Arauna

It is amazing that these kind of people, who stood up for the Truth centuries ago, could stand so firm without the support structure that we have today. They really took their bible reading and vocation seriously whereas the other clergy just loved the position they were in and merely saw their work as a daily job.... not a serious calling to speak the truth and assist people to get closer to god.  They ( like Emlyn) must have had a little extra holy spirit.

It is amazing that these kind of people, who stood up for the Truth centuries ago, could stand so firm without the support structure that we have today. They really took their bible reading and vocation seriously whereas the other clergy just loved the position they were in and merely saw their work as a daily job.... not a serious calling to speak the truth and assist people to get closer to god.  They ( like Emlyn) must have had a little extra holy spirit.

It is amazing that these kind of people, who stood up for the Truth centuries ago, could stand so firm without the support structure that we have today. They really took their bible reading and vocation seriously whereas the other clergy just loved the position they were in and merely saw their work as a daily job.... not a serious calling to speak the truth and assist people to get closer to god.  They ( like Emlyn) must have had a little extra holy spirit.

via TheWorldNewsOrgWorld News

via TheWorldNewsOrgWorld News

These horses are riding harder than ever!   I found the pale horse interesting because in one of the older publications it mentioned anyone dying a premature death by pestilence, hunger or "beasts".    These beasts are humans who are violent and act like beasts.... and this so prevalent in the world today. One just has to watch the news.
But none of these "beasts" are triumphant because Jehovah can resurrect all those victims who suffered a premature death. 

@John Lindsay Barltrop @Arauna What exciting times! Thank you for your comments, we bring "hope" to many! May the "King" complete His conquest soon! Right before our eyes ? we see prophecy being fulfilled! Let God's Kingdom ? come soon! So be it! 
@Queen Esther Yes! The white horse is the King ? soon he will complete His conquest! Exciting times! At Jehovah's command it will be accomplished! Let it come, let it come! Thank you for your comment to encourage others. Bible Speaks   ???????

Trumped up charges - no pun intended.

These horses are riding harder than ever!   I found the pale horse interesting because in one of the older publications it mentioned anyone dying a premature death by pestilence, hunger or "beasts".    These beasts are humans who are violent and act like beasts.... and this so prevalent in the world today. One just has to watch the news.
But none of these "beasts" are triumphant because Jehovah can resurrect all those victims who suffered a premature death. 

via TheWorldNewsOrgWorld News

What We Owe Jehovah’s Witnesses
FACEBOOK TWITTER LINKEDIN PINTEREST PRINT BY SARAH BARRINGER GORDON 
1/27/2011 • AMERICAN HISTORY
Jehovah’s Witnesses were unlikely champions of religious freedom.
One of the most momentous cases on the Supreme Court docket as war raged globally in 1943 was about a single sentence said aloud by schoolchildren every day. They stood, held their right hands over their hearts or in a raised-arm salute and began, “I pledge allegiance to the flag…” To most Americans the pledge was a solemn affirmation of national unity, especially at a time when millions of U.S. troops were fighting overseas. But the Jehovah’s Witnesses, a religious sect renowned for descending en masse on small towns or city neighborhoods and calling on members of other faiths to “awake” and escape the snare of the devil and his minions, felt otherwise. They insisted that pledging allegiance to the flag was a form of idolatry akin to the worship of graven images prohibited by the Bible. In West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, Walter Barnett (whose surname was misspelled by a court clerk) argued that the constitutional rights of his daughters Marie, 8, and Gathie, 9, were violated when they were expelled from Slip Hill Grade School near Charleston, W.Va., for refusing to recite the pledge.
 
      In a landmark decision written by Justice Robert Jackson and announced on Flag Day, June 14, the Supreme Court sided with the Witnesses. “To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous instead of a compulsory routine is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds,” Jackson said. “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”
Jehovah’s Witnesses were unlikely champions of religious freedom. The sect’s leaders denounced all other religions and all secular governments as tools of the devil, and preached the imminence of the Apocalypse, during which no one except Jehovah’s Witnesses would be spared. But their persistence in fighting in the courts for their beliefs had a dramatic impact on constitutional law. Barnette is just one of several major Supreme Court decisions involving freedom of religion, speech, assembly and conscience that arose from clashes between Jehovah’s Witnesses and government authorities. The Witnesses insisted that God’s law demanded they refrain from all pledges of allegiance to earthly governments. They tested the nation’s tolerance of controversial beliefs and led to an increasing recognition that a willingness to embrace religious diversity is what distinguishes America from tyrannical regimes.
The Witness sect was founded in the 1870s, and caused a stir when the founder, Charles Taze Russell, a haberdasher in Pittsburgh, predicted the world would come to an end in 1914. Russell died in 1916; he was succeeded by his lawyer Joseph Franklin Rutherford, who shrewdly emphasized that the Apocalypse was near, but not so near that Witnesses didn’t have time to convert new followers, which they were required to do lest they miss out on salvation. This “blood guilt” propelled in-your-face proselytizing by Witnesses in various communities on street corners and in door-to-door visits. Soon the sect developed a reputation for exhibiting “astonishing powers of annoyance,” as one legal commentator put it.
Rutherford ruled the Witnesses with an iron fist. He routinely encouraged public displays of contempt for “Satan’s world,” which included all other religions and all secular governments. At the time, the number of Witnesses in the U.S.—roughly 40,000—was so small that many Americans could ignore them. But in Nazi Germany, no group was too small to escape the eye of new chancellor Adolf Hitler, who banned the Witnesses after they refused to show their fealty to him with the mandatory “Heil Hitler” raised-arm salute. (Many Witnesses would later perish in his death camps.) In response, Rutherford praised the German Witnesses and advised all of his followers to refuse to participate in any oaths of allegiance that violated (in his view) the Second Commandment: “Thou shall have no Gods before me.”
With conflict looming around the world in the 1930s, many states enacted flag salute requirements, especially in schools. The steadfast refusal of Witnesses to pledge, combined with their refusal to serve in the military or to support America’s war effort in any way, triggered public anger. Witnesses soon became a ubiquitous presence in courtrooms across the country.
The relationship between Witnesses and the courts was complicated, in part because of the open disdain Rutherford and his followers displayed toward all forms of government and organized religion. Rutherford instructed Witnesses not to vote, serve on juries or participate in other civic duties. He even claimed Social Security numbers were the “mark of the beast” foretold in Revelations. The Catholic Church, said Rutherford, was a “racket,” and Protestants and Jews were “great simpletons,” taken in by the Catholic hierarchy to “carry on her commercial, religious traffic and increase her revenues.” Complaints about unwelcome public proselytizing by Witnesses led to frequent run-ins with state and local authorities and hundreds of appearances in lower courts. Every day in court for Rutherford and the Witnesses’ chief attorney, Hayden Covington, was an opportunity to preach the true meaning of law to the judges and to confront the satanic government.
In late 1935, Witness Walter Gobitas’ two children—Lillian, 12, and Billy, 10—were expelled from school in Minersville, Pa., because they balked at the mandatory recital of the Pledge of Allegiance, and a long court battle ensued. When Gobitis v. Minersville School District (as with Barnette, a court clerk misspelled the family surname) made its way to the Supreme Court in the spring of 1940, Rutherford and Covington framed their argument in religious terms, claiming that any statute contrary to God’s law as given to Moses must be void. The Court rejected the Witnesses’ claim, holding that the secular interests of the school district in fostering patriotism were paramount. In the majority opinion, written during the same month that France fell to the Nazis, Felix Frankfurter wrote: “National unity is the basis of national security.” The plaintiffs, said Frankfurter, were free to “fight out the wise use of legislative authority in the forum of public opinion and before legislative assemblies.”
In a strongly worded dissent, Justice Harlan Stone argued that “constitutional guarantees or personal liberty are not always absolutes…but it is a long step, and one which I am unwilling to take, that government may, as a supposed educational measure…compel public affirmations which violate their public conscience.” Further, said Stone, the prospect of help for this “small and helpless minority” by the political process was so remote that Frankfurter had effectively “surrendered…the liberty of small minorities to the popular will.”
Public reaction to Gobitis bordered on hysteria, colored by the hotly debated prospect of American participation in the war in Europe. Some vigilantes interpreted the Supreme Court’s decision as a signal that Jehovah’s Witnesses were traitors who might be linked to a network of Nazi spies and saboteurs. In Imperial, a town outside Pittsburgh, a mob descended on a small group of Witnesses and pummeled them mercilessly. One Witness was beaten unconscious, and those who fled were cornered by ax- and knife-wielding men riding the town’s fire truck as someone yelled, “Get the ropes! Bring the flag!” In Kennebunk, Maine, the Witnesses’ gathering place, Kingdom Hall, was ransacked and torched, and days of rioting ensued. In Litchfield, Ill., an angry crowd spread an American flag on the hood of a car and watched while a man repeatedly smashed the head of a Witness upon it. In Rockville, Md., Witnesses were assaulted across the street from the police station, while officers stood and watched. By the end of the year, the American Civil Liberties Union estimated that 1,500 Witnesses had been assaulted in 335 separate attacks.
The reversal of Gobitis in Barnette just three years later was remarkably swift considering the typical pace of deliberations in the Supreme Court. In the wake of all the violence against Witnesses, three Supreme Court justices—William O. Douglas, Frank Murphy and Hugo Black—publicly signaled in a separate case that they thought Gobitis had been “wrongly decided.” When Barnette reached the Supreme Court in 1943, Harlan Stone, the lone dissenter in Gobitis, had risen to chief justice. The facts of the two cases mirrored each other, but the outcome differed dramatically. Most important, in ruling that Witness children could not be forced to recite the pledge, the new majority rejected the notion that legislatures, rather than the courts, were the proper place to address questions involving religious liberty. The “very purpose” of the Bill of Rights, wrote Justice Robert Jackson, was to protect some issues from the majority rule of politics. “One’s right to life, liberty and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, may not be submitted to vote….Fundamental rights depend on the outcome of no elections.” Jackson’s opinion was laced with condemnation of enforced patriotism and oblique hints at the slaughter taking place in Hitler’s Europe. “Those who begin in coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters,” Jackson wrote. “Compulsory unification of opinions achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.” Religious dissenters, when seen from this perspective, are like the canary in the coal mine: When they begin to suffer and die, everyone should be worried that the atmosphere has been polluted by tyranny.
Today, the Witnesses still proselytize, but their right to do so is well established thanks to their long legal campaign. Over time they became less confrontational and blended into the fabric of American life.
In the wake of the Barnette decision, the flag and the Pledge of Allegiance continued to occupy a key (yet ambiguous) place in American politics and law. The original pledge was a secular oath, with no reference to any power greater than the United States of America. The phrase “under God” was added by an act of Congress and signed into law by President Dwight Eisenhower on Flag Day, June 14, 1954. Eisenhower, who had grown up in a Jehovah’s Witness household but later became a Presbyterian, alluded to the growing threat posed by Communists in the Soviet Union and China when he signed the bill: “In this way we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America’s heritage and future; in this way we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country’s most powerful resources in peace and war.”
Eisenhower’s political instincts for the ways that religion functioned in American life were finely honed: Support for the amendment to the Pledge of Allegiance was strong, including an overwhelming majority of Catholics and Protestants as well as a majority of Jews. According to a Gallup survey, the only group that truly opposed the change was the smattering of atheists. In a country locked in battle with godless communism, a spiritual weapon such as an amended pledge that was not denominationally specific made sense. Only after the intervening half-century and more does the “Judeo-Christian” God invoked in the pledge seem less than broadly inclusive.
Sarah Barringer Gordon is the author of The Spirit of the Law: Religious Voices and the Constitution in Modern America.

The practice of "protection" money which is used by the mafia - originated when the Muslims ruled this area.   One pays the "jizya to be a subject of the Islamic state for your protection.  The problem is that they push up the price until one cannot pay and then one forfeits your life.
 
"Jizya or jizyah (Arabic: جزية‎‎ ǧizya IPA: [dʒizja]; Ottoman Turkish: جزيه cizye) is a per capita yearly tax historically levied by Islamic states on certain non-Muslim subjects—dhimmis—permanently residing in Muslim lands under Islamic law."

many people will do anything for money...........look at Judas Iscariot and the counsel at 1 Timothy 6:9, 10 9 But those who are determined to be rich fall into temptation and a snare and many senseless and harmful desires that plunge men into destruction and ruin. 10 For the love of money is a root of all sorts of injurious things, and by reaching out for this love some have been led astray from the faith and have stabbed themselves all over with many pains.

Is this RUSSIA, or IRAN, or SYRIA...............nooooo............its America the free??????...........was the Dr. mistaken for Kim Jong Un??????

Brazil and South Africa (junk status) who were part of the BRIX are both falling apart financially at present.  When Busch went into Iraq USA created severe debt  (I remember we were supposed to build 18 hospitals in Iraq and only 2 were completed - the rest of the money is unaccounted for.)   At the end of Busch's term we were trillions in debt with the financial crisis - very close to collapse.  Few people realize that Obama (whether you like him or not) had the banks tested for resilience and many banks were closed for a day to find out 2 days later that they were taken over by some bigger bank as instructed by the government.  Disaster was averted. All happened quiet so as not to create panic.  And the FED printed a lot of money to get us out of the  sinkhole while the bigger companies were bailed out such as GM by this extra printed money.
Now that things were starting to improve- although we have not yet addressed the deficit and the checks and balances brought in by Obama have been nullified - we may be going to war again.  I agree with this article that this time we may be in too deep as many countries do not want to use the petro-dollar any more.  This could lead to US economic collapse. 
We know the end is close, as predicted by Jesus  - all the signs are here.  After the collapse of Babylon the great we see in revelation 17 + 18 how the merchants cry.   So yes, financial collapse of the world system (stock exchange etc.) will bring severe distress.  We will see the supply chains which bring in food from other countries collapse and people will kill to get their food.  It will not help to hoard food because there may not be law and order and people will do as they please and take food from those who have.
It is a dire picture - but it is realistic - because the worst of human nature appears when there is no law and order.  When the internet collapses (via warfare or otherwise) most bank balances will be obliterated.... and people can just as well throw their gold on the streets as the Bible predicts because the financial system as we know it today will be no more.
Do we still place too much value on our stuff? ....and the status that goes with it?  It is reality check time.

Brazil and South Africa (junk status) who were part of the BRIX are both falling apart financially at present.  When Busch went into Iraq USA created severe debt  (I remember we were supposed to build 18 hospitals in Iraq and only 2 were completed - the rest of the money is unaccounted for.)   At the end of Busch's term we were trillions in debt with the financial crisis - very close to collapse.  Few people realize that Obama (whether you like him or not) had the banks tested for resilience and many banks were closed for a day to find out 2 days later that they were taken over by some bigger bank as instructed by the government.  Disaster was averted. All happened quiet so as not to create panic.  And the FED printed a lot of money to get us out of the  sinkhole while the bigger companies were bailed out such as GM by this extra printed money.
Now that things were starting to improve- although we have not yet addressed the deficit and the checks and balances brought in by Obama have been nullified - we may be going to war again.  I agree with this article that this time we may be in too deep as many countries do not want to use the petro-dollar any more.  This could lead to US economic collapse. 
We know the end is close, as predicted by Jesus  - all the signs are here.  After the collapse of Babylon the great we see in revelation 17 + 18 how the merchants cry.   So yes, financial collapse of the world system (stock exchange etc.) will bring severe distress.  We will see the supply chains which bring in food from other countries collapse and people will kill to get their food.  It will not help to hoard food because there may not be law and order and people will do as they please and take food from those who have.
It is a dire picture - but it is realistic - because the worst of human nature appears when there is no law and order.  When the internet collapses (via warfare or otherwise) most bank balances will be obliterated.... and people can just as well throw their gold on the streets as the Bible predicts because the financial system as we know it today will be no more.
Do we still place too much value on our stuff? ....and the status that goes with it?  It is reality check time.

BROTHERS  OF  RUSSIA  SENT  US  A  PHOTO  AND  A  MESSAGE  ;-))
"We live in Russia, we are happy that we live in a very interesting & great moment ! Thank  you  brothers,  who live all over the world,  for your support ❤
(Sent Vladimir)
May  JEHOVAH  be  near  you  ALL,  dear  Brothers  and  Sisters ❤

Absolutely. Also, these days a lot more flights get cancelled, delayed and/or turn into stop-over nightmares. And, the various airlines no longer honor each other's tickets, so you are stuck with the schedule of a single airline. Plus, they book the smallest planes possible from every hub, meaning that there are fewer flexible passengers to choose from.

What happens if one has an important meeting, funeral or something of the sort?  This man obviously needed to stay on the plane.
Unfortunately people forget quickly and victims are forgotten even quicker.  People have short memories.  Boycotts do not last long - money always talks. 
What happens when a nice compensation is not worth the event you are going to miss...  on the odd occasion one may find that no-one is prepared to give up a seat no matter how much the compensation.
 

What happens if one has an important meeting, funeral or something of the sort?  This man obviously needed to stay on the plane.
Unfortunately people forget quickly and victims are forgotten even quicker.  People have short memories.  Boycotts do not last long - money always talks. 
What happens when a nice compensation is not worth the event you are going to miss...  on the odd occasion one may find that no-one is prepared to give up a seat no matter how much the compensation.
 

That's what happens when you don't "volunteer" to give up a seat on an overbooked flight. They randomly pick someone to get literally pulled off the plane. Yet, the airlines overbook on purpose, knowing that they almost never get 100% to show up, at which point they can usually accommodate a few stand-by travelers to fill up the plane.
I have been on many planes where an attendant asked for volunteers to get off the plane for the next flight home (often the next day), and it usually comes with an offer for a local hotel, a couple of meal vouchers, and a free round-trip flight to be used later in the year. Traveling alone for business, I often took them up on it, since I was always reimbursed anyway and didn't have to give the extra ticket back to the company. 
If the flight is having trouble finding volunteers, the usual way is to just up the offer, like $100 plus all of the above, then $200 plus all of the above. Someone always volunteers. It's cheaper than losing your brand reputation!

via TheWorldNewsOrgWorld News

via TheWorldNewsOrgWorld News

We must not think from our own perspective only.  There are many people in Jehovah's organization that come with a lot of baggage.  Some have never learnt to say " I love you" and others do not know how to show love - they have to learn this.  They may be in Jehovah's organization being healed from a bad life and they learn slowly how to communicate and show love.  One does not change overnight all the problems you had before by being baptized... so many are still on the road to learn.
I was talking yesterday to a very nice young brother on field service.  He must be 32 years old.   He is seriously in love with a sister and he is troubled by the fact that Swedes do not show gushy feelings.  The love of his life is Spanish (people who show their feelings).  So he told me that a friend (not Swedish) gave him the advice to spill  his tremendous love for this sister and to be honest with her. But it is giving him sooo much pain to do this....he may never get to the point to do this.  
This gave me insight in how different cultures can be - that a young man is so stifled in his communication to tell a girl he is crazy over her.   Yes - communication is the life blood of any good relationship and especially in marriage. 
I was happy recently when I saw a photo of my son and his wife on Facebook and he declared to the world that she is his "best friend."  We must be best friends (one can tell your best friend anything and trust them with the revelations) as well as husband and wife.
 
 
 
By the way - I can add a few more sagely comments from husbands to the list above - but I may offend some!