Jack Ryan

@Jim63 You just ACCUSED ME of being the devil!? Oh the irony! ...... I was asking QUESTIONS earlier without knowing all of the answers of potential dilemmas and for that act alone you called me something far worse than "despicable fool". Let's see... those who call others "despicable fools" according to Jesus are liable to the fiery Gehenna. Hmmm..... I would say an apology is in order for your long term well-being.

Apparently Prince died of an overdose , does he still get a resurrection even though he knew the "truth" ?

Was Prince one of the 144,000 Anointed ones?

They suspect percocet (opioid drug) overdose is what caused his death. Very similar to Michael Jackson's death. Will he still receive a JW funeral in a Kingdom Hall if the autopsy shows it was a DRUG OVERDOSE? Wouldn't he be posthumously disfellowshipped? ;-) Many JW's have been DF'd for lesser offenses such as smoking.

Does this mean Watchtower will be releasing statements of condolence for ALL Jehovah's Witnesses, even the most lowly among them, or is this gesture only for the big donor, celebrity types? Now the young JW children can aspire to receive the JW.org blessing and "find fulfillment" by becoming "rock star celebrities". Oh, have times changed..... Watchtower should not have just laid off 25,000 bethelites ... now they can afford to pay them. OR.... Can we say that Jehovah heard the cry and need for money and has now solved the problem for us?

I had read that Prince had recently disassociated himself. Is this true? If that is the case, shouldn't all JW's have refrained from praying for him and / or expressing sorrow for his passing? According to Watchtower policy he was to be shunned during his life. They were not even to say "Hello" to such a wicked man or eat a meal with him. Now that he has died he awaits a resurrection since he has died for his sins and it no longer matters that he was possibly disassociated. Will Watchtower leaders (elders) refuse to offer a funeral talk for him on this basis?

Doesn't it imply some sort of "after-life"? Your thoughts?

As of 9 April 2015 Watchtower Bible & Tract Society of Britain and the Manchester New Moston Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses have lost all appeals and attempts to prevent an investigation by the Charity Commission for England and Wales into their activities. In June 2014 the Charity Commission for England and Wales announced an investigation into Watchtower Bible & Tract Society of Britain and a number of congregations of Jehovah’s Witnesses. On 22 December 2014 the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Watchtower lodged a Notice of Appeal against the investigation (Appeal Number CA/2014/0023) with the intent of preventing the Charity Commission investigating their charity status and activities. The appeal lodged by Watchtower and Jehovah’s Witnesses was outside the six month statutory time limit. On 23 December 2014 the Tribunal issued directions in relation to the late lodging of the appeal giving the Charity Commission until 13 January 2015 to provide a response to the Tribunal as to whether they accept the late appeal. New Moston Congregation v Charity Commission – Tribunal Decision (09 April 2015) new-moston-congregation-v-charity-commission-tribunal-decision-09-april-2015.pdf Charity Tribunal Rejects Watchtower’s Application to Appeal – Decision (02 April 2015) tayo-pta-decision-02-april-2015.pdf Watch Tower v Charity Tribunal Ruling (02 April 2015) watch-tower-charity-tribunal-ruling-02-april-2015.pdf Watch Tower v Charity Commission – Tribunal Decision (14 January 2015) watch-tower-v-charity-commission-tribunal-decision-14-january-2015.pdf Watchtower v Charity Commission – Tribunal Directions (23 December 2014) watchtower-v-charity-commission-tribunal-directions-23-december-20141.pdf Watchtower v Charity Commission – Tribunal Directions – 23 December 2014 watchtower-v-charity-commission-tribunal-directions-23-december-2014.pdf Press release Charity Commission announces investigation into Jehovah’s Witnesses (10 June 2014) press-release-charity-commission-announces-investigation-into-jehovahs-witnesses.pdf

Prince interviewed by Tavis Smiley in 2011. Prince Talks About The Illuminati & Chemtrails

Prince and Smith went on to film footage with the singer's fans, which Smith thought was going to be a concert film. However, Smith says he ended up quitting the project he determined the music icon was trying to make a promotional movie for his faith, the Jehovah's Witnesses. The footage was never released.

After Jack's secretly recorded video with elders, the Secretary of cong calls Jack and says: we need you & kyla to show up at a judicial meeting on 4/25/16.

The Electric Church Turns On THE preacher wears no black robes. Instead, he glistens in a three-piece white polyester suit. He presides over no altar, but roams over the multilevel stage of his television “cathedral,” bathed in klieg lights. Polished to a mirror finish, with every step outlined in flashing lights, and numerous backdrops constantly changing the scene, the stage itself seems to be the star of the show. It is time for prayer, but this is no ordinary prayer. The preacher pauses before a table full of letters from his “prayer-key family” and settles down on one knee before the table, hands reverently clasped together. His freshly scrubbed choir takes its place, forming a semicircle behind him. As the preacher prays, the choir hums along, the lips of each member just caressing a microphone, nightclub-style. At the close of the prayer the scene dissolves to a videotaped commercial plugging the preacher’s “prayer-key family.” It is very professionally done. An elderly woman, obviously devout and lonely, is shown writing the preacher a letter. In the voice-over she tells how her loneliness, and most of her other problems, have vanished since joining the “prayer-key family.” Now we return to the preacher, just in time for his sermon. There is no Bible-waving. The sermon is “cool,” in TV jargon, which means the preacher is talking to you as he would if he were in your living room. Again and again he makes the same point. If you want your prayers to be answered you must join his “prayer-key family.” Where does the key fit in? “Prayer is the key,” he earnestly intones, “that unlocks the bank of heaven.” This is one example of the attention-grabbing phenomenon in American religion—the Electric Church. Its newly attained sophistication and popularity are sending religious and political shocks through the United States. Its brightest stars are taking in more money than most large American denominations. Who are they? Where did they come from? What do they stand for? The Electric Church consists of TV preachers who buy their own air time and use it to get contributions with which they buy more air time, and so on. Of course, most TV stations are leery of selling time to a preacher who is only going to dun their viewers, so the preachers have elaborate ways of avoiding the appearance of asking for funds over the air. What are some of these? They encourage their viewers to write in for a free pin or “prayer key,” at which point the viewers are put on a computerized mailing list, and then the hard sell begins. Or they offer a televised “counseling service,” and those who call for help are later contacted by mail. Computerized mailing has made the Electric Church a very profitable business. How profitable? Here are some typical figures: Oral Roberts, former Pentecostal faith-healer, now somewhat toned down as a Methodist, $60,000,000 a year. Jerry Falwell, Lynchburg, Virginia, Baptist with a strong political message, over $50,000,000 a year. Pat Robertson started the first popular religious guest interview show and now has his own network broadcasting from his new $20,000,000 headquarters. His Christian Broadcasting Network took in $70,000,000 last year. Jim Bakker, formerly associated with Robertson, has started his own guest show, and his network grosses $53,000,000 a year. Rex Humbard, with his “Cathedral of Tomorrow” and its spectacular stage, takes in $25,000,000 or so. The list goes on and on. All told, the top start of the Electric Church are able to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to buy air time every year. Where do they get it? Most of the people who watch the Electric Church are not rich. Benjamin L. Armstrong, who coined the term “Electric Church,” explains: “As part of the Electric Church concept, the listener is conditioned to give.” Most of those millions of dollars come to the Electric Preachers $25 or $50 at a time. Jerry Falwell, for example, may get 10,000 letters in a typical day’s mail, over half of which contain contributions. A prisoner in Pontiac, Michigan, was surprised to receive a computer-written request for $35. Why? He says: “The machine-printed note explained that a friend of mine, who wished to remain nameless, had . . . requested that a special prayer be said in my behalf on the air . . . The prayer had been said, but my friend had not responded to the subsequent required ‘donation card’ that had been mailed. Would I be kind enough to send a check?” Sometimes the pitch for money is more subtle. “I saw a television show the other day that epitomized my fears about paid religious broadcasts,” said one observer. “The preacher put two phone numbers on the screen during the program. One was a toll-free number for those viewers who wanted to make contributions, and the number for people who wanted counseling was not toll-free.” Why the constant demand for money? One reason is that the Electric Church has been made possible by a great deal of very expensive technology. Most religious broadcasters could never compete with regular network programming for the America mass audience. When a religious program comes on TV, most people, bluntly put, turn it off. The problem for the Electric Church is: How can they reach the dedicated minority of viewers who want to watch religious programs? The answer? “Revolutions in satellite technology, breakthroughs in computer applications, and the advent of cable TV systems and new over-the-air stations are turning the U.S. into a global village and making it economical to ‘narrowcast’ to a relative handful of supporters,” as Forbes magazine points out. “So what if not everyone wants to watch a religious program? . . . TV, like magazines, can now cater to specialized audiences.” The result is a different economics for the Electric Church. The viewers do not support these programs indirectly by purchasing soap flakes that have been advertised on the show. Instead, they must support the programs directly with their contributions. Soliciting and maintaining those contributions has become a massive computerized operation for most of the stars of the Electric Church. The computer is as vital to the Electric Church as the television tube. The need constantly to raise money traps Electric Preachers in a boom-or-bust cycle. Big projects, like “cathedrals” or universities or hospitals, are started, followed by desperate pleas to the faithful for more money to “finish God’s work.” As a local banker said of one Electric Church superstar: “There’s only one problem with a ministry like Jerry’s. He can’t stop raising money; if he does, it all falls apart.” This aspect of the Electric Church may remind thinking Christians of Jesus’ words found in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus pointedly said, “No one can slave for two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will stick to the one and despise the other. You cannot slave for God and for Riches.”—Matt. 6:24. With the preachers of the Electric Church constantly in need of vast contributions from their viewers, is it likely that they will risk offending those viewers? Hardly. The theology of the Electric Church, not surprisingly, is simplistic and self-gratifying. “Ask not what you can do for your religion; ask rather what your religion can do for you,” as Forbes put it. Even some sympathetic to the Electric Church admit that it has little content. As evangelical theologian Carl F. Henry observes: “Much television religion is too experience-centered, too doctrinally thin, to provide an adequate alternative to modern religious and moral confusion.” In other words, TV religion cannot really help you to solve life’s problems. Instead, as Harvard divinity professor Harvey Cox notes, the preachers of the Electric Church “are merely perpetuating and deepening the values of a materialistic consumer culture. They are helping people to accept some very shallow values, while promising easy salvation in the most commercial setting.” How does that message square with Jesus’ warning that the road to life is not easy, but difficult—“narrow is the gate and cramped the road leading off into life, and few are the ones finding it”? (Matt. 7:14) Does that sound as though eternal life can be yours merely by dialing Channel 21? Consider this further admonition from Jesus Christ: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross [torture stake, New World Translation] daily, and follow me.” (Luke 9:23, Authorized Version) Does a person deny himself and take up his “cross” daily propped in front of the TV? Could Jesus Christ really approve of a religion that promises people easy salvation—no torture stake, no self-denial—for just a monthly check to somebody’s “worldwide TV ministry”? Rather, it looks as if the Electric Church is a 20th-century example of what the apostle Paul warned Timothy about when he said: “For there will be a period of time when they will not put up with the healthful teaching, but, in accord with their own desires, they will accumulate teachers for themselves to have their ears tickled; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, whereas they will be turned aside to false stories.”—2 Tim. 4:3, 4. Why are people willing to give millions of dollars to support the Electric Church? Because they are being told what they want to hear. They are assured that God will answer their prayers. They do not have to deny themselves or ‘bear a cross’ or do the work Christ did, but they are “saved” and God loves them—just as long as they keep those checks coming in. However, even if the theology of the Electric Church is vague and imprecise, its politics are clear and specific. That is the subject of the following article. http://imgur.com/a/HYlhO

A huge galaxy orbiting our own Milky Way has seemingly appeared out of nowhere. The newly spotted dwarf galaxy, which has been named Crater 2, sits around 400,000 light-years away, and has already earned the title of the fourth largest known galaxy circling our own. http://www.sciencealert.com/astronomers-just-discovered-a-huge-galaxy-orbiting-our-own

Jonah and the big fish....

MERCY, A DOMINANT QUALITY OF TRUE CHRISTIANS PB_007-E 3-91.pdf is now IMITATE “THE FATHER OF TENDER MERCIES” PB_007-E 12-15.pdf

SAN DIEGO (CN) — The national Jehovah's Witnesses organization must produce any documents in its possession relating to perpetrators of child sexual abuse, a California appeals court ruled. Jose Lopez sued Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York and the Linda Vista Spanish Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses in June of 2012 for the sexual abuse he allegedly suffered when he was seven years old at the hands of his Bible instructor Gonzales Campos. In 1986, Lopez's mother allowed Campos to give her son bible study lessons after an elder from her congregation recommended him because he was "good very good with children." According to the complaint, after Campos had given Lopez several lessons, he sexually molested him. The abuse was reported to an elder of the church after Lopez told his mother, but nothing was done after the elders spoke to Lopez about where he was touched. This was not the first time there had been allegations Campos had sexually abused young boys. Another boy from the same congregation accused Campos of sexually molesting him four years earlier. Campos admitted to acting inappropriately, but the elders continued to allow him to be around children, and even continued to recommend him as a Bible instructor. Lopez and his mother left the congregation shortly after the alleged abuse, but Campos continued to rise within the congregation over the next several years, eventually serving as an elder and being placed on the congregation's governing service committee. Yet, according to the Lopez's complaint, between 1982 and 1995, Campos sexually abused at least eight other children. Neither Watchtower nor the congregation ever reported the incidents to law enforcement officers, the complaint said. With more than 1.2 million members and 13,777 congregations across the United States, the Jehovah's Witness religion's practices, policies and administrative duties were supervised by Watchtower during the relevant time period, including congregation elders who served as its agents. Watchtower challenged two discovery orders -- one requesting the church produce documents concerning the sexual abuse of other victims; the other seeking to compel the disposition of an individual believed to be the managing agent of Watchtower at the time. The organization also requested that an order, compelling it to pay nearly $38,000 in monetary sanctions, be terminated. In addition to rejecting claims the document request was overly broad and violated attorney-client privilege, a three-judge panel with California's Fourth Appellate District also found that, although unusual, the 27-year post-incident request "is partly a function of the permissive limitations statutes governing child sexual abuse under which Lopez was seeking to recover for an alleged wrongful act committed almost three decades earlier." Watchtower's claim that the document request was overly oppressive because it would take years to comply was also rejected by the panel, which pointed out the church's computer system had a search function that could easily identify information within the scanned documents. The panel also shot down Watchtower's First Amendment objection by citing relevant cases, including a decade old case in which the court held it did not violate constitutional religious freedom when an archdiocese was order to product documents about priests who were indicted for sexually abusing children. While the three-judge panel upheld the discovery order, it found the disposition order was not supportable because there was no evidence that the named individual was a managing agent at the time Lopez was abused. Judge Judith Haller, writing for panel, concluded the ruling by finding the sanctions order needed to be vacated. "There was no question Watchtower willfully failed to comply with the document production order." Judge Haller wrote. "The fundamental flaw with the court's approach is there is no basis in the record showing the court could not have obtained Watchtowers' compliance with lesser sanctions." D066388.pdf http://www.courthousenews.com/2016/04/18/witnesses-must-produce-child-sex-abuse-docs.htm

Some of you mentioned Carl Olof Jonsson on the Destruction of Jerusalem I didn't know any of his story until this video.

In the temptation account, Satan is shown as reflecting the erroneous belief of ancient time that shape of earth is flat, thus taking Jesus to the top of “a very high mountain” and showed “all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor.” (Mathew 4:8, 9) The fact that Jesus did not correct the mistaken view of Satan shows the account of temptation is allegorical. Further, Jesus knew that Satan was only a personification of evil (Mathew 16:23; John 6:70) and categorically declared that “all evil thoughts proceed from one’s heart,” not from Satan. (Mark 7:21; James 1:14). There is nothing unusual with personification as Bible personifies even material riches. (Mathew 6:24).

I saw this post by the Librarian under Abrahamic Religions and it got me thinking: The Jews don't refer to this name.... even though they worship "Yahweh"..... isn't it the same God? The "Name" is not really an important issue. "Elohim" is the term often used in the Bible..... Why not use that? It was good enough for Moses! Shouldn't it work for us?

G-14-E_Us.pdf

March 11, 2016 TO ALL CONGREGATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES BRANCH TERRITORY Re: 2016 Bethel Visitors Information 20160311-E.pdf