TrueTomHarley

The reason I cannot watch network news anymore is that they are obsessed over whether Secretary of State Tillerson called Trump a moron or not. It is a huge story. Yesterday, Tillerson called a news conference. They carried on and on about how unusual it was for a Secretary of State to do such a thing. He called it mostly to scold them, yet they were too stupid to realize it. Despite media reports that the two do nothing but squabble and that he has had it up to here with the President's dumb ways, Tillerson said he has never even once thought about quitting, that he and the President get along just fine, that he regards him as smart and demanding of results, that he envisions foreign policy possibilities that no one else does. (yeah but, yeah but...did you call him a moron or not?) 'Look, I don't come from this town [Washington], but where I come from we don't have time for such petty nonsense,' he answered. YEAH! Incredibly, they are not chastened by this rebuke. ...'well...he didn't actually say that he didn't call him a moron, did he?' He probably did, is my best guess. It is the realization that they think this is meaningful that takes your breath away. I cannot watch anymore, it has steadily decreased over the past few months. When you work closely with someone, he will do or say things that will nettle you sometimes, and you say in passing 'what did that moron do now?' for Trump does speak impulsively at times - sometimes I think it is by design to see these characters fall all over themselves 'fact-checking' things that everyone else realizes doesn't amount to a hill of beans. They truly think those things are significant in news-land? I have to go someplace where there are grown-ups. For crying out loud, he used to run Exxon! He put that aside for what is the role of a lifetime for him, an area in which he thinks he can best bring his talents to bear - and he probably never imagined there would be such a role other than Exxon. How could anyone possibly be so juvenile as to imagine that he spends his days in cat-fights with the President? I've never seen anyone with less political ambition in my life. You can't even watch the networks for disaster coverage anymore, something at which they were arguably good. All they can talk about is who did comforting and relief better: this President or the one before. This piece is more political than I like to get, but it is not really political at all. It is a commentary on the media. What a bunch of children they have become.

Someone said somewhere: 'what you are doing, get done more quickly,' so you almost wish that if someone is going to leave the faith, they would have done it long ago. That way they do not carry on about being misled or even brainwashed. Why do they not leave quicker? Does one become a Witness through brainwashing? If so, there are far better examples. College is foremost among them. The student is separated almost 24/7 on campus from all that is familiar to him or her. In contrast, on the pathway to become a Witness, you will go to two meetings a week and have a personal Bible study which lasts an hour or two per weekly session. And you'll get to know people and cultivate new relationships in exactly the same way you would cultivate new relationships anywhere else. A special event or two and that's it. 95% of the time you are in the same well-trod territory you have always been in. Moreover, nothing about the way God uses a human agency to direct his people is ever hidden. It is manifest from day one. So it seems disingenuous to grouse about being misled. Instead, one simply reassesses matters over time. They decide the cost is too high and the reason for paying it too nebulous or far off. They depart because they were 'not of our sort' and because they decide that they like this system of things after all, or at least do not dislike it enough to keep such distance. An exception would be those raised in the faith. They never did see both sides. Or, rather, to the extent most of them saw both sides, it was both sides presented through the eyes of the theocratic organization, which hardly represents the other side as that side would represent itself. How to solve this? I don't know. It may already be solved to the extent it can be. The reason Obi-wan does not want Luke to go over into the dark side is that he really thinks it is the dark side. He is not trying to control Luke. He is not trying to deprive him of anything. He is looking out for him. He truly believes the dark side is bad, and he doesn't say 'why don't you go over there and roam around for a while so you can make an informed choice.' So it is with the GB. Charges that they try to control people are so juvenile, so adolescent, that they are hard to countenance. How could anybody be so stupid? No. They truly believe the theocratic side is good and the other side is - well - the dark side. Though that viewpoint is objectionable to some, it is exactly how the Bible presents matters. I don't know how you get around it, or if you even want to, though it does result in the problems mentioned above. Furthermore, if the GB ever 'misrepresents' the non-Witness world, it is not because they are sinister. It is because they don't know it themselves. They take their own counsel, which is the Bible's counsel, and they don't go there. They are lowly people who have poured themselves out and who now find themselves in places that are 'high for them.' They don't puff themselves up over it. They trust in God and actually, like the kings of old supposedly did, read their Bibles daily. They keep away from what is 'falsely called knowledge' and from 'empty philosophies that violate what is holy and toss people about as though the waves of the sea.' They have run their own lives with the lesson of Haggai ever foremost - 'clean will be contaminated by unclean,' not the reverse - and so they don't go there. Because they don't go there, they know it only through the lens of Scripture. If the Bible says, in effect, that the 'world will chew you up and spit you out,' they assume that it does. if they find someone who says exactly those words, they eat it right up and broadcast it. And who is to say the words are untrue? Some get chewed up and spit out so decisively and quickly that no one would ever deny it, but with others? Who is to say the scriptures are wrong on that point? It may just take a longer time to get chewed up and spit out. Certainly the one out of ten senior citizens from the other post might have come to think that, seeing everything they had worked for drained away.

If I understand this correctly, then the new truth you have arrived at is that the world is salvageable and we should all work to fix it, rather than carry on about there being a true religion and an end of this system of things.

We have already covered the scriptural evidence of a triune God and it is laughably small. The reason I shy from these type of discussions is that always participants have been convinced by revelation of some sort. How does one counter that? Truth revealed through revelation is fine until you find someone else who has also received truth by revelation and it differs from yours.

yes, but they are all warm and fuzzy friendly bacteria, who only want peace and to be loved and to be accepted for who they are. Only when in the toilet do they come over to the dark side and plot evil....I think (for free science lessons, contact: 'Ask True Tom')

One does such things when a plain answer fails to stem a tantrum. It is a significant shebang they are throwing, at considerable expense. Everyone else would pass the collection plates and would not stop passing them until they had their fill. The Witnesses have faith to staff the place with contribution boxes which every single person can walk by if they so wish.

CC of JW: Dear brothers: Please tape over all contribution boxes so that no one can donate. If anyone tries to remove the tape, reprove them. If they try again, if it a judicial matter. If anyone wants the Bethel address so that they can donate that way, tell them that it is none of their business. if they want to know about donating by electronic means, tell them they have inquired into matters too high for them. It's the only way we can shut @Shiwiii up.

I'm going to get me one of those things someday that all you have to do it tap the cashier on the forehead with it and the transaction is done.

Thars money in them thar pockets!

I'm not sure what terrible thing I said. John said of those who went out in the first century, 'they were not of our sort.' So of someone who 'went out' in the modern day, he would say that they were?

*

It's all perception and spin. The woman who catches the garter at a wedding is never insulted.

In this case, I think a gun would not be of much use. The scheme is legal. Read and see that, though every sort of authority was called to intervene, none did - because the villains were operating within the law. You might have pointed your gun and found satisfaction in shooting one of them (there were four in the case of the North family) or just scaring them away, but that would have only strengthened the court perception that you were in need of a guardian, and probably permanent prison besides. It's not even government, really. It is private enterprise doing the foul deed, bending government law to its will. You could even make the case that it is not too much government, but too little, that is the problem. The laws upon which guardianship is based go back 800 years. One it ten American seniors abused in this way. Legally. It's breathtaking.

This may be one of the most evil schemes I have ever read, and it is all the more evil in that it is perfectly legal. It is more evil still in that perpetrators may think themselves benefactors. Rachel Aviv deserves a Pulitzer. No punishment is too severe for the perpetrators, who may be legion. People who insist upon gun rights will say this is exactly why they advocate for them. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/09/how-the-elderly-lose-their-rights

This is ridiculous. Yes, of course you can find some who have espoused the same, but given where we are in the stream of time, it's a bit late to be still meeting in a Quonset hut under the direction of a pork chop preacher. It's a bit late not to have made serious headway in preaching the Matt 24:14 good news, and nobody else is doing that. You don't have to go to the archives and search the journals of religion. You just have to look around you.

I was a sleeping JW for the last 8 hours or so, but now I have awaken. I don't believe in answering questions like this because there is no way for you to check. I could tell you I am a circuit overseer. I could tell you I am disfellowshipped. How would you know? To the extent you are interested, judge for yourself by what I have written. Seriously. That is your best guide. You may say that you are not that interested to do it. That's okay, too.

The article will be different than you imagine. It will start - and maybe finish - its own thread.

I think you will take it more to heart after I post an certain article - not my own - tomorrow.

When I say 'right reasons' I am not speaking biblically. I am simply speaking of reasons that are not hypocritical. Things you have flagged are not the right reasons, imo. The GB has done flip-flops on doctrinal things? They've never said otherwise. What is 'the light gets brighter' or 'tacking' if not an admission that positions are being revised? But they are all on superfluous things. They are all trimmings on the tree, and not the tree itself. The essential doctrines of Jehovah's Witnesses that distinguish us from anyone else have been bedrock for over 100 years - teachings that the Trinity is false, for example, and that the soul does not live on after death. These are the the important points that one should focus on. No one else figured it out. You didn't. I didn't. The GB did. We should cut them slack for that reason. If they have all become villains, as some people here seem to think, then God will make them all drop in their tracks. He's God. He can do things like that. 2 Timothy 4:10 tells us that Demas left Christianity because he 'loved the present system of things' One may not agree with his decision, but it is not hypocritical. That's what I meant by the 'right reasons.' John wrote (1 John 2:19) that many had left because 'they were not of our sort.' Again, one may think their actions unwise, but they are not hypocritical.

It is fine to leave Jehovah's Witnesses if one wants to. Why not? But one should leave for the right reasons, not exaggerated or made-up nonsense.

Nobody ever said that that would not happen. And if they ever did, they changed it.

Pretty flimsy 'evidence' upon which to rest one's central doctrine, imo. The internet is inherently the land of the liars and you are silly to take it too seriously. You cannot possibly know who's who. This is not to say that he is. Perhaps I am. Or you. Some on the internet are geniuses. Some on the internet are absolute morons, but because they can make letters of the alphabet appear onscreen, they are perceived as smart. I don't put him in either category. I haven't figured him out. He weighs in, more or less, on the side I think is correct. That's enough for me. I don't screen every word. Why anyone would debate at length with someone ambiguous is beyond me.

Actually, I meant 'spinning' that might not translate, for in the U.S. it has only been applied to political matters in the last decade or so - perhaps that new definition has not caught on with other lands. Spin (from thesaurus.com) Synonyms for spin noun circular motion spiralstar twiststar circuitstar gyrationstar revolutionstar rollstar rotationstar turnstar whirlstar None of these words apply. 'Spin' the way I have used it is slanting or interpreting data one way or another according to one's bias.

It is also American. I'm not sure it translates well.

He is the founder of Guelph Ontario, where my wife and I visited not long ago.