1290 and 1335 days

[JW Insider]

14 minutes ago, Noble Berean said:

matters like the rejection of blood transfusions and shunning df'ed children are crossing a line of control. I just can't stand behind those things. It violates my Bible conscience.

A son of a Governing Body member was handling the Watch Tower's Public Relations department just before J.R.Brown took over that position. He said that these particular two items were the two items that, if changed, would resolve 90% of our public relations problems. (This was just prior to the child abuse debacle which J.R.Brown was immediately thrown into.) I suspect people understood him to be saying he disagreed with our position on these issues, but I don't recall him ever saying that. He was fired from the position anyway.

[Noble Berean]

15 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

A son of a Governing Body member was handling the Watch Tower's Public Relations department just before J.R.Brown took over that position. He said that these particular two items were the two items that, if changed, would resolve 90% of our public relations problems. (This was just prior to the child abuse debacle which J.R.Brown was immediately thrown into.) I suspect people understood him to be saying he disagreed with our position on these issues, but I don't recall him ever saying that. He was fired from the position anyway.

I would agree. That's usually what's brought up in anti-JW articles as a way to say the religion is a cult.

[Israeli Bar Avaddhon]

8 hours ago, Noble Berean said:

Yes, there is a balancing act that is necessary. I don't agree with the organization becoming tolerant of everything, but I think matters like the rejection of blood transfusions and shunning df'ed children are crossing a line of control. I just can't stand behind those things. It violates my Bible conscience. I know that puts me in a bad place in this religion.

The fact of the matter is that after having personally studied the Bible and meditating on it, certain decisions should be left to the conscience of each individual - 2 Corinthians 1:24

[JW Insider]

3 hours ago, Nana Fofana said:

Blood Transfusions Often Kill the Patients.

This is true. Blood is dangerous. Heart surgery is dangerous too and has killed many patients. But it has also saved many patients. It's the same with blood, which is why so many thousands of Jehovah's Witnesses take blood. They take it in fractional components. Most blood is stored in fractional components anyway. And most blood is supposed to be used within 42 days. This was true long before the Duke study, because it was already known that blood stored for 4 months was only about half as efficient for carrying oxygen.

The Duke study (this is only one of many Duke studies) was one of the most repeated in the media because it was the "scariest." But attempts to repeat the study with more randomized data did not fully confirm it. And the failure to show any difference by trying to bump up the nitrous oxide might be evidence that they were on the wrong track anyway.

None of this is evidence one way or another that Jehovah's Witnesses should reverse their conscience on blood. Blood saves lives in the same way that heart surgery saves lives. Just because something might save our life doesn't mean it's right. But we shouldn't have to find ourselves always trying to defend our position based on specific secular studies of risk vs benefit. Are human scholars that important to us? If we are right, why would it matter even if blood only saved lives 80% of the time or 50% or 20%? Is it men we are trying to please, or God?

The apostle Paul obviously didn't mind getting some blood in his meat, and said it was a matter of conscience. So let each one decide for himself, he said. As adults, we have the right to our own conscience in this matter. None of us should question the conscientious choice of another. I have a concern over whether we should force our conscience on unbaptized members of our household including small children, or should we follow the "higher authorities" of Romans 13:1.

Obviously, this discussion should go under another topic.

Edited to add: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2851210/

[JW Insider]

50 minutes ago, Nana Fofana said:

And I know   the only reason this story appeared simultaneously  everywhere  in 2007 [and then disappeared] was that a patented product was going to be rolled-out, but then turned out not -effective, after all.

So you think that the headline "Blood Transfusions Kill Millions" was a hyped-up lie to try to sell a patented solution to a problem that didn't work?

50 minutes ago, Nana Fofana said:

"Some tests indicate that stored blood has lost most of it's nitric oxide - hence most of it's oxygen-carrying capacity - within three hours of being removed from a donor."

Wasn't this also found to be incorrect information (disinfo)? [The site quoted above also shows studies and experiments that include finding certain freezing/thawing methods to keep blood effective after storing for 37 years.]

At any rate, my point was that even if blood were 100% effective and safe, we should still avoid it if we truly believe this is Jehovah's will. If we begin selectively picking out negative studies, and ignoring more positive studies, we end up looking like we are embarrassed to hold to a Biblical position on the subject, and are hoping that we can find a secular reason to bolster our position.

It reminds me of what a Jewish person under the Mosaic law should do if he were starving to death and the only meat available to him that could save his life was the meat from a pig. Would he begin telling people that pig meat can be prone to trichinosis, and people have died from it? Or will he say that it's against God's law? (Of course, if he were truly dying, the position of Jesus appears to be that he should do what is unlawful in order to save a life.)

• (Matthew 12:1-7) . . .disciples got hungry and started to pluck heads of grain and to eat. 2 At seeing this, the Pharisees said to him: “Look! Your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.” 3 He said to them: “Have you not read what David did when he and the men with him were hungry? 4 How he entered into the house of God and they ate the loaves of presentation, something that it was not lawful for him or those with him to eat, but for the priests only? 5 Or have you not read in the Law that on the Sabbaths the priests in the temple violate the Sabbath and continue guiltless? 6 But I tell you that something greater than the temple is here. 7 However, if you had understood what this means, ‘I want mercy and not sacrifice,’. . .

There is more than one way to understand that passage, but it is clear that the conscience of some would allow them to get one thing out of it, and the conscience of another would allow them to get something else out of it.

By the way, I agree completely that there should technologies by now that would help with both increased volume and increased oxygenation. The position of JWs along with the financial costs of collecting and storing blood have already combined to help produce advances in these areas. Hopefully, more will be done sooner than later.

[Anna]

5 hours ago, JW Insider said:

None of this is evidence one way or another that Jehovah's Witnesses should reverse their conscience on blood. Blood saves lives in the same way that heart surgery saves lives. Just because something might save our life doesn't mean it's right. But we shouldn't have to find ourselves always trying to defend our position based on specific secular studies of risk vs benefit. Are human scholars that important to us? If we are right, why would it matter even if blood only saved lives 80% of the time or 50% or 20%? Is it men we are trying to please, or God?

Exactly!

[Anna]

18 hours ago, JW Insider said:

He said that these particular two items were the two items that, if changed, would resolve 90% of our public relations problems.

Of course as you said regarding blood transfusions:

5 hours ago, JW Insider said:

Is it men we are trying to please, or God?

 

[Anna]

18 hours ago, JW Insider said:

A son of a Governing Body member was handling the Watch Tower's Public Relations department just before J.R.Brown took over that position.

Who was that?

 

[JW Insider]

6 minutes ago, Anna said:

Who was that?

Persons who are still alive and who are not having their names appear in public elsewhere are probably not looking to have their names appear here either. But I will be happy to show you his picture. We were at Bethel together for several years. He's the one in the middle. One year younger than me.

[Anna]

 

5 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

Persons who are still alive and who are not having their names appear in public elsewhere are probably not looking to have their names appear here either. But I will be happy to show you his picture. We were at Bethel together for several years. He's the one in the middle. One year younger than me.

Lol! Good answer and great pic. What a cute baby. So who is the father?

[JW Insider]

1 minute ago, Anna said:

So who is the father?

He's the one on the right side of the picture.

[TrueTomHarley]

10 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

We were at Bethel together for several years. He's the one in the middle. One year younger than me.

IT'S OUTRAGEOUS!!! THE WICKED PLACE EVEN MAKES BABIES WORK!!!!