The Librarian

A Speaker used this illustration regarding our relationship with Jehovah and our faith in holding on during this time of the end; When we are right at the brink of Armageddon and we feel like we can't hang on another minute.

A man was is in the mountains, it's night time, he wanders off the road and falls off a cliff. He grabs on to a tree root and holds on for dear life. He hangs there all night during this raging storm and every time his grip weakens, he grabs on tighter, his life hangs in the balance. His muscles ache and finally near dawn he feels his grip loosening and he thinks he cannot hold on another minute.

Then the sun rises and he looks down and realizes that all during that stormy ordeal - HE WAS ONLY TWO FEET OFF THE GROUND.

Isn't it wonderful. The point being - we are right on the brink of Armageddon and just when we feel we cannot hold on another minute in this darkened, terrible world - we could be only one day away from salvation. We're only 'two feet off the ground.
via Robert Ryles

"Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots ? 
Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil " Jeremiah 13:23
 
You've no doubt read the old fable about the scorpion and the frog.

It illustrates how man's nature is much more devious and controlling than is his logic.

The fable says how,...

" One day a scorpion arrived at the bank of a river he wanted to cross, but there was no bridge.

He asked a frog that was sitting nearby if he would take him across the river on his back.
The frog refused and said,... " I will not, because you will sting me "

The scorpion replied,..." It would be foolish for me to sting you because then we would both drown "

The frog saw the logic in the scorpion's words, and agreed to carry the scorpion across.

But when they were halfway across the river the scorpion stung the frog.

The stunned frog asked,..." Why did you sting me, now we will both die ! "

The scorpion replied,... " Because I'm a scorpion … and that's what scorpions do "

Sad to say some people today are more concerned about being " politically correct " than they are about being " Biblically correct ",...

They change the name of sins to justify people's sinful behavior.

They do this because they are more concerned about the approval of man than they are about the approval of Jehovah God.

To Jehovah God, sin—all sin—is sin by whatever name we call it, and all sin is ultimately self-destructive regardless of how we seek to justify it.


Furthermore, God's Word reminds us that no matter how good, how noble, how educated, how refined, or how sophisticated we may be, we are all sinners.
Romans 3:23

Like the leopard that cannot change its spots neither can we change our nature.

We are not sinners because we sin, but rather, we sin because we are sinners.

That's our nature and that's why we need Jehovah God's salvation to save us from the eternal consequences of our sin—which is eternal separation from Jehovah God for all eternity.

When I was a little girl, my mom liked to make breakfast food for dinner every now and then.  And I remember one night in particular when she had made breakfast after a long, hard day at work.  On that evening so long ago, my mom placed a plate of eggs, sausage and extremely burned toast in front of my dad.  I remember waiting to see if anyone noticed!  Yet all my dad did was reach for his toast, smile at my mom and ask me how my day was at school.  I don't remember what I told him that night, but I do remember watching him smear butter and jelly on that toast and eat every bite!
When I got up from the table that evening, I remember hearing my mom apologize to my dad for burning the toast. 
And I'll never forget what he said:  "Baby, I love burned toast."
Later that night, I went to kiss Daddy good night and I asked him if he really liked his toast burned.  He wrapped me in his arms and said, "Your Momma put in a hard day at work today and she's real tired.  And besides - a little burnt toast never hurt anyone!"
You know, life is full of imperfect things.....and imperfect people.  I'm not the best housekeeper or cook.  What I've learned over the years is that learning to accept each other's faults - and choosing to celebrate each other's differences - is one of the most important keys to creating a healthy, growing, and lasting relationship.
 Learn to take the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of your life and lay them at the feet of God.  Because in the end, He's the only One who will be able to give you a relationship where burnt toast isn't a deal-breaker!  We could extend this to any relationship in fact - as understanding is the base of any relationship, be it a husband-wife or parent-child or friendship!
"Don't put the key to your happiness in someone else's pocket - keep it in your own." 

A house of "Confidence" that is...                   
                    What is the first thing on a house that gets destroyed in a storm?   The roof.   Now let's build our house, a house of Confidence, the foundation is the Christ. What are the four walls?   1st wall is Prayer.   2nd wall is Personal Study.   3rd wall is Daily Bible Reading.     4th wall is Field Service.     Now let's put on the roof. The roof is our Meeting Attendance.   Now that we've built our house of Confidence, here comes the storms, storms of persecution as varied as can be. Unfortunately, the first thing to go during these storms is our meeting attendance, then once that roof is gone, then one by one our "walls" start collapsing around us, and eventually our foundation, Christ is no longer a solid basis for our house of "Confidence." How did this all happen, by not protecting our roof, our Meeting Attendance. Guard it! Cherish it! Do not neglect it!

@TrueTomHarley I still getting used to this theme.
I think I will actually ask the @admin to go back to the default. 

Take note, @The Librarian. Take a screenshot. Save it for posterity. Show it to your grandchildren.
JWI made a comment and he only used ONE WORD!
I’ve heard of turning over a new leaf before, but this takes it to a whole ‘nother level.
”There were too many...um...uh....notes,” the prince told Mozart.

@TrueTomHarley I still getting used to this theme.
I think I will actually ask the @admin to go back to the default. 

Did @The Librarian (that old hen) forget to pay her light bill?

@The Witness / Pearl Doxsey - Why don't you just create your own club on here and preach your own version of Christianity?
I get that you are relating many items back to JW's but you could do better in your own club rather than challenging every JW on here.
'You get more flies with honey" sort of thing....?

The 'Black Thursday' stock market crash was the worst crash in U.S. history & heralded the beginning of the Great Depression. On October 24th 1929, the market lost 11% of its value.

Pinpointing the first single day of the crash ends up giving an incomplete picture of the larger problem. By the end of October 1929 about 25 percent of the value of the market was gone. By 1933 about 80 percent of the peak 1929 market was gone.
Ironically, it was when Roosevelt (FDR) turned to some Marxist ideas from "socialism" that the economy began improving again after 1933. Even more ironically, the big secret of capitalism relies on the largest capitalists continually taking of more and more of other people's money until they finally run out of it, and they cannot drain any more money from the system (mostly from workers). As historian Schlesinger says:
According to historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. the most critical reasons for this economic collapse can be summarized as:
1) Management’s disposition to maintain prices and inflate profits while holding down wages and raw material prices meant that workers and farmers were denied the benefits of increases in their own productivity. The consequence was the relative decline of mass purchasing power. As goods flowed out of the expanding capital plant in ever greater quantities, there was proportionately less and less cash in the hands of buyers to carry the goods off the market. The pattern of income distribution, in short, was incapable of long maintaining prosperity.
2) Seven years of fixed capital investment at high rates had “overbuilt” productive capacity (in terms of existing capacity to consume) and had thus saturated the economy. The slackening of the automotive and building industries was symptomatic. The existing rate of capital formation could not be sustained without different governmental policies – policies aimed not at helping those who had money to accumulate more but at transferring money from those who were letting it stagnate in savings to those who would spend it.
3) The sucking off into profits and dividends of the gains of technology meant the tendency to use excess money for speculation, transforming the Stock Exchange from a securities market into a gaming-house.
. . .
Source: Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. The Crisis of the Old Order, The Age of Roosevelt 1919-1933: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1957, pp. 159-160.
 

@The Witness / Pearl Doxsey - Why don't you just create your own club on here and preach your own version of Christianity?
I get that you are relating many items back to JW's but you could do better in your own club rather than challenging every JW on here.
'You get more flies with honey" sort of thing....?

That is one serious concoction.
That might end up being my last cough ever.
 

What is the theme of your baptism year??
Mine was... Kingdom Truth~1982

(Although mine was at a Circuit Assembly in Natick, Massachusetts not a district convention)

A full size man would be an afternoon snack for that thing.

@The Witness / Pearl Doxsey - Why don't you just create your own club on here and preach your own version of Christianity?
I get that you are relating many items back to JW's but you could do better in your own club rather than challenging every JW on here.
'You get more flies with honey" sort of thing....?

Jehovah’s Witnesses Renovate Historic Venue for Bible Education
https://www.jw.org/en/news/releases/by-region/united-states/jehovahs-witnesses-renovate-stanley-theater/
Stanley Theater Renovation
https://www.jw.org/en/news/releases/by-region/united-states/video-clip-stanley-theater-renovation/
 

there is a "special" brochure that I had seen in the "jw-archive.com" long time ago.
 

Out of HUNDREDS of JW men that I have met over 40+ years in the organization only TWO seemed metrosexual.
One left a homosexual lifestyle and became a JW ... the other left bethel to become a "flaming homosexual".
The % rate seems rather low to me.

REAL EXPERIENCE FROM RUSSIA. 
In one of the areas, a group of Jehovah's witnesses was to return home on a bus from a trip.This information was known to the priest of one of the villages that  Jehovah's witnesses had to pass. The priest gathered the men of that village and persuaded them to attack the bus of Jehovah's witnesses,saying they would not  fight back. Suddenly, along the way, the Jehovah's witness bus broke down and they couldn't go any further. They stopped, and at a point and  were overtaken by an exact same bus. The other bus was driving home from a competition of the master of sports in aikido(martial art) ... When the bus drove through that village,  the certified men of the priest stopped the bus and attacked, as they thought, Jehovah's witnesses! The consequences were very unexpected for the attackers of local men! After such a "setup", these men went to the priest in anger believing he had deceived them.The priest was taken in an ambulance... Jehovah's witnesses safely came home.
 Thank you Prudence Teroso 

via .ORGWorld News

No he will not be dead. His powers will be taken away until the thousand years are ended. Rev 20.
 

They are in his sphere of influence.
(Revelation 12:3, 4) 3 Another sign was seen in heaven. Look! A great fiery-colored dragon, with seven heads and ten horns and on its heads seven diadems; 4 and its tail drags a third of the stars of heaven, and it hurled them down to the earth. . . .

Revelation 20:1-3) And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven with the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand. 2 He seized the dragon, the original serpent, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for 1,000 years. 3 And he hurled him into the abyss and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he would not mislead the nations anymore until the 1,000 years were ended. After this he must be released for a little while. 
(Jude 6) 6 And the angels who did not keep their original position but forsook their own proper dwelling place, he has reserved with eternal bonds in dense darkness for the judgment of the great day.    
(Romans 16:20) For his part, the God who gives peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly. May the undeserved kindness of our Lord Jesus be with you.
1 Cor 6: 1-3  Or do you not know that the holy ones will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you not competent to try very trivial matters? 3 Do you not know that we will judge angels? 
(Mark 3:22-27) 22 Also, the scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying: “He has Be·elʹze·bub, and he expels the demons by means of the ruler of the demons.” 23 So after calling them to him, he spoke to them with illustrations: “How can Satan expel Satan? 24 If a kingdom becomes divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand; 25 and if a house becomes divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. 26 Also, if Satan has risen up against himself and has become divided, he cannot stand but is coming to an end. 27 In fact, no one who enters the house of a strong man is able to steal his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man. Only then can he plunder his house. 

My take from these scriptures:
Jesus will in fact tie up that strong man - those in his house (the demons) will be affected similarly.
From above scriptures - Satan rules the demons - he is called the ruler of the demons.
These wicked angels will be judged by Jesus and the 144 000 who will rule with him. 1 Cor 6:3
Since Satan "drags them in his tail", they will be with him and share the same fate.
Their fate is already sealed - stored up for destruction. Jude 6
It is obvious they will be judged with Satan, bound with Satan and destroyed with Satan

*** w69 10/1 p. 591 par. 22 Pay Attention to “The Prophetic Word” ***
22 In many places, the prophetic Word warns of God’s executing judgment on Satan and his “seed.” For example, there is Jeremiah 25:31-38, which tells us that “those slain by Jehovah will certainly come to be in that day from one end of the earth clear to the other end of the earth.” To the forefront are the political and religious “shepherds,” who will ‘howl’ and ‘cry out,’ and wallowing with them are the “majestic ones of the flock,” including the favored prominent followers, who follow them into destruction. Finally, the original Serpent himself, together with his demons, will be shut up for a thousand years. Revelation 19:11 to 20:3 describes how Christ Jesus and the holy angels of heaven will fight for just such a victory, in vindication of Jehovah’s name. The triumph over the Serpent and his “seed” will be complete!