TrueTomHarley

Aren’t you in Britain? Don’t you have some exotic cars there that I could buy? What was the last auto that James Bond tooled around in? My current project is to go through Dear Mr. Putin - Jehovah’s Witnesses Write Russia paragraph by paragraph to re-examine wording. I have already done so to (mostly) fix a self-devised system of punctuation. That book has caused me more trouble than my other three put together, mostly because of the manner in which it was written. Once I have completed the task, I will look into releasing it on audio, as an author-read narrator. There are many many things that I am not good at, in fact, almost everything. However, public reading is something that I am good at.

And John has no sense of hyperbole, rather unfortunate, because Jesus uses them frequently.

The Witness organization cannot possibly be as bad as you charge, for the Devil is not that bad. You are a loon, John, wildly overstating all of your points, substantial or trivial, implacable to any persuasion to back down even a little on any of them. Nothing shows more clearly. More later.

What surprises me as I go through the sequential schedule of Bible reading, now focused on the letters of Paul, is how well they anticipate current “anti-cultist” complaints of being brainwashed, misled, duped, and so forth. What would appear to be a brand new scenario is just history recycled—put on steroids by modern viral methods of communication. Given that the following was said then, when the only communication was word-of-mouth, it is not at all surprising that it would be so prolific today: “We have wronged no one, we have corrupted no one, we have taken advantage of no one,” says the apostle at 2 Corinthians 7:2, as though the accusation of those things was commonplace. “Nevertheless, you say, I was “crafty” and I caught you “by trickery,” he says again at 2 Corinthians 12:16. For sure, Solomon had a point: “There is nothing new under the sun.” (Eccles 1:9) Do “apostates” proliferate today, as though something new? It’s the oldest game in town. “For there are many—I used to mention them often but now I mention them also with weeping—who are walking as enemies of the torture stake of the Christ. Their end is destruction, and their god is their belly, and their glory is really their shame, and they have their minds on earthly things.” (Philippians 3:18-19) ”Having their mind on earthly things” is where its at today, and there are endless people who obsess over petty freedoms at the expense of totally missing the real ones. Their “critical thinking” has sold them down the river; they have shipwrecked whatever faith they once had—just like Paul says about two actual malcontents in the first century, when he advised Timothy to “go on waging the fine warfare, holding faith and a good conscience, which some have thrust aside, resulting in the shipwreck of their faith. Hymenaeus and Alexander are among these, and I have handed them over to Satan so that they may be taught by discipline not to blaspheme.” (1 Timothy 3:18-19) What exactly is it to be “handed over to Satan?” The only other use of the expression (1 Corinthians 5:5) makes clear that it is expulsion from the congregation. Today their counterparts on social media protest loudly that discipline. They protest another sort of discipline as well. “Just as I encouraged you to stay in Ephesus when I was about to go to Macedonia, so I do now, in order for you to command certain ones not to teach different doctrine, nor to pay attention to false stories and to genealogies. Such things end up in nothing useful but merely give rise to speculations rather than providing anything from God in connection with faith.” Today the ones so “commanded” would hop on social media to rail that you can’t even breathe a word different from the tyrannical men on top to be muzzled at first transgression, and ejected at second. Jehovah’s Witnesses are a cult if and only if the Bible is a cult manual. Nobody has apostates like Jehovah’s Witnesses. Nobody has apostates more prolific, more determined, and in some cases they seem almost deranged—I mean, if someone so much as farts at Bethel, there is one of these yo-yos to start a thread on it, which is not ignored, but is joined in by countless persons in sympathy, some of whom are coherent and some of whom are pure loons. It is as it should be. We should be proud of our apostates. Nobody else has anyone like them. What if they did not exist? Would you not have to wonder why? No writer of the New Testament fails to deal with them. What if there were no mention of them today? Would it not indicate that the faith had so strayed from its roots to embrace contemporary thinking that there was little to apostatize from? I will admit that the only apostates that interest me are the ones that go atheist, which partly accounts for my take on the 2 Thessalonians “Man of Lawlessness.” Having learned the man-made origins of Trinity and the immortal soul, and having come to appreciate the damage these teachings do to to a close relationship with God, can one really go back to them? Often the “believing” apostates do not—they simply become ambiguous on such doctrines, thinking that they hardly matter—to each his own. Essentially, they want to retain God, but they acquiesce to the greater world molding their thinking as to outlook, goals, and morals. They want to “throw off all restraint” and in no time at all, they have lost whatever unity they once had. When they can be distracted from attacking their former roots on social media, they are to found lambasting each other over differences in matters scientific, medical, climate, politics, etc.

You are right, of course, as regards the overall picture. “Yes, in her [Babylon the Great] was found the blood of prophets and of holy ones and of all those who have been slaughtered on the earth.” Rev 18:24 “All those who have been slaughtered” is a big category, and it is especially huge if we equate slaughter to death, since no one would have died at all were it not for rebellion back in Eden. Most die, not due to acts of commission, but due to acts of omission. The Man of Lawlessness does not teach biblical truth, and the sheep, as a consequence, are found roaming the hills, and land themselves into all sorts of mischief, atheism being one of those mischiefs. Had they not been force-fed a diet of spiritual junk food, they might not have thrown out the baby with the bathwater, asserting that not only are the doctrines untrue, but also God. So the origin of the Man of Lawlessness may be correct, but I am not sure that we keep up with its modern evolutions. Sometimes I think that we do the equivalent of railing about Egypt or Assyria, and don’t grasp that other heads have emerged in the seven-headed wild beast. The “apostates” that cause us trouble today are overwhelmingly atheistic. You mentioned Lloyd recently. He is atheist, and all those close to him that he works with. The media people, be it print or video, who “accuse the brothers day and night before our God” are almost always atheistic, Every general needs to know the enemy. We do ourselves a disservice if we imagine that today’s enemy is religious. It leads to miscalculations as to how to oppose him. Sometimes, we imagine that explaining doctrine clearly will serve to rectify things. I don’t think that’s true, and it is a good case in point. Buy too much into this and it would appear that if the clergy were to disappear, our problems would be over. In fact, the clergy has practically disappeared from the standpoint of influence, and our problems come upon us full-throttle. Nobody believes me on this. They just assume that the Russian Orthodox Church is behind the ban. They have said that they are not. I am inclined to believe them. To be sure, most there squealed with delight when the ban on Witnesses went into effect, like kids on Christmas morning, but the thinkers among them don’t like it. They think that the same legal reasonings being used against us could also be used against them. They also regard themselves as the true church, and THAT is now illegal under the new laws first applied to Witnesses. The centerpiece of my “theory” is articles such as this one in the Daily Caller: https://dailycaller.com/2017/07/23/the-french-connection-how-the-russian-orthodox-church-and-the-putin-administration-colluded-with-a-french-ngo-to-destroy-the-jehovahs-witnesses/ We fixate on the Russian Orthodox Church because we have not moved on from the days of the Roman Catholic Church in 1950s Quebec, and 1940s America and Europe, when religion truly did orchestrate the mischief. The anti-cult movement of today that would take out ALL religion starts with the biblical faith that is most clearly “no part of this world,” but it is hardly friendlier with other types. We should know the enemy. Recently in field service a woman answered my companion’s knock and said she wouldn’t speak with us since she “follows the Word of God.” Thus, she drew “battle lines,” and it was hard to not respond in kind. My companion began to go where we so often go, where I used to go, and a silly little contest begins of searching for chinks in her “armor,” since we are loath to leave an “objection” such as hers unanswered. After all, we also think that we are following the Word of God. After a time, I interrupted to say: “Look, you believe in God and you think we’re doing it all wrong. We believe in God and we think you’re doing it all wrong. We will steal sheep from your church if we can and you will do the same to us. Let’s just accept that as a given. Either way it is a search for God and a desire to worship him.” With that, I made a point about the “shocking disregard for Jesus” prevalent in the world today, and a brief defused conversation ensued. We parted with her thinking that we were, at least in some respects, on the same page. And we were. We both have a common enemy who is on the ascent. The Western clergy is licking its wounds these days. It is the atheists who are riding tall. It may be correct to identify the Man of Lawlessness with a religious faction—it certainly was that way in the early centuries—but its latest manifestation is not religious and has no use for God, having elevated other concerns to that status.

Sheesh. Next thing you know, Srecko will be saying that JWs in the concentration camps wore purple triangles to “promote JW religion.” Why make such a conspiracy out of everything? It is not as though people have never been known to wear name badges outside of Christianity, or that their doing so is the sure sign of a brainwashed cult. Their wearing badges advertising the convention is in perfect harmony with “declaring this good news of the kingdom in all the inhabited earth.”

In other words, I was right. Why all the mock outrage? And I am right with Srecko, too. Almost certainly.

What in the world is wrong with it? “Typical patterns” can be discerned by just keeping ones eyes opened. You don’t need “investigative journalism,” for example, to voice that Americans are, as a people, overweight. Even checking your “critical thinking” at the door, one can come up with that observation. What I have done is parallel. I also plainly said that you as an individual didn’t necessarily fit that “typical pattern.” Witnesses as a people have a much greater diversity of friends as regards race, social-economic, nationality, & educational letters, then do non-Witnesses. It doesn’t mean that there will be not found many individuals of both groups who do not fit the typical pattern. I don’t back down on this one even a bit. It is plainly true.

Obviously, if you have outgrown the cause, the sacrifices involved in cooperating with the cause will seem oppressive to you. This is a no-brainer. If one is still true to it, one puts up without too much fuss the inconveniences that being organized for the cause can bring about. The cause entails both pluses and minuses, and those true to it generally think that the minuses are relatively insignificant. But if you leave the cause, then the pluses become non-factors at best, minuses at worst, and what were already minuses becomes draconian “mind-control.” This is also not especially difficult to figure out. Still, you don’t actually disappear, do you, Jack? Aren’t you the one who has started up to a dozen threads in a single day designed to stumble your ex-brothers? If Science is the true God, then go on following Him.

Is it? One could make that case. It certainly could be annoying at times. Still, not every whim in life goes your way. I never wanted a beard anyway. It did sometimes cause some trouble however, when they grew one for non-standard reasons. They could always do it, but they might come in for counsel and be kept from what Witnesses call “privileges”—MS, elder, pioneer, and so forth. Yet, isn’t this another case of the non-doers saying that the doers are doing it wrong? Witnesses are a close-knit group, organized that way for the sake of preaching the good news. They rub shoulders will people of all dispositions and backgrounds that they otherwise wouldn’t rub shoulders with. The past circuit overseer said that Jehovah has molded his people into “large, united, happy, somewhat dysfunctional family.” Idiosyncrasies will pop up in a dysfunctional family, and this was one of them. Not really. It has been a issue only for the last 30 years, which is still not nothing, but neither is it 100. In the days of beatniks and hippies, Anna’s application of verse would have been spot-on. A beard during that time, suggesting affiliation with those characters, did indeed have a high chance of stumbling new ones or unbelievers Neither of you are in any position to lecture. Both of you have put yourself in places where you have no need to get along with people—if anyone annoys you, simply write him or her out of the picture. Inevitably, you surround yourselves with people who are pretty much like yourself. I don’t know it for sure, of course, with you as individuals, but it is the typical pattern that you have probably fallen into. If I were not a Witness, my friends would almost certainly be persons just like me, with little variety. Instead, I have friends of every age, nationality, ethnicity, social class, educational and economic level. I have a whole circuitful of real people who like me, and I like them. It is not for the sake of making friends that I come online—I have more friends than I can handle. The only common feature that they have is that they are on the same page spiritually, which I regard as a good thing, not a bad thing. I am grateful to Jehovah for it, and to his organization, because it would not happen otherwise. There is a price to pay for such close interaction, however. You don’t always get your way. Sometimes you have to yield. Sometimes you yield on things that you think you really shouldn’t have to yield on, but you know that keeping the peace is better than getting your way on every thing. Nations have cultures. They all have their own unique ways of thinking, their own quirks, some of which will seem nuts to another nation. Witnesses have their own culture, too, and their own quirks. It is the price to pay for working in close proximity with many different people. I wouldn’t get too hung up on it.

Many things suggest this to me. It may not be so, but one can only go by evidence presented. The fact that, on your pet peeve, you have never yielded to the tiniest degree, suggests it. Everyone yields someplace to some degree. The fact that @JW Insider brings up a circumstance which he makes clear he regards as quite rare, and you immediately characterize it as the norm is another. Another is that the frequent child sexual abuse that you have chronicled was perpetrated for years by a party that you should consistently vent your wrath upon, yet you vent it upon people who had nothing to do with your trouble. The fact that you attach a maniacal laughing emoji to comments that are not at all funny, posted by several here, and that in some cases are quite frank and conciliatory, is yet another. Before you came along, I once observed that @Srecko Sostar had chosen to represent himself on this forum as a moron, regularly appending an inane “hehehe :)))))))” to his comments. He did it so much that @Nana Fofana began imitating his style, and did it better than he. He stopped doing it. He is not a moron and didn’t want to portray himself that way. In hindsight I think some of it was due to language and culture differences, he not realizing how certain signs translated.

In my opinion, the "beard issue" was one of the stupidest stands that hung us up for far too long, and I am so glad to see that it has finally been addressed. I wish it had been done long ago. It caused loyal ones like Anna to go into contortions trying to explain it: The verses of Paul and eating meat seldom applied in the U.S, from where I write. There would be a few off-the-grid places where they would, but mostly they did not. Paul was concerned about stumbling new ones and unbelievers. Mature ones would not be stumbled by his eating meat that had been sacrificed to an idol. With beards, the situation was the complete opposite. New ones and unbelievers generally had no problem with them, but mature ones would balk. It made no sense. Though nowhere forbidden by scripture or Bible principles, no "rule" was applied with more vigor than the "no beard" rule, and I am glad to see it go. It is working out pretty much as I thought it would. It is gradual. Brothers progress to the point of qualifying for privileges, but there are some elder bodies who say: "Yeah, but he has a beard." "That doesn't matter," says the C.O, and the brother is appointed.

No need to get too technical here. It is enough for the phrase to stand for one’s guiding focus on life, as the Temple was for Jews. The aggravation I face is that I only have to breathe an expression like “Temple of God” and Witness reliably jumps in with: and this is generally followed by pages and pages of diatribe which always come down to her same regular conclusion: that she represents a truer anointed than the ones that Jehovah’s Witnesses focus upon. Been there, done that (1000 times) I just didn’t want to go there yet again. Yeah. That’s pretty much the point I was making. Again, no need to get too technical here.

Someone dear to me got much mileage out of the expression: “Jehovah never lets you down. People let you down, but Jehovah never lets you down.” This is a better take than on how another brother put it. His observation was meant to be cynical and humorous, and whether it was a factor or not, he didn’t stick with the faith” ”The truth is such a beautiful thing. It’s a shame Jehovah had to waste it on people.” The two statements are not that far apart. The first simply implies an element of forgiveness that the other does not.

I liken making that “journey of discovery” to assembling the 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle and reproducing the mountain vista on the box cover. Having done this, you are pretty much immune to the critic who comes along later and says you did it wrong. You are especially immune if that critic’s own puzzle lies boxed and unassembled on his closet shelf. And when you are cruising down the highway at 60 MPH, you are pretty much immune to the atheist on the radio telling you that your car doesn’t run.

Would you please give it a rest, lady? The purpose of my thread was not so that you would adapt it, as you adapt so many threads here, to once again advance your pet peeve that you are the good anointed, they are the bad ones, and beat it into the ground. The purpose was to see if the Man of Lawlessness can be associated with the new and very anti-Witness (and others) wave of atheism, in view of the verses that I highlighted: 2 Thess 2: 4, 9-10, as well as Paul’s observation of the next chapter that “faith is not a possession of all people.”

Well, I am in the U S, not Britain. It does not happen here, though there probably are youngsters who will run away from home, and afterwards present it that they were thrown out, as explained in my post. And I am dubious that it happens where you are, John. You do not come across as the most rational of commenters. Rather, you come across as pretty unhinged. If someone has the time, find the discussion—it would be somewhere in the 1991 WT, I think—dealing with how parents would treat a disfellowshipped youngster. The consideration that is posed is to determine whether that person an adult, capable of being self-sufficient, or whether he/she is a child. In the latter case he or she would not be asked to leave. It is in print. Go find the contrary, if you think it exists. It doesn’t.

No. The apostates back then were the ones who brought in the immortal soul teaching, as well as the Trinity. The governing arrangement then, as now, stayed true to scripture. Besides your statement the end is a long long ways off, have you now come to embrace the Trinity and hellfire for the miscreants? Witness, too, cheered this statement. Is she also a Trinitarian and hellfire advocate?

You certainly do come out of your hole to prognosticate a lot.

I have never encountered a more one-note person in my entire life.

So, it is now a crime for literature to reflect the morality of the Bible?

No. I meant that many girls do not return, as did the one in the video.

This does not happen. I would not say that it never ever happens. It may. It is a big world with many people and you never know what individuals might do. But no way would it ever be sanctioned by the organization. Nor is 6 an age that I have ever heard of for someone being baptized. Again, it may have happened, but I know of no examples. One of my kids wanted to get baptized at 10, and was advised to wait. (and was bummed about it) However, another was baptized a 9–something which was most unusual, but not unheard of. I think the tendency is to recommend more years of age today—mid teens is what I typically see. More likely the case presented is the 15 year old running away due to an atmosphere he/she thought too “restrictive” and then retroactively spinning it as being “kicked out” of the home. Kids locking horns with parents and running away from home is a theme almost as old as time. In this case her parents following the lead of the organization is presented as the trigger—and may actually be the trigger—but it is always something. It is not new. Malcontents complain at great length over the video shown at a convention of a teenaged girl “kicked out” of her house for immorality. Were they to be more honest, they would acknowledge that 1) she ran away from home, 2) her parents did not want her to go, 3) (admittedly speculative) she thereafter represented the situation as being “kicked out” due to the repressive rule of the Governing Body. (Actually, the girl of the video probably did not, because she did return, but many girls of reality do just that.) It was so with a star witness at the Russian trial that resulted in a countrywide ban. She complained of the oppressive tactics of the organization. When asked to give an example, she offered up her being ejected for her “not officially sanctioned” relationship with a man. Here she is “shacking up,” an action once universally condemned by most of society, and virtually ALL of religious society, and she spins it as a philosophical disagreement with the Witness organization! Adhering to Bible moral standards on matters of sexuality was once commonplace, and what the video portrays would have once been spun as “tough love.” I have been going through a Great Courses series on CD lately. The narrator (Prof Patrick Allitt) observes that in 1960 a child out of wedlock was an absolute shocker to general society. Fifteen years later it was commonplace. Those condemning the video are essentially those condemning a traditional generation for not more quickly falling into line with the “new morality”—spinning it as a conflict with the Witness organization, when in actually it is a conflict with the morality of the Bible.

Yes, I know, I know. The application of the Man of Lawlessness is to the emergence of the clergy class in the early centuries. That point was repeated in the discussion of Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians at the midweek meetings. But is there anyone other than me that thinks a modern application would be more to the emergence of a modern-day atheist class, today’s apostasy, that turns upon the theocratic organization under the guise of “protecting people” from its “mind-control?” 2 Thessalonians 2:3. Let no one lead you astray in any way, because it will not come unless the apostasy comes first and the man of lawlessness gets revealed, the son of destruction. 4 He stands in opposition and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he sits down in the temple of God, publicly showing himself to be a god. 5 Do you not remember that when I was still with you, I used to tell you these things? 6 And now you know what is acting as a restraint, so that he will be revealed in his own due time. 7 True, the mystery of this lawlessness is already at work, but only until the one who is right now acting as a restraint is out of the way. 8 Then, indeed, the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will do away with by the spirit of his mouth and bring to nothing by the manifestation of his presence. 9 But the lawless one’s presence is by the operation of Satan with every powerful work and lying signs and wonders 10 and every unrighteous deception for those who are perishing, as a retribution because they did not accept the love of the truth in order that they might be saved. 11 That is why God lets a deluding influence mislead them so that they may come to believe the lie, 12 in order that they all may be judged because they did not believe the truth but took pleasure in unrighteousness. Verse 4 fits an atheistic Man better than it does a clerical Man. Also verses 9 and 10–with the powerful works and wonders being the application of science, which enthralls them to the point that they forget all about God. It certainly fits better with the line of Paul from the next chapter: Finally, brothers, carry on prayer for us, that the word of Jehovah may keep spreading rapidly and being glorified, just as it is with you, and that we may be rescued from harmful and wicked men, for faith is not a possession of all people. It is not those with faith—even a skewed faith that might be ascribed to a clergy class—that most seek to further the “cult” meme today. It is those without faith. it is all spot-on to identify the Man of Lawlessness with the emerging clergy class in the first century, with all the infusions of Babylonian and Greek philosophies that it embraced and spread. But today that Man is much weakened. He is casually respected as long as he stays in his place, but his place is much reduced. In the old days his place was anywhere he wanted it to be. He limps along trying to insist that he is relevant, and more and more people doubt that is the case. The verses of 2nd Thessalonians remind me more today of an atheistic Man than of a religious Man.

No. It is a must-avoid. Actually, it is sort of cute. It is not a must-see, but it is a movie you would probably enjoy. We have some good friends in that circuit, who tell us A) that there is a congregation in Punxsutawney, and B) you never saw such a tacky place in your life, with every interest imaginable cashing in on the legend.