TrueTomHarley

Come come. Are you really a ‘newbie?’ You read very much like an ‘oldbie’ to me. He doesn’t ‘vote.’ He laughs—like a hyena.

“Am I on Candid Camera?”

I dislike incurring the displeasure of Dooyaateehda Ajigaleidii, and I hope never to do so.

I can deal with someone accusatory. And I can deal with someone stupid. But someone accusatory AND stupid I admit I have a difficult time with. That is largely why I am distancing myself from this particular forum in favor ot the smaller one.

I got to pass both the bread AND the wine to all those in the audience (my wife). How often does THAT happen?

The king of the south has taken advantage of the financial crisis to provide himself an excuse to neglect road repairs. Recently I crashed headlong into a huge pothole and spent the rest of the afternoon muttering, driving around on 3 1/2 tires.

I saw an item about some squirting wine at car occupants using turkey basters to keep social distance. Or is that only in my mind’s eye that I saw it?

What a bunch of slippery yoyos hanging out here! Making up a ‘hovah’ word Sheesh! It reminds me of how the evangelicals tried to say that early translators simply made just an honest mistake in mistranslating the word ‘kaaru’ so as to make scriptures say what they wanted them to say, and Rabbi Singer called them on it. There is no ‘kaaru’ he said. No such word—or rather there wasn’t until you coined it to cover your dishonest tracks: https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2010/03/so-there-was-this-lutheran-evangelical-and-he-approaches-this-rabbi.html

Exactly my impression when this first aired weeks ago.

That’s a dumber comment than your preceding one! What does it apply to? I will allow that I probably overreacted to your initial comment about what is political and what is not. You did not wave the red flag that you usually do—stupid comments about box cars of letters to serve as fuel for the Russians through cold winter nights. I was anticipating yet one more encore of that idiocy and you did not deliver it. My bad. The Russian brothers always thought it a long shot for harassment to be alleviated by the campaign. It would be icing on the cake if it had turned out that way. Instead, as it turned out, the consolation prize was every bit as valuable, perhaps even more so, and everyone in the world can see it but you! It was for the witness! Obviously those government leaders did not read all the letters—they may have not read even one. But they could not have failed to know that they existed. They could not have failed to know that there is one ‘nation’ absolutely unique in the world of nations in which each and every member cares deeply about each and every other. Not only did they learn of it—most of the relevant power players in the world came to know of it—and there is always a chance, however remote, that one night Putin will be unable to sleep, as was Ahasuerus long ago, and he will say, ‘Bring me a packet of those letters from the the Jehovahs—what is it with those people that each and every one would do that way? Last time I went to church, the arch-deacon nearly ran over my feet in the parking lot on his way out.’ It also bound the brotherhood together—hugely important for those who value it. Witnesses the world over felt helpless. They longed for something that they could do, and here was something they could do! They could fortify their Russian brothers, now in the eye of the storm, but not left to weather it thinking that everyone has abandoned them. No, they realize that the hearts of the entire brotherhood are one with them! Who knows how many have been fortified to keep integrity on just that account?—and here you cannot let an opportunity pass to ridicule it! We are social creatures. It is how Jehovah made us. We are not creatures as Witness and 4Jah would have everyone believe—and in this matter you throw in your lot with them—that say ‘Just Jesus n me!’—that’s enough! When God hands you an additional gift of a worldwide brotherhood, so essential for social beings, you do not reject to it to say, “Nope! No need, thanks. Me n Jesus—that will get me through!” Nobody knows how things will play out, but one possibility is that it will play out as in that cassette drama of Brother Friend playing Moses. (If any casting ever illustrated the Peter Principle, that was it) One woman in the background—Zenia, I think her name was—was eternally whining and bitching and bellyaching and fault-finding and carrying on—and when she went down at the end into the opened earth, the surviving Israelites did not say what they might be expected to say: ‘Ding dong, the witch is dead—what a pain in the rear end she was!’ No! They lamented her death because they were chumps—all of God’s people are. And should you ever go down for exactly the parallel reason, I too will not say, ‘Ding dong the witch is dead—what a pain in the rear he was!’ as reasonable people might expect me to say. i, too, will lament. for I, too, am a chump.

I thought today’s WT study timely indeed, as it addressed: (1) How should anointed ones view themselves? (2) How should those who partake of the emblems at the Memorial be treated? (3) Should we be worried if the number of partakers increases? The really true anointed don't say: “Well, you can go to the elders if you want, but if you REALLY want to know what is going on, here I am. I am one of the anointed, after all. I mean, c’mon! You don’t think there are some unbalanced ones who will claim—and in most cases, truly convince themselves of it—the status exactly for that purpose? It is such a power-play to do it that way. It is so much like the greater world. To hear some here carry on about the ‘anointed being muzzled’ you would think it as though the GB was the media that had succeeded in separating Trump from ‘his base.’ On and on they rage about it. Will some lunatics on this forum rage about what they are going to do as the ‘true anointed’ in just a few short years? We’ll see. They are not too far along in the ‘to do’ list, the first item is to merely show up at all. For every 10,000 persons who can point to what they are going to do, there is only one who can point to what he has done—and so far, the GB are that one. It doesn’t matter if the number has in rising in recent years. It has risen no more than ten thousand over—what? twenty years? In a congregation of 8.5 million, that is statistically nothing. The organization doesn’t even try to figure it out; it can easily be attributed to possible emotional duress and imbalance. Nobody would argue that there’s not plenty of that going around today in the world, and Jehovah’s servants are not unaffected. Or maybe it is real. Doesn’t matter. It is irrelevant to faithful life. You don’t have to know it, is the point. You don’t have to figure out: ‘Is he (or she) really anointed or not?’ It is a designation of a heavenly assignment. Unless one is tapped for a GB assignment—and how likely is that?—it is irrelevant for the present life in this system. Should they come to feel they need one more member, surely it will be someone with a long-time record of faithful service and not just one ‘right off the boat.’ One brother commented on how there are VIP clubs today in the world and that it is a sign of status to belong to a VIP club. It is exactly what the really true anointed do not do. Such a club excludes everyone else. Anointed don’t do it. As to any tendency to treat them as celebrities? Look they do not want that. Face it, why do we usually want to meet any well-known person? Because they have made it to the top! GB members don’t view themselves are making it to the top—it is part of their very aualitficatons that they do not think of themselves in that way.

Most of these churches that defy government quarantine restrictions do so because they see the government being opportunistic—‘never let a crisis go to waste.’ They are intensely political on the right, celebrate the Bill of Rights, and they fear that government surveillance, monitoring, restrictions will not revert to normal after the crisis has passed. To them, the crisis is the wedge to introduce permanent restriction of freedom. Some see it as a deliberate move to so decimate capitalism that all that will be left is for socialism to take the helm. A fringe of these people even think the ‘crisis’ is manufactured for exactly that purpose—to extend control and restrictive means of government over all persons. And don’t get them going about Bill Gates! None of this is so absurd to be dismissed out of hand. See how popular Bernie Sanders is, or even Elizabeth Warren. The trouble with conspiracy theories is that once a few of them turn out to be true it becomes so much easier to swallow anything coming down the pipe. I am glad that we really don’t have to worry about it. We never put our trust in human institutions, so if it turns out that there are machinations amongst them, it does not unsettle us to the degree that it unsettles people who do put full trust in human self-rule. Nor do we look to human institutions for ‘staying power.’ If they don’t go down this way, they will go down that way. All we have to do is stay loyal to God, no matter what, and let the chips fall where they may. When push comes to shove, this life is not the ‘real’ life of 1 Timothy 6:19.

I can’t quite get my head around what your ridiculous premise is. Saying something is ‘political’ and so is not saying something! What sort of a ‘premise’ is that? Even here where bytes are cheap that premise is a waste of them.

Should I let the blowhard have it, or what? Naw. ‘Tommy, for once in your life, keep your mouth shut.’ He is what he is.

In the US there is a call for mandatory lockdown. Those who resist that call say What is the point?’ What, are you going to put people that disobey in jail, and thereby make the problems worse? That has happened in NYC. There is not much that can be done unless people voluntarily cooperate. Horrible thing for those in prison. Yes, they should be released. Will they be? At least JWs have the knowledge that this life is not the ‘real life’ of 1 Timothy 6. None of us wants to die—death is inconvenient and it makes people feel bad—though death itself is not a cause of fear for those who trust in Bible promises.

Categorically I deny that JTR was the inspiration for ‘Tom Irregardless and Me.’ It was another chicken-raising hillbilly, not he.

Can one really say something about the Trinity in the third person and expect to be taken seriously? I am still trying to punch my way out of that paper bag.

Hmm. That explains a lot.

I think you just put your finger on the problem.

I believe the position of Pork Chop Secretary remains unfilled.

In fact, it has turned out to be just that way. I vacationed there over the summer and it is a lush paradise—beautiful beyond belief. All praise to the great God who sent that craft to its doom. The point is, that if you can make outlandish and ignorant statements, there is no reason that I can not do so as well.

There is a part of me that wants to lay down bets on this, but I would have to be following the thread more carefully so as to get the odds right. Has Witness met her match in pummeling ability? One thing for sure, I have never met such as assortment of characters who’s shared favorite scripture is that mentioned in the WT today: “...and you do not need anyone to be teaching you;...” I mean, almost everyone hear feels the need to instruct Warwick. But these characters feel the need to not only to that, but everyone who comes within 50 bytes of them.

No, you blockhead. It rescued postal systems throughout the world, most of whom are on the ropes, as they have been in the United States forever, and they bought us serious good will from the superior authorities which may prove useful some day. “They will sit, each one under his vine and under his pork chop tree and hopefully learn some sense, or if not, at least some decorum.”

Works well with me. There are some others who would use it to bolster their claim to ‘true anointed’ status.

I would not disagree that the description fits, but I gave you that name and I get to say how you earned it. Admitted, your story is better than mine, because mine doesn’t fit in all particulars. Slow Joe used to refer to the semi-grifter preachers who set up storefront churches as ‘pork chop preachers.’ They preached just enough to keep themselves in pork chops. There was no particular judgment as to whether they were sincere or not, but the inference is that they knew just enough of the Bible to buy their pork chop and no more. I like the description. I applied it to you. The insulting connotations really don’t fit. The home-spun seat-of-your-pants ones do.