Matthew9969

They can see the names of the devices connected to the WiFi, but there is a specific process and your permission in order to see your browsing history. Its a lot harder to do with tablets.

I hope they don't start supplying Caleb and Sophia dolls to the bethelites.

I imagine they would say someone found gods true organization by flushing a toilet.

Man the gb is getting desperate for money.

Cats were once considered gods and were worshipped seriously, cats were from a pagan god, so the pagans believed. so why are jw's allowed to have cats in their homes, own them as pets, care for them as if they are family members? Yet having a Christmas tree is a death sentence in Jehovah's eye's.

On ‎6‎/‎28‎/‎2018 at 5:09 PM, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

Considering the title of the video, among a person of knowledgeable experience, that in my opinion would be a "given"..

SURPRISE!!

Not.

I agree but not everyone is as in the know as you and I. Even some x jw's as myself don't like that language. However I've seen jw's post such language, which is not a surprise either, given that we are all human.

You could have warned that there was very foul language in the video.

Its a good thing they didn't have the governing body back in Jesus day, they would have disfellowshipped Jesus.

On ?6?/?15?/?2018 at 3:11 PM, The Librarian said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As you read this.... remember PERCEPTION is 90% of everything. Sometimes it even trumps the truth itself for centuries. It is that important.

I suspect we should consider that most businesses no longer require suits (business casual and clean is now ok for most jobs)

I try to not bring my electronic devices to my business meetings. It sends the wrong message I think.  What is wrong with the Bible and songbook (actual books)?

Let's also consider what a Kingdom Hall full of Mercedes and Audis appears like to the public.

I remember how I felt as a regular pioneer showing up in California one day at a KH with all their expensive cars. WRONG MESSAGE!!!

Remember what Jesus said about the RICH?

Just some random thoughts when I saw this on Facebook.

Any ideas?

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For one, this meme didn't mention anything about using tablets, almost every church uses them these days. What it is addressing is being required to dress to the 9's in order to get jehovahs approval, or believe you must dress like a business man in your worship of Jehovah...several criminals and pagan rituals require special dress, just like the jw's.

Jesus and His disciples didn't drive fancy camels and donkeys. I believe the reference there is jw's who are blessed enough to drive a nice car isn't doing charity, which is nothing new. Several members of my church drive very expensive vehicles. The car you drive shouldn't be the judge of the heart or financial situation.

Now as far as helping others. I myself have had a 1 on 1 discussion when I was studying that even if your next door neighbor is trapped in a burning house, you as a jw are supposed to leave them be and only help other jw's in your town. In all reports of natural disasters the reports were always giving assistance to jw's only, then anyone else who may need it afterwards. 

And on top of that you have no charities, and with the watchtower being worth hundreds of billions of dollars possibly, I'm sure they could afford at least a bloodless charity.

20 hours ago, Gone Away said:

Who can verify this age?

Maybe they used the same method the watchtower used to calculate the day Adam was created on?

Good question.

Would God have then created the Borg and Feruengi?

When you listen to the stay alive til 75 talk and a few other video's, jw's applaud and cheer at the announcement that billions of men women and children are going to die horrible deaths by Jehovah,  yes this Jehovah and his followers are a perverse group.

On ‎6‎/‎15‎/‎2018 at 3:24 PM, Jack Ryan said:

Did You Know?

You can openly and publicly question if the President of the United States is fit for office. You can question his policies, his statements, and his character. Your family and friends will not be taken away from you.

You can openly and publicly question the policies, fitness for office, statements, and character of governors, senators, congressmen, judges, and various other politicians and leaders in the United States. Your family and friends will not be taken away from you.

If you believe in a god, you can pray to your god questioning his authority, ability to rule, his decisions, and his purpose. When you open your eyes, you will find that your family and friends have not and will not be taken away from you.

Jesus had his authority questioned many times. (Matt. 21: 23-27) According to the Bible, he would have had the power to punish those questioning him. Yet, he did nothing to them. He harmed no one physically or emotionally.

You can confidentially question the ability to lead, the validity, the teachings, the doctrines and policies of the Governing Body to only two family members or close companions.  Your family and friends WILL be taken away from you. You will be labeled as dead, evil, and mentally diseased. You can and will likely lose all the social connections and relationships you have developed over a lifetime.

Only absolute dictators take away the rights of those they rule if their authority is questioned. Look at the examples of Stalin, Hitler, Bashar al-Assad, and Kim Jong Un. 

The Governing Body today will attend court hearings in other countries rejoicing when freedoms are granted to their followers. They will organize letter writing campaigns to lobby for religious freedoms of Jehovah's Witnesses. They will take legal arguments to the highest courts to fight for the rights of the organization that they govern. Yet, all it takes for you to lose all of your freedoms to be with your very own family is the admission to enough witnesses that you no longer believe the Governing Body are chosen by God and have authority over you. 

Did You Know? The Governing Body will fight tooth and nail for their own perceived freedoms, but they have no problems taking away your own freedoms and declaring you dead if you dare to question them.

Of course you can't, they call themselves Jehovah, and who is going to question Jehovah.

17 hours ago, JW Insider said:

When did JWs ever say the word Christian was a demonically inspired word?

It was a common saying in our home growing up, 'those Christians are demons'. And when you think about it, I don't think the watchtower has ever had anything to say about Christians other than they serve satan.

You guys are forgetting a 'generation' for a Jewish calendar was 40 years. So the overlapping generations is non biblical and is a man made excuse for trying to explain the failed prophecy of the governing body. 

The 8 million # is an inflated number by the governing body. A baby cannot be counted as a jw.

And talk about counterfeit Christians....it was the jw's who used to believe the word 'Christian' was a demonically inspired word, not they call themselves Christians...who are the counterfeit Christians then?

I'm pretty confident God would have had alternate plans, like space travel, which makes most since to me seeing as how such perfect minds would have no problem inventing the means to do so.

The parents should be arrested as well.

When I was a jw I found a nice looking bottle, so I started to dust it off and a genie popped out and told me he didn't do demon impressions.

Ouch!

I remember something very similar, if you didn't obey the watchtower and governing body, Jehovah was going to kill you, which was basically not being forgiven by the governing body since the governing body considers themselves to be Jehovah.

That's what I was raised to believe, and in really horrible ways according to the pictures in the magazines and books.

I remember it seemed to be very uncomfortable for the entire congregation when someone would comment on something that wasn't parroting the paragraph.

Predictions by members of mainstream churches

Adventism, Millerism

Adventism has its roots in the teachings of a Baptist preacher by the name of William Miller. He first predicted the Second Advent of Jesus Christ would occur before March 21, 1844.[1] When this date passed a new date was predicted, April 18, 1844. Again the date passed and another Millerite, Samuel S. Snow, derived the date of October 22, 1844. The un-fulfillment of these predictions has been named the Millerite Great Disappointment.

Anabaptist Church

Certain Anabaptists of the early 16th century believed that the Millennium would occur in 1533. Another source reports: "When the prophecy failed, the Anabaptists became more zealous and claimed that two witnesses (Enoch and Elijah) had come in the form of Jan Matthys and Jan Bockelson; they would set up the New Jerusalem in Münster. Münster became a frightening dictatorship under Bockelson's control. Although all Lutherans and Catholics were expelled from that city, the millennium never came."

Anglican Church

In volume II of The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, author Leroy Edwin Froom tells us about a prominent Anglican prelate, who made a relevant prediction: "Edwin Sandys (1519–1588), Archbishop of York and Primate of England was born in Lancashire... Sandys says, 'Now, as we know not the day and time, so let us be assured that this coming of the Lord is near. He is not slack, as we do count slackness. That it is at hand, it may be probably gathered out of the Scriptures in diverse places. The signs mentioned by Christ in the Gospel which should be the foreshewers of this terrible day, are almost all fulfilled.'"

Assemblies of God Church

During World War I, The Weekly Evangel, an official publication of the Assemblies of God, carried this prediction: "We are not yet in the Armageddon struggle proper, but at its commencement, and it may be, if students of prophecy read the signs aright, that Christ will come before the present war closes, and before Armageddon...The war preliminary to Armageddon, it seems, has commenced." Other editions speculated that the end would come no later than 1934 or 1935.

Calvary Chapel

The founder of the Calvary Chapel system, Chuck Smith, published the book End Times in 1979. On the jacket of his book, Smith is called a "well known Bible scholar and prophecy teacher." In this book he wrote:

As we look at the world scene today, it would appear that the coming of the Lord is very, very, close. Yet, we do not know when it will be. It could be that the Lord will wait for a time longer. If I understand Scripture correctly, Jesus taught us that the generation which sees the 'budding of the fig tree', the birth of the nation Israel, will be the generation that sees the Lord's return; I believe that the generation of 1948 is the last generation. Since a generation of judgment is forty years and the tribulation lasts seven years, I believe the Lord could come back for his church anytime before the tribulation starts, which would mean anytime before 1981. (1948 + 40 − 7 = 1981) However, it is possible that Jesus is dating the beginning of the generation from 1967, when Jerusalem was again under Israeli control for the first time since 587 BC. We don't know for sure which year actually marks the beginning of the last generation.

This same viewpoint was published by the popular pastor Hal Lindsey in his widely published book The Late Great Planet Earth.

Lutheran Church

The founder of the Lutheran Church was the reformer, Martin Luther (1483–1546 A.D.). According to one authority, Luther ventured to predict: "For my part, I am sure that the Day of Judgement is just around the corner. It doesn't matter that we don't know the precise day... perhaps someone else can figure it out. But it is certain that time is now at an end." Another author says: "In all of [Luther's] work there was a sense of urgency for the time was short... the world was heading for Armageddon in the war with the Turk."

Even after Luther's death in 1546, Lutheran leaders kept up the claim of the nearness of the end. About the year 1584, a zealous Lutheran named Adam Nachenmoser wrote the large volume '[Prognosticum Theologicum]' in which he predicted: "In 1590 the Gospel would be preached to all nations and a wonderful unity would be achieved. The last days would then be close at hand." Nachenmoser offered numerous conjectures about the date; 1635 seemed most likely.

The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod issued a study in 1989 refuting any end times claim, declaring that "repeatedly taught by Jesus and the apostles is the truth that the exact hour of Christ's coming remains hidden in the secret counsels of God (Matt. 24:36)."

Mennonites

Russian Mennonite minister Claas Epp, Jr. predicted that Christ would return on March 8, 1889, and, when that date passed uneventfully, 1891.

Presbyterian Church

Thomas Brightman, who lived from 1562 to 1607, has been called "one of the fathers of Presbyterianism in England." He predicted that "between 1650 and 1695 [we] would see the conversion of the many Jews and a revival of their nation in Palestine...the destruction of the Papacy...the marriage of the Lamb and his wife."

Christopher Love who lived from 1618–1651 was a bright graduate of Oxford and a strong Presbyterian. Love predicted that: (1) Babylon would fall in 1758 (2) God's anger against the wicked would be demonstrated in 1759 and (3) in 1763 there would occur a great earthquake all over the world.

Roman Catholic Church

When in 1525 Martin Luther, an ex-monk, married Katharina von Bora, an ex-nun, his enemies[who?] said that their offspring would fulfill an old tradition that the Antichrist would be the son of such a union. The Catholic scholar and theologian Erasmus remarked that the tradition could apply to thousands of such children.

In 1771 Bishop Charles Walmesley published, under the nom de plume of "Signor Pastorini", his "General History of the Christian Church from Her Birth to Her Final Triumphant State in Heaven Chiefly Deduced from the Apocalypse of St. John the Apostle and Evangelist". In it he attributed to what he called the fifth age of the Church a duration of 300 years, beginning with the Protestant Reformation in 1520 or 1525. This was widely interpreted as predicting the downfall of Protestantism by 1825. In fact, just four years later, the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 brought to a culmination the process of Catholic Emancipation throughout the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

Predictions by other groups

Irvingism

The well known Scottish cleric, Edward Irving, was the forerunner of the Catholic Apostolic Church.[23] In 1828 he wrote a work headed The Last Days: A Discourse on the Evil Character of These Our Times, Proving Them to be the 'Perilous Times' and the 'Last Days'. On pages 10–22 we find some telling information which includes the following:

I conclude, therefore, that the last days... will begin to run from the time of God's appearing for his ancient people, and gathering them together to the work of destroying all Antichristian nations, of evangelising the world, and of governing it during the Millennium... The times and fullness of the times, so often mentioned in the New Testament, I consider as referring to the great period numbered by times...Now if this reasoning be correct, as there can be little doubt that the one thousand two hundred and sixty days concluded in the year 1792, and the thirty additional days in the year 1823, we are already entered upon the last days, and the ordinary life of a man will carry many of us to the end of them. If this be so, it gives to the subject with which we have introduced this year's ministry a very great importance indeed.

Jehovah's Witnesses

Charles Taze Russell, the first president of the Watch Tower Society, calculated 1874 as the year of Christ's Second Coming, and taught that Christ was invisibly present and ruling from the heavens since that year. Russell proclaimed Christ's invisible return in 1874,[29] the resurrection of the saints in 1875, and predicted the end of the "harvest" and the Rapture of the saints to heaven for 1878,  and the final end of "the day of wrath" in 1914. 1874 was considered the end of 6,000 years of human history and the beginning of judgment by Christ. A 1917 Watch Tower Society publication predicted that in 1918, God would begin to destroy churches and millions of their members.

J.F. Rutherford, who succeeded Russell as president of the Watch Tower Society, predicted that the Millennium would begin in 1925, and that biblical figures such as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and David would be resurrected as "princes". The Watch Tower Society bought property and built a house, Beth Sarim, in California for their return.

From 1966, statements in Jehovah's Witness publications raised strong expectations that Armageddon could arrive in 1975. In 1974 Witnesses were commended for selling their homes and property to "finish out the rest of their days in this old system" in full-time preaching.[36] In 1976 The Watchtower advised those who had been "disappointed" by unfulfilled expectations for 1975 to adjust their viewpoint because that understanding was "based on wrong premises". Four years later, the Watch Tower Society admitted its responsibility in building up hope regarding 1975.

Montanists

Montanus, who founded the Montanist movement in 156 AD, predicted that Jesus would return during the lifetime of the group's founding members.

Mormonism

Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon faith, made several dozen prophecies during his lifetime, many of which are recorded in the sacred texts of the Mormon faith. The prophecies included predictions of the Civil War, the coming of Jesus, and several less significant predictions. Church apologists cite prophecies that they claim came true, and church critics cite prophecies that they claim did not come true.

The end already came.....and went, then came again...then went, then came again.....doh! no it didn't, maybe 2034? Have a wonderful day!