TrueTomHarley

18 minutes ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

I have often (every time he starts typing ..) thought that he is a bitter enemy of Jehovah's Witnesses, and an excellent psychologist, and deliberately portrays himself as a petulant, angry, demented, slow and  truly nasty person (when he may in actual fact be NONE of those things ...), in order to with reverse psychology make Jehovah's Witnesses look like all those things ... so that others are deliberately CHASED AWAY from any idea that they might want to be one of Jehovah's Witnesses.

Suddenly the unthinkable has happened. JTR has become the wise and intrepid man of the thread—daring to go where no one has gone before 

18 minutes ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

Fortunately, I have a stockpile of cartoons to get refocused on ....

Can we set up some sort of a lending library program so that I can borrow some?

1 hour ago, TrueTomHarley said:

I don’t. You, too, have read it wrong. I guess John has a point

Alright, alright, already—it was Srecko I was speaking of.

It does play into another bit of speechmaking for me. I don’t think it is proper to entreat ones who have so firmly put himself into the opposite camp after having weighed all the evidence. I don’t do it.

When I address any of these characters, it is not to sway them—I don’t think that I have seen a single person here alter their position since I came across this site long ago, so what sort of a self-pugilist would pour their time into that futile effort?

When I address these characters it is to speak to whoever might lie beyond—and that may be nobody. It is also the case that whatever is hammered out eventually appears in some other form where it may do some good.

The fat lady has not yet sung, so who can say where anyone will be when she does? Still, I don’t entreat them to come back on the side of the angels. They have decisively shown where they want to be. Perhaps some day they will no longer want to be there, but if so, it will not be because of my invitation. They have rejected that invitation decisively after having once accepted it and I think it is wrong therefore to keep extending it. Essentially, they have tasted and pronounced Jehovah bad. Beyond saying ‘check your tastebuds,’ there is little response to be made.

These are persons—many of them—who conducted themselves so outrageously and unremorsefully in word or deed that they were put out of the congregation, and as such, I keep my distance spiritually. And now they will come online and engage me in earnest spiritual conversation? It’s not happening on my watch.

it is sort of a fine line—the distinctions between engaging, responding, conversing, answering, and fraternizing. Billy (the bad cop) sees no distinction at all between them and simply practices roasting and toasting. I am not so sure that he is wrong—though I am sure enough about it not to do it myself. It’s mostly the horrible PR that he leaves in his wake that is objectionable. To the extent people think he is a Witness, he paints them as the most intolerant, rigid, and anger-prone people on the planet.

17 minutes ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

As 'Judgement day' is still a long way off yet, God has plenty of time to show the true Anointed and to prove they are inspired. 

How do you know that ‘Judgement day’ is still a long way off yet?

Didn’t you just base that on your previous assessment that God has not yet produced a true Anointed? It does not sound like much to hang one’s hat on.

25 minutes ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

You do make life complicated when you don't mention who you are talking about. 

It wasn’t you.

6 hours ago, BillyTheKid46 said:

If you consider that person your brother, more power to you, I don't and unless he repents, never will! 😏

I don’t. You, too, have read it wrong. I guess John has a point. it is well to identify who you are talking about and not just leave that identification to the thread. Even those who you think are paying rapt attention are just waiting for the other blowhard to stop talking so that they can make their own speech.

21 hours ago, Space Merchant said:

and I hope you pick wisely, 

Well, I think he already has picked, long before he came here, and from our point of view, it is not wise. 

It is one thing that I appreciate about Billy Flamethrower, even if I think he is doing nearly everything else all wrong—he does appreciate when choices have been made and he no longer entreats those who have made them.

3 hours ago, BillyTheKid46 said:

Then why do you do it. That’s right kiss up to apostates! It shows your true nature! Oh! I'm sorry if I offend you, while yelling at those that defend the truth, rebuke! Rebuke! Your classic! 😂

I don’t think you read this correctly. It had nothing to do with you, nor were you on my mind.

9 hours ago, BillyTheKid46 said:

However, that fool just like Tom like to use double standards.

Some bromance

1 hour ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

That is totally a Billy the Kid comment.  So is Tom, Billy ?

To be fair to you, John, I did a partial cut and paste and forgot to take out what was irrelevant. Sorry. That doubtless confused you even more than usual. My bad.

I changed it. Again, maybe my bad. JTR will howl that I have thwarted factfinding by the dozens if not hundreds of honest tried and true citizens that he is convinced have nothing better to do with their time but hang out here.

20 hours ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

The devil has had that authority for thousands of years. So why oh why you go on about higher education being the big problem i do not know. 

What! Have you gone back to the devil as a nasty red fellow with horns and a pitchfork who otherwise has no influence?

It is Satan whose ‘spirit’ pervades the air. Do you think that foul air has been sealed out of the university? Or does it emanate from it?

Granted, it is not so everywhere. I recall reading somewhere (not in a WT publication) that business majors and engineering majors seldom study at the expense of their faith. It is more to be found in today’s ‘liberal arts’ that is intertwined in everything. 

When it is not the food that is bad, it is the restaurant in which it is served, with it’s maitre d’s, chefs, and waiters. A la carte is the way to take your education wherever possible—cherry picking the best of it—rather than simply unlatching the top of your head and let today’s atheistic and/or politically minded professors (usually leftist) fill it with whatever they want.

11 minutes ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

That is EXACTLY what I think of when I hear the cringeworthy label "overlapping generations"..

Hmm. It looks to me like you may need a visit from the ‘bad cop.’

3 hours ago, BillyTheKid46 said:

Yes, Paul was a Pharisee, but he was also a prosecutor for the church, which in essence made him a legal entity, as a convincing lawyer. Therefore, both terms are politically correct!

It may be so, but that is not how anyone understands the word ‘lawyer.’ Even few of us would understand it that way, and it is too trivial a point to be so glaringly out of sync with common understanding of the word. 

We are trying to communicate, after all, not make people think we are weird. “If the trumpet call is indistinct, who will get ready for battle?”

Some words are not so trivial. They are essential and so we hold to and spread them, even in the face of a world that thinks otherwise. Such as the definition of the individual Witness as a minister. 

We hold to it, even though the world does not think of ‘minister’ that way. To most of them, a minister is someone who ‘has a church’ and ‘gets paid.’

I almost think that we flirted with that definition briefly in the late 70’s to align more with how the word is understood by most people, but then changed it back because it is so core. Blabbermouth probably knows about that. 

But there is no sense in harping on a different understanding of ‘lawyer’ and I am glad that it is no longer done.

(It isn’t, is it?)

12 minutes ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

So why oh why you go on about higher education being the big problem i do not know. 

If people do not have moral underpinnings, you are almost better off not educating them. They can do less harm that way.

If janitors and car-wash attendants had run the financial world back in 2007, they might have found a way to beat the taxpayer out of a day’s wage.

As it was, highly educated MBA’s and lawyers, without the morals to balance their education, ran it and they discovered a way to bury future generations, even nations, in inescapable debt.

2 hours ago, Srecko Sostar said:

 (thanks to God, GB members of those time were not burdened themselves about Education Issue)

Each time there is a slam on the GB for their unenthusiasm over higher education, I think that proponents of that education should be required to take ownership of the world that it has collectively created.

Unlike the GB, the movers and shakers of this world are, with few exceptions, highly educated. Let them point proudly to the world that their brand of education has made. See how many have the chutzpah to do it.

3 hours ago, Srecko Sostar said:

Dear friend SM, Why you are defending WTJWORG when you are not part of them? I represent my opinions as mine, right or wrong or semi-right and semi-wrong. :)) 

Didn’t it turn out in the movie that when he finally pulled his helmet off, he was your father?

7 hours ago, Anna said:

and there is some evidence that he is a Watchtower Lawyer

[from JTR, actually]

I will admit that I am glad they have stopped referring to Paul as a lawyer, which they did a few times & that brother is on permanent potato peeling duty in the Bethel kitchen. 

I mean, technically he was, as a Pharisee, but that is not how anyone understands the term today.

8 hours ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

Tom, if i had to judge, i would say that neither of you are good cops or good JW's

Duh.

Good JWs will not be here. They will have more regard for the preference of the organization not to get into cat fights with those who oppose.

Come on, Billy, let’s retire to the secret closed JW forum where this character can’t come so we can continue to plot our good cop/bad cop strategy. If you like, I’ll even reverse roles, be the bad cop, and let you be the good cop for awhile.

11 minutes ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

Heck ! ... for all I know, BTK46 may be one of TTH's alternate on-line personalities !

hee hee hee    (so are you)

21 hours ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

What [BillytheKid] you and your friend Tom do

John, you are such a two-year-old. You know very well that I rebuked him harshly not long ago, and that he took offense to it.

Nonetheless, I know your style, and I now know that you will be taunting me over this forever. So...is Billy my friend or not?

Yes, assuming that he is the brother that he claims to be, he absolutely is. He is loyal to God. He is loyal to Christ. He is loyal to the human organization that does its level best to follow their lead. He is my friend. He may sometimes display himself a marauding and unhinged pit bull, but he is my friend. In the Kingdom Hall, we would get along just fine. 

Maybe, since you have paired us, we will roll with the illustration of ‘Good Cop/Bad Cop.’ (Guess which one he is) The good cop really and truly does not want you to fall into the hands of the bad cop, for he knows how bad that bad cop can be. He thinks the bad cop is doing it all wrong and indeed wonders sometimes whether the bad cop can truly be a cop. However, the bad cop thinks the good cop is a namby-pamby, fraternizing with the crooks way too much, and wonders ‘where is his loyalty?’

The metaphor works well enough. I like it.

Let me direct you, therefore, to the L.A. Confidential movie in with the corrupt official taunts the good cop: “Oh, give me a break! You are not going to pull the good cop/bad cop routine on me, are you? I wrote the book on that routine!” Whereupon the bad cop grabs him by the scruff of the neck, nearly drowns him in the toilet, and then dangles him by a single foot over the 20th floor window that he had kicked out. 

Placing the jellyfied mess that is left of the corrupt official back on the couch, as the two leave, he says, “Was that in your book?”

Your witness, Billy. Go as easy on him as you are capable of.

14 hours ago, BillyTheKid46 said:

But, keep it up. Tom likes to push the envelope to get a reaction from you guys

You know, sometimes I think that Billy and I are going to get along just fine. 

8 hours ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

I  notice that @TrueTomHarley didn't answer on my comment....Come on Tom, don't hide away. If i am witnessing about Jehovah, then am I one of Jehovah's Witnesses ? 

If I “hide away” at your comment—which I have since addressed—then I notice that you run like a scared rabbit at mine.

When you say you will be satisfied only with a “true” anointed and I say you won’t, I notice you do not answer that. Why not?

Because you know that what I pointed out is true—if the “true” anointed is anything like the true anointed of the first century, they will make adjustments to changing times and circumstances. They will make some mistakes. They will give evidence of human imperfection. As soon as they do, you will rail against them as LIARS, because that is your pattern. There is no reason to think that it would change.

Why did you “hide away” at that remark, John?

3 hours ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

Come on Tom, don't hide away. If i am witnessing about Jehovah, then am I one of Jehovah's Witnesses ? 

Oh, for crying out loud! You think you have found a ‘gotcha’ do you?

If ones leave Jehovah’s earthly organization and still wishes to call themselves Jehovah’s Witnesses because they say they are still witnessing for Jehovah, be my guest—they are perfectly welcome to do so.

In no time at all, however, they will be witnessing for Yahweh, because the name Jehovah is associated with those they don’t like. Soon thereafter, they will be witnessing for The LORD, because people keep giving them the fisheye when they say ‘Yahweh.’ After that they will stop witnessing altogether, because it is hard, they find themselves unsupported, and they have also lost the thread of what to talk about.

That is the pattern that is seldom deviated from.

54 minutes ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

You only kid yourself if you think God is 'working with' the GB / JW Org or the Watchtower. 

He works with them very well indeed, just like he worked with the ‘earthen vessels’ of the first century.

One cannot shoot oneself in the foot more decisively than by insisting, ‘If it is not perfect, then it is filthy.’

What! Because you and your friends are trying to take them down means that God is not working with them? There is not one writer in the Christian Greek Scriptures who does not devote attention to ‘the burning that is taking place among you’. (1 Peter 4:12)

https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2019/01/who-are-the-apostates.html

7 hours ago, BillyTheKid46 said:

No better than Shiwiii desperately trying to prove Jesus is God.

Does he do that? I have wondered what his hangup was.

1 hour ago, Srecko Sostar said:

As result, of this Truth, Watchtower IS Imperfect because

I think it is more along the lines of what a certain brother observed. The younger ones got to be ragging on each other, and he would lean back and marvel, “It’s amazing what Jehovah accomplishes considering what he has to work with.”

3 hours ago, JW Insider said:

At any rate, as we are driving through a Beverly Hills residential area to get here (from the Beverly Hilton past the Beverly Hills Hotel) we were in a neighborhood where the average house cost $50,000,000 and we passed up one that was for sale. My daughter joked that it was for sale for only $35,000,000. 

"A week later I was working on Pretencia Pond Way with Tom and Pearl Pearlsnswine, and also Bill Ding. I was already off to a bad start. It’s always dicey working in the same car group with Tom Pearlsnswine. I knew he’d do something outrageous. He always does. More than once I’ve vowed never to work with him again, but I always repent....As we cruised by the massive homes of Pretencia Pond Way, where the only Bible to be found in many is Consumer Reports, I watched uneasily in the mirror as Tom’s brow darkened. He began to mutter under his breath and presently erupted: “I don’t know how it happened! The pigs have escaped from the barn and they’re in the farmer’s house!” He is such an idiot!"

- Tom Irregardless and Me

If I ever rewrite this, I will include the detail that Pearlsnswines live in the trailer park. Actually, I think I have included that somewhere.

11 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

We went up to the pool on the roof, and felt very out of place. Most of the visitors are merely "on display" never intending to go in the water. And, for some of the more female-looking types, I doubt their tiny thongs would even hold up if they got wet anyway. It's as if even people with a lot of money can't just be comfortable with it, even in laid-back California. They still have to make a showy display of it, speaking very pretentiously, holding their drinks pretentiously, etc, etc. They hope other persons will be just as impressed with their expensive style as they are with their own. Seems no one is really satisfied.

“How does it feeeel, to be on you own, 

with no direction hoooome,

like a rolling stooone.”