Anna

Yes indeed, "united we stand, divided we fall"
And I like this remark you make " I am going to continue to be very grateful for the provision of a shepherding arrangement to help and support me in the discerning and applying of those requirements".
I am not thinking this is a sinister or underhanded way to over assert authority, but rather I am:
1. wondering about the application of the scriptures that were used, using them to show that there will be, without a doubt, special instructions passed on from Jehovah to the Slave, then to the congregations, to preserve us alive.
2. wondering about the logic of such an interpretation. Just yesterday we were asked if our house could be used for a new field service group (as there is a need for another group because of the increase in the congregation) and I reminded the brother (tongue in cheek) that we don't have a basement and does that matter. (For those who don't know the significance of this it's from the idea that service groups will receive instructions for the survival of Armageddon (it used to be Book Study groups) and from the insinuation at the convention video where the (presumably) field service group were hiding in a basement). Then I get to thinking along practical lines. Each group is different, (location, publishers, some old and infirm etc.) and has different circumstances (different countries). Does that mean that "specific instructions" will be passed to each individual group overseers, or slightly more general such as  "those groups that have a basement go and hide in there, those who don't have one get with a group that does, those who don't have access to any basements go and hide in the woods, those that are not near any woods go and hide in the shed etc. etc. even then as one can see it would become ridiculous to give out even generalized instructions because of the infinite number of specific circumstances that exist for each individual all over the world. Or are we thinking each group overseer is going to receive personal divine instruction for their particular group? It all seems just far fetched and unlikely...and on top of that, standing on a somewhat shaky foundation, as another poster reminded us of the 2017 Feb WT where it mentions that the Slave can err....... in organizational direction. Also, when will there be time for the announcement of such instructions to the congregations, especially since the day will come as a thief in the night while we are "in the field, or grinding at the hand mill"?
3. wondering about the manner used, insinuating our prime motive for obedience is to survive Armageddon, rather  "our love for Jehovah and his sovereignty, appreciation for the ransom,  and our desire to please him".
 
I like that. Yes!

If you downvote, you could at least contribute to our discussions

This is speculation. As if Jehovah can only save people when they are gathered in a specific spot?
They sure are, as far as I can tell.  John 17:3, John 20:31, John 8:12,  Matthew 7:21,  Romans 2:13, James 1:22, 1 John 2:17, 1 John 5:3, Jude 3:3-5, Romans 13:11-13, Heb 10:36,  3John 3,4,  Romans 8:6....etc. etc.

I also meant to mention @Melinda Mills who like me, finds  other poster's comments (not the rude ones) helpful and inspire her to do more research and "reason out a matter" .

For now 

For now 

I also meant to mention @Melinda Mills who like me, finds  other poster's comments (not the rude ones) helpful and inspire her to do more research and "reason out a matter" .

@JW Insider
Jehovah sees our needs and love we share with others. Are we not grateful those 5,000 letters were sent! How small a token to show love to others and think about how they are loved and cared for. Jehovah takes care of us everyday. Are we not as appreciative?
 Thank you for your support. We serve a “Happy God”!  
 

My uncle was a circuit overseer in the traveling work for many years, and more recently had only served as a temporary circuit overseer due to his age. His wife (my aunt) also received one of these letters. I would guess that about 5,000 of these letters went out worldwide, and the chances that several of them would arrive at the right time for it was clearly very good. Many circuit overseer's wives find the lifestyle very difficult.

Apparently, with eighty million tries, not Vladimir Putin.

Insanity is when you are poor ... if you are rich, you are merely eccentric.

I just decided to listen to Rolf Furuli's video regarding the study, noticing that @Nana Fofana has provided a YouTube link. My comment on the 10 to 16% was based on the link that JTR gave, where I read the following in the abstract summary of the article written by Rolf Furuli:
Jerry Bergman has published one book and several articles on the mental health of JW. . . . . his claim that Witnesses have  between 10 and 16% higher rate of mental illness than the non-Witness population, and that 10% of the congregation members are in need of professional help, has no basis whatsoever. However, when I listen to the video, I see that Rolf Furuli makes a different claim. In the video Furuli says that Bergman has claimed that the rate of mental illness among JWs is 10 to 16 times higher than the non-Witness population.
If Furuli is correct about Bergman's claim as summarized in his article, then I would agree with Bergman as I stated before. However, if Furuli is correct about Bergman's claim as presented in the video, then I would not agree with Bergman. For example, if 20 out of a 1000 persons in a random collection of adults might have mental illness, Bergman would be claiming that 23 random JWs would have mental illness, if 16% higher. But, if 16 times higher, then this would mean that JWs could expect to see 320 persons with mental illness out a thousand. (I know I started with a high base number of 2%, but this was to more easily illustrate the problem with the claim.)

this shows that it is not personal with him, as I try never to make it with me. I like that.

"You are Legend", as Gone Fishing recently told me the same attribute :))).
I hope that you are an elder in some congregation and that your way of giving public talk is in the same manner as on this web site :))
 

'There are seven. Just seven. And the GB members never used to until they started hanging out here too much. They had to face the incessant barrage of persons demanding equal (or greater) say, though such ones manifested little interest in doing comparable work. I fear they have or will suffer the same fate as Paul, who went "mad" dealing with these small persons with giant ambitions:
Are they ministers of Christ? I reply like a madman, I am more outstandingly one: I have done more work,been imprisoned more often, suffered countless beatings, and experienced many near-deaths.Five times I received 40 strokes less one from the Jews, three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned,  three times I experienced shipwreck, a night and a day I have spent in the open sea;  in journeys often, in dangers from rivers, in dangers from robbers, in dangers from my own people, in dangers from the nations, in dangers in the city, in dangers in the wilderness, in dangers at sea, in dangers among false brothers, in labor and toil, in sleepless nights often, in hunger and thirst, frequently without food, in cold and lacking clothing.  Besides those things of an external kind, there is what rushes in on me from day to day: the anxiety for all the congregations.Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is stumbled, and I am not incensed? (2 Corinthians 11:23-29)
What are the qualifications of these superfine apostles? They have not done the work, but the have followed the admonition of @Israeli Bar Avaddhon to 'study their Bibles' more.
There is no nice way to put it. Paul went nuts dealing with these idiots and I fear for the GB, too. Paul had to join @The Librarian for a stiff drink after his tirade had ended, pouring himself another each time the old biddy looked away to take another bite of her taco.

Once again I will handle your desire to malign by suggesting that even if it were true, it is exactly what one would expect when Jesus says he came to seek, not those who do not need a physician, but those that do. The groups to worry aboutmare those who have low rates of mental illness among them - for there are a lot of mentally ill people around. It must be that they feel excluded - driven away by condescension, lack of love, or inhospitality. 
Those who can operate smoothly among this world’s calamities – who can absorb all the atrocities that have become routine and who can accommodate themselves to it without fuss - those are the people to worry about. W
hen our people go off the rails, they nonetheless wouldn’t hurt a fly. If persons of the greater world go off the rails - better call the SWAT team and secure a new identity from the authorities!

Thanks for your 'sane' perspective -  very true, just like satan they are pure evil - but it is going against the nature of God and the way we were created...... there must be serious mental affects after their decisions...to be serial murderers like satan.
In England and some European states the sex crime rings are getting away with serious crimes against children. The governments are following the 'pressure' of the UN and EU and are using their limited police resources to "police" the internet.  Not to catch sex crime rings on the dark net but to monitor the general public who visit far right web sites or extremist web sites and those who say anything about a certain faith which 'believes it to be their duty' to bomb people into submission.  Quite a large number of people have already been taken into custody and face charges for posting stupid stuff on Facebook.
This is the level of injustice going on in the world - and the truly wicked are getting a free pass. And then people quote totally bias 'old studies' which were done by suspiciously bias people  for the sole purpose to show that Witnesses have serious mental issues - really?
Woke up this morning and thought about that "sea of humankind" in Isaiah 57... "20 But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt."
I work in a massive field which is really like a volatile, stormy sea.... one has to really keep on going and just sound the warning without hoping for much success. Every one needs to be warned.  Yesterday's bombing of 305 people dead in Egypt  -  305 families lost their father and livelihood! and many more injured...  To me these incidents are extremely heart breaking because of the social construct those wives and children face extreme hardship!
It is Muslim killing Muslim ......and yet when you mention something like this there is just excuses, excuses...   The mental condition of the entire world is seriously ill!!   There is no more logic thinking or common sense in any sphere of life..... and the worst is still to come...
When the next generation in the West starts to vomit up more 'mire" from the sea of insane "post-modern" philosophy, which is now responsible for so much problems at the universities and many militant clashes, then we will see the next phase of the world condition of human insanity.......we ain't seen nothing yet.
 

There are people that are as sane as anybody ... but completely EVIL ...sometimes whole nations of people. Much pure EVIL is done for reasons that are rational (to the perpetrator).  It just seems to be insane ... to those who are not evil.
 

Thanks for the video.  How do you classify people as lower classes? By their degrees?  Just look at some of the film makers and world leaders with high qualifications who have been accused of abnormal sexual activities in recent weeks. The methods used in the so-called studies were totally unscientific to say the least.  I would love to see a study where they DO NOT KNOW who is a witness and who not - this will be fair and just and rule out any predetermined bias.
To keep up with a busy life and do what witnesses do, I would think that one needs to function on a pretty high level of competence to maintain such a tight schedule.... and they stay reasonable even though they are put under pressure for their faith every day.  They face injustice and bias.
Unfortunately when psychiatrists start to give patients medication for bipolar (without the person really being bi-polar) the nature of the medicine is such that it puts great imbalance in the chemical balance of the person and they are stuck in a cycle of taking this medicine for life!  I do not trust psychiatrists - they give out dangerous pills like sweets. In really severe cases where a definite need is established, I would not criticize, but we all know it is like an industrial complex - pills are prescribed because it keeps the coffers of the pharmaceutical companies full.
A fair comparative study of the world and witnesses right now, will bring an even larger gap in numbers since most of the world is using all kinds of serious drugs and this includes Russia, middle east and most western countries. The use and proliferation of drugs has absolutely sky-rocketed! together with immorality and crime.
Study the criminality and mental health of the population and you will see that most of these terrorist killers are now classified as mentally ill to get lesser prison sentences.  We all know it is the crazy fundamentalist ideology driving this. But one does not see them publishing studies on it - one is not even allowed to say anything publically - then you are called names and these terrorists  have been responsible for more than 30,000 attacks world wide since 9/11. (This excludes far-left and far-right ideological groups)
Most witnesses (with or without) a mental illness are totally harmless to other people.  It is rare that they would kill another person.  While sexual misconduct has been tolerated in the world in the past - and did not receive the attention it should have amongst the elite - it is now (at last) being spoken of and we can see the prevalence of it.  The powerful can 'cover' their tracks and get away with it and some can be classified as sociopaths or some other nasty label. 
The few deviant witnesses who have perpetrated sexual crimes have received an inordinate amount of attention in the press in the past.  While other serious sexual criminals have been getting away with it.  I am now thinking of the sexual crime rings (pedophilia) which has been covered up for years in Scotland, Ireland and UK - to just name 3 countries.
Just this week they busted a crime ring (Russia and Italy) where videos were made with children being ill-treated so bad and then "snuffed".   And there is a big underworld business for this!  So don't talk of 'mental illness' amongst witnesses because most of them would not stoop to this level of debasement.  One needs to be seriously mentally ill to be curious to  snuff out children and watch sadistic videos with children - I do not see any studies on this!
 
 

Frankly - it is not about pleasing your weird wishes - we also do not accept your challenges, even if you call us cowards. People who have left us - we do not worry about them.  If their heart is right they will find their way back.
It is the ones who think they know it all and have found bliss in the great big world out there but yet, they cannot help themselves to come to websites where they know they will find Witnesses - and then obsessively troll them. 
There is something OCD about those who have left Jehovah on bad terms...... they obsessively come back with dubious intentions. I have seen this over and over again. Many of them seem to suffer from this OCD phenomena.  This alone should tell you - there is some kind of problem. Stalking (even on internet) is a problem. So, I do not need no study to tell me that some do have  emotional problems. 
Seriously - if their lives were happy and they have found wonderful new goals - they will leave the past behind and get on with their lives and look to the future.  But they cannot.  They cannot get on with their lives  because they cannot let go. If I were a psychologist I would say they need help to leave - totally.

For now 

Has anyone wondered about this?
God’s Kingdom Rules! Page 230, par.19 & 20  says:
How to Prepare Ourselves
19  How can we prepare ourselves for the earthshaking
events that are to come? The Watchtower stated some years
ago: “Survival will depend on obedience.” Why is that so?
The answer is found in a warning from Jehovah to the captive
Jews living in ancient Babylon. Jehovah foretold that
Babylon would be conquered, but what were God’s people
to do to prepare themselves for that event? Jehovah stated:
“Go, my people, enter your inner rooms, and shut your
doors behind you. Hide yourself for a brief moment until
the wrath has passed by.” (Isa. 26:20) Note the verbs in this
verse: “go,” “enter,” “shut,” “hide”—all are in the imperative
mood; they are commands. The Jews who heeded those
commands would have stayed in their houses, away from
the conquering soldiers out in the streets. Hence, their survival
depended on obeying Jehovah’s instructions.[2]
 
20  What is the lesson for us? As in the case of those ancient
servants of God, our survival of coming events will
depend on our obedience to Jehovah’s instructions. (Isa.
30:21) Such instructions come to us through the congregation
arrangement. Therefore, we want to develop heartfelt
obedience to the guidance we are receiving. (1 John 5:3)
If we do so today, we will be more inclined to obey willingly
in the future and thus receive the protection of our Father,
Jehovah, and our King, Jesus. (Zeph. 2:3) That divine
protection will allow us to witness firsthand how God’s
Kingdom will completely remove its enemies. What an unforgettable
event that will be!
Prior to those paragraphs, and in harmony with Matthew 24, it was made clear that the sheep and the goats will have already been judged, the sheep being marked for survival. Why would there be further need to follow some other instructions in order to survive? Matthew 24 does not indicate anything about additional instructions as a criterion for survival. In fact it says “then two men will be in the field; one will be taken along and the other abandoned.  Two women will be grinding at the hand mill; one will be taken along and the other abandoned.” This indicates that people will be in ordinary situations, when they are “saved”. The rest of the gospels focus on doing God’s will and following in Christ’s footsteps as the criterion for gaining salvation. "For this is what the love of God means, that we observe his commandments; and yet his commandments are not burdensome" 1John 5:3. None of the Greek scriptures talk about any special instructions that will have to be obeyed during the great tribulation and Armageddon.  It is only Isaiah that mentions this in relation to surviving the overthrow of Babylon, with similar references to the Passover in Egypt and perhaps also Noah entering the Ark.
I wonder why the Slave thinks that the same pattern will be followed when the ultimate destruction comes, as if Jehovah is not capable of saving individuals wherever they may be. Looking at it from a practical point of view, not everyone will be physically able to “go” or “shut” or “hide”. Think of the old and infirm.  The scripture in Zepheniah 2:3 talks about doing specific things well before  the day of Jehovah's anger. “Seek Jehovah, all you meek ones of the earth, Who observe his righteous decrees, seek righteousness, seek meekness. Probably you will be concealed on the day of Jehovah’s anger”.
The paragraph that follows,  (Par. 20) talks about us learning to obey the Slave now, so that when the time comes we will “obey” the Slave then, because our salvation depends on it.  But the scriptures clearly show our salvation depends on lots of other things, one of them being enduring faithfully to the end.  This was the symposium at this year’s Do not Give up convention as well. This included practical steps to “Run With Endurance”
·         Run to Win! (1 Corinthians 9:24)
·         Train Diligently (1 Corinthians 9:25-27)
·         Let Go of Unnecessary Burdens (Hebrews 12:1)
·         Imitate Good Examples (Hebrews 12:2, 3)
·         Eat Nutritious Food (Hebrews 5:12-14)
·         Drink Plenty of Water (Revelation 22:17)
·         Obey the Rules of the Contest (2 Timothy 2:5)
·         Be Confident of Gaining the Prize (Romans 15:13)
That pertains to everything we do now. And those are the things we will be judged on. That’s how we prepare ourselves surely? Not by obeying some last minute instructions as if Jehovah is not capable of saving each individual Witness wherever they may be, since the whole performance is going to involve supernatural powers anyway....Plus, it has been speculated that some may die at Armageddon, not by Jehovah's hand, but by other extenuating circumstances, even by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I will do some more research on this....
 

Just got back home. Anything happen while I was out?

I also meant to mention @Melinda Mills who like me, finds  other poster's comments (not the rude ones) helpful and inspire her to do more research and "reason out a matter" .

I also meant to mention @Melinda Mills who like me, finds  other poster's comments (not the rude ones) helpful and inspire her to do more research and "reason out a matter" .