Anna

I rather like the Gary Larsen cartoon of the Devil fuming that his 666 room has been mislabeled 999, and the workman explains that he must have been holding the blueprint upside down.
Maybe that’s what hell is—not being able to find good help.

.... and I suspect Satan's ( the fantasy one with the horns and barbed tail ...) torment weapon of choice is not a pitchfork .... it's an accordion.

Matthew9969:
Can you please tell me in detail how you visualize "hell", and what do you use as hard evidence to justify that belief?
Inquiring canines want to know.
 

The point of the above cartoon, for the agenda disabled, is that EVERYBODY has a different viewpoint of what "Hell" is ... it's not a monolithic block of belief ... even if in any group that "officially" believes one or another concept .... ALWAYS without proof (as it is SOOooo difficult to get reliable reports back ....).
Many preachers now teach that "Hell" is eternal separation from God and his influence, now that we know what is below the Earth's crust in great detail.
They teach that the human soul is immortal (somehow), and when you add the eternal separation from God ... MANY would consider that as Heaven!
.... as a classic example, Las Vegas immediately comes to mind.
As an aside: you can always tell "agenda driven thinking", as opposed to REAL thinking.
Their downvotes are a spasm reflex ... irregardless of the topic or points raised.

Hey brother, don't be so hard on yourself! I've noticed that people in general have no time....really. I'm a prime example, I have books on my to read list (including yours) and have I read them, nope, not a single one...yet. I wanted to start a topic on here the other day, but other (more important) stuff got in the way. In fact the days run into each other so fast and before you know another week is gone. I swear time is running faster. I think if we ever get put in jail I will beg them to let me access all the books I have wanted to read....

Hey brother, don't be so hard on yourself! I've noticed that people in general have no time....really. I'm a prime example, I have books on my to read list (including yours) and have I read them, nope, not a single one...yet. I wanted to start a topic on here the other day, but other (more important) stuff got in the way. In fact the days run into each other so fast and before you know another week is gone. I swear time is running faster. I think if we ever get put in jail I will beg them to let me access all the books I have wanted to read....

Yes. His general goal is always to minimize any negative press about NRMs. He lists "Mostly Against [Their Own] Members" as one of those minimizing factors. This is why I said:
If in politics, for example, a dictator were to bomb or gas a part of their own population, the world would point out how terrible it was that "he gassed his own people." It would not be considered a factor that minimizes guilt.

Hey brother, don't be so hard on yourself! I've noticed that people in general have no time....really. I'm a prime example, I have books on my to read list (including yours) and have I read them, nope, not a single one...yet. I wanted to start a topic on here the other day, but other (more important) stuff got in the way. In fact the days run into each other so fast and before you know another week is gone. I swear time is running faster. I think if we ever get put in jail I will beg them to let me access all the books I have wanted to read....

Not sure I understand what you are saying is embarrassing. Is it because of course it's bad that ANYONE should suffer the bad consequences of cultish behavior, regardless whether they are members or outsiders. Is that what you mean?

Do you remember the Twilight Zone in which the henpecked bank employee would retreat into the vault for some peace and quiet during lunchtime? While doing so, the vault was rocked, and upon emerging, he saw that the world had ended—everything was in ruins. Far from being alarmed, he was delighted, for now he could read in peace, free from his nagging boss and wife. 
Then he broke his glasses.

Hey brother, don't be so hard on yourself! I've noticed that people in general have no time....really. I'm a prime example, I have books on my to read list (including yours) and have I read them, nope, not a single one...yet. I wanted to start a topic on here the other day, but other (more important) stuff got in the way. In fact the days run into each other so fast and before you know another week is gone. I swear time is running faster. I think if we ever get put in jail I will beg them to let me access all the books I have wanted to read....

Is this when Bro Brumley was photographed at a conference and opponents made a big fuss about it because Scientologists were there, too? 
“Relax, he keyed their cars in the parking lot,” I replied to one of them.

I would love to be one of them, and I have more than once contacted certain ones—Introvigne, Folk, and Chrysiddes. They all ignore me.
I don’t hammer at their door, nor do I take their non-response personally. I tend to think that they wish to maintain a scholarly detached independence. Whereas I unambiguously champion a certain New Relgion, they stand in defense of them all, and thus may wish to keep any specific apologist at arm’s length.
Or maybe they have just concluded that my books suck. That certainly was the case with Dear Mr. Putin. Damage control after such a debacle to present the new and improved Don’t Know Why We Persecute is anything but a slam-dunk. You must persuade people who perhaps have previously written you off to give you another look. That’s why someone should have told me that Dear Mr. Putin sucked;

The one whom I have hammered at his door to no avail (as much as 5 or 6 times cumulatively) is George Chrysiddes. The reason for added persistence here is that we had an email correspondence. On Twitter, I came across his saying to someone that he wished he knew a real live rank-and-file Witness. “Here I am,” I said like Isaiah, and we had some nice chit-chats. He faithfully read Tom Irregardless and Me, commenting via email as he did so, and wrote what is far-and-away the more original review of it (under his informal pen name Ivor E Tower).
It’s the last I ever heard from him. Maybe he too, read Dear Mr Putin and concluded it stunk. (Of course, its always possible that all of these guys have read Don’t Know Why and have concluded that it stinks, too—yikes!—but that is a scenario I prefer not to entertain. I gave it my best shot.)
My second book, No Fake News, stunk, too. Maybe that was a turn-off for George even before Dear Mr. Putin.  It was written too hastily, too sloppily. Even after sinking some time in a rewrite, I have removed it. Not sure right now if it will ever see the light of day again. I have several other irons in the fire ahead of it, so that for all practical purposes, that one is not in the fire. Or if the fire is literal, maybe it is.
Any day now (I’ve been saying this forever) Don’t Know Why will be in Amazon print. Just now I cannot make Word behave to do the bells and whistles version with fancy headers and whatnot. If I settle for a simplified version, I am fine, and I just may have to do that. The one who does my covers referred me to someone who wants $285 to format it just so. It’s not unreasonable at all, yet I think I’ll draw the line. I spend enough as it is and I’m self-published. I may have to settle for a certain rough-hewn look, which is certainly reinforced anyway by my many battles with proofing. To proof it professionally can cost thousands.
Alas, nobody likes me. Even Liebster blocks me. I probably can patch that up, and will someday. Most likely they came along whilst I was bickering with some villains and were scandalized. Or maybe they, too, read Dear Mr Putin and thought it stunk, so that I became to them “an indiscreet brother.”
Only the Librarian likes me (that old hen). I may be a bad pupil, but I am her pupil, and she doesn’t forget that. Oh—and I have Cesar in my back pocket, too. But then, who doesn’t?

The group Introvigne heads, CESNUR, (Center for the Study of New Religions) is roughly the opposite of FECRIS, the latter which, if they had their way, would ban them all as “cults.” “New religion” is the scholarly term for any group originating in relatively recent times. Scholars deliberately choose “new religion” over “cult” to avoid the incendiary overtones of the latter word. Non-scholars favor “cult” because they are intolerant and wish to make it as hot as possible for the “new religions.”
One might think of Introvigne (who I know nothing of personally) as a modern-day Voltaire. Voltaire (probably you know) is from the 17th century, and is considered founder of the Enlightenment. He was a fierce critic of organized religion, particularly the Judeo-Christian variety. He was also firmly deist, that is, he never doubted the existence of God, and he came to be much distressed that his body of work was used as a stepping stone into atheism—breaking free of God altogether. His dream was that there be religious tolerance, that all religions should get along peaceably. It never occurred to him to change them internally or to mush them into one incoherent whole. He just wanted them not to wreak violence upon one another. 
Early in his life a dispute with a French aristocrat caused Voltaire to flee to England. While there he noted how there were dozens of religions, many (maybe all) claiming to be the one true path (people took religion more seriously then), yet they all co-existed without rancor. (In his native France, the Roman Catholic Church was torturing those professing other faiths on the rack.) It never would have occurred to Voltaire that a faith calling itself the one true faith was doing violence to any other one. Virtually all of them were doing it. It is a uniquely modern concept to think a religion regarding itself as the true path does violence to the others.
Voltaire’s “Letters from England” conveys his amazement and delight that here was a country, so different from back home, where people could worship as they pleased without anyone trying to ban them or beat up on them. He sets himself up as a chump interviewing a Quaker, just about as weird a religion as one could envision backed then—they ‘quaked’ when they became filled with spirit. He paints himself as though a devout Catholic thoroughly scandalized by Quaker beliefs, gives dialogue with one in which the Quaker ties him in knots, before summing up with how you just can’t talk sense with a fanatic.
It never occurred to Voltaire that the Quakers should change—he was just delighted that, given their “weirdness,” they could coexist so easily with the rest of society. In short, “intolerance” had nothing to do with doctrines or beliefs within a religion. He took for granted that internally each religion would be sufficiently different from other religions. If they were not, there would not BE separate religions—they would all blend into the same. It didn’t matter to him if Quakers were weird; if you conclude they are, don’t be one, would have been his obvious conclusion, just like it should be today with anyone concluding JWs are weird. 
Being a strict religion, serious about their beliefs, there would be severe internal strictures for any Quaker doing a 180 and leaving his faith. This was of no concern to Voltaire, who personally had no use for any of the established religions. Whatever strictures a departing Quaker would encounter would be more-or-less human nature: turn your back on previously cherished beliefs and you will of course find yourself on the outside looking in as regards those still holding true to those beliefs. It only adds “fuel to the fire” that the Christian scriptures can so easily be read that way. It’s the same with JWs today. It’s the same with most of the “new religions” that FECRIS labels as “cults,” as it seeks to homogenize religions, extracting whatever teeth they have to make them stand out from others, and mush them all into one that doesn’t stand for much or anything other than putting a God-face on humanist endeavors.
Voltaire’s firm deism, his belief in God, stems from what the Jehovah’s Witness organization has called the “Book of Creation.” It stems from the observed design of creation, and from what he called first cause, the utility that created things are put to. He rejected any “book of revelation,” that is, any sacred scriptures from any source that would attempt to explain the creator. But he also famously, after years of soul-searching, declared insoluble the “problem of evil.” There is undeniably a God, and there is undeniably evil. He could not reconcile the two, though he was the foremost thinker and deist of his time.
To say that rejecting any revelatory information on God is foolish might be going too far, but it certainly is self-defeating. He yearns with all his heart to discern the problem of evil, yet he confines his gaze to where the answer certainly will not be—in the book of creation. There is only so far that book will take you. His aversion is quite understandable, given the horrendous abuse practices by the religions of his day, but it was still self-defeating as for discerning the problem of evil or any other aspects of God’s personality.
If there is an answer to the “problem of evil,” it will be found in the new religions. Of course, my view is that it will be found specifically within the the tenets of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Indeed, the wording may differ, but “Why is there evil?” is a staple of each of their basic study guides almost since their founding. Mainstream religions have so homogenized their views, so eager not to be out of step with intellectual or scientific trends, that they have modified their own foundation to the extent that the problem of evil cannot be solved. FECRIS gets around the issue by ignoring it. There is no answer to such questions, they maintain, forget about them. Focus on making the world a better place now. Nevermind arcane spiritual concerns that will distract from how we must, in the words of the Beatles, “come together.”

I suppose reasonableness and balance is the key 😀

I remember a while back, when I was "super holy" browsing a brother's library and noticing Bible literature that was not from our source. In my self righteous judgemental previous self I was shocked and almost stumbled. The said brother then proceeded to recommend some of those books saying how interesting they were especially if we are into deep research. I was beside myself with disgust and loathing, wondering how an elder could be saying this...and is he even an elder, probably more of a closet apostate.  Well that was then, and this is now. Looking back I see how immature I really was, thinking myself spiritually superior to someone else just because they read other things besides "our" things. It works the other way too, do we consider ourselves somehow more intelligent and superior to those who only read "our" literature? Everybody is at varying stages of spiritual maturity and it is ultimately between them and Jehovah what they chose to, or not to, research.
The brother by the way is still our brother. His daughter sings some of our songs.

Wow, hahaha! I wish I could understand what he is saying, but I don't speak Norwegian....
I wonder why him? Surely there are other maybe more suitable people like pop stars or actors? Perhaps though he is quite famous in Norway....

Finally got this image right.
 

Well I didn't say you should block him, just not respond. But I guess you have no self control Tom, so if blocking is what it takes then that's the way to go 👍😀

Yes. I think this is pretty much the reason some of us like to come here (and even more so the closed club where we can discuss deeper things without the distraction of opposers). If one has been in the truth for a long time, and has had much experience in the truth, then the basics just repeated over and over are not enough for some. There are always new things to learn! And sometimes these things can be a bit controversial and frowned upon by others, but I don't feel bad, in fact I feel positively enlightened 😀

What a stupid statement!
“Interpretation of Bible text” is not what is on trial here. What—we are all required to interpret Bible text in a certain way? 
Jehovah’s Witnesses are a ‘one true faith” religion. There are many ‘one true faith’ religions. As such, they are known to criticize other religions, as all ‘one true faith’ religions criticize other religions. It is a valid read of the Scriptures that any perusal will suggest just might be true—that there is one true faith.
But if they would “not allow any faiths” they would call for violence against them. They would try to get politicians to pass laws against them. Instead, the “weapons” of Jehovah’s Witnesses are words only. Tell them ‘no’ and they go away.
Joel Engardio has stated how Witnesses provide a fine example, perhaps our last hope, of how groups with strongly polarized views can yet co-exist peacefully.
There is a difference between criticizing and disallowing. The back of a cigarette package contains a very strong warning agains smoking. Does that mean people are not allowed to smoke?
 

I added an enhanced version since the original tweet rotted away.

Yes, makes sense. But I think some people  think that sitting at the right hand of God means waiting to become king. The question is, where would he be sitting then, when he became king? He cannot be sitting in place of Jehovah, so as you say: "When Jesus received all authority in the first century, when did he receive more authority"? Or when he was sitting at the right hand of God where was the place that was more of a throne? (this is not a question for you, it's for the sake of the discussion)

We're not changing any teachings silly, we are changing our understanding of them. 

Hey! I gotta idea for a new topic !
Let's argue for a couple of days on whether or not the "rapture", or even simple resurrection sends people to Heaven, with or without their clothes!