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I read the book. I don't think he ever mentions any of those meeting minutes, but he already knows and states the gist of the point about Russell having complete authority and final say about any decision, and that the board members, both editorial board and society officers, were basically just a legal formality. They had no real input into any of his decisions. Russell pretty much ran the Society by himself. If others helped, and we know that his wife had plenty of input, he didn't give them any credit publicly. I know we think of Rutherford as the most autocratic in this regard, but Rutherford seemed to allow quite a bit of leeway and input from those around him, even if his was the only name that would be put on the publications for most of his presidency. Russell did this early on too although most of those others who had writing input all left the Watch Tower Society within a few short years.

(Hebrews 3:7) Therefore, just as the holy spirit says, "Today, if you listen to his voice . . . " I was using this point about equating the term "the holy spirit says" with the direct use of Heberw Scriptures because it appears that although they used the "holy spirit" quotation as a basis for interpretation, Paul seemed to think they had interpreted it incorrectly. Paul directly opposed the idea that gentiles could be put under any kind of law, except the "law of undeserved kindness" i.e., grace and love. Paul even went so far as to say he learned nothing from this so-called "governing body" in which he included Peter, James, and John. He didn't care who they were, even if they had been angels from heaven. In fact, Paul directly opposes some of the exact wording that came from that meeting in Jerusalem when he uses an exact Greek term from that list in 1 Cor 8 and referred to the topic again in chapter 10: 1 Play (1 Cor 8:1) Now concerning food offered to idols: We know we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. 1 Cor 10:23-27 All things are lawful, but not all things are advantageous.e All things are lawful, but not all things build up.f 24 Let each one keep seeking, not his own advantage, but that of the other person.g25 Eat whatever is sold in a meat market, making no inquiry because of your conscience, 26 for “to Jehovah belong the earth and everything in it.”h 27 If an unbeliever invites you and you want to go, eat whatever is set before you, making no inquiry on account of your conscience.

When I first learned about the rabbinic versions of the Noahide Laws --there are several variations, but usually quite similar-- I always wondered why theft and murder were not part of the Genesis vis-a-vis Acts list. They seem pretty important, too, even though 'no bloodshed' could be read into the idea: "abstain from blood." I think it was because of a compromise that the Jewish Christians would still want to see it as a following of at least the "Gentile-referenced" part of the Mosaic Law. The Greek Scriptures (in Acts, Hebrews) uses the term "the holy spirit says" when referring to accepted Hebrew Scripture, and I think this is why James could say "the holy spirit and we ourselves." Here's why: It happens that these four terms in particular that the apostles and elders came up with for Gentiles were listed in the exact same order, and already expanded upon, in Leviticus. I found this idea already summarized on another site: https://bibletopicexpo.wordpress.com/2015/03/27/the-four-prohibitions-of-acts-15/ Le.17:1 “The Lord spoke to Moses, saying….” This was God speaking to Moses, not just Moses’ own words. Le.17:6-9 “They shall no longer offer their sacrifices to idols, with which they play the harlot. This shall be a permanent statute….The man shall be cut off from his people.” JFB Commentary Le.17:9 “This was a form of idolatry practiced by the Egyptians.” Prohibition #1 God forbids sacrifices to idols. (also see “Sacrifices To Idols and Romans 14”.) Le.17:10-12 “Any man from the house of Israel or aliens sojourning among them who eats any blood, I will set My face against that person and cut him off. For the life [soul] of the flesh is in the blood.” Prohibition #2 God forbids the consumption of blood. The heathen thought that drinking another’s blood would gain them the life or power of that other person/animal. Continuing in Le.17:13-16. “When any native Israelite or alien among you goes hunting and kills an animal or bird which may be eaten [NLT is approved for eating], he must drain its blood. When any person eats an animal which dies of natural causes or was torn by beasts, whether he is native or alien, he must wash his clothes and bathe, and remain unclean until evening. But if he doesn’t wash or bathe, he will bear his iniquity.” Prohibition #3 God forbids eating things strangled/unbled. No roadkill. When an animal was snared or was suffocated/strangled and died of itself, its blood coagulated in the meat. It wasn’t properly bled. Life and disease are both in the blood. The slaughter procedure causes the effusion of blood. Remaining blood may be extracted by washing & salting the meat. The incidence of diseases from bacteria or parasites is thereby reduced. Of note, this prohibition applies to clean creatures “which may be eaten”. Many forbidden unclean creatures/scavengers naturally carry disease-causing micro-organisms and worms. (for more on this aspect, see “Unclean versus Clean Food”.) Le.18 identifies sexual acts which are immorality/porneia. That’s Prohibition #4. In the Bible, porneia includes: incest (v.6-18); menstrual sex when blood is present, putting her at risk for vaginal infection & cervical cancer & tubal pregnancy (v.19); adultery (v.20); religious harlotry (v.21, ref Le.17:7, 20:5); homosexuality & lesbianism (Le.18:22, ref Ro.1:26); beastiality (Le.18:23). All these are forms of illicit sex/porneia/‘fornication’, prohibited to both Jews and gentiles. Of note: Le.17:8, 10, 15, 18:26 say the four restrictions apply to both Israelites and aliens (ger) with them! Getting sex any way you want it is prohibited by God in both Testaments. Jesus said porneia is even just cause for divorce! Mt.19:9 “I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality [porneia g4202], and marries another wife commits adultery [g3429].” Although extremely serious, adultery was only one form of sexual immorality. According to Jesus, all porneia is just cause for divorce. This includes beastiality, lesbianism, homosexuality, etc. Some translations render porneia or illicit sex as “fornication”. -------------------- So although the basis was undoubtedly the fact that Noahide Laws were already a "thing" to cover the communion between Jews and "law-abiding" Gentiles, James and others were able to make use of a version of them that was in a portion of Scripture (holy spirit) that already included references and laws for the Gentiles (alien residents). For me, it's the best explanation for why murder isn't explicitly on the list. Also, it means that James and others were making use of a form of Bible commentary, a unique form of "pesher" which shows up elsewhere in scripture, especially obvious in Matthew. (In Matthew we sometimes wonder why the book uses verses that appear to be completely out of context to make application to Jesus, as if they were Messianic prohecies. But the special patterns of "pesher" commentary will explain this very well. Although that's another topic for later. The patterns of "pesher" commentary were not well known until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, btw.

When the Noahide Laws were clarified and expanded from what we currently see in the Genesis account, the rabbis specifically forbade eating a limb or part of an animal while it was alive and kicking. In fact, some even interpret the term "strangled" to refer to the twisting off of a limb for eating. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26551218?read-now=1&seq=3#page_scan_tab_contents in the Tosefta, a supplementary work to the Mishnah. Its teachings date back to the time of the Tannaim and provide a glimpse into how the early rab- bis approached Jewish-gentile relations. In t. ʿAbod. Zar. 8:4, the text states: “Concerning seven commandments were the sons of Noah admonished: [establishing] courts of justice, idolatry, cursing the name [of God], illicit inter- course, bloodshed, thievery and [consuming] a limb from a living beast.”2 These are the commandments generally accepted within rabbinic litera- ture as the seven Noahide laws pertaining to gentiles. Sifre Deuteronomy, an early Tannaitic midrash (late 3rd c. CE), provides additional information . . . That was from: The Sons of Noah and the Sons of Abraham: The Origins of Noahide Law Matthew P. Van Zile Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Period, Vol. 48, No. 3 (2017), pp. 386-417 (32 pages)

Like you said, "why does it matter" that a millionaire business tycoon was the first president of the Watch Tower Society before Russell. Russell sent Rose Ball and her husband to Australia just before the trial. So Rose couldn't be there to testify. Russell would not have been able to deceive the court about her age if she had been there. The court didn't refuse to allow it. Russell made a fool of himself in court. He showed his vindictiveness and he was deceitful and egotistical. On another occasion in court Russell directly perjured himself but was allowed to change his testimony in the following day(s) to state the exact opposite of what he testified earlier (under oath!). The courts were fairly lenient with C T Russell. Russell then used his own public "pulplt" including the pages of the Watchtower itself to fight against (and perhaps even slander) Mrs Russell in the court of public opinion. Since we got onto this topic of the power of the Watchtower's presidency, this reminds me that Rutherford also used the pages of the Watchtower and even a Watchtower Convention resuolution to slander a man who, by almost all accounts, had told the truth about Rutherford and even won in a lawsuit against him. Obviously these scandalous occasions do not define the Watchtower or Watchtower presidents. They were rare, and all the good that has been successfully accomplished overrides these past fiascos and failures. Like the Bible's account of Samson, we have to accept some bad with the good. People are imperfect, often unfaithful and indiscreet.

The Watchtoewr's publications including those promoted and distributed by the Watchtower Society have always presented the opposite view. And I don't think they would have any reason to lie about this. See "The Biography of Charles Taze Russell" published by the WTBTS and Russell's funeral address by Rutherford, and "Fatih on the March" by A H MacMillan but promoted and distributed by the WTBTS. Also see Russell's own statements about how he would make all decisions by himself and that the board would not come into play at all until and unless Russell died. The view from the Watchtower has been that it was only the President of the Society who made all decisions and that the board was just a legal formality. Russell WAS the Society, as claimed in Watchtower publcations. It sounds like you are saying the Watchtower wasn't telling the truth when they made this claim. Do you have any evidence against the Watchtower's claims?

It's the current style governing body he was against. If you listen to his talk carefully you see that he was against any kind of governing body that took any part of the final decision-making away from the President of the Watchtower Society. That's the way it had always been, under Russell, Rutherord and Knorr, even though Franz himself had provided the strongest direction for doctrinal matters mostly behind the scenes. But it was behind the scenes only to most of us 'rank and file' Witnesses. But for decades, it was clear as day to those around him in Bethel that only he had the final say on anything doctrinal right up until some of his perceived failures respecting predictions surrounding 1975. And they already knew that Knorr was dying of cancer.

Srecko, That last video has a lot of the same points made by Fred Franz when he gave his infamous Sept 1975 speech at the 59th Gilead Graduation and railed and ranted against the idea of a governing body. Of course, he was preparing to take over as a governing individual, and thus opposed a governing body for the wrong reasons, it seems. But at least Brother Franz' points were all scriptural when he showed why a governing body was not scriptural.

Dilbert 4:14

No wires under the switch or going through the switch, and the switch is completely replaceable with any other switch. The light and power source are also replaceable with any standard light or power source. He just used this one because it looks the most like the way a switch is drawn in a schematic circuit diagram. But even if there were, it might still be difficult to explain how closing the switch turns the light off and opening it turns it on.

The other one is in bad shape and doesn’t work any more. The university of Missouri at Columbia and Chicago University might still have one. it is a ball (a 6 inch steel globe penny bank) that I had painted to be like way the Apollo astronauts photographed the earth from space. It hangs in mid air and you can take a stick or ruler to all sides and above and below and show that it is not attached to anything. You can even spin it and it keeps spinning on its North Pole / South Pole axis. Below the display is a sign that says “He hangs the earth upon nothing.” — Job 26:7. My dad often told the story of how some students would see it and wonder what the job number referred to. it’s a little easier to guess how this one works.

With reference to the above video I just took I remember that my father made this same circuit on transparent plexiglass so that students could look at all the wires and switch and bulb from underneath and from all sides. It’s not as impressive on a wooden board but the idea is still there. It should represent the most simple circuit possible but very few electronics lab students could figure out why this one doesn’t work as expected. You break the circuit and the light goes on instead of off. Any guesses?

After my father died during but not from COVID, my mother moved from their house to a two bedroom apartment then to a one bedroom and now to a smaller one-bedroom. Even THAT won’t always keep your housing costs level, this being California. So I am out here in California helping her “keep her eye simple” tossing out stuff she wishes she could keep. There is a stack of electronics magazines in which my dad wrote articles which I already got for her a year ago in PDF and she has never looked at any of them anyway, not even the physical copies. My father also has a couple inventions to his name (via Univ of Missouri) and I was hoping to find prototypes at least. I’ll talk about two things I did find. One is shown in a video next. IMG_3282.MOV

I appreciate that information. I've still heard it in a talk too, but I don't recall if it is any any of the latest outlines. I remember some bros in correspondence like Bro Malone and Bro Pritchard. I can't imagine their reaction to a memo that would say please don't quote any publications before a certain date unless you adjust the wording to such-and-such. It would have given away the "deceptive" use of the quotes when there was already an argument brewing over these statements in the early 80s in writing. I got the feeling that Service & Correspondence wasn't privy to all the arguing going on in writing. I was nearby when I heard commotion that turned out to be Brother Greenlees yelling and throwing (slamming) a new summer convention publication down on the desk of one of the writers in an office shared by Bro Lengtat and Bro Napolitano. It wasn't specifically about this particular issue, but was partly over the fact that the publication didn't highlight the true importance of 1914 nor the visible Organization. The anger was also over the fact that none of the publications for that summer made these most important points and the fear (I think) that some might get the impression it was left out on purpose. I think that Service/Correspondence was mostly oblivious to these kinds of arguments. I don't know that for a fact, but there was a good amount of interaction between brothers in Writing, but I rarely heard about much face-to-face interaction between Writing and Correspondence except through question memos and then memos responding with "guidance" outlines. One brother, Pritchard, I think, said that he started out using the files to merely copy the previous letter on the topic, but that only someone else would send a memo request for updated guidance. I'm guessing that if there was a letter in the file on the topic, it could go back decades. I have a feeling you know more about this process, so I'm hoping you'll clarify if you know.

For full disclosure, at your first post, I almost immediately recognized that this would be your point of view even though you hadn't revealed it yet. I think you know what I mean, and I'll have to leave it at that. But I have no problem with questioning the validity of posts in the absence of concrete evidence. This is how I think all of us should think about most posts here. It's the nature of the media. From what I could see, there were indeed persons at Bethel at that time who appeared to choose disloyalty to God (in favor of the Organization) and I worked very closely with one of them. The brother I am referring to above was NOT one of them. He found a way to be loyal to the organization and remain loyal to Jehovah. The brother I worked more closely with tried to punish him for it, but that punishment didn't really stick, as he continued to work for the Writing Department, remotely via Bro Swingle, and continued to write many of the Watchtower study articles long after he was dismissed from Bethel and given a special pioneer stipend to live on. In fact, a large portion of the Insight book contains articles that remain untouched from the way he wrote and edited them for the Aid Book. The Aid Book was once removed from the Watchtower Library, but has since won its place back into it (although mostly redundant with Insight).

in the original context, the difference was that Angus Stewart asked "do you see yourself as modern-day disciples?" A lot of people use the term "Jesus' disciples" as synonymous with his original direct "twelve disciples." Of course, Bro Jackson could answer that the GB definitely see themselves as modern-day disciples. [Those taught by Jesus.] The GB also definitely see themselves as modern-day "sent-forth ones" which is the meaning of the word "apostles." And they do speak of themselves in several ways as a modern-day parallel to the apostles, or even as a kind of parallel to the small number of men who ended up writing all the books of the Christian Greek Scriptures. But Bro Jackson knew the danger of trying to explain these "parallels" to a non-JW so he steered clear of it by even pointing out that they, the GB, do not consider themselves to be the sole channel (mouthpiece) of truth today. Mr. Stewart had clearly been prepped with the knowledge that the Watchtower has many times pointed to the Watchtower publications and/or the Watchtower Society as the sole channel for dispensing truth today. This idea has been repeated very directly during the time of Russell, Rutherford and Knorr/Franz, but much more subtly in recent publications.

I would participate gladly in an open-forum Biblical discussion about what we can learn from Paul's letter to the Galatians. If it can inform our modern day view of the GB that's fine, but I think the view of an ex-JW vs the view of a JW is going to be rather predictable on that count. Nevertheless, I'd say 'go for it.'

Let's see. ichi ni San-J go roku shichi hachi kuu juu . . . I stopped counting when it was up into the thirty-somethings. But more than half are still active, just rarely resurrected.

It's amazing, isn't it? It's also amazing how quickly each of the new avatars puts on the old personality, and then puts on old "socks," too.

For some, I think it must be like the reason they tie C.T.Russell somehow to Freemasonry. There is absolutely no reason to think that CTR was a Freemason just because he was familiar with some of their terminology and dabbled in silly pyramidology. But to a lot of people, Freemasonry means "demon" and "demon-control" and therefore it means something much worse than it would have meant, if Russell had been an actual Freemason. The same goes for those anti-JWs with a 'no-better-than-average' sense of pareidolia (people who see people and faces in everyday objects). When they look at pictures in the Watchtower of clouds or trees or bushes or patterns on cloth or in woodwork or this or that or the other, they see deformed faces and think of demons. I think these same people are a bit paranoid, too, so that when a real cloud in the sky looks like a puppy they wait for the cloud to grow and change and shift and distort and only notice it when it looks like a werewolf to them. I have a sense that they want to dismiss the success of JWs and assign it to demonic forces and this somehow rationalizes it for them. (Seeing Jehovah's obvious blessing in something and then trying to say it was from Satan and his demons is, in my mind, the primary definition of 'sinning against the holy spirit.') I say this because the answer is yes, they often do posit a reason. I just got sucked down a reddit-hole last night looking for the answer to the same question. And it's sometimes related to the idea that if the UN really is a [demon-inspired] beast of Revelation, then the Witnesses are sucking up to the beast for whatever favors the beast would grant them. For the most part, however, it's just mentioned as a show of hypocrisy and sloppiness (as opposed to faithfulness and "discreetness"). I saw a comparison of the directive by the WTS that Malawians not buy a 25 cent national ID card over which Witnesses were killed, and the nonchalant sign-up to a 1991 NGO application that said the NGO participant would 'support the mission' of the UN. Some posited that it was for free international flights to troublespots (I highly doubt it), higher visibility when getting involved in humanitarian aid, a way of highlighting support for UNICEF (for children) at the same time that trouble began brewing over child protection in congregations. Ciro Aulicino is the guy who signed up for it along with GB member Lloyd Barry. Several on the forum know these brothers and know that Ciro, at least, was prone to lapses in judgment, but always with a good heart and for a good reason. When he first moved from the Service Dept to the Writing Dept he immediately began setting up a regular schedule where he was at one of the major libraries for nearly a whole day at least once a week. He had no qualms about taking material for his public talks directly from 18th and 19th century authors and commentaries. His Awake! and Watchtower material would often start out with statistics from outside sources. He must have thought that the UN had the best statistics about various nations and international data. Personally, I absolutely believe the WTS's explanation that it was all about access to the library. Any non-profit organization could already have standard access to the UN library, but the library was also a pre-Internet source of information about past, present and future UN backed seminars and reports, and therefore the advantages of becoming an NGO would have been seen as tempting. Those seminars are related to world health, world crime, natural disasters, religious persecution, holocaust memorials, etc., and are attended by writers, researchers, journalists and other religious and political organizations, too. In fact, the WTS still attends seminars that are backed by UN NGO's because it can help highlight the WTS's own involvement with some of these same issues.

Most Witnesses would agree that just visiting a church for the artistic or historical significance is not a problem. When I worked in NYC (1984 to 2014) I worked at 787 7th and then for about 2 years in our auditing department offices at 30 Rockefeller Center (aka "30 Rock"). From my window you could always see St Pats church on the next block and an even closer xmas tree for about 2 months out of every year. On my lunch hour I'd go to various free operas and classical musical performances at St Patrick's, or even a couple blocks further up 5th ave to a large Presbyterian church for its lunchtime concerts. These weren't religious at all, although some Witnesses wouldn't even listen to Bach or various operas because of religious backgrounds and overtones. The acoustics and echoing make many types of music sound amazing inside one of these cathedrals. Choral especially. It might be wrong, but I'll take my Gregorian chantses.

I don't think I ever saw a Gilead tour letter for a U.N. tour. But the ones I have seen are very similar, and there is nothing in the writing or format of this one that looks odd. It's very much like the other letters that came out of the Gilead office in the 70s and 80s. When I pull out some of my old boxes of papers, I can post an almost identical memo/notice that was given to all Gilead students.

I've mentioned before that I was a "Gilead Tour Guide" from 1978 to 1981 for several different classes. I wasn't assigned the UN visit (and I don't recall that there was one at that time) but I took them on tours of NYC including the Financial District (Wall Street area) and Midtown: Rockefeller Center & Central Park & 42nd Street Library. That tour included an old St Patrick's cathedral (Prince & Mott) downtown, and the huge "new" St Patrick's cathedral in Rockefeller Center. We didn't go in the smaller one downtown to avoid attracting attention as a conspicuously large group of JWs in a relatively smaller church, but we always took the entire group into the much larger St Patrick's cathedral in Rockefeller Center (5th & 51st). The fact that there were tours of the UN doesn't mean anything. Just like going into St Patrick's church didn't mean we were turning Roman Catholic. I do remember that there were sometimes one or two who wouldn't go in to the church. They were free to wait in front for the rest of the group to finish. The more vocal of the Gilead students would ask why we were going in: "What if Armageddon comes when you are inside?" One of them once tried to convince a couple others that this might be a test to see who would "fall for it" and go inside. What was most memorable to me was that some wanted to wait directly across the street so they wouldn't even be on the same block. They ended up standing under and next to the large statue of the Titan "god" Atlas, as if he would be strong enough to save them, while Jehovah somehow would not be able to protect anyone who had chosen to look inside a cathedral.