James Thomas Rook Jr.

Sylvia, Sylvia.... Sylvia ... ...sigh ..... Russia is a sovereign nation ... they have any rights they want ... any rights at all! Any rights they assign themselves .... and give themselves .... and ARE ABLE TO ENFORCE. The old adage "You have your rights and I have my bayonets" is the rule here. Policy has absolutely NOTHING to do with what is right or what is wrong, except on very, very rare occasions. They have the advantage ... they have the enforceable power to declare and enforce what they SAY is "Right". Nobody believes it ... except those who do not want to be ground up. People will bend their minds into a pretzel to survive .... They self appoint themselves through political machinations, and propaganda, drilled into people's minds from infancy, and have any rights, interpreted any way they want ... THEY HAVE THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE FINELY TUNED, AND THEY HAVE THE BAYONETS.. In Russia's case, the bayonets are literal .... the best we have been able to manage is extreme shunning and tearing families apart to enforce policy. In the adage I quoted above there is more ... "You have your rights and I have my bayonets --- Let's see who wins!" Perhaps Jehovah is preparing to chastise us for our cruelties, the same way he chastised his Name People back in ancient times ... with the Babylonian Army. In about five years .... we will all know.

The Jews in Poland had homes, jobs and businesses when the Nazis came in. Some homes were magnificent, and had been in the family for 600 years or more. Jews were rounded up, and murdered. Those that liquidated everything at 5 cents on the dollar and fled early with only a stomach full of diamonds, survived. Those that wanted security starved and froze in the camps before they were burned in the ovens. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Rosalie Barry: If I remember correctly, the Apostle Peter said that about God's Son, Jesus Christ. He did NOT say that about any collection of Governing Body in Jerusalem. There is a very real difference.

How about that ... I have the answers even before you ask the questions ..... !

That's what happens when you get a blind Jewish Mohel.

18 last minute first class or business class plane tickets from Russia to the United States cost a FORTUNE! Was the plane chartered? Airlines will generally not let you on an aircraft if the foreign country requires as part of their Visa, a return ticket, especially on a business Visa. Which is more probable ... he lied to us, or the entire group of 12 or so highly experienced Lawyers and experienced world travelers risked a Russian Prison camp?

Do the "other religions destroy whole families to chastise one errant congregant? Do the other religions require children to commit ritual medical suicide? Do other religions have their congregants IN A LIFE BOAT with so many patches it looks covered in post-it-notes? Inquiring minds want to know!

I suppose it DOES work better for midgets and dwarfs.

That is always true when I use my right to bear arms .... (... may not translate across languages ... )

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Unfortunately, as I was swept downstream by the rapids, the river flattened out and I fell over a waterfall into a pool of alligators, and they ate me.

The secret caption is hidden in the file name ....

From the picture above, it appears Jesus shaved his arm pits.

I remember an incident when I was working in the Congo, in 1974.. it was called Zaire then ... and half way between Kinshasa and Kananga a lion started stalking me and Jim, the Brother I was traveling with, walking on a one lane dirt road next to a rapidly flowing river in the jungle. I saw it first and yelled "Jim!, lion behind you !" ... and I ran and made a long dive into the water. They say that you cannot outrun a lion, and that is true ... as I was being swept downstream I looked back and saw the lion had caught Jim. To this day I believe Jim would have also made it to the river, if he had not been wearing his lucky ham.

Could be worse ..... after an especially good meeting ... a speaker that REALLY knew his stuff... I stood up and excitedly said to an elderly Sister sittin' in the row behind me " Wasn't that a HELL of a good talk?".

Queen Esther: It is OK by me .... it's YOUR thread ... and I do realize its a long rambling story ... but tried to tie-in WHY I told that story, at the end. The connection makes sense to me ... but I am a guest on your thread.

At the same time that I risked my life before a triple bypass heart surgery, about 9 years ago, and insisted on no blood or blood fractions ... and had to be taken by ambulance to a hospital 30 miles away, kept alive en route by six VERY BUSY EMT technicians, to get the operation without blood, I was beginning to understand that unless an animal, or a human actually dies ... the blood does NOT represent his life. The soldiers who got water for King David RISKED their life to get it ... and the water represented their life, and LIKE blood, he refused to drink the water. In ancient Israel, NO ONE drank live animal blood, and when the animal was slain for food, the blood was properly returned to God, BECAUSE the animal died. BECAUSE the animal died ... its blood represented its life ..... NOT BEFORE. If the ancient Israelite Priests had drained blood from animals for sacrificial use, sprinkling it on the crowd, etc., and not killed the animal, allowing it to heal up ... would THAT blood have been proper for sacrifice to God? NO ... because the animal had not been sacrificed ... only wounded. If when as a young carpenter someone accidentally injured Jesus, and he had almost cut a finger off, would THAT blood have redeemed mankind? NO. When Jesus was killed by punching holes in his body, he bled ... and AFTER he died ... his blood represented his life. NOT BEFORE! Further, if he had been executed by drowning, or strangulation ... yes he would have died, but no sacrificial blood could be offered to God for that LIFE! KNOWING what I know now, would I still insist on no blood for myself should I need more surgery? The LIFE belongs to God ... and when life dies, specifically for hemoglobin carrying air breathers (not fish, as an example), Jehovah has ORDERED the blood returned to him "on the ground", or in specifically approved ritual sacrifice. The human blood would have NO sacrificial value unless it was blood from a cadaver ..... ANY MORE THAN A BLOODY NOSE AND SWALLOWING THE BLOOD UNTIL IT STOPS, HAS ANY VALUE WHATSOEVER. And I have not quite figured that example completely out. People used to eat blood saturated animals they had strangled ... the animal was DEAD. The blood, representing THAT LIFE, was ordered returned to God, from whence it came. The blood had value to God, THE ANIMAL HAD DIED, and God demanded its return to him out of respect for his being the force behind ALL LIFE. In some African tribes, they cut a cow and drink the blood, sometimes mixing it with milk. The Jews did not do this, the very IDEA was totally abhorrent. The New Testament admonitions specify keeping away from "... blood ... and things strangled ..." FROM ANIMALS ACTUALLY KILLED . KNOWING what I know now, would I still insist on no blood for myself should I need more surgery? Yes ... Jehovah, as an example, ALLOWS pacifism, even though it is not required ... and many, many other things not required. It's called FREEDOM. People that believe in FREEDOM, often will sacrifice their lives ... for reasons that make no sense to someone else ... because they believe In certain symbols, and ideas. I would bind myself with that restriction ... but I would not bind YOU. To the best of my understanding at the present time. I could be wrong, and am completely open to other reasonable interpretations. I suppose I bind myself .. just in case I might be wrong, which is unlikely, but possible. ... but then again ... I have been at death's door many dozens of times without turning the knob, and am USED to the idea. Not everybody is. Perhaps the Russians are right ... and we are wrong ... in requiring of our Bretheren things God does not, and which civilization in general has the "high moral ground", and in addition to destroying families by shunning, we are destroying families by actually causing them to medically suicide. This is a VERY REASONABLE definition of "extremism". Perhaps it's a good thing to take the signs off of the confiscated buildings. In about 5 years, about many, many things .... we will all know. .

Thanks JWI for better insight ! That is the difference between two skilled surgeons .... you with a scalpel and bandages, and I with a chain saw and a mop.

And to think ... I used to think a "conundrum" was a wide belt worn with a tuxedo ....

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beautiful pictures of magnificent animals ....

I betcha Bible Speaks regrets having opened THIS Pandora's Box.

To my mind, the following three things determine the "real answer", in the absence of the elderly brothers who were there, who have all since died, and we cannot sit at their knees and hear how it REALLY happened. 1.) The story I was told in Honolulu Hawaii, when I was on vacation, about 40 years ago, when I visited a random Kingdom Hall there, and had before never thought about how the name happened, did not know any better, nor did I care at all ... it was only a piece of remembered conversational trivia to me at the time, and 2.) JWI's astute comment that the term used at the time was kingdom hall, not Kingdom Hall ... in the manner that a "car wash" is a functional name, and "BOB'S HONOLULU CAR WASH" might be a brand name, or identifying label of WHICH car wash, of many. There could be many public meeting halls in Honolulu, Hawaii ... but only one kingdom hall (at the time...) in Honolulu, Hawaii. I can see that from the Society's own quote, it was called a kingdom hall while it was under construction. and so when the electrified sign was put up, I can visualize the Brothers saying, in effect "What shall we call our new kingdom hall? DUH! .... It's a kingdom hall ... let's call it a Kingdom Hall !", and 3.) The Society has a LONG HISTORY, of rewriting the past both in oral presentations, rewriting the bound volumes of the Watchtower, and rewriting electronic copies of older publications to make it many years later APPEAR they were right, when they were flat wrong. The PERFECT example of this is the "Overlapping Generations" insult, to us and to God. This is the exact same job Winston Smith had, when he worked in the "Ministry of Truth" in the George Orwell book "1984". In order to have a self-appointed Governing Body today, there has to in the realm of PR "Public Relations" spin that shows the wisdom of PAST leaders. The easiest way to do this, is to change history, which JWI directly pointed out, and which I also have seen and do see happening incrementally. It's blatantly, and to use a word that shows up in the 2013 New World Translation that previously never showed up in any Bible, anywhere in the world, THREE TIMES, including Benjamin Wilson's Emphatic Diaglott, nor the Kingdom Interlinear Translation, nor the previous New World Translations (!) of the Holy Scriptures ... BRAZEN ... intellectual dishonesty.   Brazen intellectual dishonesty ... because they think we are ALL too stupid or uneducated, or both, to know and understand what that is. It tries to be invisible, but not everybody who knows the difference has died off ..... YET. As soon as those who know the difference die off .... as soon as those who remember die off ... revised Watchtower history will be the ONLY history the Brotherhood will know, and control will be complete, and like Pavlov's dogs ... when the dinner bell rings .... automatic salivation begins. The motto of the BOOK "1984"''s "Ministry of Truth", was "HE WHO CONTROLS THE PAST CONTROLS THE FUTURE". It was a WARNING ... and was not supposed to be adopted as a SCRIPT!

I found the address of the first KH ... That little house of worship at 1228 Pensacola Street, which has since been expanded and renovated three times, holds the noteworthy distinction of being the first to be named Kingdom Hall. I would assume that is in Honolulu

WOW! When the people who know die out, the only thing left will be the Snowflake puff pieces, with no one to contradict them. People will forget that Caleb and Sophia were once only cartoons invented by TPT, when they are elevated to Saints. HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED... WHY DO JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES CALL THEIR MEETING PLACE A KINGDOM HALL RATHER THAN A CHURCH? There are two ways to look at that question, some of it already addressed ... but about 40 years ago I went to Hawaii, and here is what the story I heard was .... Once upon a time all Kingdom Halls were called something else, perhaps meeting places, I do not know. Then, one congregation in Hawaii in the early 1930's started calling their meeting places "Kingdom Hall", and later, about 1935 "Judge" Rutherford visited Hawaii and saw that, and when he went back to Brooklyn or San Diego directed that all meeting places be called "Kingdom Halls". I wish I had been paying more attention when this was being told to me by some older brothers, all now dead (their entire generation having passed away by now) , but it was just a piece of trivia, to me, until about 11 to 15 years ago when the annual Watchtower Calendar came out and showed a picture of a Hawaiian Kingdom Hall, that credited Bro. Rutherford with INVENTING the idea, and the first place that was instituted was in Hawaii. I pointed this out to my then wife and children, as we had that calendar hanging in our kitchen and the caption stated what directly contradicted what I thought I knew. So now we have two completely different stories .... close .... but no banana. NOW.. I think I will try to have Mr. Google find out for me. It's just like the Big Bang!I do not have Polaroids, and I wasn't there. But without more evidence, I believe the Hawaiian Brothers ... NOT the calendar. Oh, and the software is screwing up my formatting, etc. I suspect JWI would have a better answer.