James Thomas Rook Jr.

Except for people with a combination of tourette's syndrome, dislexia, and one leg shorter than the other, which gives you brain-tilt .... that seems to wrap up THAT discussion.

You sure sound like Allen Smith, he suggested something similar. However, no matter how you wish to turn it, the responsibility rested with the GB, who themselves admitted that the way they conveyed the idea became more a probability rather than a possibility at convention talks. Some still have tapes, or remember these talks where GB members spoke about 1975 as a probability.  Not only that, but as others on this forum have pointed out, WT publications assured its readers that we would not see the end of the 20th century before Armaggedon came. That is a fact because you can check these publications yourself.

That's O.K.
Princess Esterina and her body guard Brunhilda, and Frosty the Snowflake don't like it EITHER.
 

ON COMPETENT ADVICE:
it is up to EVERY INDIVIDUAL Brother and Sister to review in their own mind how COMPETENT this advice was .... because it has not changed ...
Taking sound, reality based advice will, barring chance and unforeseen circumstances, make your life better, happier, EASIER, and more fulfilling. Most of the REAL PROBLEMS I have had in my life have been caused by being poor, and constantly STRUGGLING to keep gainfully employed.
Gainfully employed in THIS day and age is not the same as in the time of John the Baptist, where you could dress in rags, live in a hole in the ground, and eat locusts (YUM!), and die of exhaustion, deprivation, starvation ( No, I'm FASTING! ...uh... yeah... uh... that's it .. uh "fasting!") .and disease, and a LONG life for the average genetically disposed person was around age 34 and you were full of infection of every sort, and your teeth had rotted out of you head.  You walked everywhere, and died on the side of the road from exposure.
It is up to EVERY INDIVIDUAL Brother and Sister to review in their own mind how COMPETENT this advice was .... because it has not changed.    
The RESULTS of taking INCOMPETENT ADVICE are completely  indistinguishable from being chained to deliberate, premeditated evil.
The Three Elders who came and counseled Job for three days did not just sit in the dirt and stare at him for 72 hours ... they were yapping their heads off ... but after three days ... nothing they said was worth recording.
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..and the LORD sayeth , " ... and because of the gifts I give you ..meekness, devotion, and patience, I also give you attributes that will preserve you and your offspring forever on this Earth .... that when all other animals shall become extinct ..you and your progeny will survive until the Earth is no more ... I give you portability ... being delicious ... and mechanical refrigeration."
...and LOOK!, the LORD saw that the lamb was good ! ... and NEVER gave anybody indigestion ...
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The  best  weapons.....
When God created the world, he rejoiced over all his works. Each being had its destiny, and all his creatures lived happily in their peculiar character. Only the lamb lay sad before the throne of God and could not share the joy of the other creatures. God saw the suffering of the Lamb and asked, "What is the matter with you that you are so sad and oppressed?" "Oh, my God," answered the lamb, sighing, "how can  I be merry and happy when I am weak and helpless.
Why am I so different among your creatures? Why did not you give me weapons for defense like all other animals? Top horns and sharp claws, powerful trunks and poisonous teeth, fast legs and wide wings have other animals. They all can save themselves by climbing and running, flying and diving, biting and stabbing, catching and robbing. But I am helpless in the great world and exposed to the will of my enemies. "
God listened to the complaints of the lamb, and gave him the right to say, "I'll leave you with the choice: do you want claws, nails, sharp teeth, an antler or a trunk, wings, or fins?" "Oh, no, my God, hurt such dangerous weapons, I want to ask you for better weapons, with which I can really overcome evil and the enemy!" -
"Your request is righteous, and I will give it to thee, and I will give thee the best weapons, which thou canst overcome and conquer."
And  God  gave  the  Lamb  his  BEST  gifts,  namely  meekness,  devotion  and  patience...  ❤

It seems to me that AGAIN ... the WRONG question is being asked.
How about " ... if in the future the GB scrapped 1914, would you lose faith in the GB?"
The answer to that seems, from the discussions already made here, to be like closing the barn door after all the sheep have gotten loose .
But, I was assured yesterday at the 2017 Convention in Greenville, SC., that Jehovah God and the Governing Body LOVES our "young ones".
(...except in Australia, the UK, and California, where GB Member "most qualified" to testify, Gerritt Losch,  refused a subpoena to testify in a Child Sexual Abuse Court Case, and the Society was originally fined 11.5 MILLION DOLLARS.)
How about the question "" ... if in the future the GB scrapped 1914, would you lose faith in Jehovah God and his Christ?"
THE GB ...  AND JEHOVAH AND JESUS  ..... THEY ARE NOT THE SAME THING.

It seems to me that AGAIN ... the WRONG question is being asked.
How about " ... if in the future the GB scrapped 1914, would you lose faith in the GB?"
The answer to that seems, from the discussions already made here, to be like closing the barn door after all the sheep have gotten loose .
But, I was assured yesterday at the 2017 Convention in Greenville, SC., that Jehovah God and the Governing Body LOVES our "young ones".
(...except in Australia, the UK, and California, where GB Member "most qualified" to testify, Gerritt Losch,  refused a subpoena to testify in a Child Sexual Abuse Court Case, and the Society was originally fined 11.5 MILLION DOLLARS.)
How about the question "" ... if in the future the GB scrapped 1914, would you lose faith in Jehovah God and his Christ?"
THE GB ...  AND JEHOVAH AND JESUS  ..... THEY ARE NOT THE SAME THING.

... perhaps a short ANALOGY will bring clarity .....
 
 

... perhaps a short ANALOGY will bring clarity .....
 
 

Excellent point and great scriptures to support! 
 
I think it is unnatural for a parent or child or sibling to ignore their family member. Who is the closest to us? Who has know our tendencies from birth/childhood? When the family moved across country, who was there? Family. Family is part of what makes a community, but a community starts with a family. To treat family members lower than strangers is wrong, it is not loving, it is not encouraging nor is it up building. This practice is only meant to control

(Ezekiel 44:25, 26) “They should not approach any dead human, or they will become unclean. However, they may make themselves unclean for their father, mother, son, daughter, brother, or an unmarried sister. And after the purification of a priest, they should count off seven days for him”
 
The priest should not contact any dead human… except his nearest relatives. Jehovah is very reasonable and comprehensive when dictating rules.
Would not it be fine to apply the same principle when we deal with disfellowshipped people? Why Paul doesn’t mention these exceptions in 1Cor 5? Why Ezekiel doesn’t mention the priest’s wife? Perhaps, because the common sense would guide the application. It isn’t the same my cousin than my father, it is?
Other reference:
(Leviticus 21:1, 2) “Jehovah went on to say to Moses: “Talk to the priests, Aaron’s sons, and say to them, ‘No one should defile himself for a dead person among his people. But he may do so for a close blood relative, for his mother, his father, his son, his daughter, his brother,…”

Actually, it's 53 MILES of interlocking tunnels ..... 1500 or so feet down ... big enough to store loaded rail cars with high level radioactive waste for 10,000 years, WITHOUT TUNNEL MAINTENANCE.. 
Spend perhaps 20 million dollars lobbying to have it declared surplus, and have it auctioned off as surplus ... and an imaginative engineer could become a multi- billionaire in about six years, if he had the capital.
It's really QUITE Simple ...
FIRST...
Get 50 million dollars .....
 
 

BTW - who do you think is more likely to be influencing Google - the God of this system of things, or the God of the Universe who already gave us his Word?
I actually don't have a strong opinion on this, but one can be sure that if JWs were ranking low on these things the average JW would be blaming the other guy.

I have often given thought as the MOST PROBABLE way to calculate time ... and it is ONLY my BEST EDUCATED GUESS, at the present time ...  is first realize that the PERSPECTIVE of the narrator in Genesis is of one standing on the surface of the Earth watching it's formation.
It is NOT a "view from Space".
Then ... we know from MOUNTAINS of very hard evidence (  no pun intended) that the Earth went from formless and void about Three and one-half BILLION years ago to a ball of molten rock from collisions with impacting and accretion materials, became an oblate spheroid (generally a ball...) and it took that long to become the Lovely Blue-Green-Tan Planet we have today., with the Moon in EXACTLY the right place, for the first time in the history of the Solar System, so that Earth observers can use it as a tool to wrestle the secrets from the Universe, as Einstein waited 18 or so years for a Solar Eclipse to verify his theory of relativity as being TRUE.
So ... if you take 3-1/2 billion years divided by six creative days, (and a day of rest ...), that is 3, 500,000,000 years divided by 7, which gives you each of the seven "days"  is about a half-billion years long.  
Time to have the entire Earth go through many changes, from a ball of super-heated steam covered incandescent rock in total darkness, to a lush jungle and ecosphere with hundreds of millions of frolicking dinosaurs and other critters swarming over the Earth.
My current BEST GUESS ... based on VERY hard evidence ... is that we are living in God's rest day now .... but where we are in that half-billion year long rest day would be wild guessing without any hard evidence.  (That means delusional fantasy, for those in Rio Linda...)
The entire Universe SCREAMS! ...  screams .... SCREAMS! ... of the existing time scale of all things .... stars, planetary formation, geological epocs,  climate variations , life .. extinctions ... life ... extinctions, etc., and of vast and widespread civilizations of proto-men, precursors to "Homo Erectus" , eventually leading to the direct creation of "Homo Theocraticus" ... the first sanctioned  humans ...by God.
             By the way ... this "theory" SOLVES the problem of  evolution's  billions of tons of hard evidence across all sciences being irrefutably true, and the Bible account of the first "Humans" being the direct creation of Jehovah God.          
IT FITS ALL KNOWN FACTS FROM BOTH SIDES .... WITHOUT ANY COMPROMISES OR OBFUSCATIONS OR COGNITIVE DISSONANCE.
If it takes more than one paragraph to explain ANY concept ... it probably is NOT true.
I am 70, now, and these things are for younger and smarter people to work out the details.  
As Kenny Rogers sang in his song "The Gambler" ....
"You gotta know when to hold 'em,
Know when to fold 'em
Know when to walk away,
Know when to run.
You can't count your money, while you're sittin' at the table ..
The'ill be time enough for countin' ...
when the dealings done."

I worked off and on for 20 years on the Yucca Mountain high level radioactive waste storage project in Nevada, from the beginning until Obama cancelled it to pander to the ignorant for votes.
These boring machines are INCREDIBLE.  And the Engineering truly MAGNIFICENT!.
Youtube has many videos of these GIGANTIC machines digging through solid rock ... worth the hunt!
 

I don't think this is objectively true at all.
Do a Google search on "the last days" or "the last days bible" (adding "Bible" focuses a bit better on what we're talking about).
Admittedly the JW team has done some good SEO work to get their own page near the top - but that is JW's talking about their own beliefs. It's not the "everyone else" you refer to.
Many people are talking about the last days, and in the first few pages of search results I couldn't find one non-JW source that was making reference to JW belief.
You can see from the results that lots of Christian groups in general are talking about the last days, and most of them believe that we are in them.
If you're convinced that when the average person hears "the last days" they automatically think of JWs and no other Christian denomination, how would you support that? I honestly think it's an impression given to JWs by JWs, and not an objective reality.
That's not to say that JWs aren't doing a decent job of talking about it. I'm just trying to put some perspective on it.

What I find curious is how one of Jehovah's Witnesses gets mixed up with such a nutcase, in the first place ... ESPECIALLY someone who eventually chops off her (his?)  HEAD!
Something about this does not pass the "smell test".

You are "preaching to the choir"  here on that one ... an American English expression that means I am ALREADY a believer that what you say about this is true. 
Unfettered human communication is SO IMPORTANT that atheists ( as the classical extreme example)  will go into mortal combat against those who try to restrict the free exchange of ideas, and are willing to die FOREVER to defend free speech and expression ... they knowing that without it the human race will always be in bondage to those who want to maintain THEIR power ... by restricting what WE are allowed to know.
A GREAT movie about this is the 1997  "THE POSTMAN", starring Kevin Costner ... about children who know that there is NOTHING more important than family communication ...and other similar themes.

RATS!
... and I had two surplus North Korean middle range ballistic missiles ... READY TO GO!

If you can make it ... it will be something you will remember with awe the REST OF YOUR LIFE ... in great DETAIL ... WITH AWE AND REVERENCE.
Susan and I and my Sister's family are planning to go to Cross Hill, South Carolina, arriving in the early morning of Monday, August 21st, 2017.  This is the exact center of the path of the total eclipse that is impossible not to be able to find. 
We have already bought solar viewing glasses,  ( about $3.00 each), and I am going to buy a solar filter for my camera. We are taking a lunch and supper, as everywhere in a 70 mile wide path of the eclipse will be PACKED with people from all over America to see it.
 
 

Since the Society does NOT recognize Civil Divorces if there is no adultery, and considers a couple to STILL BE MARRIED ... if a man and wife get divorced civilly ONLY ( perhaps for some economic reason, like bankruptcy, or estate management .... or they cannot stand each other more than a few hours a week .. (health reasons (?)) ... and they still shack up (friends, with benefits..) does the Society sanction these ones in any way?
( For those in Rio Linda ... "friends with benefits" means friends that have sex ...) ....
 

Don't blame JTR for this thread. This is JWI hijacking one of JTR's posts that was just moved over here. I'm only stealing the top half of this post as an explanation for the the rest of this thread. JTR only gets top billing here because his was the earliest post chosen for this new thread.
I was asked to try my hand at splitting off some of the diversionary topics from the thread called:
Perhaps you heard of it. Well, as you can tell from the image attached to the link, above, it quickly turned into thread about buzzards and elephants and Rolex watches and even took a detour down sewers and down Broadway, too. So I did a quick review of the thread and decided that it might be good to just see if I can split off only several of the side topics, so that this new thread,  becomes a place for the obvious side topics that always come up in a 1914 discussion, such as:
You have no right to discuss this because it's apostasy even to bring it up! You must be a follower of Carl Olof Jonsson You must be a follower of Raymond Franz You are not being loyal and faithful to the Governing Body You must have bad motives, ego issues, etc. etc. In addition since that other thread is at least 14 pages too long, this new one will likely have a lot of free space, comparatively. So we might also just move over a few of the posts that weren't directly responding to the subject, although they might make interesting side topics, which could even be broken off of this thread someday. By diversionary topics, I don't mean they were unwelcome diversions (OK, some of them were) but some were excellent, informative posts responding to diversions, and some tied back to the original topic so well that they remained in place. Feel free to make suggestions. 
I wouldn't worry about this too much. In a few days, probably both of these threads could move to the back of the line. For anyone who worries about such things I won't move posts if I find out that it loses any reactions it had. Wouldn't want to change that. But I'm also worried about the chronological order of the posts and continuity of comments. So if it's not working out, then most things will just stay where they were.
AND NOW WE RETURN YOU TO YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED POST FROM JTR:
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I remember many years ago, in Mechanicsville, Virginia, an Engineering firm wanted to build  an office complex on land they had bought ... BUT ... there was a historic building on the site that by law could not be torn down without government approval .... so the Company applied to build a museum around it .... which was approved.
After the larger building was constructed around the smaller building, that changed the status FROM historical site to museum exhibit, and the Owners decided that their PERSONAL PROPERTY (no longer considered "Real Estate"), had to go ... and they demolished the smaller building, and built their necessary offices inside, on their own land.
This is EXACTLY what Jesus did (figuratively speaking) when establishing the Christian Congregation.
THE OLD BUILDING WAS "HISTORICAL",  BUT PEOPLE'S REAL NEEDS ARE MORE IMPORTANT!
When you find a dead elephant in your bath tub, a lot of analysis is not necessary ... you just fire up the Ol' chain saw .. and HANDLE IT.

I had already posted the following on the Archive "thumbnails by date" (what is the official name for that, anyway?):
" Yeah ... and here in the United States, they ban Primatene Mist Asthma Rescue Inhalers because THE MUST-ERIOUS "they" believe (Belief is a strange and convoluted animal...) is that after the medicine is delivered to the lungs, the propellant is dangerous for the atmosphere, AND IS CONTRIBUTING TO DESTROYING EARTH'S CLIMATE.
...take a LOOK at this picture of the Japanese Eruption, and here the Mt. Pinatubo Explosion!!
The U.S. Geological Survey said this about the Cataclysmic 1991 Eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippine Islands ... which before they stopped measuring, put more pollution and claimed "Greenhouse Gasses" (greenhouse gasses ... the only REAL one is water vapor...) than the human race has collectively done in its entire history ... COMBINED ... by a factor of 870. ( ... that's 870 times MORE than EVERYTHING mankind has ever produced, altogether, for those in Rio Linda ....).
" Impacts of the Eruptions
Fortunately, scientists from the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and
Seismology and the U.S. Geological Survey had forecast Pinatubo's 1991 climactic
eruption, resulting in the saving of at least 5,000 lives and at least $250
million in property. Commercial aircraft were warned about the hazard of the ash
cloud from the June 15 eruption, and most avoided it, but a number of jets
flying far to the west of the Philippines encountered ash and sustained about
$100 million in damage. Although much equipment was successfully protected,
structures on the two largest U.S. military bases in the Philippines--Clark Air
Base and Subic Bay Naval Station--were heavily damaged by ash from the volcano's
climactic eruption.
Nearly 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide were injected into the stratosphere
in Pinatubo's 1991 eruptions, and dispersal of this gas cloud around the world
caused global temperatures to drop temporarily (1991 through 1993) by about 1°F
(0.5°C). The eruptions have dramatically changed the face of central Luzon, home
to about 3 million people."
Note that putting 870 times, and MORE greenhouse gasses, and crud into the atmosphere LOWERED the Earth's temperature ... NOT raised it.
We are being duped by Snowflakes.

.

I had already posted the following on the Archive "thumbnails by date" (what is the official name for that, anyway?):
" Yeah ... and here in the United States, they ban Primatene Mist Asthma Rescue Inhalers because THE MUST-ERIOUS "they" believe (Belief is a strange and convoluted animal...) is that after the medicine is delivered to the lungs, the propellant is dangerous for the atmosphere, AND IS CONTRIBUTING TO DESTROYING EARTH'S CLIMATE.
...take a LOOK at this picture of the Japanese Eruption, and here the Mt. Pinatubo Explosion!!
The U.S. Geological Survey said this about the Cataclysmic 1991 Eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippine Islands ... which before they stopped measuring, put more pollution and claimed "Greenhouse Gasses" (greenhouse gasses ... the only REAL one is water vapor...) than the human race has collectively done in its entire history ... COMBINED ... by a factor of 870. ( ... that's 870 times MORE than EVERYTHING mankind has ever produced, altogether, for those in Rio Linda ....).
" Impacts of the Eruptions
Fortunately, scientists from the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and
Seismology and the U.S. Geological Survey had forecast Pinatubo's 1991 climactic
eruption, resulting in the saving of at least 5,000 lives and at least $250
million in property. Commercial aircraft were warned about the hazard of the ash
cloud from the June 15 eruption, and most avoided it, but a number of jets
flying far to the west of the Philippines encountered ash and sustained about
$100 million in damage. Although much equipment was successfully protected,
structures on the two largest U.S. military bases in the Philippines--Clark Air
Base and Subic Bay Naval Station--were heavily damaged by ash from the volcano's
climactic eruption.
Nearly 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide were injected into the stratosphere
in Pinatubo's 1991 eruptions, and dispersal of this gas cloud around the world
caused global temperatures to drop temporarily (1991 through 1993) by about 1°F
(0.5°C). The eruptions have dramatically changed the face of central Luzon, home
to about 3 million people."
Note that putting 870 times, and MORE greenhouse gasses, and crud into the atmosphere LOWERED the Earth's temperature ... NOT raised it.
We are being duped by Snowflakes.

.