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TrueTomHarley

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Everything posted by TrueTomHarley

  1. TrueTomHarley
    I think on this forum, but it could be elsewhere, is a brother who used to call on George Wallace, the Alabama governor, with the magazines. He described him as very cordial, and when the brother brought to his attention that violence had been threatened by the Klan at an assembly, Mr. Wallace told the police chief present to see to it. It doesn't come up in a search here. Maybe I got my wires crossed. Does anyone know about this?
  2. TrueTomHarley
    The old biddy.
  3. TrueTomHarley
    so if 607 BCE is such a clunker, how did it get to be a foundation in the first place? What is this about 'counting backwards?' The above quote seems to indicate otherwise. My vague impression has been that Russell or someone latched onto it strictly through Bible chronology and wasn't overly concerned that it wasn't prevailing opinion - surely something would eventually cause that opinion to come around, as often happens. With 607 BCE as a starting point, it is just a Dan 4 calculation away from 1914. It is not that way? As for the Gnosis mystery above, I assure that there are two scoundrels here as well that are chomping at the bit to chime in, but I am keeping a tight leash on them.
  4. TrueTomHarley
    Actually, I think that many things are essentially unknowable. They have too many permutations. Our nature is that of emotion. And vested interests spin too many notions, sometimes deliberately, to muddy the waters. We make fools of ourselves with our current insistence on 'critical analysis' when we imagine that will solve the problem. Jesus never spoke that way. If anything, he deliberately tweaked those of that mindset, with 'heart' illustrations that he rarely explained. Illustrative is a quote from Max Planck. Who is more science-minded than he? "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." And that assumes that new 'truths' accepted after a generation truly are truths. it is not inevitable that they are. Instead, they are often the mountains, the hills, the islands, that crumble just when you need them the most. That being the case, 'that's all you need' usually suffices. There is nothing wrong with it. Experts are like hired guns. They are like psychiatrists at a murder trial - one insisting the accused knew exactly what he was doing, the other insisting he was crazy as a loon. Yes, it is a bit cynical. But that doesn't mean it's not true. Perhaps that's why people accept 'the Truth' in the first place. They see all the diverse puzzle pieces come together to reveal the mountain vista on the box cover. They taste and see that Jehovah is good. The latter has nothing to do with 'critical thinking,' the former only marginally so. The critical thinker would analyze the pieces in great detail, find some flaws in them, and therefore never attempt to assemble them. If it goes, it goes. As you say, it is not the essence. But I like it when things work. WWI and the Spanish influenza works. Hitler, Roosevelt, the Fed, and the returning Jews do not.
  5. TrueTomHarley
    Maybe Trump didn't. Maybe Chan isn't. Maybe Inglesias didn't. But they all should have.
  6. TrueTomHarley
    While I might be willing to discuss some things with those who want to remodel, that does not mean I am willing to discuss them with those who want to demolish. Especially when they have neither replacement nor concern over that lack.
  7. TrueTomHarley
    While one could say that those things are 'sexy,' they are not nearly so sexy as the entire world being at war for the first time, with the 2nd time largely being a consequence of the first. If that is not 'peace being taken away from the earth' (Revelation 6), I'm not sure what is. If that is not Satan cast down (Revelation 12) and being peeved about it, I'm not sure what would be. Throw in the greatest pestilence ever, and some 'acceptable' food shortages, and the coincidence, if it were to be one, is ...I am tempted to say...unprecedented. In contrast, Hitler and Roosevelt 'rose' for some time, just try selling the Federal Reserve as the issue to get everyone hyped over, and the Jews are a 'been there, done that' thing with our emphasis on spiritual Israel. They are all very problematic. With regard to a World War, you would have to be looking hard NOT to see it. I wasn't suggesting that.
  8. TrueTomHarley
    If you move the day back 20 years, does that fit with any verses? Should it be expected to?
  9. TrueTomHarley
    If this is a reference to 607 (it is not JWI's fault if I do not do my homework), I think of the expression 'it is the victors that write history.' It is a political statement regarding world powers, but it applies to everything. Certainly, science is fraught with accounts of one view coming into vogue, and then crushing the opposition for as long as possible. My understanding is that some scholarly type has written a defense of 607. That's all you need. Not one Witness teaching is the majority view today; should we insist this one must be? For all the hype about 'critical thinking' today, the pattern remains what it has always been; in fact, it intensifies: choose your belief (largely based on 'heart') then go find some 'experts' to back you up. Will 1914 fall? If it does, it does. But I am far from burying it just yet. Nor do I feel I should encourage the GB to have the wisdom and courage to do whatever is right. If I drop dead tomorrow, they will do just fine. I have grown used to explaining that 'if the greatest war in history, the ONLY time until then that the entire world went to war at the same time (China & region excepted, as it was isolated at the time), AND if the greatest pestilence in history does not constitute fulfillment of Matt 24:7 and Luke 21:10, 11, what does? Vs 8 of Matt indicates it starts off with a bang, but continues for some time. Will I have to change my tune on this? On the vs 8 'you ain't seen nothin' yet' front, terrorist knife or vehicle attacks, unheard of not long ago, are now just 'one of those things.' The gay revolution took decades; whereas the transgendered revolution has taken mere months, and a 9 year old girl can be, on National Geographic, not just transgendered, but a transgendered activist. 'Fake news,' absolutely unheard of just 3 years ago, is now a staple of life, one more of many pitfalls to mess with us. Perhaps 1914 will suffice to get us through to the end. Maybe that won't be so far off after all.
  10. TrueTomHarley
    In effect, is he not saying: "Why does TrueTom not apologize to me? Why does he not scroll back through the pages to uncover the stupid, self-absorbed blunder I have made in assuming that since I have seen the video, everyone has seen it, even though most opportunities to see it lie still in the future - further complicated by my insistence that he brought it up in the first place? Why did he roll his eyes and dismiss ME as a loon instead of patiently trying to uncover where I had gone off the rails?" He is touchy about his feelings. He is not unlike @James Thomas Rook Jr., who, when you call him on anything, screams that you know NOTHING about him, how he has seen the BLOOD, the SWEAT, the TEARS, has stared into the VERY ABYSS, has DANCED WITH THE DEVIL IN THE PALE MOONLIGHT, and so forth. The reason I know nothing about such things is that he has never said them. All he does is spray tommygun accusations like a terrorist does bullets, never doubting that his EXTRAORDINARY EXPERIENCE and UNIQUE INSIGHT justifies his outrageous actions. None are unjustified attacks on anyone's character or motive, least of all, his countless slams of the GB. No. They are all FULLY JUSTIFIED!!! Why? Because HE HAS MADE THEM!!! Far from criticizing his style and format, I admire it greatly, and emulate it whenever I can.
  11. TrueTomHarley
    Besides, I am answering your questions. I'm just not answering them in the way you prefer. I'm just not recognizing your right to submit others to interrogation. But, in every case (well...almost) I have responded to something you have said. You need only change one word to make this statement accurate: 'But if you're just willfully distracting from MY purpose of the discussion' For example, why did you not take issue with my characterizing many of my own people as "nuts?" What right had I to do that? Generally speaking, if I have, at times, been ungracious to you, I think you have been no less to me. I simply haven't cried foul with every insult. Mr. Tact and Kindness is telling me about attacks?
  12. TrueTomHarley
    Having failed to ceaselessly debate me at the Kingdom Hall, eventually being shown the door because they WILL NOT accept any answer other than the one they've already set their heart on, they instead go online with the same plea to debate. What they were not able to get me to do at the Kingdom Hall - patiently hash over all their unsatisfiable issues with them, they imagine they will get me to do online. It's not happening on my watch.
  13. TrueTomHarley
    The gnat you should have strained, if you had to strain one , is "nuts," for that is hardly a medically precise term. Obviously, "TrueTom" is not my real name. My early friends appended the 'Tom' and I've had to live that down ever since.
  14. TrueTomHarley
    With some, if you are not strictly literal at all times, you are toast. It is why poets die young. Tell them about 'crocodile tears' and they accuse you of changing the subject to crocodiles, whereas they are trying to speak about real issues involving real people. ("Dam* that TrueTom, mutters @The Librarian. Now I have to start another card category entry under 'reptiles.'") *Misspelled deliberately so as not the offend the sensitive @James Thomas Rook Jr. with a bad word, which he would never use in his refined collection of graphics, lovingly collected as some people do rare stamps now bordering on 6000.
  15. TrueTomHarley
    Since the only alternative facts I mentioned were the prospect of living forever on a paradise earth, is that, too, a misguided 'bubble' for you? If so, you would have saved everyone's time by cutting right to the chase.
  16. TrueTomHarley
    Yes, that is the quote you pull from that long excerpt.
  17. TrueTomHarley
    KellyAnne explained what she meant by that expression. The media went apoplectic when she seemingly applied it to photos that plainly showed whose inauguration crowd was greater...I swear, he does it just to bait them. The 'alternative facts' that she was referring to are the facts she feels they should have been reporting but were not because they were consumed with back-biting and trivia. Lest there be any doubt that this was her meaning, her Twitter banner for a time showed her peering over Trump's shoulder as he signed important looking documents. Photoshopped in was the dialogue box: "I'm 50. He's 45." It is the same here. Grousers that complain would do better to consider the 'alternative facts:' ...how, for example, a person has opportunity to live forever on a paradise earth, and that being the case, is it really the best use of their time to piss it all away over relatively minor things?
  18. TrueTomHarley
    This, too, gets very old. It is the slogan of every soldier of every nation on earth, collectively ripping each other's lungs out. Yes, of course you respect anyone willing to risk their lives for a cause. By that reasoning alone, you would respect ISIS, for they risk all to defend their oppressed back from where they come from. Yes. You respect them. But at some point say: "You poor sap. Why didn't to give your life in a cause worth dying for?" Squabbling about the petty things you mostly squabble about hardly qualifies. Just suck it up and carry on: From: 'No Fake News..." "After studying one book seemingly written for no other purpose other than to harp on dress and grooming and harangue about field service, the conductor said to me: ‘Tom, why don’t you comment? You know all these answers.’ It was a turning point. He was right. I did know them all. It was time to stop sulking. From the circuit overseer on down, they had stirred up major chaos in the family. They had been heavy-handed and clumsy - but never malicious. And it had never been Jehovah. I’d read of ill-goings-on in the first-century record. Congregations described in Revelation chapters 2 and 3 were veritable basket cases, some of them, but that did not mean they weren’t congregations. Eventually things smooth out. Should I stumble when it became my turn? I’d read whiner after whiner carrying on about some personal affront or other on the internet. Was I going to be one of them? Let’s face it - many of Jehovah’s Witnesses are nuts, but none are liars. In a world full of liars one should be able to overlook some nuts. If screwball things happened here, they happen everywhere - usually with consequences devastating to unity - usually with parties stomping off and forming separate factions. “That point the Governing Body just wrote about it?” Mike Tussen once said, referring to matters like the Babylonian exile. “You might have noticed that point, too, years ago. And if this was the world, you would have separated and formed your own religion over it.” Some points are arguable. They can be spun another way. But they are not the essential points. I’ll spin it the way Bethel spins it, out of loyalty. That way we can all move on and get something done. If they spin it another way later, I’ll spin it that way, too, if they demand it. But they don’t demand it – they never do - for these are peripheral points, not the stuff that the truth is made of. Jehovah’s Witnesses maintain precious unity to effectively proclaim a vital message. But everyone must take it on the chin from time to time, and not carry on forever about things that didn’t go their way. Recovery didn’t happen overnight, for I have a PhD in grudge-holding. Indeed, I was so good at it that few noticed I held a grudge, for I had never left the library – I had only strayed from the same page. Now it was time to get on the same paragraph. Was that book truly a dog? They’re not all dazzling flashes of light, you know, for the treasure is contained in earthen vessels. Or was it the conductor? Or was it me? No matter. If life throws you for a loop, you thank God for the discipline and move on. ‘For those whom Jehovah loves he disciplines, in fact, he scourges everyone whom he receives as a son,’ the Bible says. Tell me about it. ‘Half of those at Bethel are here to test the other half,’ the old-timers said. Yeah – tell me about that, too. My training wasn’t even then over – it never is.
  19. TrueTomHarley
    Can this not be taken as 'imputing motive?' almost an ad hominem attack? Alas, perhaps we were speaking past each other. If the thread is long, I skim before posting, and barely touch ground on certain posts, as you would if walking through a cow pasture. Apparently, I missed the change of topic. Sorry.
  20. TrueTomHarley
    While you were scrapping, I acknowledged that: https://www.theworldnewsmedia.org/forums/topic/39002-the-judge-of-the-entire-earth-will-always-do-what-is-right/ I managed to do it without slandering a good man as a tyrant.
  21. TrueTomHarley
    I've got them all. I printed them up for posterity. My visitors walk right past the booze I offer them to leaf through the pages. Unfortunately, I've had to jack up that side of the house.
  22. TrueTomHarley
    And while I'm at it, what is it with your showboating this? You just want to keep your complaints on center stage for as long as you possibly can. Our history only goes back two threads. We've had no exchanges in secret. Just scroll back is all you need to do. I'm sure it will be subjective, as everything else is here. Your chums will agree with you, mine with me. Just scroll back, find something I've said, and argue with it. You don't need my help. That way, I can do other things. Oh, please. Once again, you demonstrate you are full of yourself. There will be no Putizers awarded here. This is a 'here today, gone tomorrow' internet thread. It will be completely buried in no time at all. Most likely the only readers we need be concerned about flagging are the immediate participants here. Rest assured that I am ever mindful, before I post anything, that it never actually disappears and always could potentially resurface some day. I always take that into account. But in all probability, these words will never be seen again. (unless someone like me is saving them)
  23. TrueTomHarley
    This, too, is a common gripe of those who detest Witnesses. Those who say it most live in the West. Few except in the West have any problem with setting aside one's personal interests in furtherance of a "greater cause." Everyone else knows 'you can't always get what you want.' Only in the West, intoxicated with independence, where the year text every year is "Nobody's telling ME what to so," do people think you should always get what you want. It is the 'spirit of independence' that the Watchtower frequently speaks about, yet it is hardly just them. Anyone concerned for the future of humanity must take note of it. Christianity is nothing if not sacrificing to a "greater cause." Don't use the phrase perjoratively. To the extent one does, it indicates that one is poles apart from Bible-defined Christianity.
  24. TrueTomHarley
    This has nothing to do with anything. For all I know, he wasn't even alive at the end of 1968. His experience is about keeping his head in view of totally unrelated happenings probably 20 years previous. It has nothing to do with material in print even, least of all, prophetic doctrine. You are flailing more with each word you write. Stop doing that. Look, you don't like the Jehovah's Witness organization. Got it. Not to mention that you will soon offend the orderly senses of the anal @The Librarian, bringing up a topic brand new. Please don't cry again if you find yourself again at the head of a thread you did not start.
  25. TrueTomHarley
    Oh, for crying out loud! You post the remark, one of a long list of complaints and criticisms: "Sure it's a "minor matter" when a vulnerable person finds themselves in a room with three elders for not believing man-made doctrine. No doubt that's what the scripture means." What would you have us all believe? That you came out smelling like a rose? You feel free to malign persons, and slander the GB. You ridicule teachings that others have accepted and have never said you had to embrace. You insinuate all sorts of wrongs and injustices you have been victimized over, yet you are cagey with clarifying details. you do everything possible to present yourself an enigma - blatantly wronged, but not able to provide any clarification. Yet as soon as anybody 'speculates' about you, you cry like a baby!
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