TrueTomHarley

15 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

Perhaps someone could buy it to put on a Woodstock II.

Book ‘The Righteous Brothers’

1 hour ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

Anybody else have something they could add?

It is still there, much expanded, and when we visited a few years ago, was where the literature was printed. So far as I know, printing moved out of Brooklyn many years previous to its sale—perhaps some specialty things were printed there, but no more than that, and Patterson has never been used for printing.

They did stop growing food there ages ago, having decided it could be purchased more economically, all factors considered. It used to be as you entered on the main road, residence buildings were on your left, and various fields of produce, along with a barn or three, were on your right. There was no printery at all.

’Davey the kid,’ who I have written about a few times, and who appears in the afterword of Tom Irregardless and Me, worked in the cheese room there. He later published a book on cheese-making. He and a few other Bethelites formed ‘The Farmhand Band’ and would entertain others of the family—perhaps even those outside. I tagged along a time or two as others who knew him went down to visit, though in time we would serve together as elders in an outside congregation.

He was one of those enormously talented brothers that everything he touched turned to gold. Walking into the 8-story Medical Arts building in Rochester—for upon leaving Bethel, he had to make a living—in order to secure the cleaning contract, the manager noted some areas of particular challenge, but then conceded that he didn’t know much about cleaning. ‘That makes two of us!’ Davey told me his (unspoken) reaction later, as he wowed the fellow with pure charm. “It’s my gift,” he told me later, “they never say no.”

He built a Kingdom Hall in Rochester, built another one, and then an Assembly Hall. Of course, it wasn’t all him—there were committees, but he was always the go-to driving force, if only because he seemed never at a loss as to what to do, while others needed time to get their heads around new things. During the Assembly Hall build, he got tired of putting out ‘cleaning fires,’ as he would call them, which would take him away to the telephone. So he took some college courses, accumulated enormous college credit via ‘life experiences’ and emerged a psychotherapist. I would joke with him that—poor fellow that he was, he always suspected that half of us were nuts, and now that he had become a psychotherapist he discovers that even the half that he thought were sane—they’re nuts, too.

He told me of the respect he had gained for the college courses with regard to psychology. He had entered upon the coursework assuming that it would be all necessary drivel, but he presently said, ‘Hey, I am not doing some of these things myself’ and benefited accordingly. 

He died a while back and so this is more-or-less an obituary that I did not intend when I started this remark—thanks for giving me the prod. His wife has died, too.  And to think that Davey made major waves in his non-believing family, for he by-passed a full university scholarship for the sake of enrolling as a pioneer. He wasn’t exactly typical.

(Srecko’s link is of ‘Mountain Farms’ the original location of Gilead—much smaller and far removed from the other three complexes.)

12 minutes ago, Arauna said:

I call you out [Srecko] for your accusing tone...

Increasingly he says nasty and largely irrelevant things just for the sake of saying nasty and irrelevant things. 

He may go the way of Matthew 4 5784, who eventually dropped all pretense of being here to help, earned a rebuke or two, and left of his own volition, a New Year’s resolution—though he is back now sparingly, and may even have turned over a new leaf in some regards. 

1 hour ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

You care so deeply, as evidenced by your Epistle  .... YOU make the phone call

In this case the answer is not particularly important, nor interesting. The situation prompting the question is what arouses interest. Here is a list of religions ‘of the world.’ Jehovah’s Witnesses, who are ‘no part of the world’ are not on it. Who cares why? I don’t.

Even so, I did mention three possibilities: 

“Is it an oversight? Is it a snub? Is it avoidance because any story about Jehovah's Witnesses will reliably attract swarms of their virulent "apostates' alarmed at any favorable mention and insistent upon maligning their former faith and so RNS just doesn't want to deal with it?”

Which one of the three it is doesn’t interest me. It is like when the Die Hard villain finally dies himself, after two hours of mayhem, and you learn in the epilogue that he was also behind in his contributions to the United Way. Who cares?

16 minutes ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

The simplest way to find out why Jehovah's Witnesses are not listed where you think the should be is ask the RNS.

There you go, ‘ol boy. A fine project for you. Right that wrong.

1 minute ago, JW Insider said:

It's odd that it's only about 20, considering, but at least most of them are pieces of news that we would consider relevant, like Russia, persecution, etc.

One of them is not JW per se, but is of someone who wrote a book on how to refute them, along with the Mormons, latching on to key scriptures cites and how to answer back.

Bring it on, I say. Any Witness worth his salt knows how to answer such things.

1 hour ago, 4Jah2me said:

Some JWs are a bit too keen to get their message across. Some even use this Covid-19 virus as an excuse.  

I haven’t. Nor have I seen anyone here who has. More importantly, The JW organization clearly hasn’t.

https://www.theworldnewsmedia.org/topic/87136-‘using’-the-pandemic-to-‘recruit’-people-sheesh-what-is-it-with-these-nutcases/

But if any individual has, I can certainly understand. A pandemic that has not been seen in 100 years. Economic disruption not seen since the Great Depression. In the US, there have been numerous reports of food lines up to two miles long. I would forgive any brother for going there, even if the organization itself has not. So far it is just one more nail in the coffin of human mismanagement of the earth to them.

Just now, Arauna said:

Good that they do not recognise us!  The image of the beast will go for all other religions - to remove them - and forget about us.  Then at last they will come for us when we deliver a special message..... just before Armageddon!  This will be their undoing..... to go for JWs.

That is the moral of the post that you stated more succinctly than I. In a list of “the religions of the world,” we are not on it.

If you were to ask Bethel to describe their faith, very quickly would come up that statement that true Christians “are no part of the world.”

Make of it what you will. I don’t make anything of it. I just note it.

1 hour ago, JW Insider said:

TTH already mentioned that. I think you were supposed to read the part that had a line through the words, too. :))

I don’t know where the strike throughs came from. It wasn’t me, unless it was by accident. A software glitch? Dunno. But there weren’t supposed to be any. 

1 hour ago, JW Insider said:

Not completely ignored, though:

That is acknowledged, too. Searching, one may find some things. But in the tree of faiths that includes most everyone, at least in the alternative or other category, Witnesses are not to be found.

As you stated to Srecko, I’m not upset about it, and Bethel may even be happy about it. As usual, 4Jah is all wet. These others he mentioned can and are maneuvered into other forms of violence, even if nationalism has become passé for some of them. And without a unity founded on love, it takes nothing for the national king to convince them that the villains are to be found in the domain of the other king. It takes nothing to stir up people today.

I visited religionnews.com and found that my religion does not exist. Jehovah's Witnesses are nowhere listed in their tree of faiths. Everyone else is. Jehovah's Witnesses are not. Can it be? RNS "strive to inform, illuminate and inspire public discourse on matters relating to belief and convictions," says their About page. So where are Jehovah's Witnesses?Few religions have been in the news as much as they, especially with their recent ban in Russia. Is Religion News Service a Russian site? No. Is it their aim to suck up to the Russians? I don't think so. So where are the Witnesses?

The reason that there is not a Jeopardy clue: "They visit door to door to speak about the Bible" is that the answer is too obvious and would stump no one. In some ways Witnesses are plainly the foremost of religions. "And this good news of the Kingdom will be preached in all the inhabited earth for a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come" (Matthew 24:14), for example. Nobody is known for taking the "good news of the Kingdom' to each and every person like Jehovah's Witnesses, especially before "the end will come.' Here is a cartoon of how JWs found Osama Bin Laden:

Or what about the verse, "beating their swords into plowshares.' (Isaiah 2:4) It is an inspirational slogan for all. The ones who actually DO it are Jehovah's Witnesses. They may be the only ones to completely do it, in that, not only will they not participate in wars, but they will not perform civilian work that is clearly designed to support war efforts. 

Yet, look through the comprehensive list at the bottom of the religionnews.com website"”they do not appear.

The first place you check, of course, is Christianity. There you find four subdivisions: Catholics, Latter Day Saints, Orthodox, and Protestants. If they are in any of the four, it must be Protestants. There you find three subdivisions: Black Protestants, Evangelical, and Mainline. Well, they're not the first or the third. Since they preach the good news of the Kingdom, could they be the second? Nope. Scroll through the stories in that category. You won't find them.

Okay, got it. They are not counted as Christian because RNS assumes that one must believe in the Trinity to be Christian"”many times we've run across this. It makes no sense, but there it is. Most verses used to advance the Trinity teaching are verses that, if they were seen in any other context, would be instantly dismissed as figure of speech. There is no verse that directly states the Trinity, and the one in the King James Version that does (1 John 5:7) has been recognized by all modern scholars as a spurious insertion and thus either removed or footnoted. One almost pictures a scribe reviewing scriptures, getting madder and madder that his favorite doctrine is no where to be found, and slipping it in when no one was looking. 

Where else might Jehovah's Witnesses be if not in the Christian category? Well, maybe the Alternative Faiths category, or the Other Faiths category. Nope. Scroll through the stories on either category. They do not appear. 

Is it an oversight? Is it a snub? Is it avoidance because any story about Jehovah's Witnesses will reliably attract swarms of their virulent "apostates' alarmed at any favorable mention and insistent upon maligning their former faith and so RNS just doesn't want to deal with it? (See TrueTom vs the Apostates) Dunno. But is certainly is strange. 

Now, to be sure, if you enter Jehovah's Witnesses in the Search box, a few items appear"”not many, but a few. There is someone there at RNS that knows that if your textbook is the Bible, if you teach from it, if you have even invented an entirely new non-commercial distribution channel and translated it into overlooked languages of developing countries so that common persons there are not stuck with some 200-year old turkey of a translation that they can neither understand nor afford, you must be a religion. Still, Jehovah's Witnesses are not listed in the list that includes everyone else. 

Do not think that the JW organization will be miffed at not being included in the list. They may even draw satisfaction from it. "Good. Here is a list of the religions "of the world' and we are not on it," they may say. If there is one verse they take seriously over there at JW HQ, it is John 17:16, where Jesus prays about his followers: "They are no part of the world, just as I am no part of the world."

For that reason I will not go the RNS site and holler, "Hey!"”what is it with you clowns?!" The site is an offspring of the Missouri School of Journalism. It speaks of the "academic experts' that monitor all. I don't want to tangle with experts. Maybe they will try to pull rank on that basis. Who knows? Maybe they are right. Maybe I am not part of a religion, even if I do speak of the Bible door to door and keep the peace.

2 hours ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

And the scripture TTH quoted:

¹² Now we ask you, brothers and sisters, to acknowledge those who work hard among you, who care for you in the Lord and who admonish you. ¹³ Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work. Live in peace with each other. ¹⁴ And we urge you, brothers and sisters, warn those who are idle and disruptive, encourage the disheartened, help the weak, be patient with everyone.

Paul didn’t write it this flowery.

2 hours ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

How many Sisters', and childrens' lives were RUINED, forever,

It’s a little too soon to tell.

19 hours ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

Back then,

My Bethel chum told me in the early 80s that he thought the old-timers at Bethel must marvel at how frail the younger generation was. Back in their day, counsel would be ‘You’ve got a rotten attitude, and you’d better straighten up!’ And the counseled one WOULD straighten up, and later say ‘Thanks for the counsel.’ Or they would decide the place was not for them and leave. But they wouldn’t melt into a puddle of mush as would more readily happen today.

19 hours ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

It is seriously creepy.

I’ll take your word for it. It is probably someone’s thought that by getting specific, they can forestall anyone ‘going gay.’ They are likely as dumbfounded as any of our generation that sexual attraction has turned out to be as fluid as it has. Nobody, but nobody, of my generation would have seen it coming, regardless of how conservative or liberal they were. As a fringe orientation? Yes, of course. But as a movement going mainstream and shaming/bullying others into acceptance? Never. 

You should develop a little more discernment, a little more 1 Thess 5:12-14, It would suit you better.

de Vienne wrote that when she submitted the final Volume I to Bethel, via mail I suppose, they received it without comment. She speculated about this and one possibility she advanced was that they ‘were incurious about their own history.’ In the main, I think this is true. They don’t look back all that much at Bethel—they look forward. 

And it is also true of me. It is not that the past history does not interest me. It is that so many things interest me more that I may never get around to it, even though I would like to. I read the book rather quickly because I told her I would write a review of it, which I did. Maybe someday I will come back to it more thoroughly. 

One other reviewer wrote of the authors’ “almost fanatical attention to detail.” That was also my general impression and it makes me suppose the book is probably the foremost authority on what it writes. They don’t appear to have any agenda at all, other than illuminating history—unlike almost everyone else who weighs in on the subject.

6 hours ago, JW Insider said:

25 to 30 years earlier the Bethelites could still carry a gun on guard duty. This probably stopped in the 1950's,

Wasn’t that the day that JTR quit Bethel?

8 hours ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

I looked it up, and it is supposed to be a Science Fiction movie, but it appears to actually be a vulgar, violent, gory horror movie.

The best cure for never ever watching that type of stuff is to have a job in which you are all alone, middle of the night, in some big creaky warehouse, and you begin to imagine a surprise around every corner or through every door.

41 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

Very interesting and detailed as usual. B W Schulz and R. M. de Vienne (deceased) showed themselves again to be meticulous researches who clearly took time to read a lot of source material to avoid jumping to conclusions.

He complains frequently about pin-headed people who come out of nowhere to attack and argue with him. I skimmed the first, more of less just to say I did it, and found myself wishing that I had 20X the time to do it properly

Ooh. Time out. I just noticed that you amended your initial response to me, @James Thomas Rook Jr. just about doubling it, and maybe making some of my reply not to the point.

You scream to high heaven when I do that.

Of course, that does not mean that I cease doing it.

3 minutes ago, Anna said:

played by John Malkowitch)

Check out John Malkovich playing Hercule Poirot. He offers a completely different take on him, poles apart from Suchet or even Finney.

1 hour ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

Interesting observations, but missed the point entirely.

Who can tell what your point is, what with the non-stop diatribes and cartoons? You like to complain—THAT point stands out front and center. As to your other point—well, you’re some sort of ‘freedom-fighter,’ or ‘gunslinger,’ or ‘whistleblower,’ or something of that sort. Join the 21st century, where such ones proliferate like weeds.

The very fact that you were reinstated gives the lie to much of your accusations as to how controlling and abusive the JW organization is. They forgave some things, overlooked others, and let go of any grudges. It’s a shame you can’t find it within yourself to do the same.

What’s remarkable is how valiantly you defend Trump, practically kissing my feet when I wrote a post to that effect, wanting me to forward it to major outlets—and at the same time, you vehemently attack the GB. Yet both purportedly play the role, in different contexts, of representing and defending the amhaarets from the ‘elites.’ TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) for you means people who go apoplectic in rage at the President. WDS (Watchtower Derangement Syndrome—your own term) means for you exactly the opposite—people who DO NOT go apoplectic in criticizing the GB, but who would defend them.

You’re a piece of work! Fortunately for you, you’re in an organization that puts up with and even welcomes pieces of work. All the ‘balanced’ people are out chasing the goals of this system of things and are, at the moment, experiencing nightmares, fearing it will all disintegrate. 

13 minutes ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

that drowns out the core truth that is so magnificent, that we have.

What drowned it out in the first century? In no time at all, the magnificent core truths were gone, thoroughly mixed in with philosophies of the day. To the extent the apostles and loyal ones tried to hold it back, no doubt reading false positives sometimes and overreacting, you would have been railing against them, too.

The trick is not to sanitize the present. It is to desanitize the past.

We’re not all that far apart, you blustering old pork chop.

26 minutes ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

but I have been friends to some who were looking for and excuse to leave, and did NOT have me to use as an example, as outlined earlier.

There is something to this. I am struck by the fact that those who leave and thereafter show their faces on the internet as ‘apostates’ have almost always forgotten all about the ‘core magnificent’ truths that they once cherished. The sighing and groaning that impelled them into the truth has been replaced by bitching and complaining that drove them out. They appear to have no problem replacing the satisfying explanation of why God permits suffering with ‘Stuff happens.’ Appreciation for the core and magnificent truths—gone, replaced by self-absorption into their own woes.

To that extent—although you bitch and complain more than any dozen of them put together, you have NOT forsaken the core magnificent truths and thus stay in the only place that holds them up high, even if they are not immune to the pig-headedness and pettiness of human nature. To that extent you deserve credit, though you carry on as disrespectfully as you do.

6 hours ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

ANSWER::" I always have. " ( correctly implying that I always will.)

You know, I can get my head around this. I really can.

I’ll still refer to you from time to time as ‘the brother with the rotten attitude’ because who knows how many brothers you have stumbled in carrying on as you do. But I sort of understand where you are coming from as you have not made clear before—or if so, I did not pick up on it. 

What you say is like when someone dear to me told off some elders and I told Mack that I didn’t really approve of him telling off the elders, but..... “I understand,” Mack saved me the hassle of finishing the sentence.

6 hours ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

and we are ALL, blind pawns, made from DNA.

The ministry is a treasure, but it is treasure in earthen vessels—us—with all the wacky foibles that humans are capable of. I once observed about beards: ‘Hippies and beatniks died out ages ago, it’s not in the Bible and to the extent it is, it is reverse. We are an organization of principles, not rules, and yet no rule is more strongly enforced than the no-beard rule. I’m glad that sucker has finally been put to bed, but it still tosses and turns in its sleep. 

You can complain about such foibles of organization to God. The trouble is, God will say, “Well, you are no great shakes yourself. You’ll all just have to work it out.” It’s a shame you’re not better at doing that, instead giving every appearance that you will be nursing a dozen grudges to your grave. Sometimes you just have to suck it up. All of us do. That’s life. It happens everywhere. 

Ah, well. We all have our hang ups. Even me.

I was walking my pet pig the other day and a man approached to say, “Hey, where did you find the pig?” Before I could open my mouth, the pig said. “I found him online, frequenting the WorldNewsMedia forum. We hit it off and have chummed together ever since.” I don’t get no respect either.

The clip from ‘meaning of life’ struck me as very shallow—junk food gussied up as if nourishing. That’s is all I saw, but because it is Jack Dorsey, I will play the rest later, time permiting.

The ad that appeared before the segment—it may be different for different viewers—for the EpochTimes, I at first did not know whether it was an ad or a parody. “Sir, how do you feel after reading the Times?” “I feel great!” But so far as I can tell, it really is an ad.

1 hour ago, Kosonen said:

I would seek for special permit from the Australian government to gather in the wilderness without passports or papers. Nobody would be disturbed by us in the wilderness anyway. 

Better yet, register as an NGO.

Am I on Candid Camera?

On 4/16/2020 at 9:54 AM, Arauna said:

Healing many problems due to the oxygen.

 

I want to put your two posts (here and to Admin) on my own blog word for word, as an experience of one person which I neither affirm nor deny. Are you okay with that?

And to think that the gadget is not yet 100 years old.