TrueTomHarley

There are innumerable threads about 1914 on this forum, and I have participated in some of them. Go back, find what I have written, and let that stand as your answer.

Now you’ve got it. My own mutt has become quite the songwriter: (Sung to the tune of Love Potion #9) I took my appetite to Madame Mew, You know that neighbor cat that’s been taboo. She’s got a pad and she’s setting up so fine, but what she doesn’t know is for my dinner she’ll be mine. I told her that I was a reformed bitch. I hadn’t eaten cat since 96. She looked at me suspiciously but then she changed her mine, she said ‘You seem a changed dog, and that suits me just fine. She lay down and turned around and I gave a wink. I said ‘I’m gonna eat this cat with ketchup, I think,’ I knew that when I made my move she’d raise quite a stink. I held my nose, I closed my eyes, but then I blinked: I didn’t know if it was day or night, She screeched and scratched at everything in sight, but when she caught my snout, then I nearly lost my mind. I said ‘I’ll leave this cat alone, clear till the end of time. Clear till the end of ti-hi-hi-hi-hime, clear till the end of time. (Don’t try to revive your singing career with this, old boy. The mutt will sue in a heartbeat. He is the most litigious dog I have ever owned.)

Organization makes possible the magnification of almost anything. In this case it is the spread of the message of God’s kingdom. To thwart that magnification, and even the message itself, is the primary reason to carry on so virulently against it.

They are outlines at the assemblies and conventions, but they are so tightly packed that it is barely possible to deviate or ramble. Most convention talks these days are but 10 minutes in length, and that often includes a video. Public talks at the Kingdom Hall are 30 minutes in length. The aim is to follow the outline supplied, but there is more room for expounding, illustrating, personalization, etc. Mess up a Kingdom Hall talk and you may live to do another one. Mess up an assembly talk and you are not likely to be assigned another.

Year after year after year I send in my suggestion for the Convention theme. Year after year after year it is ignored! “The righteous one takes care of his domestic animals.” Proverbs 12:10 One glorious year it will happen.

There you go again. You’ve got it all wrong.

Come now, John, what do you expect? Of course I am here to get ammo. You have logged hundreds of comments here during the past year. I can’t recall that you have budged even the tiniest degree on the tiniest point. When someone answers one of your complaints, you shake it off like a dog shakes off water, and lodge the complaint again. When someone attempts to “meet you halfway,” you take their end and beat them over the head with it. So, do you think that I am here to converse with you? I don’t even think that it is proper to do so. After your congregation elders were totally unable to reason with you on your strident points, you cut all ties with the Christian congregation. And now you think that you will come online and do what you could not do with then in person? Not with me, you’re not. I trust those guys. Furthermore, I don’t think that I am the only one who keeps endless conversations going for the sake of gaining feedback from arguments. With me, it is a variation of “Run it up the flagpost, and see who salutes it.” It is “Run it up the flagpost and see if John succeeds in shooting any holes in it.” I know very well that the air will be acrid with gunpowder. But that is not the same thing as hitting it. Once in a while you do graze it a little and then I rethink matters and reconsider presentation.

If you divorce a woman, you should not be overly shocked if she stops speaking to you.

I had no problem with it. How you carry on.

Haven’t gone yet. But I think it is possible to extrapolate from prior conventions what this one will be. That’s what I have done.

Years ago an introductory convention talk featured Matthew 13:52 “...every public instructor who is taught about the Kingdom of the heavens is like a man, the master of the house, who brings out of his treasure store things both new and old.” It wouldn’t all be new. It would be also plenty of the old. At seventy years of age, most of it will be old. It will be reminders and exhortations, encouragement and the relating of experiences. It will be new ways of looking at old things—the gem turned so that it is examined through a new facet. Since you are so very much out of harmony with the ones putting on the program, you will kick back at most of it. I mean, you are not exactly easy to satisfy.

It is exactly that way with modern assemblies, assuming you brownbag the mutton and chicken, and hold the wine.

Kids cost an arm and a leg to raise. Two of them will disable you for life. Okay. I’ll approach it in that spirit. I think you defeat yourself looking at it this way. The Bible is a finite book. You have been reading it for 70 years. Just what do you expect to learn that is new? There are three assembly events in modern times. There were three assembly events, connected with the festivals, in ancient times. What did they learn then that was new? Why did they go?

He does. That’s half the problem. Working up a better answer. Time is a little tight now.

It is not only you, and the obtuseness is perhaps not deliberate.

Thanks for that, SM. I did know it. I just said what I did to answer someone who it seems to me is deliberately obtuse.

Here. Try some of this:

It is good that you inserted the last two words. I hope you know what you are getting into. You can always back out, and so not be obliged to sing my sad song: ”And it’s been the ruin of many a poor boy, and God, I know I’m one.”

You are going to fit in just fine.

When I worked for the inventory company for a time, described by a former manager as ‘the most selfish company in the world,” there were three female student workers from the nearby SUNY college. All were that tall, and were colloquially known as ‘the Amazons.’

I could have given them hundreds.

You would have taken out the smiley? Maybe so. It was a quick Wikipedia search I did to come up with that bit, and you know how authoritative Wikipedia is. Why don’t you hop on there and put in your recollection? I’ve never entirely gotten my head round just how that is supposed to work. Apparently if one ignoramus writes something wrong, others jump on board to instantly set him straight.

Talk: (5 min. or less) w04 5/1 19-20 ¶3-7—Theme: How Were Certain Christians “a Strengthening Aid” to Paul? (Col 4:11, ftn.) (th study 7) “I know several people who rose in their employment far beyond what their qualifications and education would have seemed to permit. When I investigated, I found that it was because they had deliberately made themselves indispensable. “Aw, man, I can’t believe I left my parchments at my apartment,” someone would say. He (or she) would volunteer to get it. “Rats, I left my cloak in the car,” another would say. “I’ll get it,” was his reply. Of course, those are Bible examples from 2 Tim 4:13, the gist of such will be revisited presently. What they would actually volunteer for is some pain-in-the-neck spreadsheet that had to be done but nobody wanted to do it. So it is that five obscure characters rose in the ranks in the apostle Paul’s eyes. “Only these are my fellow workers,” he says of Tychicus, Onesimus, Aristarchus, Mark, and Justus, almost as though they formed a cabal. He describes them as a “strengthening aid” (“source of great comfort” - 2013 NWT) and the Greek root word is peregoria, used only once in scripture, which generally has medicinal connotations, hence the two acceptable renderings. Going back several decades, there was the English ‘peregoric,’ an over-the-counter medicine. It had opium in it. It was good for whatever ailed you. Paul comes across as almost superhuman in his endurance—recall Mark Sanderson at the Gilead gradation referring to the list at 2 Corinthians 11:23 and observing that just one of those experiences would have floored most of us—yet he surely could have used “strengthening” from time to time. Like when enemies try to pin the charge of ‘sedition’ on him—as they did with Jesus—as they have done with Jehovah’s people today—and, far from according him respect as a driving force of an important religion, dismiss him as a “pest” promoting a “sect.” (Acts 24:5) If someone is described that way—especially if they are under (house) arrest, as was Paul—there is a tendency to keep one’s distance, lest the unsavory accusations rub off. If someone is charged with sedition, you think twice before you say, “That’s my buddy!” If someone is written off as a “pest,” you show whose esteem you are trying to court by whether you identify with that person or not. Similarly, “they will say every sort of [wicked] thing about you,” Jesus says of his disciples. And ‘if you see how they treat me, then you know how they will treat you.’ (Matthew 5:11, John 15:20) There is a tendency to back away from anyone of whom “every sort of wicked thing” is said, and these five cabal Christians would not do it. It is hard not to think of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia right now. As some are being led off to courts and imprisonment, after having personal property confiscated, their brothers, far from laying low, are publicly identifying with them. There is even a scene somewhere of the friends clapping in the aftermath of a trial, as the “guilty” member is being led away. It plays a little odd from a distance, but the idea is to recognize and support those keeping integrity under trial. It is hardly just Russia, however. Everywhere “every sort of wicked thing” is said about Christians, affording ones opportunity to gather round or distance themselves. Qualifications were not unreachable for those whom Paul would later recognize as a “strengthening aid,” or “source of great comfort”—just stick with him under censure and don’t run like a chicken. One of them even DID run like a chicken at one time (arguably) —Mark, but he later got his act together and identified with Paul in hard times—so if we are chickens, there is yet hope. The others: “Tychicus, my beloved brother and faithful minister and fellow slave in the Lord, will tell you all the news about me. I am sending him to you so that you will know how we are and that he may comfort your hearts. He is coming along with Onesimus, my faithful and beloved brother, who is from among you; they will tell you all the things happening here.Aristarchus, my fellow captive, sends you his greetings, and so does Mark, the cousin of Barʹna·bas (concerning whom you received instructions to welcome him if he comes to you), and Jesus who is called Justus, who are of those circumcised. Only these are my fellow workers for the Kingdom of God, and they have become a source of great comfort to me.” (Colossians 4:7-11) Tychicus made himself a conduit and a go-for. Onesimus is the former slave that the educated Paul hung out with—probably freed at his request, since his owner had also become a Christian. Aristarchus—all that is known about him is that he was a jailbird with Paul, and incurred the same slander. Mark, as mentioned, is the reformed chicken. Justus—virtually nothing is known about him. These are not high-profile people and their high praise as Christians is not unreachable for anyone.” That is how I ended the talk, by observing that anyone could attain that status and that I hoped to be described that way myself someday.

This brings to mind when Anna started complaining that I never upvoted anyone, so I searched through her comments and upvoted if she so much as sneezed. In no time at all, I had crashed her computer system.

There are a few of them here. Someone should work on producing a program.