TrueTomHarley

I may have weighed in too quickly on this one, without having read the whole context, just like the ol pork chop says I do. 
Like Herod, I was in “a fighting mood” at the time. Unlike Herod, I have the worldnewsmediaforum as an outlet whenever I am punchy like that. That way I don’t have to go shooting up any public place, which is all the rage in these insane days.
Since the JWI comment immediately follows mine, and then your remark,  I am not sure if I have made a faux pas or hit a home run, but I will cover myself in any event.

They are all woven into a fine garment, so it hardly matters.

They are all woven into a fine garment, so it hardly matters.

Yes. I have cancelled my subscription to the Watchtower. Also The Week. Also my trips to the library. Also any further visits to JW.org. How could I ever have wasted all those hours?
Now I am a regular reader. I do nothing else. 
(No. I have yet to visit. That is not to say maybe it will be so someday. Try.to keep your enthusiasm in check)

No! Say it ain’t so. The only thing that is lacking is that your VW bus ownership does not stretch back to the original ones of the 60’s.
You know, the more I think about it, the more I think that the JW website should be taken down and replaced with a Facebook page like yours. That way, Zuckerberg will steal information willy-nilly, the way he does, and we can count it all as placements.

It isn't about support. It is about not taking slander as a truth, and I told you many times, I take issues with lies, slander and conspiracy, and as a truther, I speak against such. This also goes concerning of the Bible of which you commit to slander in majority of your claims.
And this goes for everything.
To paraphrase my own professor, there are many denominations, there are many beliefs. People can agree on some things and disagree on other things, and majority of those who disagree are the ones who speak lies without understanding of the other group is coming from.
There are those who do not have to agree with faith groups, this includes JWs, but they will not accept lies about such groups and profess it as a truth, for not too long ago, hence my only issue concerning you is you start at a base and sparkle lies, and you also twist and mix Scripture either to push the lie and or push an untruth about the Bible itself. Not to mention even due to typo errors you even make ill claims of which you cannot prove.
Actually the believe of God passing Judgment is of core Christian beliefs, even before the days of the JWs, this was the core, this is what Christians believed before the false teachings ended up entering the church with the teachings of immortal soul, new agism, hellfire, etc, for such believes are the core beliefs of mainstream Christianity and not True Christianity. God, according to the Bible, as wiped out the wicked, examples such as the bad ones of Noah's Day, what happened at Sodom and Gomorrah, Korah and his Household, the cursed people, Ba'al worshipers, The Egyptians, etc. In every instance, God done so to protect HIS people, of which is only begotten Son would come from, eventually grow older, preach the gospel, serving God's Purpose and Will to the day of his death and resurrection, and evidently to the day he will return to deal with God's enemies, for Jesus is the one to take up the sword.
God's original promise is and always will be a strong one, in his dealings with mankind on earth, and his original promise continues through Jesus and it will continue to the point when Jesus returns, to the end of Jesus' millennial reign and to the end of Judgement itself.
That being said, other than that you still mix verses even now. Also it is jarring to the eyes for you to use the term "Firstfruits" granted of what you conveyed in your other thread.

When Anthony Morris, at the 2016 Regional in Atlanta, spoke of coming down south, and his sons had asked him ‘What is a redneck?’ he replied that they “would know them when they saw them.”
He was having fun with his opening remarks. Everyone....well, almost everyone....took it in that spirit. In case there was someone who did not, in a subsequent talk he walked it back, referring the the gentle “folk wisdom” of the south.
He speaks off the cuff sometimes. Rise, for he too is human. He probably regrets that remark about the tight pants, because @James Thomas Rook Jr. has made it is yeartext ever since. 
It is very difficult counseling a huge and diverse group of people One will say: “Thanks for the new RULE!!” and his companion will say: “Huh? Did you say something.”
I think they just don’t want to find themselves in the shoes of Lot, whose sons-in-law thought he was joking.
Even at the Watchtower study last Sunday, the conductor gave an aside about the tight pants, observing that they must have to be put on when wet, so as to allow the fabric to stretch over the feet. Strictly speaking, (even loosely speaking) it is not necessary. But an 80-year old can be forgiven for a few seconds (it was no more than that, and he is universally regarded as a man of integrity and good judgment) of scratching his head and expressing bewilderment at the world that is today.
This is the same Watchtower conductor whose lifelong secular work was that of a Porsche dealer mechanic, and who quit in disgust when Porsche began manufacturing SUVs, as though an elite art museum commended displaying that painting of the dogs playing poker. It’s not true, he tells me. He was about to retire anyway, but he does nothing to counter the meme that others have spread around. 
This is the same Watchtower Study, on how the wisdom of Jehovah is superior to the wisdom of this world, in which I thought the artwork was wrong. The VW bus is one from the 70’s, whereas it should have been one with a funky grill that was from the 60’s. The impeccably dressed brother with the hat is from the 50s—hadn’t dress hats pretty well faded out by the mid-60s? And don’t get me going about the “hippy” conversing with him, who no doubt took off his wig and clothes thereafter and resumed his place analyzing a computer spreadsheet. 
And while I am on the topic of that Watchtower:
My daughter is in town for a few weeks. At the study observation of how some say God-given sexual desire argues for promiscuity, she said: “Well, that’s stupid! God made me to have to pee, too. Does that mean I should pee my pants?”
“That’s my daughter!” I told the family gathering, as she related her remark. Frankly, I wish I had thought of it.
But back to the tight pants. They were tight in the early 60s, too, and I can remember battles with my [non-Witness] Dad because I wanted to wear them and he had a fit over it, though I gradually won out. Even the “spray-on” descriptions are from the past. I wore clamdiggers, too, cool pants that came in pastel colors, had a stripe down the side, and ended mid-shin. I wore them when visiting my uncle who lives way way out in the sticks, and he said: “What are you doing wearing peddle-pushers? Those are girls’ pants!!” They weren’t peddlepushers, you hillbilly. They were cool clamdiggers.
It’s not just pants. Ties widened in the late 60’s as well, regaining the status they previously had given up. I remember Brother Park giving a talk about how the Bethel brothers were very concerned for Brother Knorr, who showed up for meals day after day with very wide ties, at a time when the styles were changing—I think he say they ultimately became as thin as a pencil. Those brothers were so worried about him, because he was “not in style.”
“BUT DO YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENED?!” he gasped. Ties began to reverse and became wider and wider—and now Brother Knorr is “in style!”
And yes, I have rambled a bit, doing what John has accused me of. Sorry.
 

Most of the involved cartoonists have said something similar to Einstein: “If I had known, I would have been a locksmith.”

This is too much—absolutely too much. Witness and @Srecko Sostarmaking common cause, as though she was his anointed. Meanwhile....
 
Let us freely admit it. There are times when nobody says it better than the ol pork chop.. 

This is too much—absolutely too much. Witness and @Srecko Sostarmaking common cause, as though she was his anointed. Meanwhile....
 
Let us freely admit it. There are times when nobody says it better than the ol pork chop.. 

" For she keeps saying in her heart: 'I sit as a queen and am no widow, and I will never see mourning' " Rev. 18:7
"The U.S.-headquartered Jehovah’s Witnesses have been under pressure for years in Russia, where the dominant Orthodox Church is championed by President Vladimir Putin. Orthodox scholars have cast them as a dangerous foreign sect that erodes state institutions and traditional values, allegations they reject." Reuters
The activity of Alexander Dvorkin is well documented. In 1993, with the blessing of Patriarch Alexy II, he established a Russian anti-cult organization currently called Association of Centres for the Study of Religions and Sects (RATsIRS). From that time on he has been extremely active in opposing cults and new religious movements through his publications. (Wikipedia)
Finally, in making an appearance at the 1999 trial hearings, which aimed at eliminating the Moscow community of Jehovah's Witnesses, this Alexander Dvorkin recounted stories about a Jehovah's Witness known to him personally, who allegedly dreamed of taking a machine gun to kill everyone who disagreed with him. However, Dvorkin was unable to answer a single specific question about the activities of Jehovah's Witnesses. 
Anyone who underestimates the guile, malice, and influence of the "man of lawlessness", despite its spectacular fall from grace in the eyes of many who were formerly dominated by it's intrigues is, sadly, under it's spell. 2Thess.2:9-11

“And the 70 returned and they were bummed. The Lord said, “Why are you bummed.” They answered, “We sat at home from morning through the burning heat of the day, straight into evening, and nobody knocked on our door.”    
 
I don’t think that this is true. The nuttiness is no more than it has always been, and is in many respects less. To some extent, it is exactly what one would expect. Jesus said he did not come to call on those who do not need a physician—he came to call on those who do. When our people go nuts, they still would not hurt a fly. When those outside go nuts, for many of them you’d better call the SWAT team.
The conventions invariably make a good impression. Both the website and the literature carts add a measure of dignity not always conveyed by any given publisher. Events transpiring in Russia paint us as downright champions of human rights.
Yes, the charges of CSA are bad, but they are largely offset by the fact that there is no sizable group of persons not also enmeshed in them, as well as a general weariness of lawyers. You well remember when premiere television or billboard sponsors were manufacturers or vendors. Today they are lawyers, and people weary over the massive transfers of cash that they enable, whilst skimming off at least the top third. They think of all the things they used to be able to do that they no longer can do on account of lawyers making things cost-prohibitive, and it qualifies any zeal for whatever cause they might represent. Even as people as individuals hope that their turn winning the lawyer-lottery may come next, people as a group share a general sense that the barristers have destroyed the fabric of life. Insurance premiums of all sorts skyrocket at a time that overall inflation is quite low. Everyone knows why. Nonstop lawsuits on everything under the sun amounts to a tax on everyone else.
I think it is too much you pumping life into anti-Witness memes—living and breathing that life. You are consumed with them, and thus you come to think they far more occupy people’s attention than they really do.
It is like that with every cause. It is like that even with us. We start to imagine that everyone on earth is turning over in their minds and hearts the kingdom cause, siding for or against. But when I met an author in the dog park, he said: “Watchtower—that’s the Mormons, isn’t it?”
https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2019/07/the-author-in-the-dog-park.html

Uh oh. There does not seem to be that option anymore. I’m sunk. Something seems a little flakey with this software lately. Has the Librarian (that old hen) fallen off the wagon again?

What makes no sense to me is that you have evaded my question. If you have peered into the deeper things of God and have decided that those running the show are frauds, why do you come to the meetings that they sponsor, as you must have for them to give you any grief.
Witness runs a fine shop that she operates out of Facebook. Why don’t you go there?

What makes no sense to me is that you have evaded my question. If you have peered into the deeper things of God and have decided that those running the show are frauds, why do you come to the meetings that they sponsor, as you must have for them to give you any grief.
Witness runs a fine shop that she operates out of Facebook. Why don’t you go there?

“What I mean is this, that each one of you says: “I belong to Paul,” “But I to A·polʹlos,” “But I to Ceʹphas,” “But I to Rook.”
Is there a reason that he cannot be baptized at an assembly or convention like every other Witness on the planet? Did you tell him to wear tight pants, too?

Aren’t you in Britain? Don’t you have some exotic cars there that I could buy? What was the last auto that James Bond tooled around in?
My current project is to go through Dear Mr. Putin - Jehovah’s Witnesses Write Russia paragraph by paragraph to re-examine wording. I have already done so to (mostly) fix a self-devised system of punctuation. 
That book has caused me more trouble than my other three put together, mostly because of the manner in which it was written.
Once I have completed the task, I will look into releasing it on audio, as an author-read narrator. 
There are many many things that I am not good at, in fact, almost everything. However, public reading is something that I am good at. 

The Witness organization cannot possibly be as bad as you charge, for the Devil is not that bad. You are a loon, John, wildly overstating all of your points, substantial or trivial, implacable to any persuasion to back down even a little on any of them. Nothing shows more clearly.
More later.

What surprises me as I go through the sequential schedule of Bible reading, now focused on the letters of Paul, is how well they anticipate current “anti-cultist” complaints of being brainwashed, misled, duped, and so forth. What would appear to be a brand new scenario is just history recycled—put on steroids by modern viral methods of communication. Given that the following was said then, when the only communication was word-of-mouth, it is not at all surprising that it would be so prolific today:
“We have wronged no one, we have corrupted no one, we have taken advantage of no one,” says the apostle at 2 Corinthians 7:2, as though the accusation of those things was commonplace.
“Nevertheless, you say, I was “crafty” and I caught you “by trickery,” he says again at 2 Corinthians 12:16. For sure, Solomon had a point: “There is nothing new under the sun.” (Eccles 1:9)
Do “apostates” proliferate today, as though something new? It’s the oldest game in town. “For there are many—I used to mention them often but now I mention them also with weeping—who are walking as enemies of the torture stake of the Christ. Their end is destruction, and their god is their belly, and their glory is really their shame, and they have their minds on earthly things.” (Philippians 3:18-19)
”Having their mind on earthly things” is where its at today, and there are endless people who obsess over petty freedoms at the expense of totally missing the real ones. Their “critical thinking” has sold them down the river; they have shipwrecked whatever faith they once had—just like Paul says about two actual malcontents in the first century, when he advised Timothy to “go on waging the fine warfare, holding faith and a good conscience, which some have thrust aside, resulting in the shipwreck of their faith.  Hymenaeus and Alexander are among these, and I have handed them over to Satan so that they may be taught by discipline not to blaspheme.” (1 Timothy 3:18-19)
What exactly is it to be “handed over to Satan?” The only other use of the expression (1 Corinthians 5:5) makes clear that it is expulsion from the congregation. Today their counterparts on social media protest loudly that discipline.
They protest another sort of discipline as well. “Just as I encouraged you to stay in Ephesus when I was about to go to Macedonia, so I do now, in order for you to command certain ones not to teach different doctrine, nor to pay attention to false stories and to genealogies. Such things end up in nothing useful but merely give rise to speculations rather than providing anything from God in connection with faith.” Today the ones so “commanded” would hop on social media to rail that you can’t even breathe a word different from the tyrannical men on top to be muzzled at first transgression, and ejected at second.
Jehovah’s Witnesses are a cult if and only if the Bible is a cult manual. Nobody has apostates like Jehovah’s Witnesses. Nobody has apostates more prolific, more determined, and in some cases they seem almost deranged—I mean, if someone so much as farts at Bethel, there is one of these yo-yos to start a thread on it, which is not ignored, but is joined in by countless persons in sympathy, some of whom are coherent and some of whom are pure loons.
It is as it should be. We should be proud of our apostates. Nobody else has anyone like them. What if they did not exist? Would you not have to wonder why? No writer of the New Testament fails to deal with them. What if there were no mention of them today? Would it not indicate that the faith had so strayed from its roots to embrace contemporary thinking that there was little to apostatize from?
I will admit that the only apostates that interest me are the ones that go atheist, which partly accounts for my take on the 2 Thessalonians “Man of Lawlessness.” Having learned the man-made origins of Trinity and the immortal soul, and having come to appreciate the damage these teachings do to to a close relationship with God, can one really go back to them? Often the “believing” apostates do not—they simply become ambiguous on such doctrines, thinking that they hardly matter—to each his own. Essentially, they want to retain God, but they acquiesce to the greater world molding their thinking as to outlook, goals, and morals. They want to “throw off all restraint” and in no time at all, they have lost whatever unity they once had. When they can be distracted from attacking their former roots on social media, they are to found lambasting each other over differences in matters scientific, medical, climate, politics, etc.
 
 
 
 

In other words, I was right. Why all the mock outrage?
And I am right with Srecko, too. Almost certainly.

What in the world is wrong with it? “Typical patterns” can be discerned by just keeping ones eyes opened.
You don’t need “investigative journalism,” for example, to voice that Americans are, as a people, overweight. Even checking your “critical thinking” at the door,  one can come up with that observation. What I have done is parallel.
I also plainly said that you as an individual didn’t necessarily fit that “typical pattern.”
Witnesses as a people have a much greater diversity of friends as regards race, social-economic, nationality, & educational letters, then do non-Witnesses. It doesn’t mean that there will be not found many individuals of both groups who do not fit the typical pattern.
I don’t back down on this one even a bit. It is plainly true.

Is it? One could make that case. It certainly could be annoying at times. Still, not every whim in life goes your way. I never wanted a beard anyway. It did sometimes cause some trouble however, when they grew one for non-standard reasons. They could always do it, but they might come in for counsel and be kept from what Witnesses call “privileges”—MS, elder, pioneer, and so forth.
Yet, isn’t this another case of the non-doers saying that the doers are doing it wrong? Witnesses are a close-knit group, organized that way for the sake of preaching the good news. They rub shoulders will people of all dispositions and backgrounds that they otherwise wouldn’t rub shoulders with. The past circuit overseer said that Jehovah has molded his people into “large, united, happy, somewhat dysfunctional family.” Idiosyncrasies will pop up in a dysfunctional family, and this was one of them.
Not really.  It has been a issue only for the last 30 years, which is still not nothing, but neither is it 100. In the days of beatniks and hippies, Anna’s application of verse would have been spot-on. A beard during that time, suggesting affiliation with those characters, did indeed have a high chance of stumbling new ones or unbelievers
Neither of you are in any position to lecture. Both of you have put yourself in places where you have no need to get along with people—if anyone annoys you, simply write him or her out of the picture. Inevitably, you surround yourselves with people who are pretty much like yourself. I don’t know it for sure, of course, with you as individuals, but it is the typical pattern that you have probably fallen into.
If I were not a Witness, my friends would almost certainly be persons just like me, with little variety. Instead, I have friends of every age, nationality, ethnicity, social class, educational and economic level. I have a whole circuitful of real people who like me, and I like them. It is not for the sake of making friends that I come online—I have more friends than I can handle. The only common feature that they have is that they are on the same page spiritually, which I regard as a good thing, not a bad thing. I am grateful to Jehovah for it, and to his organization, because it would not happen otherwise. 
There is a price to pay for such close interaction, however. You don’t always get your way. Sometimes you have to yield. Sometimes you yield on things that you think you really shouldn’t have to yield on, but you know that keeping the peace is better than getting your way on every thing. 
Nations have cultures. They all have their own unique ways of thinking, their own quirks, some of which will seem nuts to another nation. Witnesses have their own culture, too, and their own quirks. It is the price to pay for working in close proximity with many different people. I wouldn’t get too hung up on it.

Many things suggest this to me. It may not be so, but one can only go by evidence presented. 
The fact that, on your pet peeve, you have never yielded to the tiniest degree, suggests it. Everyone yields someplace to some degree.
The fact that @JW Insider brings up a circumstance which he makes clear he regards as quite rare, and you immediately characterize it as the norm is another.
Another is that the frequent child sexual abuse that you have chronicled was perpetrated for years by a party that you should consistently vent your wrath upon, yet you vent it upon people who had nothing to do with your trouble.
The fact that you attach a maniacal laughing emoji to comments that are not at all funny, posted by several here, and that in some cases are quite frank and conciliatory, is yet another.
Before you came along, I once observed that @Srecko Sostar had chosen to represent himself on this forum as a moron, regularly appending an inane “hehehe :)))))))” to his comments. He did it so much that @Nana Fofana began imitating his style, and did it better than he. He stopped doing it. He is not a moron and didn’t want to portray himself that way. In hindsight I think some of it was due to language and culture differences, he not realizing how certain signs translated. 

This is a reference to a Caleb and Sophia video which would be seen as praiseworthy were it for any other cause.
If Sophia had had an epiphany and donated her ice cream money to the ‘world hunger fund,’ or the ‘world peace fund,’ or the ‘save the planet fund’ or the ‘animal rescue fund’ or almost any charitable fund, the video would be lauded. It represents training a child that not everything is about her, and that used to be seen as a good thing.
It is only because the malcontents here despise the Witness organization dedicated to the relief of ‘spiritual hunger’ that this video is so attacked. Were it for anything else, it would be lauded.

Kids cost an arm and a leg to raise. Two of them will disable you for life.
Okay. I’ll approach it in that spirit.
I think you defeat yourself looking at it this way. The Bible is a finite book. You have been reading it for 70 years. Just what do you expect to learn that is new?
There are three assembly events in modern times. There were three assembly events, connected with the festivals, in ancient times. What did they learn then that was new? Why did they go?