James Thomas Rook Jr.

Just as a person has the natural right to bear arms to defend himself or his family ... there are those that will pervert this into the right of a Bear to HAVE arms, defend the position for short sleeve shirts, and use references to support bare arms, or other irrational goofiness.

When irrational goofyness reaches a certain level it transforms into unadulterated EVIL.

Did you ever see the classic "must see" movie "Deliverance"?  Bodies and evidence disappear, or is never found or linked ....  all the time. 

There are infinite variety scenarios to everything ... including making, in the game of Golf, a "hole in one" that would NEVER have happened if not for a squirrel that dropped an acorn out of its mouth a hundred years ago, it grew into an oak tree, and now in the present day, the golf ball bounced off of the tree ... rolled across the green, and plopped into the little cup.

Add time element to "WOW! What are the chances of THAT ( ... pick anything the mind can imagine ..) happening ?".

It helps to think about such things after three beers, while sitting in a darkened room, in a comfortable chair.

This would be an "Infinite Variety" scenario.

Let's say I murdered "Bro. Jack" .....  "Bro. Bobby" saw me do it, and I took the body several states away and buried it in a corn field ... and denied I had ever been with Bro. Jack and Bro. Bobby that day ... that I had been, say, walking in the woods taking photos somewhere in the other direction.

To everybody else but Bro. Bobby .... Jack just disappeared.

According to the "two witness rule", the elders COULD NOT EVEN REPORT ME TO THE POLICE for investigation.

Why?

Only one Witness.

BRO. BOBBY, however,  could report me to the police, as any responsible man with a conscience would and should, and would HAVE to do to avoid MORAL complicity in a CRIMINAL activity, and and deny JUSTICE to Bro. Jack.

If we as claimants to God's special favor, and carry his Name,  deny basic, elemental, natural human MORALITY, that even most atheists are born with, and continually pervert Justice ... it is WRONG .. and a great slander and reproach on our God, Jehovah, and his reputation.

... and, it makes the administrators of those policies ..... EVIL.

... and a million published words, spoken and written a thousand times, will not make that go away.

When irrational goofyness reaches a certain level it transforms into unadulterated EVIL.

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1 hour ago, Sharon Washington said:

Let me see... the ONE witness that saw you and the DEAD person! There's your two witnesses!

If someone goes looking for 'jack' and 'jack's' found dead, and you were the last one seen walking into his flat- and no more 'jack' AND the conscious moves the person to say they SAW you kill him - AND that person is 'credible' - well, your guilty as charged by three witness:          

1. Credible witness

2. Dead Jack

3. Circumstances 

 

LoL. I solved the crime!  Unfortunately, this would be too much for a victim to go through.   Too much trauma not to be believed.  Sadly, it happens.  ?

Did you ever see the classic "must see" movie "Deliverance"?  Bodies and evidence disappear, or is never found or linked ....  all the time. 

There are infinite variety scenarios to everything ... including making, in the game of Golf, a "hole in one" that would NEVER have happened if not for a squirrel that dropped an acorn out of its mouth a hundred years ago, it grew into an oak tree, and now in the present day, the golf ball bounced off of the tree ... rolled across the green, and plopped into the little cup.

Add time element to "WOW! What are the chances of THAT ( ... pick anything the mind can imagine ..) happening ?".

It helps to think about such things after three beers, while sitting in a darkened room, in a comfortable chair.

This would be an "Infinite Variety" scenario.

Let's say I murdered "Bro. Jack" .....  "Bro. Bobby" saw me do it, and I took the body several states away and buried it in a corn field ... and denied I had ever been with Bro. Jack and Bro. Bobby that day ... that I had been, say, walking in the woods taking photos somewhere in the other direction.

To everybody else but Bro. Bobby .... Jack just disappeared.

According to the "two witness rule", the elders COULD NOT EVEN REPORT ME TO THE POLICE for investigation.

Why?

Only one Witness.

BRO. BOBBY, however,  could report me to the police, as any responsible man with a conscience would and should, and would HAVE to do to avoid MORAL complicity in a CRIMINAL activity, and and deny JUSTICE to Bro. Jack.

If we as claimants to God's special favor, and carry his Name,  deny basic, elemental, natural human MORALITY, that even most atheists are born with, and continually pervert Justice ... it is WRONG .. and a great slander and reproach on our God, Jehovah, and his reputation.

... and, it makes the administrators of those policies ..... EVIL.

... and a million published words, spoken and written a thousand times, will not make that go away.

Arauna:

Thank you for your honest and valid criticism .. every word you typed is valid. I am impressed, and at 70, and having "paid attention", not much impresses me.

Like I tell my wife, Susan, when she is right and I am wrong ... I do not mind at all when she is right .. but it embarrasses me when I am wrong.

... same thing with your coherent analysis.

I do recognize that Jehovah's Witnesses have the only true theology, even though the TRUTH is 15% of the billions of words spent, and opinion, and drivel, and irrelevancy clouds it, and creates enormous damage.

By people who suffer my rants I have had the accusation (paraphrased) "With what you know, and how you have been treated, how can you POSSIBLY still give your allegiance to that religion?".

I have resolved it in this way .... My allegiance is to Jehovah God, Christ Jesus, and the Brotherhood ... and I respect the WTB&TS for the very improbable fact that I stumbled across the Truth about God's Kingdom, so many years ago BECAUSE of the WTB&TS,   ... however I personally expect NOTHING from anyone. 

You cannot be stumbled if you have NO unreasonable expectations, and realize that we are all just big ugly bags of water with DNA ends that get shorter every year until we wrinkle up and die.

However, people with the very best of intentions have a HEAVY responsibility to do things RIGHT when they claim to be God's "Faithful and Discreet Slave", and command respect and obedience to their CULTURAL as well as Theological perspective.

November of 2015, everything we studied in the Ministry School, and the Watchtowers, and the Public Talks was on the topic of Justice.

I see the magnificent things the Brotherhood has accomplished but I also see a continuous string of injustices and cover-ups ... and the Society is paying the price for that now both in ruined reputation globally, and because they claim to reflect the will of God, which in many cases they do .. but the incompetence has gotten so bad that it has gotten silly, and embarrassing.

You can cover up a LOT with an unlimited supply of free money, and free labor ... but the damage grows and escalates, year by year by year.

We are not in Kansas, anymore, ToTo. 

The Internet has opened the whitewashed graves of those who have been cruelly treated .... by an institution with presumably the highest motives.

I have an advantage .... I was baptized in 1964, when the baptismal oath was "The Father, The Son, and the Holy Spirit" .. so my allegiance is not to the Corporation or to the "Organization".  If you were baptized AFTER 1985, when the oath generally took it's current form .. you are STUCK.

if 85% of what we promote was not irrelevant drivel ... we would not have to knock on other peoples' doors  ...

THEY WOULD BE KNOCKING ON OURS!

If you don't think so .. just ask Caleb and Sophia.

Arauna:

6 hours ago, Arauna said:

My dear Sir - my only comment on your comment is - on which planet do you live? 

Flippantly, I reply, "Earth, Sol 3, Milky Way Galaxy".

Please feel free to seriously analyze and dissect any of my postings, and give me advice and counsel as you see fit.

If my perspective is wrong or agendaized, or just plain screwed up, or facts are wrong .. please tell me.  I will not only recant my error, but seriously beg your, and others humble pardon, here on this forum.

People are afraid of offending me ... but to the best of my knowledge, I cannot be insulted.

I am used to living in a world culture where EVERY word, comma, and period is challenged.  For me this is normal.

For EVERYBODY, that is the ONLY road that leads to real TRUTH.

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... please be specific ... I am a retired Engineer.

I am unfailingly truly amazed at what you perceive .....

On 3/7/2017 at 6:50 AM, JW Insider said:

All these scenarios might be a clue as to why the Apostle Paul rejected the kind of Pharisaism that would try to account for all the various scenarios and merely left "legal" matters up to each individual conscience.

In the Shakespeare play, "Henry V"  the King was walking around at night, amidst the camped soldiers who had invaded France, to see what they were talking about around the campfires before another day of battle, slaughtering both French combatants and civilians.

These were battle hardened men ... veterans of many military campaigns .. who in this case were deeply concerned about the long wake of innocent bodies, and the rivers of innocent blood that they were creating to obey the political greed of King Henry. 

They had been taught from infancy that their sacred obligation was to obey the one that governed them, their King ... but their natural conscience was rebelling and they hated what they were obligated to do.

Paraphrased, "I hope we are doing what is righteous ... because if we are not .. because we are obligated to serve the King, he will have to answer to God for what we do here ...".

The Clergy had inculcated these soldiers that the King ruled by Divine Appointment .. that King Henry was God's "Faithful and Discrete Slave".

Those that do not know and understand History ... are doomed to repeat it. 

Especially so if they have "employment" where they can eat well, dress well, and sleep warm, and have the adoration of their minions.

... follow the money ... the trail ALWAYS leads to the TRUTH.

... JUST A NOTE ALLEN SMITH:

... for what it is worth, and certainly worth the price of electricity of a few photons on a screen ... um ... when someone defends a view that is completely contradicted by actual real world facts, and they are intelligent people, normally prone to use their intellect, as you are ... they have a choice .... change their viewpoint to reflect what is real .... which will almost always involve a great deal of anguish ... and consequences from those who hold the same irrational viewpoints ... or begin that slippery slope that leads to a fractured, and fragile mind.

As the group The Eagles sang in their incredibly perceptive song from the late 1960s or so, (paraphrased) ...

" ... Take it easy, take it easy ... don't let the sound of your own wheels, MAKE YOU CRAZY ..."

I have to daily remind myself of these things ... as the Universe will decide what is true .. and it is without mercy.

" There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters." " — Daniel Webster

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.. and STOP CALLING ME SHIRLEY!

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You are simply amazing.

A guest in someone else's personal space .... and you insult them.

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Among rational people ... reputation is EVERYTHING ... and the Catholic Church has a reputation that goes back a THOUSAND years of the clergy and the privileged enslaving children, herding tens of thousands them across Europe in the custody of Monks in the "Children's Crusades" where more than half died of starvation and exposure, to end up off the Northern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, to be met by Muslim ships, where they were sold into slavery .

Recently Ireland published 5 books of data of Catholic Orphanages who used children as sex slaves, worked them to death, and MURDERED (if memory serves..) 90,000 orphan children  since the 1930's.  Their reputation is SO BAD that about three years ago, there were riots in England protesting the actions of the Catholic Church in Ireland over this issue, when Ireland issued their encyclopedic report ... which by the way, is available in it's ENTIRETY in PDF form on the Internet.

Cardinal Bernard Law, Archbishop of Boston, Mass., was driven out of office for protecting pedophile priests, and covering up the HUGE pedophile priest scandal, which is what the movie "SPOTLIGHT", starring Michael Keaton (Batman) was all about.

It is SO pervasive that in Los Angeles, the Catholic Church was ordered to pay 3/4 BILLION DOLLARS in reparations to victims of pedophile Priests child sexual abuse.

They did not have the money, so the courts started selling their buildings out from under them by court order ... putting whole orders of Nuns out on the street.

The Catholic Church has a reputation of incredible wealth, absolute control, being the favorite religion of mobsters and the Mafia, warfare and political assassination so much that books such as the best seller, made into a movie,  "The Divinci Code" with a traveling albino Monk from the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) as the Vatican's assassin to maintain discipline, struck no discordant notes in the minds of the readers.

SUCH THINGS IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IS SO NORMAL, so pervasive, and so universal ... for centuries and even millennia ... THEY ARE NOT EVEN NEWS .. just a footnote on page 14.

A search of Amazon dot com has a huge selection of the paper trails they have left throughout history.

We as Jehovah's Witnesses have gotten that VERY same reputation .. it is news now ... but soon it also will be a footnote on page 14.

The FIRST thing people will think of when the hear "Jehovah's Witnesses", is their duplicity, irrational and corrupt organization, which not only makes us JUST LIKE any other Church in their minds .. in will be in actuality ... TRUE!

If wearing a beard or tight pants reflects badly on Jehovah's name ... this is catapulted excrement!

It's just like when you see an "Indiana Jones" movie ... when the Nazis show up in their prescribed uniforms ... you instantly know who the BAD Guys are.

The Governing Body has ALREADY ruined THEIR reputation, and by claimed reflection, greatly slandered our God.

I wonder how long it will take before this is the normal expectation about the average Jehovah's Witness, due to the constant subversion and avoidance of JUSTICE to save money ... with the great slander that ascends like smoke to obscure the real face of Jehovah God, and His Christ.

When I saw that picture of  of the Pope in his whitewashed grave outfit, holding a screaming kid, also dressed in his whitewashed grave outfit ... I immediately thought of the picture below.  

THEREFORE: Because reputation is everything among rational people .... I think it would be quite reasonable and fair to caption the Pope and the Poppy FIRST alluding that he either HAD molested the kid, was going to molest the kid, or was feeling him up to give to someone else for their boy toy.

They have a 1700 year history of doing exactly that.

We, on the other hand ... cannot compete.

We on the other hand, have the superior moral high ground ... we are truly against such things ... but cover it up, disfellowship people that talk about it, or HAVE to leave because they cannot stand it, destroying their entire families with unnecessary and capricious CRUELTY ... and banning them to Coventry ... pervert and obstruct JUSTICE, and on JW.ORG website, the world news tells the Brotherhood NOTHING about what is really going on in the news.

The Organization is currently implementing a plan to avoid the problem of Branch Coordinators, and Service Desk personnel having to be fired , or exiled to Pacific Islands when called before the Australian Royal Commission's Inquirys, as well as others that have embarrassed the Organization under oath.

The Organization always knows what is best .......

Yes... there are MANY replies .... some very, very detailed on "Elsewhere in the Forum" .. specifically under "Controversial Posts", and the main header "JW News".

This is a LOT of work ... fortunately I am retired, and often have the free time and energy, and interest to do it.

sometimes I am just too tired,

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Yeah ... I also caught those lies ...  I am particularly sensitive to such things .. because as a JW Newbie, over a half century ago ... I did the very same thing ... to my everlasting shame.

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If you call a cow, a race horse ... and get everybody on the Planet (presumably Earth ... Sol3), to agree with you ... entering the cows in the Kentucky Derby you will ALWAYS be a loser.

... same thing.

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I really liked that idea the Brother made,  with the Literature Rack on the back of his red Yamaha Motorcycle ... it has the advantage of being a licensed vehicle, and the motorcycle is cargo, so no "corner permit" should be needed (?).

Many of you will remember Bro. Johnny 5, who started out as a military robot with lasers and missiles ... but who forsake war as he got smarter, and whose credo was " input, Input, INPUT, INPUT!", and who could read about 126 pages a minute.

His baptism was at age three, and was a bit different, as water would have short circuited him after he dropped his armament, so he was baptized in a lightweight oil.

What?  What's that you say?  ....  Oh!, gimmee a break! ... TPT invented Caleb and Sophia, 

'NUFF said.

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"STUFF" HAPPENS ...

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..REMEMBER ... What motivates almost all Shepherds of a flock of sheep to take tender , loving care of them .. bandaging their wounded legs when needed, is back then, there was no refrigerators and freezers.

Follow the money ... for along that path always is  the road to truth about WHY things really happen.

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Well... We have beat this horse to death ...and made dog food out of the ground horse meat ... since the clear and unambiguous command from the Biggies in Jerusalem that even the Apostle Paul respected ..  "ABSTAIN" from blood. ..... how about an observation, and a pressing question?

Did you know that although Jehovah God lamented the desperate times when Jerusalem was under siege ( ... that means enemies using catapult siege engines throwing huge rocks into and over their walls and crushing Jews... ) those starving to death  would EAT THEIR OWN DEAD ...

.... He NEVER once prohibited the practice.

Not even ALLUDING to forbidding it.

Go ahead... be a sport ... look it up.  It's only a CULTURAL taboo.

.Presumably those killed  bled out before being eaten, and we have been talking about how GOD views blood as his own personal property ... um... haven't we?

.... um... that was the pressing question.

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Of course .. if we want to ignore God's viewpoints for PRACTICAL considerations ... like when 6,000 Bethelites and Special Pioneers were recently "laid off" ( .. and hung out to dry ...) given a map to the front door ....

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Four scary cartoons just came to mind .......

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I would like to apologize for directing my previous rant to individuals ... I try to be an "idea man" ... but I suppose it is a carry-over from when I worked for Dallas Area Rapid Transit years ago, sitting in a room with 25 very highly paid individuals  arguing about what kind of screws to put in bus shelters .. ONE SHELTER costing an average of about $55,000 ... in the early 1990's.

I told them "Why not just park a new Mercedes Benz Car on the corner, let the air out of the tires, and let them wait for the bus in the car?"

I occasionally stop and ask when that happens  "Did I actually say that out loud ?"

It was like that for two years, every day ... and I developed  uncontrollable high blood pressure.

When I left DART and went back to just straight Engineering, my blood pressure returned to normal.

I did learn a lot about the specifics of fractionating.

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HAVE YOU PEOPLE COLLECTIVELY LOST YOUR MINDS?

After reviewing the previous posts .. the good .. the bad ... and the ugly .... I have come to this conclusion.

HAVE YOU PEOPLE COLLECTIVELY LOST YOUR MINDS?

What part of "Abstain from blood..." is not absolutely crystal and totally unambiguously clear?

This is the same thing that after a great revolutionary war against England, The people who fought, suffered and died fighting the greatest military in the world at that time to found the United States of America ... and wrote " ... The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed...", and drawing the conclusion that they were talking about future generations of bears, with arms ... or that the reason this was written was for deer hunters.

HAVE YOU PEOPLE COLLECTIVELY LOST YOUR MINDS?

What part of "Abstain from blood..." is not absolutely crystal and totally unambiguously clear?

Eoin Joyce;

I fully understand what you are saying, and it is a well reasoned observation .. but I do not agree with your extrapolation in this case, about blood.

It's like the Brother whose wife abandoned him many years ago ... he gets a divorce .... and eventually re-marries ... and is disfellowshipped ... and the ONLY way he can return is to recant his wife, which he CANNOT, and will not do.

The 13 blood fractions is an over-simplification ... but the PRINCIPLE behind it is not.

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THE POINT IS ... ( about my cartoon) is that the ABSURD, LOONY "fractions argument" is absurd and Loony, and the product of Lawyers and Accountants  .. NOT any Theology except that of insane people who value money more than common sense.

Taking whole blood will GET YOU DISFELLOWSHIPPED, and your life will be DESTROYED.

... and the lives of your family and extended family.

Taking whole blood in 13 parts, although never done in actual practice ... COULD be done WITHOUT ANY Congregational sanctions, and your life will be approved by those who have the power to ruin it ... based on something that the Society's LAWYERS invented.

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Well, John Lindsay Barltrop apparently saw it as intended ... merely an outrageous joke.

I remember when the PETA folks ( People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) tried to have me arrested for animal cruelty, as mice I caught alive in the house I promised to send them to Disneyland to meet Micky ...

.... AND DIDN'T!

bROUHAHAHhahaHAHAH !

I am completely in favor of saving the Lemurs ... I must have a hundred of them in my Freezer.

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IT IS A GREAT KINDNESS and a great Merciful act, when one deliberately kills one's beloved Dog, when racked by disease. My dog Cubby, a Siberian Husky, had cancer in her left eye, and we had it removed ... but it had spread to her intestines and she was in great pain, and it would take a long time to die.

We took her to the Vet, and with wailing tears and anguish had her executed.

I felt it was my responsibility as a man to "pull the trigger" myself , but my wife, Susan, could not abide it.

There comes a time when every man has to shoot his own dog ... farming it out does not make it better .. it makes it worse.

I KNOW Cubby would never even had heard the sound. ... but it would have been messy.  Fortunately, we had the $140 to have her executed and she never knew it.

Many people do NOT!

It was completely painless and she died with her eyes open ... never knowing she had died.

I lament that when my time comes... and it WILL come ... there is no one to show me the great Kindness and Mercy that I was able to do for my beloved dog.

Jehovah God has stated many times in many different ways that he wants mercy ... and not sacrifice.

People that are COMPLETELY divorced from reality ... as it really is ... find the idea of killing ones child abhorrent, but there is a PRINCIPLE that reality based people understand, that liberals living in a fantasy world do NOT understand ... in Latin it's " Quod est necessarium est licitum", which means "that which is necessary, is legal" .

People of courage DO WHAT IS RIGHT, at ANY cost.

Slaves do what is legal.

If any of my three children had Rabies, as an example, and no medical care was available ... I would shoot him or her first ... and myself second.

Should I treat my children with LESS MERCY than my dog?