TrueTomHarley

8 hours ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

It's like those that fear if their children play a Beatles Vinyl Album backwards , they will hear the words "Worship Satan".

They hear ‘Turn me on, dead man.’ It is very distinct and impossible to mistake, when they play backwards Revolution #9.

Check your ‘Beatles checker’

2 hours ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

Like the Pharisees loading burdens on the people. 

I admit I have never seen it as the GB placing a heavy burden on people by informing young men that masturbation is not the bees’ knees.

1 hour ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

If only you could understand that the JW Org is run by fear not love. 

At last, I think you have put your finger on the problem. That Anna is nothing but a big chicken. ?

21 minutes ago, Space Merchant said:

In my country the pretzel were rounded. They look similar to the Italian pretzels known as Taraliis.

Every morning around 10:30am-11:30am, a woman with a basket on her head will walk around the towns and or villages, tossing the pretzels in a small bag to children and older folk. Other times it is cookies, bon-bon, as we call it, popcorn and or the best kind of snack, Sugar Canes. The other half of my family from Belize do something similar, but never made rounded pretzels, we tend to get more fruit

One loop. These are Unitarian pretzels, not those of Fred Rogers.

44 minutes ago, Space Merchant said:

Yes, but regarding him I do not see how is trying to approach masturbation and pornography in such as to give a helping hand a smoke screen when others are in the same boat trying to help those who have this problem, mainly if said problem grows out of control to the point they will do things they would never think of doing to begin with. For any person and or group who is combating this addiction, such is no smoke screen, for this is the same game those who are for masturbation and pornography and think it is a normal way of life, will often say, and I have run into such ones before who give the wrong ideas to people who are clearly not a fan of the problem.

It could be just me, but it seems that he has but a passing interest in the topic of discussion, if any at all, and but uses whatever the subject to further his peeve with the GB. If you discuss any other aspect of the topic, you lose him.

15 minutes ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

I think you missed my point.

There is only one point JB has, SM. Please get your head around it.  ?

6 minutes ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

It appears that the Elders also try to tell the marriage mates of those that leave the Org' not to discuss scriptural things with the one who has left. So where do the elders get this instruction from ?

You mean that your wife will not discuss these things with you? Whatever is wrong with that woman?

I hope you dial this stuff down a few notches at home. You cannot be easy to live with. If you go at it at home as you go at it here and your wife decided one day that she just couldn’t take it anymore, I’m sure you would assign the GB full blame for that, too.

8 hours ago, JW Insider said:

To their credit the WTS did not ban pretzels, although now I always look at them a bit like "hot cross buns."

Thr reason for they always indulged pretzels is that they all got a kick out of the joke, ‘What do you get when you pour boiling water down a rabbit hole?’

Hot cross bunnies.

Per the 60 Minutes report years ago:

Industry-funded studies concluded that the stuff was as safe as rain.

Nonindustry-funded studies concluded: ‘Yikes! We’d better take another look at this!’

19 minutes ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

I note that you didn't answer any of my questions 

How many of them do you want answered?

We went round and round on a prior thread and you just repackage your questions and run them through again.

The verse says: ‘Taste and see that Jehovah is good.’ If you tasted and saw that he was bad, what can I say? Check your taste buds. But you can just as easily say it to me.

It may be that you should be praying to The LORD. It is the GB that brings God’s name to the fore, nearly everyone else seeks to bury it, and you have made clear that you don’t trust the GB as far as you can spit.

1 hour ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

In Maryland, they still have on the books that the local Sheriff can, at his discretion, jail anyone disparaging "The Holy Trinity".

Always I wait till I have crossed the state line before I disparage via megaphone the phony insert at 1John 5:7-8

 

I liked at the meeting Thursday, Proverbs 21:2, one of the support scriptures cited on the gem point of how Jehovah draws people: 

All of a man’s ways seem right to him, But Jehovah examines the hearts.

Everybody is right. Nobody states a fact that is wrong. Everybody states facts that are right. These are all matters of the head.

But how they are combined and how they are prioritized are matters of the heart, which Jehovah examines.

3 hours ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

As for this stupid argument as to what the law states or does not state, its totally irrelevant.

Of course! Why bring such nonsense into a discussion of courtroom proceedings?

21 hours ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

And how could a person, with a clear conscience, go on the ministry to try to bring more people into an Organisation which allows such wicked Child Abuse to go on

A Montana court is now hearing some of these cases. The pattern is familiar. They are civil matters, not criminal matters, because almost always no crime has been committed. The ‘crime’ charged is ‘failing to go beyond the law’ in reporting allegations or actual instances of child sexual abuse.

If it is so crucial to go beyond the law, MAKE that the law everywhere. It is what Geoffrey Jackson pleaded for before the ARC. What could be simpler? Make universal mandatory reporting laws that allow for no exceptions. JWs will be delighted at that development.

The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reported (November 20, 2011) that two thirds of professionals who ARE required to report suspected child abuse fail to do it. “Studies over the past two decades nationally have consistently shown that nearly two-thirds of professionals who are required to report all cases of suspected abuse fail to do so.....‘I think that we fail miserably in mandated reporting,’ said Monroe County Assistant District Attorney Kristina Karle.”

Why do the two thirds of professionals required by law to report child abuse fail to do it? Is it that two thirds of professionals are wicked and don't give a hoot about children? Few would say that. Most would say that there must be other factors involved to account for such a lapse. Have the two thirds all been sued or fired? Yet here we have congregation elders, who were NOT required to report, on trial for not reporting. Penalizing people for ‘not going beyond the law’ simply allows for Monday-morning quarterbacking to assign motives, invariably bad ones, to people unpopular.

The purpose of law is to codify what is right and to make an involved situation simple. That is why Brother Jackson asked for such a change. That way both parties, secular and congregation, can pursue their investigations into wrongdoing without hampering the other.

It is a dilemma that Jehovah’s Witnesses face almost alone. Few others feel the need to look into their own wrongdoing. ‘Preach to them on Sunday and let that be the end of it,’ most say. ‘Whether they do it or not is not our concern.’ Only a religion determined to remain as clean as possible in God's eyes investigates such matters itself.

Since our last engagement I have taken to kicking back at some of these articles. Sometimes I place the responses on this site as well. Such as here:

https://www.theworldnewsmedia.org/topic/59889-a-reply-to-three-philadelphia-inquirer-incendiary-articles-about-child-sexual-abuse-and-jehovahs-witnesses/

and here:

https://www.theworldnewsmedia.org/topic/70092-the-serena-williams-child-doesnt-do-birthdays-parts-25-and-3/

If you keep on knocking through regular prayer and continued reading of the Bible and yet are still not moving forward, apparently that is not enough.

Put aside for a moment the question of whether or not the GB is doing a good job; the point is that there needs be some organized human component of the divine/human interface to move God's work forward in a practical way. Otherwise, individual Christians end up merely flailing away ineffectively, and in time, are absorbed into the popular culture.

31 minutes ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

Since leaving the JW Org I have continuously prayed to God using both names Yahweh and Jehovah and always prayed through Jesus Christ. I am reading the 4 gospels over and over now and finding things I never noticed before. but I will confess one thing, I have not yet moved forward

It is because you are kicking against the goads, like Saul was when he was told he was just making it hard on himself. Stop doing that and you will recover and again move forward.

Even Serena Williams, smashing her racket, cussing out the officials, putting it all on display, and saying she will one day practice the faith, has managed to cobble together 145 mil.

https://coed.com/2016/06/04/serena-williams-net-worth-how-much-is-serena-worth-net-worth-tennis-french-open/

2 hours ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

When Jehovah was a "harsher taskmaster", and NOBODY could obey the Old Covenant regulations .... THERE WERE NO REGULATIONS ABOUT THIS SUBJECT. This was at a time when nearly EVERYTHING ELSE  was regulated.

Hard to fault the old pork chop here, much as I like to do it. Still, it's hard to picture the ancient Israelites carrying on this way.

26 minutes ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

Like watching an Indiana Jones movie, and when the Nazis show up, there is no need to belabor or explain who the "Bad guys" are.

"I hate these guys."  Indiana Jones

On ‎9‎/‎17‎/‎2018 at 12:23 AM, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

FAKE NEWS is when it is alluded to that Trump is going to use it for ANY personal purpose.

That is true, though if I see any ads for Ivanka's line of clothing, I am reassessing. Especially if she introduces fashion with a new 'Armegeddon survival look.'

14 hours ago, Jack Ryan said:

He should wipe that grin off his face if he only has $100 million. Why such a pauper, compared to Gates or Buffett?

8 minutes ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

 

is Victorian culture and personal preferences ... ARE PRESENTED AS THE WILL OF GOD!

I have commented before that strict avoidance of all earthy language (which if I recall correctly, reliably triggers your outrage, so that I have sometimes employed it just to get you going) is more a Victorian relic than a biblical one. When Elijah taunts that maybe Baal has excrement, I somehow can't picture him using that clinical word.

That said, there is one of the 'Church fathers,' I forget who, who rails against masturbation, painting it as a huge sin. 

Of course, that is not to say that we must follow the church fathers. It is to say, though, that condemnation of masturbation is not a product of the Victorian age.

“Finally, Moses cried out to Jehovah: “What should I do with this people? A little longer and they will stone me!” as the Israelites went online and complained 24/7 over everything under the sun. It is an update Exodus 17:4 into the present. Though the July 2018 Watchtower article entitled ‘Where are Your Eyes Looking?Â’ nowhere makes the connection, beyond a vague reference to those having ‘a measure of responsibility in GodÂ’s organization,Â’ which everyone took as a reference to congregation elders, I couldnÂ’t help but think the ones of the Governing Body had themselves foremost in mind as beneficiaries of the counsel offered.

It is not as though I have any special insight. It is just that I hang out on the internet a lot and I hear all the grousing going on. It is not necessarily to my credit that I do this. It may be like the impression you get from hearing Trump and Obama people scream online at each other day and night but then you go into the real world and you find that people get along with each other tolerably well despite differences, and it is just the internet that gives a skewed picture.

Much was made of the instance in which Moses produced water from the rock at GodÂ’s direction. He did it twice, something that I had forgotten, if I ever knew it in the first place. The first was months after crossing the Red Sea, during a time when there was so much muttering over lack of water that Moses in frustration cried out the words above. It didnÂ’t occur to them that the God who slammed Egypt with ten plagues and parted the waters, closing them upon the army in pursuit, could solve the problem of a drought. Jehovah told Moses to strike a rock. Moses did, and water gushed out. (Exodus 17)

The next instance was almost 40 years later, and the people seem to have worn Moses down, what with constant bellyaching and occasional rebellion throughout the interim. This time when they started complaining over the same thing, Moses lost it. “Hear, now, you rebels! Must we bring water for you from this crag?” and struck the rock twice, after which water again gushed out. But God didn’t like what Moses had shouted. Much later Psalm 106: 32-33 says, ‘They provoked him at the waters of Meribah, and it went badly for Moses because of them. They embittered his spirit, and he spoke rashly with his lips.”

Look, if you approach the speaker after a good talk and tell him it was a good talk, he will as often as not say something to the effect that it is not really him who should get the credit, but Jehovah. He says that even though people are capable of speaking all by themselves without any help at all from Jehovah. So what about someone who takes full credit for doing what no human in a thousand years could do? It is what Moses did. Yet that’s what can happen when the scoundrels are nipping at your heels day and night for forty years. This last bit of correction from God, that Moses as a result of his outburst would not be the one to take his countrymen into the promised land, strikes the average reader as pretty harsh. Yet it is entirely in harmony with ‘to whom more is given, more will be expected,’ and ‘he will finish your training; he will make you firm.’ Moses, like everybody else, is being trained for the real life, not this transitory one.

Notwithstanding that the internet is the perfect breeding ground for complainers, one has to ask. ‘What is it with all these malcontents?’ It is as though kicking against the goads is the order of the day, seen everywhere. Acquiescence to the authority of the parent, the teacher, the counselor, the coach, the boss, the consulted advisor, the party leader, the union steward, and those taking the lead in the congregation was once an entirely unremarkable fact of life; today it is selling out one’s soul. I begin to imagine the GB posting God’s rebuke to Moses as their own personal yeartext, in hopes that they do not also lose it one day kicking back at the grumblers.

God counted that complaining about Moses as complaining about Him. “When your forefathers tested me; They challenged me, though they had seen my works,” reads Psalm 96:6. ‘Yeah, well, they’re no Moses,’ I can hear the retorts already, ‘Where are their comparable works? What Red Sea did they lead anyone though?’

No, I think people should think very hard before they go there. The human component of the divine-human interface is always the sticking point. It is even so with Judas. He and God were tight; there were absolutely no problems there. But that fraud that claimed to be the Messiah! That was just too much for Judas.

Observing that literal food and drink prefigures the greater spiritual food and drink, the accomplishments of the Witness organization today are nothing short of amazing, The average person of a developing nation is stuck with some 200 year-old turkey of a translation that he can neither afford nor understand because those in the church world think it only natural that Big Business be entrusted with the distribution of God’s word. Only Jehovah’s Witnesses devise an entirely separate channel to place a modern understandable translation in his hands at minimal cost, even free. The Bible satisfactorily answers questions that are answered nowhere else, the deeper questions of life such as ‘Why would God permit suffering, why do people die and what is the hope afterward, and what is the ultimate purpose of life?’ Although this fellow may not have a nickel to his name, he has access to the answers no less than someone in more affluent lands, some of whom count it as nothing, as they grouse about matters of personal inconvenience.

It is not nothing. However, when people become obsessed with their own immediate needs and wants, it can become as nothing. I don’t dare do it: simply become a whiner over present inconveniences. There are some inconveniences, of course, in pursuing a united service to God today, but to carry on excessively about them seems to me a reality not too far off from Moses in Sinai. In any organization there is a chance that a given decision will not go your way. Should organization be jettisoned on that account? It is exactly what opposers would wish. That way individuals flail away, accomplish little, and can likely be absorbed in time by the popular cause.

Obviously if you take away the upside there become nothing left other than to bitch about the downside. The rage today of the young is to go atheist. Who smoothed that path for them? However, when they come around complaining about the ‘restrictions’ they have broken free from, always ask them what they have found that is better. What is it that they have to offer? Are they not just ‘promising them freedom’ while existing as ‘slaves of corruption’? What do they have to offer? Simply the freedom to do whatever one wants without check? History shows that freedom has not worked out particularly well for humankind.

 

 

I admit to a prejudice against anything having the suffix 'gate' attached to it. It strikes me as too stupid of a word device, a sure sign of running with the herd.

I haven't seen the videos, not being part of the intended audience.

One way that the internet can lie, even while telling the truth, is through endless repetition of something meant to be heard once, giving the impression that they talk of nothing else over there.

JTR (amazingly) is right. The Bible nowhere mentions masturbation. That said, it pretty clearly is an unclean habit, covered under the topic of gaining self-control, and when one becomes enslaved to it, it can warp one's personality.

I'd say the organization's coverage of it is just about right: occasional discussion in articles geared mostly for young people, with the caveat that it is not the end of the world should one suffer a relapse. The video JTR titillates over was never on the website. Ten years of conventions contain but one mention of it that I can recall.

Adultery and fornication, on the other hand, is mentioned all the time. The degree of repetition is meaningful, yet that measure is completely lost of the internet, the perfect forum where persons can assert themselves wise while proving themselves foolish, turning down all matters of context as 'strawmen.'

On 9/15/2018 at 2:50 PM, admin said:

I will never believe weather reporters ever again. 

This winter when I see reporters shivering in the frigid cold despite being dressed like polar bears I will look for two guys in the background strolling by in their shirtsleeves.