James Thomas Rook Jr.

TTH: As usual, you have confused two things ( ...and more...) with other things that are not applicable, and instead of addressing the issues (Remember issues? No? ... nevermind...) tried to distract with attacks against me. That's OK .... I find it entertaining. I see how YOU look at the world as if everything you see is distorted by your agenda, as do you about me. Fair enough. My statements were crystal clear and completely unambiguous .... They can be dissected to ascertain EXACTLY what I meant to say, and the sentences can be diagrammed. to show that pictorially. I wear EVERYTHING on my sleeve, including long sleeve shirts and watches. I find that being honest with everyone scares the people away whose goofiness would clutter up my life with irrelevancy .... and I lead a very content and peaceful life. .... and as an aside .... you being wrong about almost everything ... I have NEVER called Hillary Rodham Clinton the Devil ... I merely stated as a point of relevant humor that she does not worship Satan ... Satan worships her! You expect a LOT, TTH ... but expecting me to castigate someone who withing the limits of human foibles, has been doing everything I personally would do if I was President, with the possible exception of making dueling once again legal, and re-instituting public hangings, which I am all for ... as well as other Barbaric practices that I as an admitted Barbarian would find helpful .... there is NO REASON for me to castigate Donald Trump. In another time, if he was my enemy, and I could manage it, I would wear his skin as a rain coat. if however ... IF HOWEVER .. he claimed to represent Jehovah God as the Guardians of the Doctrine, as the Governing Body claims ... I would rip him a "new one" About that, you apparently try to keep up with politics ... so you know that in the past few weeks the "Onion" has been peeled back to reveal that Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party and their cronies are the ones that have been colluding with the Russians, and it goes all the way back to Ted Kennedy. As of this date, Feb 25, 2018, the only "Russian Collusion" has been with HRC as Secretary of State selling U.S. Uranium to the Russians, and her financing the fake "golden showers" dossier through her lawyers and the DNC. When Trump claims to be the titular head of God's Organization on Earth, and spews forth volumes and volumes of edicts on every manner of human behavior ... IN THE NAME OF GOD .... I will do exactly as you suggest. Now that I hopefully have dispensed with this irrelevancy .. perhaps you would care to comment on any of the ISSUES and facts I presented .... or do you accept them all at face value? Hmmmmmm?

Yeah.... I have many times beaten a dead horse, and it managed to bite me.

What single decision had the greatest effect on history? I think it was arguably when the Dinosaurs "were just not working out...", and God dropped a big rock on what later came to be known as the Yucatan Peninsula.

Life is tough .... then you die. Journey Lyrics "Don't Stop Believin'" Just a small town girl Livin' in a lonely world She took the midnight train Goin' anywhere Just a city boy Born and raised in South Detroit He took the midnight train Goin' anywhere A singer in a smokey room The smell of wine and cheap perfume For a smile they can share the night It goes on and on, and on, and on Strangers waiting Up and down the boulevard Their shadows searching In the night Streetlight people Livin' just to find emotion Hidin' somewhere in the night Workin' hard to get my fill Everybody wants a thrill Payin' anything to roll the dice Just one more time Some will win Some will lose Some were born to sing the blues Oh, the movie never ends It goes on and on, and on, and on Strangers waiting Up and down the boulevard Their shadows searching In the night Streetlight people Livin' just to find emotion Hidin' somewhere in the night [Instrumental interlude] Don't stop believin' Hold on to that feelin' Streetlight people Don't stop believin' Hold on Streetlight people Don't stop believin' Hold on to that feelin' Streetlight people

Footnote: EVERYONE that follows the Bible's examples do better. even atheists.

Like you, my loyalty is to the Jehovah, his Christ, and the Brotherhood. Unlike you, my loyalty to its leaders is only when they deserve it. When they deserve it is very easily determined. It is determined by how much open, honest, complete and full disclosure has been made on the JW.ORG web site, and in the Watchtower, and at the Kingdom Halls globally to the Brotherhood, and when they are following the Christ, and not making up stuff out of thin air. How should we honestly evaluate them, based on THAT?

You stated " Study 54 looked at the 17 instances of child abuse from the Witness organization that had been reported in the interim, from August 2015 to January 2017." That was AFTER the Society was caught with their hands in the cookie jar, so to speak. Hey Dick Tracy, go back to your squad car and get the files subpoenoed from the Australian Kingdom Halls and Bethel offices showing over 5 THOUSAND cases reported to the Elders, and not ONE reported to the police. The true test of their INTEGRITY is how much open, honest, complete and full disclosure has been made on the JW.ORG web site, or in the Watchtower, or at the Kingdom Halls globally to the Brotherhood. What grade would you give them on THAT? To the best of my knowledge ... and please feel free to show me I am wrong ... not a single word of the ARC hearings has been breathed on the website. .... or in the Watchtower. .... or in talks at the KIngdom Halls. It seems they are totally consumed with "Pillowgate", and explaining by specific reference why two naked brothers at Bethel, sitting in chairs across from each other, watching each other masturbate, IS NOT PORNEIA. If you have watched the "Pillowgate" videos produced by the Society, you know THEY EVEN MADE A VIDEO FOR NEW BETHELITES .... "CLARIFYING" .... THAT!

Thank you for this information. I wish I had known this when I was younger, as I used to use two liter bottles half filled with hot water, with a rubber stopper with a basketball filler needle attached to make rockets for my kids. You warm the bottle, and insert a cold cork with the basketball filler needle in it. As the rubber stopper warms up, it gets bigger, and as the neck of the bottle cools down, it gets smaller. An EXTREMELY tight fit. We used a 12v tire inflator with a hose to pressurize the bottle through the needle, and it would blow the stopper off and the water acted as reaction mass, sending the bottle perhaps a hundred or so feet high. Great fun! Never had a bottle blow up, as the compressed air always blew out the stopper before the limits of the bottle were reached, and the worst was we got sprayed with water. One time the bottle fell over and we almost got torpedoed. However, with chemicals. I have seen pictures of boys with their hands blown completely off from various combinations.

The point is, TTH, that the word BRAZEN first showed up in the 2010 supposedly super-secret Elders Handbook in 2010, as a way to make anything at all punishable , if it was "Brazen" (What the hell does that even mean, anyway?) It is not in the Emphatic Diaglott, or the Kingdom Interlinear Translation. It was not in any English Bible Translation, anywhere in the world. for 50 years It was not even in the 1962-2012 New World Translation ... and that was a GOOD thing. It was CHANGED in the 2013 "Silver Sword" Bible translation to agree with WTB&TS POLICY, codified in 2010 ... made up from THIN AIR. ...which was specifically designed to be able to cut people off at the knees for ambiguous, foggery and mopery, with mirrors. For those in Rio Linda.... that means anything they decide it means .... that they don't like.

TTH: There is nothing you can do to help the people whose have little or no reading comprehension skills when you have an open discussion with text based information. No matter what you say, or how you say it... they will find a way to misinterpret, misunderstand, and resist any ideas that conflict with their agenda driven world view. Knowing what we both know, to tickle their ears would just be an exercise in Ferengi "Pillowgate". ... a person who is almost universally misunderstood, misrepresented, and castigated recently said this:

.... because, Dear Melinda, some people are more curious than others, and exploration of lands and space, and ideas are in the very nature of their being ... the very nature of their soul, and the marrow of their bones. They MUST explore and ponder, and think of new ideas, and wrestle with "What do they mean?" ... the same way all people MUST have food and water and air. You have asked MANY excellent questions, Grasshopper ....

You completely missed the point that I was talking about religious authority having witch hunts, and executing the innocent. You comment is the first time in my life I have ever heard anyone propose the accused witches accusing religious authority of being witches. I suppose that DOES make you unique.

Two wrongs don't make a right ... but three lefts, do.

Due process at one time was binding a witch suspect with ropes and dropping her into a full horse trough. If she sank she was innocent. If she floated she was guilty. Remember, at the height of the Nazi plague on the Earth, they had a fully staffed "Department of Justice" and death warrants were signed, sealed delivered and executed with all due process.

TTH: I would give that treatise TWO upvotes. I find myself agreeing with both your premise, and conclusion .... which is, for me, berry, berry strange. My concern is not what happened for the very reasons you stated ... but the institutionalized coverup, and the intimidation ... and the threats of disfellowshipping. and the ACTUAL disfellowshipping of those who wanted to go to the Police, in the decades before the time period of your analysis, and the fact that in 1006 cases actually subpoenaed from the Society's own records ... NOT ONE was reported to the police.

I guess this means that my 50 pound bags of Purina Lion Chow will go up.

42

I home schooled my children one year while waiting for a new Contract Assignment, and had to register with the State of North Carolina. The name of the School was the "Lazarus Long Science Academy", which is an inside joke, that perhaps I am the only one who ever understood it.

I love great biting satire .... makes me want to be a shark! A GREAT way to show the hypocrisy and evil of the Churches without using a heavy hand.. I would like to see a similar high production value, comedic video made of infant baptisms .... considering that there is NO Biblical record of children being baptized ... and Jesus set the example HIMSELF by being baptized at age 30. Perhaps someone baptizing a baby shark in a baptismal font. Or an 8 year old girl in an indoor pool.

Remember ... Bible Translation is NOT a science ... it is an ART ... and some are good artists, and some are bad artists, and I have seen an Elephant trained to paint a picture. https://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/elephantpainting.asp

How and why is the Jehovah's Witness' translation of the Bible different than some more common translations? The ENGLISH translation was theoretically accurately translated into the New Word Translation of the Bible. This worked well pre-2013 with the old NWT and produced a Bible that was highly respected even by critics ... well, some critics who were demonstratively objective in their analysis, such as Jason BeDunn. THEN, they got the idea to paraphrase the Bible, and fit it to the previous policy statements of the 2010 Top Secret Elder's Handbook which made it a punishable offense to have "brazen conduct". A catch-all that could mean anything. With this "Silver Sword" post 2013 paraphrased Bible Translation Centers were established all over the world .... where whatever folks were available could take this simplified, paraphrased English version ... and translate it into local Languages by whoever was available that would work for free, and spoke both English and any of several hundred other languages. The selection of translators criteria and qualifications to do this kind of work is a closely guarded "military secret". The quality control is totally unknown by ANYBODY. Many translation centers all over the world were closed down. and the staff dispersed. Some went home... others just disappeared mysteriously. The pre-2013 (1962 to 2013) New World Translation is in my considered and educated opinion the finest Bible Translation ever produced by the mind of man ... into English. I wish I had stocked up on them before they were discontinued.

Why does the Watchtower not build a hospital or provide aid for bloodless procedures? TWO REASONS come to mind. Because it requires requires educated, certified and tested medical people ... and they ALREADY have enough lawsuits. Bethelite Bobby Brother with a box of band-aids just isn't the surgeon you want working on your heart.

The best dressed folks I ever saw were Mafioso types, the Governing Body, and of course, Penguins.

I noticed on the "Pillowgate" WTB&TS Videos, that sex toys were not mentioned.

Because most of us, by definition ..... are AVERAGE. Being average is nothing to be ashamed of ... ... but it's NOT a bragging point.