TrueTomHarley

When I heard the truncated clip, I was disappointed. It makes our guy look like a religious nut. “It’s a modern-day miracle,” he says, seemingly his lead-off line about the Jehovah’s Witnesses move to present their annual summer conventions online. It’s not a modern-day miracle. It’s a technological accomplishment—an impressive one, to be sure—after all, it involves 500 languages, done on a crash basis, and broadcast worldwide—but it is not a “miracle.” It is not Jesus walking on water. Forgive me if I admit that when I first saw the clip with that as his lead statement, I supposed that the man was a nut—an over enthusiastic zealot who had drunk too much of his own Kool-Aid. Yet, do I not come across the entire interview several days later to find it of a completely different flavor? It turns out that he is not that way at all—his remarks were framed to make him sound a fanatic by a media that feels it their duty to do so when dealing with matters of faith, something that is not their forte. He never meant the “miracle” remark literally. It’s a gush of enthusiasm such as anyone will have upon completing an overwhelming project. It is Neil Armstrong saying “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” It is a throw-off line of hyperbole that comes 5 minutes into the interview—not the lead-off pronouncement of the truncated version. This is so infuriating, but also so typical. Everyone will say something in the course of 15 minutes that can be misconstrued by those of another agenda—who simply can’t get their heads around a different point of view or may even be trying to deliberately sabotage it—to make the person look like a nut. I almost wonder if something similar is now at work with the doctor from Cameroon recommending the hydroxychloroquine drug for Covid 19. There were ten doctors who banded together for a public statement before the steps of the Supreme Court, but because this one (Stella Immanuel) has made remarks in her past about demons, and the others presumably have not, she becomes the sole media focus to discredit the lot of them. The other nine are sent out to pasture. I don’t often speak on my blog of demons, nor of the devil. Much of my target audience chokes at mention of God, so should I really send them into orbit with posts of the devil? Besides, humans are perfectly capable of doing evil things all on their own—a line of demarcation is hard to draw. But neither do I think someone should be pilloried for bringing up the topic, much less when it has nothing to do with the story at hand. If anything, I am the expedient chicken, not her. Anyone who knows anything about Africa knows that belief in interaction with the spirits is well-nigh universal. She is to be expected not to pick up on it? Let the thinkers today get a handle on evil—even eradicate it a little bit—before they go ridiculing those who go off their materialistic script. At root, though the doctor and our guy may be poles apart, the reason to trash them is the same, or at least it is a kissing cousin: they are both serious about things not endorsed by today’s prevailing atheistic materialistic view. In her case, there may be more to the story—something that is deliberately discredited. In our case, there certainly is. Us first: Robert Hendricks, spokesperson for Jehovah’s Witnesses, speaks of how both the door-to-door ministry and the annual conventions have been suspended for the first time in history. The reasons are telling—that of “respect for life” and “love of neighbor.” Probably no one has more potential to spread the Covid 19 virus than Jehovah’s Witnesses in their old model. Not only do they routinely approach people, but their organization is the largest convention-holding one in the world—people converge sometimes by the tens of thousands for events held in stadiums. We just couldn’t see ourselves doing that this year, Hendricks said. With a lead-in time of only about a month, Witnesses put the entire event online to be streamed worldwide. Their organization had gone into lockdown even before governments began to require it. “Just because you can drive 75 mph in some areas doesn’t mean that you should,” he stated. I told the CultExpert, he of the #freedomofmind hashtag, that “our” people were more responsible than his. Our people promptly and without fuss laid low—Covid 19 would be long gone by now if all were like them—but “his” people? You don’t think many of them will use their “freedom of mind” to tell the government what it can do with its rules? Frankly, since media jumps all over churches that defy “science” by gathering, you would think they would praise to the heavens one that has set the example for being proactive. Yet, even when trying to compliment, they are hamstrung by a mindset that pronounces religion outmoded. Even as the New York Times covers the socially responsible move, (that of suspending the door-to-door ministry, not that of the conventions, which came later), they take for granted that it is done only for the sake of appearances. “It followed anguished discussions at Watchtower headquarters with leaders deciding March 20 that knocking on doors would leave the impression that members were disregarding the safety of those they hoped to convert,” as though the safety itself doesn’t mean beans to them. “Members are called on to share scriptures in person with nonmembers,” it wrote. Well, in fact they are called to do it, but it is by the scriptures themselves, and not the commands of HQ, as they seem to frame it. “Now if I am declaring the good news, it is no reason for me to boast, for necessity is laid upon me. Really, woe to me if I do not declare the good news!” writes the apostle at 1 Corinthians 9:16. Why do these materialistic ones not just say that the Bible itself is a cult manual and be done with it? As to the 500 languages (1000 in print): the interview branched into this as the newsman asked some questions—it turns out that his mom is a Witness, and he thanked Hendricks for keeping her safe. The languages feat can be done because there is no profit motive, Hendricks said. That’s why no one else even comes close—Google, Apple, Amazon—no one. “There’s no end to what can be done if there is not a profit motive,” he said. A cynical me says that he will probably be fired for going so far “off-script.” Naw—I don’t really think he will be, but if it is like the Cameroon doctor, he could be. She and her fellow doctors were promptly muzzled on social media for “spreading misinformation.” Will the News13 reporter be accused of “enabling” it as well? Her turn: A major study of the Henry Ford Healthcare System in Detroit finds that the drug hydroxychloroquine is extremely effective. Why it is trashed as it is, I will never know. But since it is dirt cheap, and since the President has recommended it, it is hard not to think that either or both or these facts suggest possible reasons. By the time, the Henry Ford study was released, media had already reached the verdict that the drug was no good. This was based upon an earlier study published in Lancet that said hydroxychloroquine was ineffective, and in fact, even dangerous. However, Lancet later retracted their article. The reason they retracted it is that it was of a study that had not been submitted to peer review. The reason it had not been submitted to peer review is that it would have failed—it was a very sloppy study, sabotaged in numerous ways. The reason it was taken up by the media anyway, despite being so sloppy, is that it discredited Trump, who first said he liked the stuff and later that he even took it. Everything is politicized today—everyone gets into the fray of battling over who will rule the world. Hydroxychloroquine has been around forever, a mainstay of treatment for several ills. It would have been run off the road long ago were it so dangerous. It is extremely cheap—another reason to attack it from an entirely different quarter—Remdesivir, a competing treatment, costs $1000 per dose! Does the cheaper drug have side effects? Just listen to the side effects of drugs relentlessly hawked on TV today—it is enough to scare your socks off. Cardiologist Dr. William O’Neill, medical director at the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, Michigan, director of the Detroit study said: “I've never seen science [so] politicized in 40 years of practice.”

Doesn’t this remind one of Gandalf the Grey going down into the abyss to cover the escape of Frodo and his pals? Why don’t you divert a little more energy towards the goal of being in that New World, you yo-yo? Perhaps then your credentials for condemning everything under the sun will improve. #FlyYouFools!

“They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work” Is the expression I have heard of the Soviet Union.

Well, you make a good point here. and here. Truman wouldn’t let him, and was pilloried for standing up to the Great Man, firing him. I recall being amazed when I first learned of this. (I had heard it was 50–compromise and say ‘up to 50’)

In the end, the only thing that matters is that certain countries will not permit the spread of the good news, and other countries will, barring only exceptional circumstances, and even then with less vigor. This makes them, by default, “the bad guys”—certainly to us, and if the Good News really is good, to God. Other than that, would I have anything in particular against communism? I’m not sure that I would. I am content where I am. But by most accounts, persons in China are content where they are too. This is exactly the point I made long ago regarding Trump that brought JTR to his feet cheering. Brothers will carry on and on about neutrality, admonishing each other should they detect wavering, and then will swallow anything rotten about the US President that his enemies serve up. Even Bro Jackson, when he says we must guard against that furtive thought, “I hope that idiot doesn’t get into power” will cause some to ask, because of the time and place in which he said it, “I wonder what idiot he has in mind?” https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2020/03/ecclesiastes-1020-do-not-speak-ill-of-the-king-jws-and-politics-in-the-age-of-trump.html I think it is a function of where we have been in life, and what outrages infuriate us most. There are plenty enough to go around and stoke all schools of thought. Nobody mows them down like the atheists do when they are setting the stage for their next secular utopia, or changing the props, determined to advance with some Great Leap Forward. I like it that @Arauna departed from Asia briefly to highlight what happened with the atheist-rationalists gained the upper hand in France, a nominal “Christian” country. I read a book (on Ben Franklin) that points out that David Hume, the English sceptic, was at a lost as to how to deal with the certainty adopted by the French atheists. In contrast, when the West mows them down, it tends to focus on just subjugating them, rather than eradicating them. The West is more likely to be “killing them softly”—perhaps by shoveling them into the maw of some financial market, just like JWI outlines above with drugs. In gathering material for ‘Dear Mr Putin- JWs Write’ I found that America bombs more countries than Russia—quite a few more—so that you almost wonder who it is that is putting his trust in “fortresses,” but since the king of the north does it more openly—parading weapons on May Day, and so forth—their military persona stands. Still, it is big business capitalism that inevitably puts lobbyists in Washington to persuade the power brokers that the world is a super dangerous place abounding with enemies, but—“fortunately for you—we here at Bob’s Bombs make just the products that you need.” When I did a post ago battling atheists who were railing on about slavery as the greatest possible evil, and how the Bible must be no good because it was willing to work with it rather than flatly condemn it, one contributor joined in to say that in the Western world the way it is now, many would be benefited by being slaves—their conditions would improve by most measures, if only because most “owners” would realize the value of keeping their “property” in good repair. He ran then-current figures of minimum wage, and assumed entirely reasonable situations, to show that the lives of many working poor were in many ways far worse than slaves. It is all what outrages trigger you most, and that is determined by one’s experiences if life. I do agree with this, however “evidence” takes many forms. She speaks of people that “she knows.” Is that lesser evidence than reports that have been culled by a think tank? Go find a think tank of the opposite persuasion—there are plenty of them in any field. The universal pattern in the US is to run the “evidence” of the other person into the ditch, though I will concede that her case is stronger if she makes it in print and with backing. Still, “evidence” is compounded or discarded by whoever’s interests prevail at the moment, often it is financial muscle that propels some evidence and suppresses other evidence.

It may be one of those “what goes around comes around situations.” Isn’t Bolshevikism in Russia a Western import, injected to better ensure an outcome of WW1, without any regard for the peoples there? Didn’t the Opium Wars serve to illustrate the West’s only interest in China—as an enriching market, and if you had to transform the population into addicts, so be it? Not to mention how peeved they were after the war that Japan, the country that had behaved so savagely towards them, was nonetheless restored by the US—whereas their interests counted for squat? Everything may be just as you say, and to be sure, I suspect that JWI is a closet-pinko still, it seems to me a case of how the sins of the fathers come home to roost. @Annashould weigh in on this, for I recall her saying how she has lived under communist rule and is not a fan.

that old hen.

No. “There are those pesky people again coming up the drive trying to teach us the Bible! I sure wish those Oneness Pentecostals and the La Luz del Mundo and the Iglesia ni Cristo and the Christadelphians and the Christian Scientists, and the Dawn Bible Students, and the Living Church of God, and the Assemblies of Yahweh, And the Israelite Church of God in Jesus Christ, And the Members Church of God International, and the Unitarian Christians, and the Unitarian Universalist Christians, and the The Way International, and the The Church of God International, and the United Church of God. would give it a rest!”

The notion of banning a religious organization but not the religion itself is too devious for people to get theirs heads around, so they act as though the religion itself is banned.

That May 2020 Watchtower really simplified how we can look at the Daniel prophesy of the kings of the north and south. I appreciate it for that reason. I think it can be likened to the ingredients of a sandwich disappearing. When that happens, what’s the point of keeping track of the two slices of bread that enclose it? Such is the case when the weeds swallow up the wheat and the Master says ‘Don’t worry about it—we’ll sort it out at the harvest.’ (Matthew 13:24-30) If the covenant people disappear, why concern oneself about who is the king of the north and south? They vanish, too. This way, you don’t have to trace some tortuous lineage through the centuries that you can get your head around after a fashion, but the moment you turn away it disappears, like your grasp of relativity. When the covenant people reappear during the harvest—well, we know that they are to be between a rock and a hard place. So look for a rock and a hard place. What could be easier than that? When the harvest season arrives, what two parties during the World Wars hate each other’s guts, and also give the covenant people grief for the same reason, that of neutrality? Easy. This new streamlined method works to everyone’s advantage except for Queen Zenobia (my favorite Bible character, second only to Obi Wan Kenobia), and I have completed my mourning for her. The second of the study articles made it very clear: “For a government to fill the role of the king of the north or the king of the south, it must do three things: (1) interact directly with God’s people, (2) show by its actions that it is an enemy of Jehovah and his people, and (3) compete with the rival king.” I noted Trump’s campaign words in Dear Mr. Putin - Jehovah’s Witnesses Write Russia, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we actually got along with Russia?” and how, were that to happen, it would take the prophesy off-script—the two are notsupposed to get along. Almost immediately outside forces in the form of the media intervened to ensure that the two kings will not get along—they are to stay on script. Almost from the instant he said it, a Russian collusion narrative emerged to ensure the two kings would remain at loggerheads. In the course of two weeks, the verses of Daniel 11:25-45 were considered at the meeting. A crash course for anyone not in the know: It is king-of-the-north Germany that opposes the king of the south during both world wars and opposes the covenant people, treating them harshly. With the Allied victory ending WWII, the Soviet Union and later Russia takes over the role of the northern king—pushing & shoving the king of the south and also treating the covenant people harshly, lately to be seen in the banning of their organization and publications, confiscation of their property, and arrests leading to the imprisonment of many. A nice touch, I thought, was the “little help” rendered at 11:34. Might this be prophetic of the lull in opposition to kingdom preaching from the fall of the Soviet Union to renewed all-out attack on Jehovah’s people in 2017? During this lull, it was not even clear just who the king of the north was. (Davey-the-kid, always quick with a joke, told me it was Bolivia) Jehovah’s Witnesses were the last of all faiths to be legally recognized in 1991 (fall of the Soviet Union) and the first of all faiths (and so far, only) to suffer ban in 2017. It occurs to me that if the king of the north started being nice to our people he would louse up stipulation 2 of the prophesy, that he must “show by its actions that it is an enemy of Jehovah and his people.” Why doesn’t he do that? There is no better way to discredit Jehovah’s Witnesses than to spectacularly mess up their take on a prophesy. Then we would have to revert back to Davey-the-kid, say it is Bolivia, and look ridiculous. Well, maybe will happen that way. But it doesn’t seem likely. If Trump couldn’t derail the prophesy, Putin can’t either. It is probably one of those situations of nations being drawn as with hooks in their jaws. They are too determined in a course of their own seeming choice to do any differently. From paragraph 13 and 14 of the second week’s study: “A prophecy recorded by Ezekiel gives some insight into what may happen during the last days of the king of the north and the king of the south....it appears that we can expect the following developments....That symbolic hailstorm may takethe form... It could be that this message provokes Gog of Magog into attacking God’s people with the intention of wiping them off the earth.” [italics mine] Joe at the Kingdom Hall, who can always be depended upon for perceptive comments, chimed in about the “wiggle words” that I’ve italicized—it may....it could be...it appears that. Hardly dogmatic, is it? Sure to be missed by Tom Pearlsandswine, that brother who is known for putting the dog into dogmatic! But the words simply indicate that, while we know the final destination, we do not know the precise route to be taken, and the foregoing only indicates the best educated guess at present. Of course, “educated” in this context means educated in the Bible study of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Despite my “crash course” a few paragraph above, I’ve made no effort to thoroughly explain anything—only the barest outline is offered. It is a little bit like how I have lately been reading Thirty Years that Shook Physics, a 1966 book by George Gamow that stood on my Dad’s bookshelf for 50 years and that I rescued from the estate sale. The preface speaks of “Dr. Gamow’s artistic gift as well as his ability to expand science in the layman’s language.” But as I peruse page after page stuffed with arcane mathematical formulas, I say, “I think they are overestimating his ‘gift.’” It’s not nothing. I’d sooner have him around than Wolfgang Pauli. But he is not exactly Mr. Rogers, and neither have I tried to be with the details of the north and south king. As to what the final fulfillment will be, and what route it will take, 1 Peter 1:12 says: “Into these very things, angels are desiring to peer.” Are you going to tell them to straighten up and get back to work? No. You won’t stop them. But I like the current sense of couching things that only appear likely in wiggle words. It is a little like how we don’t do anti-types anymore, unless such anti-type is clearly spelled out in the Bible—Jesus’ identification with the Passover lamb, for example. It is enough to say, “this reminds me of that.” What! Is someone going to come along later and say it doesn’t?

“Oh shut up, shut up, with your Kentucky Fried Foghorn Leghorn drawl!” was The rebuke to Beniot Blanc, and someone applied that to ME. I understand. It is a bit wearing. But what is the purpose of this forum? That varies in each person’s eyes. As far as the Witness organization Itself is concerned, it has no purpose at all and were it to vanish into the abyss I don’t think they would miss it. Well....he gave YOU a free pass and not me. If it were the other way around.... grumble, grumble.....

Here is an article that warns that the mainstream media better be frank as to the side effects of any vaccine produced by a crash program, because they are significant, as the article below states. The resulting vaccine will still be worth taking, the writer states, but if media doesn’t quit their unabashed cheerleading for it, they provide huge opportunity for ‘anti-vaxxers’ to later say, “Look at what they didn’t tell you.” https://www.wired.com/story/covid-19-vaccines-with-minor-side-effects-could-still-be-pretty-bad/

You’ve got to be kidding me! If those who descended into barbarism had offered the choice: Death by being hacked to pieces with machete or suffer us “supporting wrong instructions regarding how to deal with cases of pedophilia,” you think they would have deliberated the choice? If those who slipped into barbarism had offered the choice: Death by being hacked to pieces with machete or suffer us no longer speaking to you, you think they would have deliberated the choice? There is such a thing as carrying a grudge to the point of ludicrousness.

There is no question that you yourself are there, of course.

think it is a matter of being practical, balancing what you know with what your audience is able to bear at present. Even of his disciples Jesus said there were things they were not yet able to bear, so what does that say about speaking to non-disciples? A pretty good guess on the 70% - 80%, I think. People’s criteria for “knowing” with certainty will differ. All will agree on the place of safety, however. None will say “all roads lead to heaven.” As to, “I believe how more JW's try answer this way, because of need to give answer that is more acceptable for non-JW people,” Tharcisse Seminega does this in his book No Greater Love—How My Family Survived the Genocide in Rwanda. Proclaiming the superiority of one’s religion comes across as crass in “educated” parts of the world, and it is actually illegal in Russia—that is the pretext used to ban the Jehovah’s Witness organization. The local populace, not being able to get their heads around something so devious as banning a religion’s organization but not the religion itself, conducts itself as though the Witnesses themselves are banned. What sensible person would not? So Brother Seminega has to self-peddle this part about “religious superiority,” a part that many would say is integral to giving a thorough witness. I don’t blame him for this—it is the only way he can reach his intended audience. Besides, whoever has spent several weeks in the hole, hidden at enormous risk by his spiritual brothers, while others of his tribe are being slaughtered wholesale on the outside, can do whatever he likes. That he privately has given a thorough witness is clear from the Foreword, written by a fellow academic, John K. Roth, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy Claremont McKenna College: “As a result, the book makes an appeal to folks like me who are not members of that particular community: Embrace and follow the ethical values embedded in the acts that saved the Seminegas. I am grateful for that invitation.” Yet, he does miss the point. He takes away from this book not that people should embrace the religion that stood fast in the face of genocide, but “the ethical value embedded in the acts that saved the Seminegas,” as though such a separation were possible. Brother Seminega prefers to let others say it, not he himself: He is content to include in an appendix: “Peace and conflict researcher Christian P. Scherrer states: ‘All the churches active in Rwanda, with the exception of the Jehovah’s Witnesses (of whom only a few survived), were involved at least ‘passively’ in the genocide.’ Genocide and Crisis in Central Africa: Conflict Roots, Mass Violence, and Regional War (London: Praeger, 2002), 113.” [Italics mine] He doesn’t thereafter say, “You see? Our religion is superior!” even though anyone of moral sense can deduce it from the above passage. There are examples in his book, corroborated by international adjudicators, of clergymen purposefully luring Tutsi parishioners to their churches to be slaughtered by the thousands. A passage from his book, that of his wife who was not then a Witness, testifies from her spot of hiding: “The stifling conditions, lack of sleep, scanty food, and darkness had a numbing effect on our minds. But one thing I knew: I, my husband, and all five of my children were alive because our Jehovah’s Witness friends had repeatedly risked their lives to save us. Their faith was like a rock. They lived for peace. No one could force them to use weapons against their neighbors, even those of a different ethnicity. They would sooner die than harm others. They were Hutu, just like the machete-wielding murderers who spilled rivers of blood. It pained me to think of it, but I knew in my heart that the vast majority of Hutu killers claimed to be Christian. Most of them belonged to my Catholic church.” Okay? The Witness religion is superior. Yet Brother Seminega is writing to an audience loath to accept that idea. “If he will really say it, the radio won’t play it, unless he lays it between the lines,” so that is what he does. The greater sophisticated world wants to view the atrocity as though there are noble qualities distributed more or less at random among all religions, and in this case, it is but the luck of the draw that they fell to Jehovah’s Witnesses. This is clear in how religionnews.com reviews the book. It does what it can to obscure the conclusion inescapable to anyone of common sense: of the superiority of a religion that alone enabled all members to withstand genocide. (Or maybe it is that I am myself influenced by how that source doesn’t appear to regard Witnesses as a religion, and how such is not necessarily disagreeable to the JW organization.) It expounds on how “Witnesses had long been oppressed for refusing to take up weapons or participate in politics. Because of this apolitical teaching... ‘Hutu Witnesses were impervious to calls for patriotic Hutu to take part in mass killings’... Professor Seminega says that his family’s rescuers and other Witnesses followed Jesus’ “new commandment”—To love one another just as he loved them, even to the death.” Note how “new commandment” is in quote marks, as though it is new to the reviewers themselves, or at least an unsophisticated and quaint notion that they know is not one that readers can be expected to quickly get their heads around. Maybe the professor has something to teach us, is the tone of the review and the Foreword. It cannot hurt that he is a professor. What learned lesson does he, and maybe even the people he has sided with, have to teach us? In fact, Jehovah’s Witnesses do try to teach them—every single day they try—and their attempts are rebuffed. To secure the integrity of the Witnesses, they have to side with the kingdom—and most of them don’t even know what it is. To secure the integrity of the Witnesses, they have to become “no part of the world” (John 17:16), and most of them are fully part of it. Here, Brother Seminega’s academic connections come in handy, for he is able to trace the historical, political, and religious roots that ultimately triggered the Rwandan sudden slide into barbarism. He, the former Catholic seminarian, writes of the Catholic Church’s deep involvement in “the world,” and of how it abruptly switched sides in the late 20th century, from that of oppressor—the Church had historically been associated with the European colonizers, and as such promoted the “privileged” tribe of the Tutsi—to the oppressed, the “lesser” Hutu. If you embrace the world and its power plays, you eventually embrace its tactics, and the tactics in this case descended to genocide. It doesn’t happen that often. During most times of normal stress, church teachings and even politics are enough to, after a fashion, ensure acceptable conduct among members. But during times of abnormal stress, they collapse completely. Did no one of the greater Rwandan religious community other than Jehovah’s Witnesses act nobly? A small minority did, and this is detailed in the Appendix section. The end of Tharcisse Seminega’s narrative marks only the halfway point of the book. Numerous appendices follow, which start with the same tale told through the eyes of different participants, as though the author has taken a cue from construction of the four Gospels themselves. Thereafter, No Greater Love is the work of a meticulous historian, and he nails down each historical detail of a story and its aftermath that ought never suffer extinction. The small minority of religious Hutu that did not participate in genocide is enough for a certain church revisionist to write that “church institutions cannot be blamed for the moral failure of individuals who abandoned Christian values.” However, scholar Timothy Longman cuts the Church no slack—the fact that some did it proved they all could have done it, is his position. This dovetails with some digging I did for ‘TrueTom vs the Apostates!’ Perhaps 10% of church Christians refused to support Hitler during Nazi times. Is that good? Of course. But the fact remains that they had to defy their own church to do it, churches that invariably played ball with the dictator. With Jehovah’s Witnesses, the figure is close to 100%. How can anyone state that their religion is not superior, or that the organization that coordinates is not to be lauded? The greater lesson for the religious scholars that Brother Seminega has is that they should become Jehovah’s Witnesses. There is a collection of core teachings often discussed (two have been cited here: identification with the kingdom and withdrawal from the politicized world) that serve to identify one and only one religion. There is no setting more poignant than 1990’s Rwanda or 1940’s Germany to highlight how vital those teachings are. This is why those “apostates” who vehemently oppose the Witnesses readily slide into hypocrisy. They ignore the vital core teachings—rarely when people leave the faith do I ever hear them referring to such things again—to rail about how the faith impeded their freedom of movement. They ignore the vital core teachings, preferring to put humans under the magnifying glass in a search for dirt. They dig through the diamonds in search of the turds and present revelation of the turds as their version of “good news.” I like how at the 2019 annual meeting, Mark Sanderson examined Hebrews 2:15, of how “through [Jesus’] death [God] might bring to nothing the one having the means to cause death, that is, the Devil, and that he might set free all those who were held in slavery all their lives by their fear of death.” He then spoke of the Nuremberg trials, in which various Nazis who had committed unspeakable atrocities were asked the simple question, “How could you do those terrible things?” “What did they say?” he asked, and then related the answer they had given: “We had no choice. If we didn’t obey they would put us to death.” “Those people could be manipulated,” Sanderson said. “They could be controlled. They could be made to do the most wicked things because they were afraid.” It was true of the Hutu tribe as well. To not join in “the work” of slaughter was enough to be put to death oneself for being disloyal to the cause. Many consciences, religious and otherwise, were cast aside due to fear of death. That’s manipulation. That’s control. That’s the consequence of—shall we say it?—not being one of Jehovah’s Witnesses and benefiting from the program of spiritual food directed from the Governing Body. Reject it and settle for a genocide every so often when with winds blow just right—history affirms that such will happen. Professor Roth welcomes No Greater Love, agreeing with the author that it is likely the first book by a Jehovah’s Witnesses writing of his own experience, the first book by someone who was there. It almost didn’t come about. From the Acknowledgments section, Brother Seminega thanks Alexandre Kimenyi, the scholar who invited him to speak and subsequently encouraged him to gather his records for history. I wrote in Dear Mr. Putin - Jehovah’s Witnesses Write Russia that “books about Jehovah’s Witnesses authored by Jehovah’s Witnesses are not plentiful. This is a shame, for no outsider, even with the best of intentions, can do justice to the faith as can an insider - they miss the nuances, and in some cases, even the facts. Jehovah’s Witnesses are primarily drawn from the ranks of working people, who are not inclined to write books... Why write a book when you can and do look people in the eye and tell them what you have to say?” Professor Seminega is from a class that is inclined to write books, yet he still doesn’t do it until much later, after outside encouragement, because he is used to “looking people in the eye and telling them what he has to say.” In time, a Russian Jehovah’s Witness will write a book of his experiences at the hands of current persecutors there, and when that happens, his book will rightly vault ahead of mine. Mine is merely a compilation and analysis of worldwide news reports, along with a considerable amount of witnessing along the way, but not so much as to negate its historical value. When that Russian Witness writer appears, he or she will be likely facilitated by the Arnold Liebster Foundation, as has been the case with No Greater Love. This, too, will vault it ahead of mine, because the Foundation at present regards me with a dubious eye. Probably they came across me when I was battling online with the malcontents and said, “What Witness would do that?” They do not know that I subsequently kicked them all to the curb. No matter. At the Kingdom Hall, we would straighten it out in two minutes. But the internet is the land of the liars where frauds roam at will, and it can be difficult to distinguish friend from foe. Of course, it is always possible that they regard even taking on the controversial topics that I do as the work of an “indiscreet brother,” and should this be the case, who am I to say that they are not right? Maybe I am the soldier singing atop the Jerusalem wall after Hezekiah has told the troops to zip it.

On the other hand, the percentage of Ninevite citizens who survived is pretty high, though it initially displeased Jonah. I have no doubt that the examples you cite are the ones that will carry the day, but they are tempered by accounts like that of Jonah. I just don’t like to be overly dogmatic—it’s a displeasing quality, and one that is not necessary. I have even taken to saying lately of Tom Pearlsandswine that “that brother knows how to put the dog into dogmatic!”

I don’t even pretend to know how this works. I know what is the place of safety. I know what is my obligation to publicize it. Everything else involves matters “too great for me.” Can you be some distance from the place of safety or not on millimeter? Dunno. “Is it only Jehovah’s Witnesses who will be saved?” someone asked my daughter, a need-greater. “Well—I’m not Jesus, and I don’t know,” she replied. What of the verse that you will by no means complete the circuit of Israel before the son of man arrives? How does that factor in? Will Jehovah pull some last minute trick like he did with Jonah? It is enough to know that he can read hearts. I’ll just do an Abraham and say, “is not the God of the entire earth going to do what is right?” After Armageddon, (let us assume that I find myself on the other side of it) I will look around, see who I see, and say, “I guess that is what’s right.” All we can do is what we can do. Between house-to-house, carts, internet, and just plain zeal, what we have done is a lot. Is the kingdom the burning issue in everyone’s mind that they consciously approve or reject, as much of our material would suggest? Or is it that people are consumed with the day-to-day and “take no note” of what is happening around them, as also much of our material would suggest? What is the interplay between the two? The issue is do people prefer government by God or government by men. The GB would be negligent to not continually stress the place of safety and call attention to verses that indicate you’d better be there. They would be negligent to not urge those there to prioritize their lives so as to join Christ in saying “Come,” They have not been negligent. Imitate them, says 2 Thess 3:7-9. Imitate their faith, says Heb 13:17, a faith that has manifested itself as deeds, because faith without works is dead. That is enough for me to go on. You don’t have to know every little thing. Not a sparrow falls to the ground unseen by the Father. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t fall. How many will fall, and why, and how many will stand?

Did your wife come home, look at it, then look at you pecking away at the keyboard, and say, “I don’t believe this”?

Did she say that? Next thing it will be all roads leading to heaven. Has she gone back to the trinity yet? I suppose I should go back and read through it, but since 90% of what she posts is of how the Great 8 have run her off the road and consigned her to Facebook, I’m just not up to it.

I think all one need do is extrapolate from present trends, or from those in Moses’ time. They will not be rebelling in their own eyes. They will be ones pointing out that the guardrails are hemming them in from doing all of which humans are capable. They may be ones pointing out that certain individuals have lost their way. Maybe there will be reformers. To say that there will be whistleblowers might be going too far—after all, are speaking of paradise—but as Srecko points out, “humans are brutal.” Who knows what sort of rationalizations they may dream up in pursuit of what they want? Humans have proved resourceful in that regard.

The older I get the more I think the day of reckoning will more heavily involve mistreatment of the animals. After all, it is a direct failure of the prime mission to care for the earth and what is on it. Instead, horses are pressed into war service. At least when innocent people die you can tell yourself that, though innocent, they were born into the offending (human) family and might later become warlike themselves, but horses...

For me, if I must stay up that late, the tree of life becomes the coffee bean tree.

It is only the greatest Witness holiday in America, that’s all! And you choose to remain ignorant! Shame! We throw huge bashes on that day. It commemorates how the little rodent (part of God’s glorious creation—nothing idolatrous about the day at all, so Witness needn’t quote all of Ezekiel in outrage over it) pops up out of his hole, and if he sees his shadow, it means 6 more weeks of winter—or maybe it is that if he doesn’t see his shadow, it means six more weeks of that.

It is good to write books.

There are two people here who I am not even sure are sane.