the south" in Dan 11) was drawn somewhat to the north of Damascus, the capital of Coele-Syria.
If anyone is interested, the context of that quote is here, on page 20:
http://www.caeno.org/pdf/Parker_Babylonian chronology_Kings reigns.pdf
I reference the context of the original because some of us might be tempted to make use of this quote from P&D to indicate that Neo-Babylonian chronology cannot always be determined with exactitude. So it's good to notice the entire sentence:
"The beginnings and ends of [their] reigns cannot always be determined with the exactitude that was possible in the earlier periods. However . . . there is no difficulty in establishing the calendar or in translating [these] dates into Julian dates."

Naw, he’s one of my aliases, or at least soon will be if I can work up the effort. 
“Ortho Doxsey.” Yeah, it would work.

Have you met Bill Ding, a major player in the LDC?
I should not have said harshest, for you are one among many. “Shrillist” is the word I was looking for, the one most given to hysteria, overstatement, and over-generalization. I wonder what you would have said about Paul, who told the Corinthians to “forgive” that fellow who had been sleeping with his father’s wife. (2 Corinthians 2:7-9)
“This rebuke given by the majority is sufficient for such a man;  now you should instead kindly forgive and comfort him, so that he may not be overwhelmed by excessive sadness. I therefore exhort you to confirm your love for him.” (2 Corinthians 2:7-9)
After just a brief period of expulsion, he was to be “comforted,” “forgiven,” with “love” for him “confirmed,” having shown himself repentant and  “saddened.” You would have not accepted that, I don’t think, and likely would have had shrill words about Paul covering up sin.
If you were then as you are now, you would have withdrawn in disgust from that first-century congregation. Then, like a Kamikazi pilot upset that the target ship doesn’t erect a memorial to him, you would have cried on and on about how the real reasons for your departure were not publicized to your former spiritual family. Instead, they just accepted your resignation and moved on.
Please believe me. I do not “dislike” you because you are “truthful.”
It also doesn’t help that you condemn the Christian organization for any expectation that did not come on time, yet put complete trust in something not even hinted at in scripture—that a True Anointed will come along at the 11th hour to save the day.

Ditto. 

I largely agree. But I think that there is another way to look at the original historical events for MOST historical events found in the scriptures. I look at them like this:
(Romans 15:4, 5) . . .For all the things that were written beforehand were written for our instruction, so that through our endurance and through the comfort from the Scriptures we might have hope. 5 Now may the God who supplies endurance and comfort grant you to have among yourselves the same mental attitude that Christ Jesus had,
(1 Corinthians 10:1-11) . . .Now I want you to know, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea 2 and all got baptized into Moses by means of the cloud and of the sea, 3 and all ate the same spiritual food 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they used to drink from the spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock meant the Christ. 5 Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, for they were struck down in the wilderness. 6 Now these things became examples for us, in order for us not to desire injurious things, as they desired them. 7 Neither become idolaters, as some of them did; just as it is written: “The people sat down to eat and drink. Then they got up to have a good time.” 8 Neither let us practice sexual immorality, as some of them committed sexual immorality, only to fall, 23,000 of them in one day. 9 Neither let us put Jehovah to the test, as some of them put him to the test, only to perish by the serpents. 10 Neither be murmurers, as some of them murmured, only to perish by the destroyer. 11 Now these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for a warning to us upon whom the ends of the systems of things have come.
In other words, the specifics are not applied to certain classes of Christians any more than they are applied to certain specific rulers or kingdoms. We don't have a Korah, Dathan and Abiram murmuring class who put Moses to the test in a specific way, for example. But we do learn a lesson for our instruction that no one, or no group of people, should put the words of Jesus to the test, or try to usurp, or take away from the authority of Jehovah's arrangement, who put Jesus as head over the congregation. So when Pharoah tried to attack the Israelites going through the sea, we don't need a new fulfillment of "Pharoah" every few decades. We don't need to identify the specific "Pharoah" of the 1st, 2nd . . . 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.
I think this is also true of the King of the North, for example. We have a specific person who Daniel had in mind for the great king whose kingdom was broken up to the four winds. We know that this great king was Alexander the Great. We don't need a new Alexander for each generation of history, or each generation of Jehovah's Witnesses. That's where I can personally see the LESSON of the "King of the North." We can always look at an event of history and say well that was the Pharaoh of this-or-that time period. Or that was the "abomination of desolation" of this-or-that time period.
I'm thinking, therefore, that Jesus wasn't identifying a "new" [Seleucid] king of the north when speaking of the Romans who would surround Jerusalem.
Jews of that generation would already have identified Caligula with Antiochus Epiphanes, for example, when Caligula had ordered the erection of his statue in the Temple at Jerusalem -- something that directly led to the revolution in Judea that resulted in the fulfillment of Jesus prophecy about the surrounding armies. This was all too similar to what Antiochus had done a couple centuries earlier. But this didn't mean that Antiochus was Caligula, only that the lesson was appropriate. There would be nothing wrong with saying that Caligula was being "an Antiochus," but not in the sense that he was the specific fulfillment of a prophecy.
All this makes sense to me up to a point, and I explained it OK. But it doesn't make sense completely, and I think this is where you are already coming from. For example, Paul in Thessalonians was very specific about identifying an end-times "antichrist" using the same terms as found in Daniel. This is part of the argument found here, too:
https://enduringword.com/bible-commentary/daniel-11/

Thanks for the typo. I don't have time to recheck while I write. I don't have the same time you do for properly making a post. Likewise, I write as I go in real time. So, when autocorrect makes an adjustment like "gal" to gaul, go figure, and I don't see it, then it becomes a misspelled word of "gall." I do try to come back to make corrections after I post. If you see my login scrolling, you'll see that effort. Perhaps it has to do with, being advised constantly to use the US English grammar or the British Grammar. But, you know me, I don't thrive on seeing misspelled words. 

It looks like everyone now needs to have their post "approved by a moderator" before the post will appear. Normally I'd have thought that thread would say: "This thread is now closed."
But we're getting a message like this:

Seems that Pudgy, Thinking and Dmitar each lost two posts apiece. I don't see that you lost any posts. Must be that Thinking had a spelling/usage error (Jesus's). Dmitar spelled "Gaul" when he meant "gall", and Pudgy spelled the plural/possessive of "hippopotamus" as hippopotamices' (or something like that). So there is plenty of blame to go around.

It looks like everyone now needs to have their post "approved by a moderator" before the post will appear. Normally I'd have thought that thread would say: "This thread is now closed."
But we're getting a message like this:

Seems that Pudgy, Thinking and Dmitar each lost two posts apiece. I don't see that you lost any posts. Must be that Thinking had a spelling/usage error (Jesus's). Dmitar spelled "Gaul" when he meant "gall", and Pudgy spelled the plural/possessive of "hippopotamus" as hippopotamices' (or something like that). So there is plenty of blame to go around.

It looks like everyone now needs to have their post "approved by a moderator" before the post will appear. Normally I'd have thought that thread would say: "This thread is now closed."
But we're getting a message like this:

Seems that Pudgy, Thinking and Dmitar each lost two posts apiece. I don't see that you lost any posts. Must be that Thinking had a spelling/usage error (Jesus's). Dmitar spelled "Gaul" when he meant "gall", and Pudgy spelled the plural/possessive of "hippopotamus" as hippopotamices' (or something like that). So there is plenty of blame to go around.

I hope that’s not true too …I would be genuinely sad over that..