TrueTomHarley

Well, one can hardly blame him for that.
Forgive me. My family made me drive Ramblers (AMC) growing up—the ultimate in child abuse. I developed an unreasonable underdog defense mentality about them.
 

You know, that’s a good one. It really is.

“The only reason to oppose such building and organization is to break up, ideally even eliminate, the coordinated preaching work that it facilitates. It is no more complicated than that. Say it plainly, and you will win some respect for frankness. But to mischaracterize operational expense as “abuse” is just too devious.”

This objection is all too silly, in my view.
They are dormitories where the Bethelites are housed. They are nice dormitories, to be sure, but they are still dormitories. They facilitate the spread of the united good news throughout “all the inhabited earth.” They are a logical extension of the “works greater than these” that Jesus told his followers they would perform. 
The “abuses” you site are no more than basic human needs—done “on the cheap” to the degree possible. (Certainly there is no arrangement to “clothe) anyone) It is true even of the solar energy and green roofs. They make for lower operating costs, thereby reducing the burden of those who will be asked to support the facility. Do you rail against extravagant waste when anyone else puts up solar panals?
The only reason to oppose such building and organization is to break up, ideally even eliminate, the coordinated preaching work that it facilitates. It is no more complicated than that. Say it plainly, and you will win some respect for frankness. But to mischaracterize operational expense as “abuse” is just too devious.
 

“The only reason to oppose such building and organization is to break up, ideally even eliminate, the coordinated preaching work that it facilitates. It is no more complicated than that. Say it plainly, and you will win some respect for frankness. But to mischaracterize operational expense as “abuse” is just too devious.”

For the past month I have been TRYING to build a large chicken coop, but it is terribly slow. I have to weave several huge rolls of chicken wire into an overhead cover, and then support it with poles, like a circus tent.
As I was digging a hole for an overhead chicken wire support, I was talking to my rooster Speckles, scratching in the dirt beside me, who has feet and legs patterned like an alligator's hide, and as I dug I wondered out loud if chickens actually did evolve from reptiles., and if all birds evolved from reptiles.
To my surprise, Speckles replied that they actually did, but it was a tragic thing, as they did it for the frequent flier miles.
 

This is because I was traumatized when I spotted someone violently attacking a fortune-teller, hitting her repeatedly and hard, and all she did was laugh and laugh.
I intervened. “What do you think you’re doing?” I demanded of the assailant.
”Just trying to strike a happy medium,” he replied.
Still sure you want me on the other forum?

I’ve said it before but not lately. The forum is good for me because with it I can hone my writing. 
If I post a Jumping Jehovah’s Witnesses photo on the JW only forum, someone will give me thunderous applause. If I truthfully say that I think such photos are stupid, someone else will counsel me to turn my frown upside down.
For the most part, I like the atmosphere of unity on what is most important, but there are times when it will not do. Better, from a writing point of view, to be here.
Here I can reference some JW foibles, even missteps, and not suffer rebuke. More importantly, here I can write something favorable about them and know that there are villains that will promptly hurl it back in my teeth. I analyze the response, like a Hadron collider scientist. Sometimes the results tell me that my comment was a logical train wreck. Even friends here will tell me so. When my remark brings mostly taunts, insults, and ridicule, then I know that I have hit bullseye.
A writer needs a muse but he needs more than a muse. He also needs a villain, so I hang here where there are villains galore.

I’ve said it before but not lately. The forum is good for me because with it I can hone my writing. 
If I post a Jumping Jehovah’s Witnesses photo on the JW only forum, someone will give me thunderous applause. If I truthfully say that I think such photos are stupid, someone else will counsel me to turn my frown upside down.
For the most part, I like the atmosphere of unity on what is most important, but there are times when it will not do. Better, from a writing point of view, to be here.
Here I can reference some JW foibles, even missteps, and not suffer rebuke. More importantly, here I can write something favorable about them and know that there are villains that will promptly hurl it back in my teeth. I analyze the response, like a Hadron collider scientist. Sometimes the results tell me that my comment was a logical train wreck. Even friends here will tell me so. When my remark brings mostly taunts, insults, and ridicule, then I know that I have hit bullseye.
A writer needs a muse but he needs more than a muse. He also needs a villain, so I hang here where there are villains galore.

I hope you understand the difference when holding a business in the temple. Were those money boxes circulated as a business? What would donations be in your eyes?
Does the Org use donated money to receive luxury items like planes, trains, boats? Do those donations support priest income and a home for that priest?
Some witnesses consider the Org headquarter as lavish. Should volunteers be housed in the field? Should the Org spend more in room and board paid to other benefactors because “bad” witnesses want to decide how the Org should, run?
Does the GB live in lavish mansions? Do those donations go to a 10 million dollar home like “Joel Olsteen” received, and have children sent to a good college with that donated money.
There are many ways those in opposition look at things to enhance a fruitless debate.
Joel Olsteens car
Featured snippet from the web
Joel Osteen - is an American televangelist based in Houston. He likes luxury car and has in his car collection this cars: Ferrari 458 Italia, Porsche 911, Mercedes G-class
 
It is clear what you are willing to accept is not the truth.
 

Two recent developments have occasioned specific rebukes from the U.S. State Department. 
1) the sentencing of 6 Witnesses to jail terms of 2-3 years.
2) the torture of at least 7 in Surgut, which Russian authorities at first denied but ultimately said proved necessary because the Witnesses resisted with martial arts techniques.
Of course, every other faith is kept track of as well—it is not just Jehovah’s Witnesses. Still, a State Department release of last year specifically mentioned just two groups. 1) Muslims, and  2) Jehovah’s Witnesses. All others were lumped into a single third category: 3) Others.
Of course, Trump might always consult with his son-in-law who can recall to him his dealings with the Witnesses from whom he purchased Bethel buildings—that they were people with whom “a handshake deal meant something.” He lavished praise on them in that video that JW.org took down as the Presidential campaign got underway, presumably so that agent Jack would not attempt to portray Witnesses as part of Trump’s election machine.
JTR, who does not hesitate to speak abusively of those whose counterparts the apostle Paul dared not, might well be right on this one, but I am not holding my breath. The two Presidents did want to get along, but I am not sure that the occasion hasn’t passed. Any overtures between them have been soundly scuttled by the American media. It is even as though when the kings of the north and south indicate that they would like to agree, outside forces intervene to make sure that they can’t, as though to to enforce the current understanding of Daniel’s prophesy that the two will hate each other’s guts right down to the end.
It is also possible that Trump senses in his meeting on religious freedom an opportunity to defuse accusations that he is anti-Muslim. It is Muslims who are under attack today, probably more so than Christian groups, and probably spurred on by the perception of how readily a certain strain of it goes on to embrace violence. Who can say what Trump is up to? To say he is a bull in a china shop, one must accept the premise that the status quo among world and national leaders is a “china shop.” But he might well be likened to a junkyard dog in a junkyard. Who can say where he goes next?
At any rate, he sidesteps an agenda of climate change policy and hosts his own religious freedom meeting instead. Religious freedom is embedded in the U.S. Constitution, primarily the Bill of Rights. Climate change is not, and Trump plainly doesn’t trust it, viewing it as a mostly concocted wedge to drive socialism more firmly into the world fabric. Instead, he goes to country after country, as though the personification of capitalism, to cut deals. He reverses decades of policy that holds that “giving away the fort” trade-wise will trigger political change, as newly monied populaces rise to overthrow the tyrannical governments that rule them, like a worldwide “Arab spring.” There is not much evidence that it works that way. It certainly didn’t with the Arab spring, and China is doubling down on its willingness to oppress, even in the face of material prosperity.
So will JTR’s prophesy come true, that Putin will reverse JW persecution by year’s end?
I agree that they are both pragmatic. But Trump is firmly resisted. And Putin may be as well. The New York Times speculated that he may not be so firmly in control as is assumed, partly because after he says: Why are we persecuting  Jehovah’s Witnesses? This must be looked into. the persecution does nothing but intensify. Even as the JW ban was under consideration, one pundit asked: why would they do it? There was no question that they could, but why would they? They do nothing but make themselves look ludicrous and thugs on the world stage. But it has been “pedal to the medal” since. The succeeding act was to rule the New World Translation as extremist—not a Bible at all—and thus paint themselves before all as breathtakingly ignorant, since anyone with even a modicum of scholarship knows that it is.
The anti-religion campaign has only intensified. Deprived of the New World Translation, Jehovah’s Witnesses there resort to any translation. So courts have found that some verses even there are actually “extremist.”
In doing so they have bought into the nonsense of the BITE model promoted by “anti-cultists” in the West. Such has become the wisdom that carries the day in Russia, however stretched the idea might be. It’s founder, Stephen Hassan, has just written a book about Trump: “The Cult of Trump—a Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control.”
https://freedomofmind.com/announcing-my-new-book-with-simon-and-schuster-entitled-the-cult-of-trump/
When you think that half the country has fallen under cult influence, it is evidence in my view that you have drunk too much of your own Kool-Aid. It is also evidence that the entire BITE anti-cult movement is little more than a political movement. It is little more than a tool of the left. It is a new culture of victimization elevated to sainthood. And it has been allowed to define Russia’s response to any religion not on the “approved list”—which in the Christian category, there is only one: the Russian Orthodox Church.

I guess the first point I could address is how someone with serious unresolved questions and concerns about a couple of our teachings could still participate in promoting our publications and our meetings to interested persons. Won't those persons be faced with unresolved questions too?
This gets to the claim by some that 85 percent of what we present is not worth it, and 15 percent is worth it, but that 15 percent is valuable enough to ignore the 85 percent.
If those were the real numbers then making a convert would be very hard to justify. And in any case we would always have to spend a lot of time telling our Bible students that there are a lot of things we don't understand ourselves. 
But the numbers aren't that bad, because we really don't spend the amount of time on the areas where more people have unresolved questions. For example, let's just look at the two magazines that were common to many of the carts today. One is the Watchtower No.3 2019, and the other is the Awake! No.2 2019.
The Awake! has the cover is "Six Lessons Children Need to Learn." There are short articles on Self-Control, Humility, Resilience, Responsibility, Adult Guidance, and the Need for Moral Values. I am critical of a lot of things, but I found every single word to be well written and useful. It makes a nicely presented way to discuss such important topics with children. Or it just makes it simple to keep a prioritized list of ideas in a parent's mind to remember as they come up. And all of it leads to the fact that Bible principles are the foundation of these lessons, even if might seem at first like mundane lessons about the amount of time spent on entertainment media.
So on to the Watchtower. The basic questions that religion should answer are the same questions that people ask all over the world. They are the questions that don't really overlap with science, and although they might overlap a bit with "philosophy" it's really the place of true religion to show why the Bible's view gives the best and most satisfying answers. 
These are the questions of "What is the meaning of life?" "Is God to blame for suffering?" "What happens when we die?"
Those are the same questions called "Life's Big Questions" on the back of the Awake!
So the Watchtower starts out with an article on "The Sad Reality of Death." Nothing questionable or inappropriate here. Science is mentioned as a possible source of answers, here, and in the next article "The Search For Long Life." The idea is clear and obvious, that "We are Designed to Live" just as the next article shows. Again, I see nothing that any naysayer, except atheists, might find wrong or questionable. In fact, up to this point, atheists might still be following along, too.  After all, it does not overwhelm with scriptures, but uses them in unobtrusive ways.
Now the question of "Why Do We Grow Old And Die" gets into the Biblical aspects, on page 8 of 15. It's all clearly the correct Biblical answer, however. Granted, some religious and science-oriented religious persons can take Adam & Eve as allegorical in some way, which is common. But even so, the rest of the Bible clearly uses the exact example as the explanation about death on earth.
And therefore page 10 begins discussing the hope, when death is conquered. There is a very clear explanation of the Ransom here. Using Scriptures throughout this article. There is a paragraph or two on "When" but it is not done with the idea that "we know something about the date that no one else knows." Someone might wonder why it only mentions "millions" being resurrected, but this isn't said in such a way that we are telling people that it won't be billions, or thousands; it's just presented as a way of stating a happy hope in the resurrection. It mentions the "last days" but exactly the way the scriptures use the expression.
In detailing "How Can You Have More Than This Life?" on page 12, the appeal is to those who want to see a better earth, and who would like to live forever under much better conditions. It's an invitation to learn more. And the next article shows how the road to that better life will produce side effects of contentment, more satisfying priorities, better marriages, and even better health (overall) in this life.
I find BOTH of these entire magazines to be 100 percent valuable, well written, and they touch on no unresolved or unresolvable questions. And we all know that some of our talks and other publications cover this same material exactly as these articles do, sometimes with more examples, more verses, more detail -- but the same ideas.
We are offering exactly what people should be looking for, satisfactory answers to important questions.
When an interested person gets to all the meetings, they will soon discover that time is spent on the meaning of Ezekiel, for example, the history of the organization, and a lot of emphasis on urgency in preaching on account of the times we're living in, and the overall timing of Jehovah's purpose. Some of this material will likely result in questions that they will find ways to resolve, or else just accept and wait for a resolution in time.
But it's not the gist of our preaching and disciple-making. I think most people who come into the organization will remember the Big Questions, and that those were the primary reasons they joined with us. Those questions are answered in a more appealing and satisfying way than other religions are answering them. And we back up our answers with the Bible. Our teachings regarding war, neutrality, Trinity, hellfire, paradise earth, the challenge to Jehovah's sovereignty, etc., will make even more sense to interested persons when they remember that the first attraction was to the way the Bible answered those big questions. Those were the questions that build a primary foundation around the teaching of God's Purpose, Eternal Life, the Ransom, the Resurrection, etc.
So even if chronology and some of the specific prophetic interpretations can result in unresolved questions, for now, it's not like this needs to be such a big part of Witness thinking. We can participate in every major aspect of our worship with joy and without being overly concerned with these unresolved questions. And when they finally are resolved, I'm sure we'll see them as relatively unimportant compared to the big things.

I’ll say it only once, Sean. I have nothing to do with running this site. I comment a lot, that is all. 

“We find nothing wrong with this man, but if an email spoke to him....”

“We find nothing wrong with this man, but if an email spoke to him....”

“We find nothing wrong with this man, but if an email spoke to him....”

Who would run the fort?

Fellow team members:
As our first order of business, I recommend that we banish Mr. @admin and @The Librarian  (that old hen)! Only then will our coup be complete!

Oh boy. A chicken coup!

Fellow team members:
As our first order of business, I recommend that we banish Mr. @admin and @The Librarian  (that old hen)! Only then will our coup be complete!

Yes. I am warning all you miscreants. Any more shenanigans and I will kick your sorry cans to the curb. Especially you, @James Thomas Rook Jr.

Yes. I am warning all you miscreants. Any more shenanigans and I will kick your sorry cans to the curb. Especially you, @James Thomas Rook Jr.

Yes. I am warning all you miscreants. Any more shenanigans and I will kick your sorry cans to the curb. Especially you, @James Thomas Rook Jr.

Yes. I am warning all you miscreants. Any more shenanigans and I will kick your sorry cans to the curb. Especially you, @James Thomas Rook Jr.

“Oh mother, tell your children
not to follooooo True Tom’s decorum.
Spend your life in sheer futility,
Battlin’ villains on the World News Forum”
@divergenceKO