TrueTomHarley

As it turns out, I have been assigned the #4 talk this week on how Paul described certain fellows few have heard of as “a strengthening aid” to him, as one taking the lead in the work at the time.
Whether I can use you as a modern-day example is dubious.

No, that is not a problem at all. None of the items of baptism are affected.
If the map changes because roads have been added or deleted, do you burn the city down?
You are so silly, John.

What Witness of Jehovah could not think of their brothers in Russia when reviewing Philippians, this week’s Bible reading? 
The imprisoned Paul writes: “Now I want you to know, brothers, that my situation has actually turned out for the advancement of the good news,  so that my prison bonds for the sake of Christ have become public knowledge among all the Praetorian Guard and all the rest.  Now most of the brothers in the Lord have gained confidence because of my prison bonds, and they are showing all the more courage to speak the word of God fearlessly.” (Philippians 1:12-14)
It is the case with Witnesses in Russia, isn’t it? They are holding up pretty well, by all reports—it can be seen in the public support they give to ones punished by the state for their worship of God. As in the first century, “most of the brothers in the Lord have gained confidence,” trial-some though their circumstances are. We are proud of them, and even wonder whether we would do so well ourselves. ‘Don’t think that you can do it on your own strength,’ comes the answer, ‘and you will do fine.’
The anti-cultist mastermind, Alexander Dvorkin, did not foresee it happening this way. Just after the ban went into effect in April 2017, he was “absolutely convinced that after a few years, the number of members of the organization will decrease dramatically, two or three times, because, when one cuts off its financial foundation, its ability to freely, without hindrance, recruit other people, to rent large halls and so on, then, in fact, people will lose interest and will very quickly disperse.” Now, two years is not “just a few years,” but it is not so far apart. He did not say “generations.” He expected his results rather quickly, and it is not turning out that way at all.
One is reminded of Satan’s taunt: “Is it for nothing that Job has feared God?  Have you not put up a protective hedge around him and his house and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his livestock has spread out in the land. But, for a change, stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your very face.” (Job 1:9-11) It isn’t working out that way. Our brothers in Russia are doing us proud.
Human rights advocates widely predicted that this would happen—it is not a circumstance solely of Jehovah’s Witnesses, but of people in general who are concerned with spiritual things. Similar fortitude is shown in other faiths as well. It is Dvorkin who, fleshly man that he is, totally misjudges the power of spiritual things to motivate. “But a physical man does not accept the things of the spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot get to know them, because they are examined spiritually,” says the apostle again at 1 Corinthians 1:14.
He drinks too much of his own Kool-Aid, and thus, when things fail to turn out as he anticipated, it is due to his own self-deluded assumptions. Dvorkin is playing the role outlaws of religion have played from before he was born, using state apparatus to squash enemies, and doing so under a guise of People’s Protector. His premise is wrong: that individual Witnesses are being “manipulated” by an evil corporate outside class. Instead, the ‘outside’ class IS them, merely in the organized form that members know is necessary to best implement the faith that they have chosen. They are not like the munchkins of his imagination, delighted that the wicked witch is destroyed. They recognize his attack as the attack on Christianity that it is.
We see this all the time—enemies impose their own standards on spiritual things, and then draw wrong conclusions when things do not turn out as they have anticipated. It is seen when they make the self-determination that religious things cannot change, as secular and scientific things do, and that should Witnesses see that some teachings have “flip-flopped,” they will be outraged at having been “misled.” How can people be so nuts? They change all the time—it is called “tacking” and the “ever brightening light”—completely above board and nobody has ever said otherwise. 
Still, the changes that are made are analogous to details, roughly akin to looking at the map anew and rereading it. It happens all the time with science. Somehow, physical people have decreed that it cannot happen with spiritual things. Of course it can. It is their own presumption of everything religious being autocratic, ironclad, and unyielding, that stymies them. It may not be so fluid—‘the each his own!—as the world they have chosen, but it is far from inflexible.  Moveover, the essential building blocks of the faith—defusing the ‘immortality’ of the soul, establishing the non-Trinitarian nature of God, the reason as to why he allows suffering and evil, along with the Name that he says he wants sanctified—these things have been firmly in place for over a century.
The Russian brothers are doing very well, thank you very much—“in no way being frightened by [their] opponents. This very thing is a proof of destruction for them, but of salvation for you; and this is from God.” (Philippians 1:28)
“Surely the people are but green grass. The green grass dries up, The blossom withers, But the word of our God endures forever.” (Isaiah 40:8) So. Dvorkin thinks he will kill off the green grass, like a dog peeing on it? Time will tell. So far his dream is not coming true.

photo: persecution 2, by dr zoidberg 

Sorry—took the ‘holding’ out and had you not had such an itchy trigger finger, it would not have tripped you up.
After installation of anything, you usually have to call the workman back to polish it up a little. 

... think about how EFFECTIVE it would be if therapists just let patients beat the hell out of them for a half hour ....
... it probably works like that, both ways!
 

Every time I go to Chipotle's they have an announcement that something is no longer being served. The guacamole for a while, then last week when they put up a sign saying they would not be serving lettuce in their burritos/bowls until further notice . . .
. . . and now I heard that they've pulled pork again.
Oh wait, scratch that . . . [JWI holds an earpiece a little tighter to his ear]. . . I'm just now being told that "pulled pork" is an actual thing. Who knew? So, actually, it's an announcement: Chipotle's: they have "pulled pork" again!

If it is not explained to my satisfaction, I’m outta here. There is only so much tacking that a guy can take.

Isn’t that another indication that ‘Judgement day’ is not so far off? The planet is frying.
Unless—what I recently read is true—that someone said ‘it feels like 115 in France’—and some climate change zealot confused the ‘feels like’ with ‘actually’—and it was not ‘record’ temperature at all.
If that is the case, then people’s brains are frying, which also means Judgement day cannot be too far off.

Then they are ‘Yahweh’s Witnesses.’ Why is this hard?
The people who witness for Jehovah without being baptized are invariably on the road to baptism, and usually are so in very short order.
To this extent, I admire the ol pork chop. Unwisely, in my view, perhaps even unforgivably unwisely, he treats abusively ones taking the lead in the Christian work. (Remember what Paul said after leaning he had said ill of the high priest)
But he nonetheless knows that if he leaves the human organization that represents Jehovah today, he will, in relatively short order, cease his witnessing. He will begin representing his town in horseshoes instead. 
He knows how people are. You cannot be faithful at something that so goes against the grain of human normalcy without a supportive arrangement.

Alright, alright, already—it was Srecko I was speaking of.
It does play into another bit of speechmaking for me. I don’t think it is proper to entreat ones who have so firmly put himself into the opposite camp after having weighed all the evidence. I don’t do it.
When I address any of these characters, it is not to sway them—I don’t think that I have seen a single person here alter their position since I came across this site long ago, so what sort of a self-pugilist would pour their time into that futile effort?
When I address these characters it is to speak to whoever might lie beyond—and that may be nobody. It is also the case that whatever is hammered out eventually appears in some other form where it may do some good.
The fat lady has not yet sung, so who can say where anyone will be when she does? Still, I don’t entreat them to come back on the side of the angels. They have decisively shown where they want to be. Perhaps some day they will no longer want to be there, but if so, it will not be because of my invitation. They have rejected that invitation decisively after having once accepted it and I think it is wrong therefore to keep extending it. Essentially, they have tasted and pronounced Jehovah bad. Beyond saying ‘check your tastebuds,’ there is little response to be made.
These are persons—many of them—who conducted themselves so outrageously and unremorsefully in word or deed that they were put out of the congregation, and as such, I keep my distance spiritually. And now they will come online and engage me in earnest spiritual conversation? It’s not happening on my watch.
it is sort of a fine line—the distinctions between engaging, responding, conversing, answering, and fraternizing. Billy (the bad cop) sees no distinction at all between them and simply practices roasting and toasting. I am not so sure that he is wrong—though I am sure enough about it not to do it myself. It’s mostly the horrible PR that he leaves in his wake that is objectionable. To the extent people think he is a Witness, he paints them as the most intolerant, rigid, and anger-prone people on the planet.

Suddenly the unthinkable has happened. JTR has become the wise and intrepid man of the thread—daring to go where no one has gone before 
 
Can we set up some sort of a lending library program so that I can borrow some?

How do you know that ‘Judgement day’ is still a long way off yet?
Didn’t you just base that on your previous assessment that God has not yet produced a true Anointed? It does not sound like much to hang one’s hat on.
It wasn’t you.
I don’t. You, too, have read it wrong. I guess John has a point. it is well to identify who you are talking about and not just leave that identification to the thread. Even those who you think are paying rapt attention are just waiting for the other blowhard to stop talking so that they can make their own speech.

Well, I think he already has picked, long before he came here, and from our point of view, it is not wise. 
It is one thing that I appreciate about Billy Flamethrower, even if I think he is doing nearly everything else all wrong—he does appreciate when choices have been made and he no longer entreats those who have made them.

Some bromance

How do you know that ‘Judgement day’ is still a long way off yet?
Didn’t you just base that on your previous assessment that God has not yet produced a true Anointed? It does not sound like much to hang one’s hat on.
It wasn’t you.
I don’t. You, too, have read it wrong. I guess John has a point. it is well to identify who you are talking about and not just leave that identification to the thread. Even those who you think are paying rapt attention are just waiting for the other blowhard to stop talking so that they can make their own speech.

Some bromance

I don’t think you read this correctly. It had nothing to do with you, nor were you on my mind.

To be fair to you, John, I did a partial cut and paste and forgot to take out what was irrelevant. Sorry. That doubtless confused you even more than usual. My bad.
I changed it. Again, maybe my bad. JTR will howl that I have thwarted factfinding by the dozens if not hundreds of honest tried and true citizens that he is convinced have nothing better to do with their time but hang out here.

What! Have you gone back to the devil as a nasty red fellow with horns and a pitchfork who otherwise has no influence?
It is Satan whose ‘spirit’ pervades the air. Do you think that foul air has been sealed out of the university? Or does it emanate from it?
Granted, it is not so everywhere. I recall reading somewhere (not in a WT publication) that business majors and engineering majors seldom study at the expense of their faith. It is more to be found in today’s ‘liberal arts’ that is intertwined in everything. 
When it is not the food that is bad, it is the restaurant in which it is served, with it’s maitre d’s, chefs, and waiters. A la carte is the way to take your education wherever possible—cherry picking the best of it—rather than simply unlatching the top of your head and let today’s atheistic and/or politically minded professors (usually leftist) fill it with whatever they want.

Hmm. It looks to me like you may need a visit from the ‘bad cop.’

Each time there is a slam on the GB for their unenthusiasm over higher education, I think that proponents of that education should be required to take ownership of the world that it has collectively created.
Unlike the GB, the movers and shakers of this world are, with few exceptions, highly educated. Let them point proudly to the world that their brand of education has made. See how many have the chutzpah to do it.

Each time there is a slam on the GB for their unenthusiasm over higher education, I think that proponents of that education should be required to take ownership of the world that it has collectively created.
Unlike the GB, the movers and shakers of this world are, with few exceptions, highly educated. Let them point proudly to the world that their brand of education has made. See how many have the chutzpah to do it.

Duh.
Good JWs will not be here. They will have more regard for the preference of the organization not to get into cat fights with those who oppose.
Come on, Billy, let’s retire to the secret closed JW forum where this character can’t come so we can continue to plot our good cop/bad cop strategy. If you like, I’ll even reverse roles, be the bad cop, and let you be the good cop for awhile.

hee hee hee    (so are you)

hee hee hee    (so are you)