TrueTomHarley

Yeah—I don’t really have a problem with it, though it’s not occurred to me to do it myself. We train our conscience by Bible principles and then in accord with our best judgment use it as our guide. 
It reminds me a little of a friend whose teenage son wanted to join the high-school golf team. He knew his boy, he knew the specifics, but he also knew that others would stampede him with their “concern” over whether this was a good course. “Look just do it,” he told the kid, “and don’t blow a trumpet over it.” 
It is one of those foibles that happens in any collection of humans. You never quite know the line between genuine godly counsel and minding your own business. You could rail against it as “control” or “hypocrisy” or whatever the malcontents might do here, but it is just human relations that must be navigated anywhere, a bit more intense here because we are, as one circuit overseer put it, one large, united, productive, happy, somewhat dysfunctional family. Aren’t we all?

The one who I said. She is too much. She defines the expression “waterless cloud,” drowning everyone in gallons of verse, but then not being guided by them.
Someone says, “but I want to talk to Jesus.” Rather than be guided by scripture which, strangely or not, seems to make no allowance for it, she spins a gooey human analogy. You can speak to anyone you want, she says (and you join her) Sometimes a child has to speak with daddy, sometimes mommy, sometimes grandpa. It’s enough to make a guy heave. 
Go with the scriptures. If they seem counterintuitive, as they might in this case, see if you can get your heart and head around how they still are the arrangement and still for the best. Don’t say, Well I want to talk to Jesus, and to say I shouldn’t is unloving, and we know that God is not unloving so that must mean I can talk to Jesus whenever I want.
 

Why I would choose to block one villain on this forum, and not another, I don’t know. They all equally want the downfall of Jehovah’s organization.
Were I going to do that, I would block them all by not coming to the open site. I’d stay on the closed one. As it is, I usually do with threads I originate. Yesterday I posted something on this week’s assigned Bible reading. There has been some discussion. I didn’t post it here becasue I did not want soreheads urinating on it with completely irrelevant remarks about how they think the GB is no good.

There was a time when speaking only to ones specifically involved in something was not interpreted as an attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of everyone else.

Yeah—I don’t really have a problem with it, though it’s not occurred to me to do it myself. We train our conscience by Bible principles and then in accord with our best judgment use it as our guide. 
It reminds me a little of a friend whose teenage son wanted to join the high-school golf team. He knew his boy, he knew the specifics, but he also knew that others would stampede him with their “concern” over whether this was a good course. “Look just do it,” he told the kid, “and don’t blow a trumpet over it.” 
It is one of those foibles that happens in any collection of humans. You never quite know the line between genuine godly counsel and minding your own business. You could rail against it as “control” or “hypocrisy” or whatever the malcontents might do here, but it is just human relations that must be navigated anywhere, a bit more intense here because we are, as one circuit overseer put it, one large, united, productive, happy, somewhat dysfunctional family. Aren’t we all?

The one who I said. She is too much. She defines the expression “waterless cloud,” drowning everyone in gallons of verse, but then not being guided by them.
Someone says, “but I want to talk to Jesus.” Rather than be guided by scripture which, strangely or not, seems to make no allowance for it, she spins a gooey human analogy. You can speak to anyone you want, she says (and you join her) Sometimes a child has to speak with daddy, sometimes mommy, sometimes grandpa. It’s enough to make a guy heave. 
Go with the scriptures. If they seem counterintuitive, as they might in this case, see if you can get your heart and head around how they still are the arrangement and still for the best. Don’t say, Well I want to talk to Jesus, and to say I shouldn’t is unloving, and we know that God is not unloving so that must mean I can talk to Jesus whenever I want.
 

Whenever someone posts covers like this, particularly when accompanied by remarks on how the WT is scaring children, I refer to a certain Newsweek cover a few years back. Over stark background, it listed 4 or 5 horrendous calamities that had visited over the past week, then dropped down to its subheading, “What the #*@! Is next?”
Total despair on the cover of a national newsweekly. But had they no reassuring words for the children? Ah—yes, they said: “What the #*@! Is next?” The generation that has failed its young in so many things now even fails them in reassuring rhetoric. “What the #*@! Is next?” is the best they can offer.
To this day, that post is a favorite.
https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2019/01/what-the-is-next.html
It even made it into the archival section of TrueTom vs the Apostates! 
After I wrote all I was ready to write, the book still wasn’t long enough. So I threw in posts written over the years that anticipated various brouhahas now coming to a head.

The guy gets smarter by the second.
I actually didn’t know that it was possible to block on this forum. 

I guess I never really thought of it that way. Jesus himself sets the example  as to whom to pray to. He appears perfectly content with his role of “simple mediator” and I’m not sure I would want to do end runs around it, as though it is enough for most people, but not enough for me—as though I have extra appreciation and extra love, so I have to speak with Jesus, too.
Can you pass along a simple hello or some such appreciation just to him? Well, I dunno, maybe you can, but in doing so I begin to feel that maybe I am trying to be more appreciative than God, more righteous than he, more loving than what he lays upon Christians to do through his written word. 
Is it a little like when Jesus makes to wash Peter’s feet, Peter says “No way!” then upon reproof, says “also my head my hands!” and Jesus says, “Just do the feet, won’t you? That’s enough. That works. You don’t have to go beyond it.”
I think when we fervently thank God for the gift of his dear son, which we especially do around Memorial time, Jesus counts it as enough. If we say, “I must talk to Jesus, too,” will he not say pretty much what he said to Peter?”
We can’t just waltz in and talk to either one of them as though we are chums. The only reason we can speak freely with Jehovah is through the merits of Jesus’ ransom sacrifice. What is the basis for speaking directly to Jesus? 
Why not say hi to all the angels, too? They also do plenty in our behalf, though of course, they don’t approach Jesus. 
I’m sure its not the worst faux pas. The sentiment probably is appreciated, as when Jesus did not think ill of Peter for wanting the complete bath. But having laid out the “chain of communication,” I am not sure the merit—and it may even cause offense—to try to go beyond it. Jesus is perfectly content that all glory should go to the father. Having done that, does he say, “You know, it would be nice if you thanked me, too?” There’s no indication of it.
He himself takes no liberties with avenues of communication. When immersed in a squabble over Moses’ body, he says to the Devil, “May Jehovah rebuke you!” He doesn’t say, “Well, I am the son, the first-born. Surely I can handle this one.”
Same as you, just thinking aloud.
(I notice that the “balanced view of an anointed one” (Witness) ends in the same way that her typically unbalanced views do—that the GB is no good, and that you ought to consider her and her “renegade anointed” as your true source for guidance.)
 

Why I would choose to block one villain on this forum, and not another, I don’t know. They all equally want the downfall of Jehovah’s organization.
Were I going to do that, I would block them all by not coming to the open site. I’d stay on the closed one. As it is, I usually do with threads I originate. Yesterday I posted something on this week’s assigned Bible reading. There has been some discussion. I didn’t post it here becasue I did not want soreheads urinating on it with completely irrelevant remarks about how they think the GB is no good.

Whenever someone posts covers like this, particularly when accompanied by remarks on how the WT is scaring children, I refer to a certain Newsweek cover a few years back. Over stark background, it listed 4 or 5 horrendous calamities that had visited over the past week, then dropped down to its subheading, “What the #*@! Is next?”
Total despair on the cover of a national newsweekly. But had they no reassuring words for the children? Ah—yes, they said: “What the #*@! Is next?” The generation that has failed its young in so many things now even fails them in reassuring rhetoric. “What the #*@! Is next?” is the best they can offer.
To this day, that post is a favorite.
https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2019/01/what-the-is-next.html
It even made it into the archival section of TrueTom vs the Apostates! 
After I wrote all I was ready to write, the book still wasn’t long enough. So I threw in posts written over the years that anticipated various brouhahas now coming to a head.

The guy gets smarter by the second.
I actually didn’t know that it was possible to block on this forum. 

The guy gets smarter by the second.
I actually didn’t know that it was possible to block on this forum. 

Well, sure, but you won’t be on this forum at all if you follow that advice.

But they don’t take credit as individuals. They even afford much input to “helpers.”

But they don’t take credit as individuals. They even afford much input to “helpers.”

If she’d lay off with her venom directed to the GB, I’d leave her peccadillos unremarked upon. I like those guys. 

If she’d lay off with her venom directed to the GB, I’d leave her peccadillos unremarked upon. I like those guys. 

The woman is too much. Even the GB members do not say “I hope you will consider the balanced counsel of an anointed one.” When they speak, they make clear that it is as one of a “multitude of counselors,” in which there is wisdom.
Nails on a chalkboard anyone?

The woman is too much. Even the GB members do not say “I hope you will consider the balanced counsel of an anointed one.” When they speak, they make clear that it is as one of a “multitude of counselors,” in which there is wisdom.
Nails on a chalkboard anyone?

I guess I never really thought of it that way. Jesus himself sets the example  as to whom to pray to. He appears perfectly content with his role of “simple mediator” and I’m not sure I would want to do end runs around it, as though it is enough for most people, but not enough for me—as though I have extra appreciation and extra love, so I have to speak with Jesus, too.
Can you pass along a simple hello or some such appreciation just to him? Well, I dunno, maybe you can, but in doing so I begin to feel that maybe I am trying to be more appreciative than God, more righteous than he, more loving than what he lays upon Christians to do through his written word. 
Is it a little like when Jesus makes to wash Peter’s feet, Peter says “No way!” then upon reproof, says “also my head my hands!” and Jesus says, “Just do the feet, won’t you? That’s enough. That works. You don’t have to go beyond it.”
I think when we fervently thank God for the gift of his dear son, which we especially do around Memorial time, Jesus counts it as enough. If we say, “I must talk to Jesus, too,” will he not say pretty much what he said to Peter?”
We can’t just waltz in and talk to either one of them as though we are chums. The only reason we can speak freely with Jehovah is through the merits of Jesus’ ransom sacrifice. What is the basis for speaking directly to Jesus? 
Why not say hi to all the angels, too? They also do plenty in our behalf, though of course, they don’t approach Jesus. 
I’m sure its not the worst faux pas. The sentiment probably is appreciated, as when Jesus did not think ill of Peter for wanting the complete bath. But having laid out the “chain of communication,” I am not sure the merit—and it may even cause offense—to try to go beyond it. Jesus is perfectly content that all glory should go to the father. Having done that, does he say, “You know, it would be nice if you thanked me, too?” There’s no indication of it.
He himself takes no liberties with avenues of communication. When immersed in a squabble over Moses’ body, he says to the Devil, “May Jehovah rebuke you!” He doesn’t say, “Well, I am the son, the first-born. Surely I can handle this one.”
Same as you, just thinking aloud.
(I notice that the “balanced view of an anointed one” (Witness) ends in the same way that her typically unbalanced views do—that the GB is no good, and that you ought to consider her and her “renegade anointed” as your true source for guidance.)
 

I obviously am, being included in your comments all the time. If you didn’t do that, my attention would probably wander elsewhere, but you keep dragging it back here.
You’re not really much of a people person, are you?

You know, I never noticed that. Though I suppose he would account for it by saying he would never utter the Name before such swine.
This is too much, CC crying over the fate of Allen, just as 4Jah cries over the fate of JB. In either case, it is like the women weeping over Tammuz.  Everyone else was glad to see both of them go, for they both conducted themselves outrageously.
Too bad they were both replaced by another who knows and repeats all their lines syllable by syllable.

Come come, I don’t buy it. This is the bluster and abuse of Alan.
Never have I heard a brother refer to God as “the man upstairs” though the expression is common elsewhere. Seldom if ever have I seen a “brother” so abusive, so ready to jettison everything Christ advised whether addressing friend or foe. Even foes he tried to reach, spinning the older son of the Prodigal parable as the one who had been faithful, for example. 
Let’s bring in a few, and hope they don’t mind. Have any of you @JW Insider, @Anna, @The Librarian, @Thinking, @xero,@Outta Here@Arauna(who used be approved by CC, then she “corrected” him, making herself a Jezebel.) Anyone, even the villains, feel free to chime in. Has anyone ever heard a brother call Jehovah “the man upstairs?”
Can he really be a Witness, as he would have everyone believe?

While the expression “the man upstairs” is very common, I have never heard one of Jehovah’s Witnesses use it, I think because they would assess it as overly familiar and disrespectful of God.
So is CC a Witness or not? Alas, I fear I will never figure it out. 
One man in a million of Jehovah’s Witnesses might use the phrase. That means there could be as many as eight CCs out there.