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JW Insider

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  1. JW Insider
    Any nitpickers for accuracy might have wondered why this article in 1990 (among others) claimed something different from the above. *** w90 3/15 pp. 16-18 pars. 8-13 Cooperating With the Governing Body Today *** Looking back in this “time of the end,” we are not surprised that the members of the Governing Body were at first closely identified with the editorial staff of the Watch Tower Society. . . . For years, the visible Governing Body came to be identified with the seven-member board of directors of this corporation established to publish the Bible study aids needed and used by the Lord’s people earth wide. The Society’s seven directors were faithful Christians. But their role in a legal corporation might have suggested that they owed their positions on the Governing Body to their being elected by legal members of the Watch Tower Society. Furthermore, by law such membership and its voting privileges were originally granted only to certain ones who made contributions to the Society. This arrangement needed to be changed. This was done at the annual meeting of the Pennsylvania corporation of the Watch Tower Society held on October 2, 1944. The statutes of the Society were amended so that membership would no longer be on a financial basis. Members would be chosen from among faithful servants of Jehovah, and these have come to include many serving full-time at the Society’s headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, and in its branches throughout the world. Reporting on this improvement, The Watchtower of November 1, 1944, stated: “Money, as represented in financial contributions, should have no determining voice, should in fact have nothing to do with the filling of the governing body of Jehovah’s witnesses on earth. . . . The holy spirit, the active force which comes down from Jehovah God through Christ Jesus, is that which should determine and guide in the matter.” . . . Until 1971 those of the Governing Body were still identified with the seven members of the board of directors of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania. At the same time that the "governing body" was over 400 members --during those years from 1944 to 1972-- something termed a "central governing body" or sometimes "spiritual governing body" were terms that began to be associated with the decision makers in Brooklyn, New York.
  2. JW Insider
    I remember pointing this out previously in a discussion of whether Sirhan Sirhan's father had a relationship with the Witnesses. (He didn't.) In the letter that the Watch Tower Society sent out to provide to newspapers who requested it, the letter made it clear that (in 1968) the governing body was the "Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society." So notice that the Watchtower was consistent in this claim for many years. Even back 15 years earlier, in 1953, the same idea showed up here. Note that the Governing Body had 402 members. That was the number of [voting] members of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania.
  3. JW Insider
    No, you don't remember that at all, because nothing like it was ever said. Not by me, nor anyone else that I can remember. The closest thing I said was that two members of the Writing Department (who shared an office) were discussing it with me, and said that it still remains on a shelf, collecting dust, because everyone in Writing considered it a "hot potato." No one wanted to be assigned to respond to it, because that would be a lose-lose situation. You couldn't respond honestly, and if you couldn't respond you'd be considered a potential apostate. I never saw it at all until a few months later. Brother Schroeder had a small portion of it photocopied, and he took it with him when we traveled together on a trip to Europe in 1978. He did not allow me to read any of it and I never asked. I never had a research assignment related to it. I didn't see the manuscript at all until early 1980 when Brother Rusk and I were going over my wedding plans in his office and he needed to take about an hour to respond to a phone call (regarding a blood issue) while I sat in his office. While I waited, I grabbed a book from his library, and I also looked around and saw that he had the manuscript open in about three stacks on his desk, but again I never read more than the pages on top of the stacks. I doubt it was ever discarded. It seems probable that what Fred Rusk had on his desk was already a photocopy.
  4. JW Insider
    There are many Jewish sources which are merely additional types of speculation. The speculation is perhaps a bit more likely to be of interest because Jewish sources have often been speculating on such things for a much longer period of written history than any so-called Christian sources. Many, historically, have had the advantage of speculating in the same language the Bible was written in and therefore have noticed nuances of language that most of us would miss. Often the same so-called advantages have led them astray, too. Looking through the Babylonian Talmud for early commentary on various subjects, for example, one might find answers relying on numerology and/or gematria. One also finds pure contradiction in some of the ancient Jewish traditions. For example, paraphrasing (but not by much): Rabbi so-and-so said this means one thing, and Rabbi thus-and-such said this means the opposite.
  5. JW Insider
    I was IN his congregation for 3 years. I had originally been assigned to the Bronx which I loved, but when I had extra assignments at work, I was ultimately transferred to the BH congregation where he also attended. I once interviewed him (taped) for about an hour with a list of questions that he mostly wrote himself. I liked him, but I agree that his voice was over-the-top. I mentioned Harold Jackson in my list of drama voices. He actually was rarely used due to a "country" accent. Sydlik had the kind of voice for dramas and he was often used alongside Maxwell Friend. People thought Sydlik was too much "Brooklyn" for doing the voice of God. I heard someone make fun of his drama voice once saying: "Hey youz gize down thayer!" Why? Wright and Stackert, too, saw the same thing that G.Fishing mentioned. There is very little actual information about how this was put into practice. Because of this, in large part, they considered it to be an idealized legal concept that had solely a literary source, but may not have been practiced. I don't buy this completely because the ideal city locations were designated for an obvious practical purpose, along with the reminder to keep roads clear for the practical purpose of getting there. I also think it was practical in the sense that it didn't waste tax dollars for jails. The taxes were given to the priests, and the priests were given walled cities and farmland. The six cities of refuge were also chosen from the priestly cities, 5 Levitic, and 1 Aaronic, if I remember correctly. Instead of a local judge who had a higher likelihood of being related to one of the families involved in the manslaughter dispute, a priest was also educated, knew the law, had extra room, for a "jail," and could always use extra help. To me, all this goes to practicality, and therefore I suspect, something that was at least sometimes put into practice. Of course, this isn't proof. It's hardly evidence for that matter. Also, there is nothing wrong with a law that was included because it showed the best way to handle justice for accidental manslaughter, even if the Jewish nation themselves didn't take advantage of it. Wright was the one who found some additional material that I can't explain within our current perspective about the Mosaic Law. I'll go on if someone asks.
  6. JW Insider
    Thanks for the information, but I never thought he did. That might help explain why I never said anything similar. This wasn't to me, but you mentioned me elsewhere, so I'll jump in, too. I'm sure AlanF can respond to the COJ / RFranz information if he wishes. I couldn't care less if COJonsson was wrong or RVFranz was wrong. I'm sure they were both wrong on lots of things, lots of times. But I am interested in whatever problem you see in it, because I will try to keep some of these issues in mind if I get a chance to finish reading the whole book this year. I didn't see your source on what R.Franz accepted as true. Can you give a source? Also, I see that you are mostly comparing GTR-2004 with an original treatise. But you also didn't quote here from the original treatise for comparison. Did you quote from it elsewhere? If so, I missed it. I see that AlanF has said that his revisions added to his original work rather than contradicting it. I saw you try this same type of claim earlier and it turned out you would never provide any evidence. I'll assume this is more of the same, at least until I see your evidence. When a discussion is for academic or learning purposes most authors give a lot of leeway with respect to copyright law and on "fair use." for discussion.
  7. JW Insider
    I'm going to remember this one in PERPETUITY !!! Good to see you back. Catch anything?
  8. JW Insider
    Sounds interesting, but isn't it all just speculation?
  9. JW Insider
    I thought I saw that article you quoted come up some months ago in a Google search about ARC. At the time there was another claim going around that was supposed to show that the ARC statistics showed the opposite. I don't believe either of them are correct. But I would never claim that the problem is much worse among JWs than all other religions. I do think that we could still do much better. But the ARC did supply some simple statistics that fit the numbers I had heard previously about the USA. Note that these were the most common statistics that were reported by the commission: There are currently 817 congregations in Australia with more than 68,000 active members” Despite the Jehovah’s Witnesses receiving more than 1000 allegations of child abuse since the 1950s, not one perpetrator was reported to authorities, the Child Abuse Royal Commission heard. Going back to the 1950's, 1960's and even the 1970's, is a bit anomalous because any such reports prior to when attention was first given to the problem are obviously "statistical outliers." However the main point is that Australia had records of over 1,000 child sexual abusers, representing even more instances of abuse, since abusers who are caught, are usually found to be multiple offenders. This turns out to be: more than one abuser per current number of congregations, over several decades and about two victims per congregation, over several decades. Extrapolating would still imply the same "order of magnitude" I heard a couple decades ago. In other words: 1000 abusers in 817 congregations (AU) is 122.4% and over 1500 reported victims. 122.4% of 120,000 congregations (worldwide) works out to 146,880 abusers, which implies about 220,000 victims. That's based on numbers over many decades, of course. Although I can't believe it's as high as the ARC numbers for Australia alone would imply, it still shows a potentially huge problem that we should do everything we can to mitigate. Whether it's 220,000 victims as ARC implies, or 10% of that which is still 22,000 victims, or even 1% which is 2,200 victims.
  10. JW Insider
    The video in the last post is just over 3 minutes long, and doesn't get into any specifics about the archaeological evidence. For those who can't see the video, the image below presents the basic claims for the dates of the period in question. Persian rule actually goes on until about 330 BCE. Also note that the dates below include the actual first year that the king acceded to the throne (accession year) even if it was not his first, full year as king (regnal year). Also, the tablets and cuneiform inscriptions were picked to indicate variety, not necessarily their importance to the chronology of each king. The basic idea of the video is the following, mostly taken straight out of the video: The entire Neo-Babylonian and Persian time periods are interlocked and intertwined. 30,000 dated tablets cover the Neo-Babylonian period. Each is dated with the current kingÂ’s year, month & day. Also, there are contemporary astronomical diaries, king lists, letters and royal inscriptions that perfectly interlock with these 30,000 dated tablets. There is no difference in the evidence for each period: the The Neo-Babylonian and the Persian. You canÂ’t accept one date and reject another. All the dates are from the same evidence: 539 is just as accurate as 626, 587, or 598. If you accept one, you are accepting them all. So, 539, the start of CyrusÂ’ rule over Babylon, is no more or less accurate than: •       626 for the start of Nabopolassar •       587 for NebuchadnezzarÂ’s 18th year, the destruction of JerusalemÂ’s temple •       537 for CyrusÂ’ 2nd full year over Babylon Accepting 539 is the same as accepting that there were 50 years from NebuchadnezzarÂ’s 18th-19th year to CyrusÂ’ 2nd-3rd year. Yet, a certain Bible interpretation [the "607 Theory"] requires that we, instead, count a 70-year period that must run from NebuchadnezzarÂ’s 18th-19th year to the 2nd-3rd year of Cyrus. Â
  11. JW Insider
    I just made a video that expresses my current general overview of the secular evidence. If it's not totally accurate, I can make appropriate changes to it. Here it is... neobabylonian.mp4
  12. JW Insider
    As you probably know, I was given some moderator functions in order to keep some level of control over my own topics/threads which tend to go on about as long as my individual posts. I still don't think you should have been deleted in the first place, and have made that known to @The Librarian. I'd be happy to see you back, in your original avatar. I don't have the power to do it myself, but consider this as another request to the Librarian or admin to get your original account back online. After all, what's the difference between the original account and all these dozens of alternate accounts that are even messier, especially when it becomes a useful part of a discussion to quote a previous post? Of course, my own reasons might have initially been more selfish than altruistic because your particular brand of abusive behavior made it so much easier to point out when an argument had finally boiled down to "Evidence vs. Ad Hominem." Some people don't notice the more subtle forms of "ad hominem" but have no problem identifying it in its more extreme forms.
  13. JW Insider
    Allen, you have brought this up at least twice before, mentioning in one earlier post that Russell was amazingly accurate in predicting that the Jews would gain their freedom in 1914. You associated this with Zionism in 1914. Based on the above statement, it appears you are still standing by this belief. How do you square it with the Watchtower's presentation of the belief, which now denies that any freedom for the Jewish nation in the 19th or 20th centuries is unrelated to the Gentile Times? Perhaps you still plan to answer the question, although I noticed you requoted the question but didn't respond to it. As a reminder, it could be worded many different ways, but the basic question remains as follows: Do you think that Russell proved himself accurate in predicting 1914 as a time when the Jewish nation gained their freedom?
  14. JW Insider
    A recent topic about whether the Watchtower view of 607 BCE is SCRIPTURALLY supported is linked below. This new topic should provide a better place to discuss the SECULAR evidence. I also think it would be useful to discuss the methodology that the Watch Tower Society has historically used to treat this evidence. I would hope that we can do this without so much side discussions of unrelated topics. To avoid another topic that goes on for 30+ pages where only half of them were on-topic, I would suggest that if we get enough off-topic posts, we merely move them to another more appropriate topic. The link to the most recent topic on a similar subject is here:
  15. JW Insider
    This was from several pages back in this thread. Page 20, I think. I could be wrong but I don't think anyone addressed it, although it was addressed the previous time you brought it up. (If you recall, you were shown to be wrong, and your 19th century source had made the error. It was not related at all to the original tablets.) This particular thread/topic was initially intended to discuss the scriptural reasons why the WT chronology doesn't match all the Bible evidence very well. We need a new thread on the secular evidence itself. For me, this thread has become too unwieldy to try to cover both perspectives. I'm happy to continue using it for posts related to the Biblical evidence for the events we have tied to the year 607, however.
  16. JW Insider
    OK. I'm not saying your belief is "apostate" but we know it is different from the Watchtower's current view of the matter. But would you be willing to answer the question? @Arauna already pointed out that this is not part of our current teaching (in this topic/thread a few pages back when John Aquila Brown was the side-topic-of-the-day here).
  17. JW Insider
    Allen, you have brought this up at least twice before, mentioning in one earlier post that Russell was amazingly accurate in predicting that the Jews would gain their freedom in 1914. You associated this with Zionism in 1914. Based on the above statement, it appears you are still standing by this belief. How do you square it with the Watchtower's presentation of the belief, which now denies that any freedom for the Jewish nation in the 19th or 20th centuries is unrelated to the Gentile Times? You appear to be disagreeing with the Watchtower again.
  18. JW Insider
    I have never criticized the Watchtower for their revisions. Revisions are the way to improvement and correction. I have criticized the Watchtower for "revisionist history" and making false claims about history, archaeology, scholarship, doctrines. The only revisions I would dare to criticize the Watchtower for are those revisions that create confusion and contradictions with the Bible. Most revisions, especially since around 2000 have been honest and have been encouraging and welcome. Claims related to chronology, early organization history, and the "generation" for example have been notable exceptions. Hopefully, this will help you understand why I started this topic.
  19. JW Insider
    Exactly! I've said this many times myself. Long before I read anything about the 200-tablet exhibit at the BLMJ. I don't know if you noticed, but this particular exhibit of "new" tablets you have been talking about is only strengthening the same evidence that Mason and COJ and O'maly and Jeffro and AlanF and others have been pointing out for many years. In fact all "new" archaeological evidence that comes to light, invariably continues to strengthen the general Biblical description of events and continues to weaken the claims that the Watchtower has been asking us to believe. I suspect that the frustration arising from such evidence is where the repetitions of nonsensical arguments, distractions, and temper tantrums are coming from.
  20. JW Insider
    Goodness gracious, AllenSmith28 (I assume). There are better ways to argue your case. You (or at least, AllenSmith) were not banned for using foul language, but for making it personal. This is what is being done again again here. What AlanF did is point out what foul connotations Foreigner was likely intending with the "P*ND*JO remark. This is quite different from using foul language just to call people names. That's what got Allen Smith banned and disciplined so often he parodied his own case by creating AllenSmith20-something through AllenSmith28, to go along with a small army of other names to play various characters [and voting blocs] But I agree that AlanF should get a second warning even if he pointed out the fouler connotation of a word that someone else used. But I don't think anyone should be banned. We can all decide to avoid seeing someone's comments by blocking them if we are sensitive to that kind of thing. And a warning is available so that others can be aware that they may not wish to read what any certain person is saying. In a discussion like this, as I've said, it's much more useful to get warnings about logical fallacies, and warnings about the difference between depending on facts and depending on speculation. Misuse of language is a trivial matter to me.
  21. JW Insider
    I don't think it does much good to challenge it. There are nearly 120,000 congregations in the world. The first time I ever heard of a "pedophile database" was not when I was at Bethel, but near the end of the following decade, around 1998. A couple years later, when ex-JWs were beginning to make a big deal out of it, my uncle (circuit overseer) and I called a friend in the Service Department to clear up what we should say if asked about it directly. He said that although it sounds high, it averaged out to "just a little less" than one person in every congregation, but that these were mostly USA/North America figures, and he couldn't say how this might compare to the rest of the world. Also, anecdotally at least, a large number of them had been disfellowshipped and were showing no interest in coming back. We have about 120,000 congregations in the world, and I don't think we catch all the child abusers. Perhaps some want to become JWs to help overcome their problem. Based on the impression I got in 1998, that might translate to somewhere on the order of 50,000 abusers from the 80's through 2000. And perhaps another 100,000 from 2000 through 2017/8. This sounds way too high, 150,000 in aggregate, but is still less than one every two decades, per congregation. I don't believe it's even half that, but wouldn't be surprised if an up-to-date worldwide database contained a number like 1% of current publishers. 1% of 8 million is 80,000. Most of these would no longer be associated with a congregation anyway. But the other thing is that a high number of child abusers abuse more than one child, and continue to find persons to abuse all their life. I recently found out that the brother who married my sister, and who was a physical abuser (over which my sister left him to remarry) was a victim of something like this when he was younger. I think we'll find out that it is much more common than people have let on. My sister was instructed not to inform the hospital workers or police under threat of disciplinary action, losing her pioneer "status" and TMS privileges. Her husband, a ministerial servant, was apparently barely talked to, and continued to advance to a position as elder. The thing is, I don't think anyone outside our own family and a couple of elders every really knew about this. My parents are of the sort that believe it shames the family to admit that my sister married such a man, and would rather only talk about his success as an elder. (I was at Bethel when this was going on.) So how much do we know about our own congregations unless we are on the judicial committee, or it blows up into the newspapers, or an Australian Royal Commission? Another person in our congregation was an elderly special pioneer who started to get in trouble for sleazy behavior with younger sisters, mostly pioneer sisters, who were between 18 and 24 or so. Not "child abuse" and no crime of any kind, but also an issue of not disciplining him because he would lose his special pioneer stipend, and his son already had a very high position at Bethel. My father was one of the elders who talked to him, and I was a "second witness" to corroborate one of the sister's stories. I had evidently caught him improperly touching/groping on only one of many occasions. I mention this because it was easy for me to think that one abuser per congregation is not that unlikely. Therefore 1,000s of victims who suffered from "cover-up" is not that unlikely.
  22. JW Insider
    From what I can tell, they are not even in the same Zip Code. Society's Branch: Saksi-Saksi Yehuwa Indonesia Central Park APL Office Tower, Floor 31 Jl. S. Parman Kav. 28 Jakarta 11470 INDONESIA Stock Exchange: 1st Tower, Jalan Jend. Sudirman Kav. 52-53, Senayan, Kebayoran Baru, RT.5/RW.3, RT.5/RW.3, Senayan, Kby. Baru, Kota Jakarta Selatan, Daerah Khusus Ibukota Jakarta 12190
  23. JW Insider
    The robes story may have shown that A.H.MacMillan was a good story-teller, but didn't care so much for research. He says there was a newspaper story about the occasion in Pittsburgh, but was probably confusing this with a story of some non-Russellite Second Adventists in Philadelphia. All the major Pittsburgh and Allegheny newspapers from the time period still exist and nothing like this was reported in Pittsburgh. The other thing is that the original "white robes" or "ascension robes" stories were probably made up out of whole cloth by non-Adventists making fun of Adventists, continuing since the Great Disappointment of 1843 and 1844, and repeated on a smaller scale among "Barbourite" Adventists in 1873 and 1874, with some Barbourite/Russellite Adventists trying again in 1878 and 1881. But "ascension robes" were not a real, confirmed part of any of these stories. Biblically, it was the "Lord" who was going to give the robes. Boston newspapers made up stories about clothes manufacturers working overtime to create these robes in time, but there was never any evidence. By 1916 however these stories of white "ascension robes" had become an accepted part of the supposed culture of Second Adventists, from outsiders, but had become "true" through repetition. So it's possible that Russell believed they were a useful symbol of his true faith in his imminent ascension. And it's possible that MacMillan writing in the 1950's was recalling events through those later "filters." But at the time, Sturgeon and Rutherford made an effort to distance the "toga" from that interpretation. I think it was possible that Russell's mind was gone by then. The type of sickness he had was the close equivalent of being poisoned to die slowly until the mind goes, too.
  24. JW Insider
    Just to make it easier to read page 2:
  25. JW Insider
    My father was in one of the assembly dramas back in 1967. Brother Glass had worked out this "play" with the Gilead students and produced the one-hour skit that was recorded by him and the Gilead students and a couple of other Bethelites with good voices (especially from the other primary instructors: Maxwell Friend, Harold Jackson, Karl Adams, Bert Schroeder). I remember that we attended two assemblies that year because of the drama. I was baptized at the first one. Those dramas had just started in '66 (Aachan and the theft of contra-"ban" at Ai) and that year they had learned that subtle gestures don't show up well in large stadium audiences, so they taught everyone to over-gesture (and gesticulate) so hard that everyone was karate-chopping the air with every syllable so you knew who was speaking. But the only thing I remember from the content was that it was used to show that everyone should stay in the protection of Jehovah's arrangement for security (the organization) or they would die. That we are all blood-guilty even if just "accidentally" so, through the sin of Adam, and that we must remain until the "high priest dies" but that he already died in 33 CE, so we are no longer bloodguilty, but we need to stay put anyway. Of course, that wasn't the whole story, but it definitely was NOT mined for treasures or gems the way that more recent discussions have done (including yesterday's WT study). I was also thinking that it highlighted safety issues, and it also did something else that isn't mentioned anywhere as far as I know. It's not just to provide a cooling-off period for the avenger who would be tempted to avenge potentially innocent manslaughter ("innocent" in the sense of unintentional). It's also a loving provision for the families who would have to continue to live and work next to the person responsible for such trauma and pain. Defending honor has developed into some terrible practices around the world, including Hatfield and McCoy style feuds that can go on for a century or more. I saw the play Hamilton last year which means I know even less about U.S. History now than I did before, but it showed a facet of dueling that I wasn't aware of, wherein, persons could use it for personal revenge, or purposely arrange to "miss" so as to forgive. Last year, I spent several days over the course of a week at the British Museum and asked if I could find information on other nations that were known to have sanctuary cities or cities of refuge. The answer was surprising, and got to read one of the recent books they had from David P. Wright and a couple articles in the JBL, including Jeffrey Stackert. Why Does Deuteronomy Legislate Cities of Refuge? Asylum in the Covenant Collection (Exodus 21:12-14) and Deuteronomy (19:1-13) Author(s): Jeffrey Stackert Source: Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 125, No. 1 (Spring, 2006), pp. 23-49 The book by Wright would be very controversial for most of us.
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