TrueTomHarley

39 minutes ago, Witness said:

Wow, this really hit a nerve with you.  My husband had a full time job during the week in the outside environment.

Others didn’t? Maybe they also had wives to “make excuses” for them.

Look, I accept that your husband was a caring man. What “strikes a nerve” is how you assume that nobody else was.

Your husband was a good man. You describe yourself as a “good elder’s wife.” (I am surprised you did not capitalize the ‘good’ in your case,) Still, he apparently wasn’t able to solve the problem. Why does everyone else have “blame” and he does not?

It’s not so terrible for people to make their own arrangements when they know they present challenges (like bringing along several small children). As stated, I would sometimes put myself into such car groups. But it wasn’t always possible. Not even your good husband was able to fix it.

12 hours ago, Witness said:

As a good elder’s wife, I eventually told my husband who was the service overseer, that it was a repetitive problem during the week.

Why did he not notice it himself, so that “eventually” you had to do it? Did you not say he, too, was good?

12 hours ago, Witness said:

From what I remember, he said he would address it.

Did he? How?

Look, if you come on with bitter tirades, and Lord knows you do, you should offer a few specifics.

12 hours ago, Witness said:

The sisters decided to arrange themselves, reaching out to others (sisters)  to help them…before showing up for the service meeting.  

If this is the case, then why is there a problem?

For whatever it’s worth, when I served as an elder, I would not work with other elders when there were other unattended publishers around. I do know that situation of some who “team up” and I don’t particularly like it. Still, I don’t take a flamethrower to the Christian organization because of it. It is a very challenging situation should sisters show up with small children that they hope others will help with. Practically speaking, it is a great challenge to integrate them—separate some kids and you’ve got 4Jah breathing down your neck—and beyond complaining, you did not offer a better way.

12 hours ago, Witness said:

Can you please tell me where I have stated that I, personally, was cheated out of my anointed status? 

Okay okay, maybe I could reword that.

12 hours ago, Witness said:

You should be concerned about the cheating of all the anointed out of their status as God's priests in the organization.

Of which YOU have appointed yourself spokesperson, constantly bringing up the subject (and little else). It is one of those “let the reader use discernment” situations.

3 hours ago, xero said:

Don't go towards hating on the world, hating on apostates, hating on the GB, hating on anything.

Yes. This is why I am nothing but hugs and kisses for Alan, Witness, and even that insufferable 4Jah.

3 hours ago, xero said:

Understand that the real enemy is in the spirit realm.

Exactly. This is why you do not pay undo attention to the individuals. They are as actors in a play. Take one out and another who knows all the lines immediately steps into his place.

This is true even with the good guys, though they are more pleasant to dwell upon and might be dwelt upon for just that reason. It is the play we are watching. One need not know the names of the actors to follow the play. It can even be a distraction if we do 

35 minutes ago, 4Jah2me said:

John Butler was removed for suggesting that the GB might be removed and replaced. 

Ah—now we are on to something. Did he suggest like any old person floating a possibility? Or did he SUGGEST like Trump, that all was not well in Congress?

Gasp! That’s why Trump was impeached! @The Librarianwas running the House! It was off with Butler’s head one day, Trump’s the next!

3 hours ago, 4Jah2me said:

But please remember that John Butler was removed from this forum for saying just that. 

He was not removed for that reason.

Look, nothing has changed with this new identification of the GB with the faithful slave. Before that was made the situation was the same. Headship came from a small group of under a dozen who, for practical reasons, physically gather together. Should they need a replacement, they look into the ranks of anointed worldwide, and select one. It was that way before. It is that way now. 

Who do you think they are going to select? Someone who just recently began to partake, or one who has done so for a long time? Someone with relatively little experience in the Christian preaching work, or one who has specialized in it full-time for decades?

This is not hard to answer. Even before this arrangement, anointed within the congregations knew, were content with, and deported themselves, that their assignment was to rule in the new system, not now. But it has apparently become the thing that there are now some anointed, whether for real or “self-promoted”  I know not, whether associated with a congregation or on the outside I know not, who want to be NOW seen as having authority. It has never been that way. 

As far as I am concerned, Witness’s non-response to my request that she arrange the car group says it all. She bitterly complains on how sisters with many children are “ignored.” When I ask how would she handle the situation she herself presented she is silent. Yet she is not silent on everything. She continues to chime in about her being “cheated” out of her anointed status.

Someone really anointed, someone really concerned with the sheep, would not ignore the scenario she presented herself as a complaint. She would tell how it is solved. She may have been like that at one time. But she appears far too interested in self-promotion” these days for her to be so now.

4 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

This is all starting to come together. The music is rising to heart-bending finale.

We are waiting only for the fat lady to sing.

Of course, she is probably afraid to, after reading @xero

3 hours ago, xero said:

You're absolutely right about the hypocrisy.

No. She is not absolutely right about the “hypocrisy.” She does not forgive it. She too quickly converts human inadequacy into hypocrisy. She does the very opposite of Jesus when confronted with the “hypocrisy” of his twelve. He forgives them up to 77 times. He patiently corrects them once again when, on the night he knows he is to die, they have begun squabbling over who is the greater—the most childish of concerns.

Jesus forgave freely. Witness does not. Not at all. Possibly she did at one time. But she doesn’t anymore.

4 hours ago, Witness said:

Many times meeting for service, and elder would put two mothers and their children together in one group,

Let us say that a given meeting for field service consists of 32. Three are elders, each of whom have their wives, and one of them also has 2 children. Two of those three elders work full time and only get out in service on the weekends. One of those two missed service last weekend and has butterflies himself. Of the other adults, about half are weak and look forward to working with those stronger. Scattered among them are three other children. Six have their arrangements pre-made, and are not open to being arranged differently. Four of the adults have to leave early. You have an assortment of vehicles that carry 4 persons each, 5 max. You (check with 4Jah on this) are not one to separate children from their parents. Two publishers arrive as you are forming groups. The two unaccompanied mothers have 5 children between them and two car seats. One of them arrived in a two door car because her husband is unbelieving and doesn’t like 4 doors. 

Arrange the car group for me. I don’t disagree with everything you say. All the same, arrange the car group for me.

4 hours ago, xero said:

I was counseled on how I walked up to the stage and that my shoes weren't shiny.

That doesn’t matter. I haven’t worn shinable shoes in years. What IS important is that you don’t go onstage the wrong way, entering from behind the quarter-walls. Forget the fatties. THAT ought to be outlawed:

https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2019/04/you-dont-enter-stage-from-behind-the-quarter-walls.html

In fact, there is some reason to think that God brought about the pandemic to shut down KHs because too many brothers were doing that.

4 hours ago, xero said:

So I'm used to taking a "What can I learn from this situation?". "I'm getting counsel. Is it biblical? Maybe. Does the brother think it is? Yes. Do I? Maybe. Do I have to tell him what I think? No. Is it good counsel for someone, even if not me? I'm sure it is somewhere and some time. Are you too proud to listen? No. Even if I think it's off."

I like this. It reminds me of Mark Twain. He told of the boy who complained that he got a spanking for something he didn’t do. The old man said, “Well—in that case it was for something you did do that you should have gotten a spanking for but didn’t!”

1 hour ago, 4Jah2me said:

Like I've said of you before, you sit on the fence, not knowing which way to turn. You say you are an Insider, giving information, but you are too frightened to stop serving your GB.

It may be that he simply prefers a place of sanity.

29 minutes ago, xero said:

“Are you tired of having to search for something to be oppressed by?" a voiceover says in the ad. "With our patented microaggression-tracking technology, you won't have to search any longer. Now, you can instantly identify up to 100 things to be offended by in any conversation."

WHOA! I need me a pair of these! I am entirely too nice to several around here and I let altogether too much slide by!

1 hour ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Attacking Jehovah’s Witnesses appears to be your sole concern. It does not matter to you if you sell out God in the process.

Another laughing emoji? I have the same fear with you, 4jah, namely that the curtain may be pulled away one day to reveal I am interacting with another nine-year-old

1 hour ago, 4Jah2me said:

But of course you are not an attack dog are you. 

On the contrary, I have pretty much turned into one. That’s why I said I may have been here too long.

My only rationalization, which probably does not suffice, is that the few I go after have large “Kick Me” signs on their backsides. If they would take them down, it wouldn’t happen.

Take yourself, for example. Alan has launched the more blistering attacks on God—not God as JWs see him, but God as any believer sees him. That makes you just another “ignorant moron” in his eyes. Yet you are thick as thieves with him, approving any anti-spiritual diatribe of his, and disapproving any put-down of him.

Attacking Jehovah’s Witnesses appears to be your sole concern. It does not matter to you if you sell out God in the process.

12 hours ago, Matthew9969 said:

So my aging mom is experiencing a great disconnect with her congregation because she is not tech savvy and my sister and I help her as much as possible, along with a few other sisters who are, but she and those others are loosing faith in God,

You help your mom and those few other sisters, or you and those few other sisters help your mom? The wording is not clear. 

It does remind me, though, of a local situation of an elderly sister who moved in with family that built an in-law apartment for her. She has never fully integrated with the congregation and I’m not sure why. Somewhere there is a disconnect with her unbelieving family who say, in the person of a daughter-in-law that they want to help spiritually (there is no question that physically she is cared for) and yet somehow there is no follow through. How hard can it be to physically get her connected with Zoom meetings, and yet somehow it doesn’t happen. Believe me, I personally have tried, and I am not the only one.

Complaints filter down through that daughter-in-law that the congregation does not do enough. That daughter in law tells me she studied with Witnesses in another country for several years but the friends here are not loving like they were there. While that may (or may not) be true, I told her, that is not why someone pursues a relationship with God. It didn’t help when a local elder went to visit and got bit by one of several yappy dogs on the premises. 

The elderly sister has the beginnings of Alzheimer’s. Even when she did not, she was very reserved and not easy to get to know. A local couple would pick her up for meetings. Something about the situation eventually wore them out, particularly as they began to cope with the ill health of their own parents. 

I’ve visited this sister. The house is massive and new, with as many as six cars in the driveway. When the sister took a fall and broke an arm, the congregation provided meals for several months, at the suggestion of the daughter-in-law. It may not have occurred to them otherwise because plainly she lives among relatives that physically care for her. My wife coordinated that campaign. It seems like it might have run on forever, far longer than with anyone else, until my wife said ‘okay, glad that we have been able to relieve pressure, give the family a break, etc, and no doubt you can take over again as before.’ It is possible that we were being “used,”—it is not nothing to provide meals every day, particularly when it is not clear why family can’t do it themselves—but that’s not the important thing. I can even picture unbelieving family muttering about “cults” and so forth, but it has never been to our face, so it is just a possibility.

She gets some phone calls, some cards, she is connected on Roku, I’ve been there to see that, but somehow things do not gel. I don’t know the answer. We do what we can do, but cannot do everything. Whatever family interplay there is was established long ago in another area, and there is only so far you can go in unraveling the oddities. There is a believing daughter that visits from time to time and hopefully alleviates matters.

This is the only situation I know of, but it is reasonable to think every congregation has one or two parallels. On the other hand, there are also several old ones not tech savvy who have come up to speed with Zoom, usually with help, but it has happened. One who was never much in the physical ministry has blossomed in the virtual one. In short, I don’t think anyone has been “left behind” any more so than what would have happened prior to Covid.

If you have @Araunaoffering to call all the way from Albania, Matthew, sounds to me like you should take her up on it. You, too, have some dysfunctional background, I recall. Didn’t you say your folks fought like cats and dogs and shouldn’t have had children? It’s to your credit that you provide for her, that being the case. Not all children do.

12 hours ago, Matthew9969 said:

They continue to put their faith in the governing body, and when they don't follow through, they view that as Jehovah God not following through

This may be so, or it may be your interpretation of what is so. You say you don’t read the current material. If you did, you would notice at the latest midweek meetings how such a fuss was made over “there at Chebar a vision came to me,” with application that even if far removed from the physical organization, one is not removed from God.

12 hours ago, Matthew9969 said:

We all know meeting together in worship is better than using zoom meeting from afar.

I’m not sure we do know this. I’ve heard several old-timers say they don’t care if we ever go back to physical meetings. It saves massive amounts of time and energy, which is not boundless at their age, and you can do nearly as much on Zoom as in person. I think pandemic is harder on young people than on old. As for me, I have unchained my inner hermit and he is doing just fine.

You act as though the organization forsakes physical meetings because they care not about anyone’s concerns than theirs. Forgive me for saying it, but this smacks to me of the complaining victimization spirit of the day. When circumstances change, you have to adapt. The reason KHs are closed is, not as a personal affront to you or your mom, but because it is thought, and authorities continually advance the view, that it saves lives. Forgive me again for saying it, but if the KHs were open I can picture you complaining  how the organization doesn’t care if members die. It is kind of what you do, and I would be happier if you didn’t.

Plan as if Alan will be out of your hair tomorrow. Live as if you know he won’t be.

39 minutes ago, AlanF said:

You're getting yourself in deeper with every post. You have no shame, any more than the criminal you've supported.

You know, Your Duhness, there is a search feature. If you actually think it will score you points somehow, you can dredge some of it up. But I recommend instead you stop at various posts where I or someone else succeed in making you look like a donkey.

1 hour ago, AlanF said:

You KNOW what you've said. You're not even fooling your braindead fellow cultists, except perhaps the ineluctably brainless Arauna.

What I would hang my head for in shame was if I had said something complimentary toward you.

My worst fear is that someone will pull the curtain away and I will discover that I am actually talking to a precocious 9-year-old child.

57 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

 

Quick—someone airbrush my face on every one of these hooligans storming the Capitol. I want to see this yo-yo go Donald Duck apoplectic. 

Ooh—and that falsetto voice, calling “Oh Naannncy”?

Dub mine in instead: “Oh Aalaaaan!)

And @César Chávezthinks this is an unwholesome site! What is wrong with him?

29 minutes ago, AlanF said:

TTH has gone far beyond merely mentioning Trumpolini's name. You're simply denying facts and lying as usual.

27 minutes ago, AlanF said:

Clueless. TTH went far beyond any such thing. Your knee-jerk defense of a fellow cultist is typical.

Quick—someone airbrush my face on every one of these hooligans storming the Capitol. I want to see this yo-yo go Donald Duck apoplectic. 

20 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Your parched writing might suffice for instructions on installing a toilet, but otherwise it is just too-rigid, too condescending, and Lord knows, too insulting to endure.

“Put it on the floor and hook it up, you moron. If you had any brains (like I do) you’d have stupid tradespeople to do it for you.”

1 hour ago, xero said:

On the other hand....did I see Tom in the background of this video! 😲

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAvFFYu1RGM

Rats. I thought the paint and horns gave me good disguise.

A brother used that image at Sunday’s Watchtower consideration of “the righteous and the unrighteous” being resurrected. It obviously spoke of an earthly resurrection, he said, since the “unrighteous” in a heavenly one would look like this mob storming the Capitol.

If I was a tolerable artist, I would portray such a picture. Same mob—just the pearly gates instead of the Capitol, and maybe for good measure leading off an angel or two in zip-tie handcuffs.

Frankly, it wouldn’t hurt me at all were I to take drawing lessons.

9 minutes ago, xero said:

 

This reminds me of what the widow of the Doctor Seuss books said. He had vehemently resisted commercialization of his work during his life, but as soon as he died he was outmaneuvered. “If Ted could see this he’d say, “I’m glad I’m dead,” she said.  

On 2/9/2021 at 12:00 PM, 4Jah2me said:

I don't watch videos. If people cannot write it then i can't be bothered with it.  Copying and pasting is lazy, put it in your own words. 

Gasp!! For once, I share the same viewpoint as 4Jah. What is the world coming to?

I’ve nothing against videos. Knowing the source, I may well squeeze these in. It is just that I can read the same material in 10% the time, so that is usually what I hold out for. Because it is @xeroI’ll watch at least one.

It is amazing how many opposers with a lay a lengthy video on your lap—sometimes an hour or more—with the directive, “Here—watch this!”

Oh, yeah—I’ll get right on it! There is such a thing as “Introduction that arouses interest.” Do these people have nothing to do with their time?

”I am well along in life. I have reached the point where I take only those cases that interest me. And my interest in your case is dwindling.” - Hercule Poirot

2 hours ago, xero said:

"By what process of reasoning did you determine that this was the one problem facing humanity that deserved your scare time and resources?"

I like this question. It is a variation of “If you could solve any problem of the world, which one would it be?” It is given more import in that you ask it when people actually are trying to solve one of them. I like it a lot, as well as the logical followup: Given that we have only so much time, where do we get the most bang for our buck?

1 hour ago, AlanF said:

Here we find TrueTomHarley continuing his usual bluffing

It is you who makes sweeping statements that are wrong.

1 hour ago, AlanF said:

TTH has never read a proper science book on evolution or evolution versus creation.

I have read at least two, one of the Sean Carroll books and one of Carl Zimmer. I give Sean considerable credit, though in the end I saw no reason to join him. A 3-part commentary of his work is included (along with other material) here:

https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2011/09/epochs-and-aeons.html

1 hour ago, AlanF said:

Furthermore, TTH has clearly violated "Christian neutrality" by espousing the criminal goals and philosophy of 'Donito Trumpolini',

I have said i rather welcome the relative peace and quiet now that he is gone.

1 hour ago, AlanF said:

aided by his getting most of his world news from criminally irresponsible "news" media like Fox News, Newsmax and OAN.

When I get news via television, it is usually CBS, rarely Fox. I probably have visited Newsmax, but that is because I visit everywhere, I do not know what OAN is. I have never listened to a complete Sean Hannity. A few times while driving, I have caught maybe 30 minutes, but such times are very rare. There is no broadcast I go out of my way to watch or listen to.

For every conservative source I follow on Twitter, I follow a liberal one for balance. I don’t pursue any of them overmuch. Nor would I describe any of them as “criminal.” You are the calcified one here, not I.

1 hour ago, AlanF said:

TTH is a fine example of the Dunning-Kruger effect

You only use this expression as a sophisticated means of insult. You would have no interest in it otherwise. 

It is just like when you make assumptions about me and every one of them is wrong.

1 hour ago, AlanF said:

TTH thinks he's a great writer, but has never exposed his crappy writing to professionals such as are found in a good college English course.

Actually, I routinely do this and the quality of my writing takes their breath away. Unfortunately, deprived of breath they die, and so cannot properly praise it.

The above paragraph is called humor. Look up the word in the dictionary, along with imagination, metaphor, and hyperbole. Your parched writing might suffice for instructions on installing a toilet, but otherwise it is just too-rigid, too condescending, and Lord knows, too insulting to endure.