TrueTomHarley

That sounds like an excellent reason for you to upvote her thread the minute after it is posted. Look, just say this about all the other threads you weigh in on and we will all be happy. “I don’t know who this person is. I am not speaking about anything that she has brought up, and I am only here to insert some crass cartoons and insult people.” There. What is so hard about that?

Your statement regarding the overall premise of this thread is EXACTLY incorrect. Alexandra’s entire complaint is based upon something that is factually incorrect—and you have hailed it as though it were the commandments brought down from Sinai. Whether or not the policy addresses every conceivable scenario or whether it is always adhered to is another matter entirely. She has stated that there is none She states that there is no policy to warn parents should a person guilty of CSA be retained in the congregation. There is. And it would be hard to put it in a more obvious place—the online and downloadable. WT policy on child sexual abuse. Moreover, had she come by the book honestly, rather than pilfering it off the internet from Jack or one of his chums, she would have been there to hear the “Brothers, make sure you consult the online CSA policy, for the special circumstance of when the wrong repented over involves child abuse.” There are enough legitimate things to be concerned about without you fanning the flames of charges that are undeniably bogus. By doing so, you contribute to the hysteria of anticultism that less freedom-loving nations use as a pretext for physically assaulting upright people and putting a stop to that dissemination of Bible truths that you have said is important.

You are sort of right and sort of wrong. TJ did own slaves. He also wrote at length that slavery destroys both blacks and whites. This is substantially different from men like John C Calhoun, who wrote that it is an arrangement that benefits both groups.

Missing the entire point is another, also. Of course any policy can not be implemented. But that is not Alexandra’s statement. Her statement is that there is no policy to specifically warn parents in the event of child sexual abuse. Had she just read the easily available online JW policy, she would have known that the whole thrust of her point is bogus.

All one need to do blow this silly thing out of the water is to read the relevant portion of the JW downloadable child abuse policy. 11. If it is determined that one guilty of child sexual abuse is repentant and will remain in the congregation, restrictions are imposed on the individual’s congregation activities. The individual will be specifically admonished by the elders not to be alone in the company of children, not to cultivate friendships with children, or display any affection for children. In addition, elders will inform parents of minors within the congregation of the need to monitor their children’s interaction with the individ- ual. {Bolded mine] https://download-a.akamaihd.net/files/media_publication/4a/cpt_E.pdf In the special case of child sexual abuse, these are the steps that go above and beyond handling other forms of wrongdoing. Why doesn’t Alexandra James refer to this? Why doesn’t John know it? No one has been more prolific at leveling charges as he, and he swallows every word of her accusations. Why does Srecko give it a Gold Star Thank You? All he and John have to do is to read the JW published policy to see that she is wrong. One would think the organization’s published child abuse policy would be the very first thing consulted. Instead, they never read it at all, or else they do and immediately seek to bury it. Will Mr. Rook give himself a downvote for overlooking this most obvious proof that the complaint he slobbers all over is bogus? It is clear that Ms James spends too much time pouring over confidential material that she has pilfered and insufficient time reading what is right under her nose.

It was a printers’ error. I meant it to say “TrueTom vs the Misunderstood Guys” Having used the A-word a few times prominently, the book mostly discards it in favor of the verses I quoted above, One place that I do not is an early chapter with the title Who Are the Apostates? https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2019/01/who-are-the-apostates.html

You may not have noticed, but I seldom even call them apostates, especially when they are young. Can a twenty-something really be an apostate? They have not yet earned the word. Sometimes I call them “apostates-in-training.” Nor do I say that they are necessarily wrong in all they say. As one elder once said to me: “Some of these brothers are so narrow-minded that you could put out their eyes with a shrimp fork.” If you happened to get caught in the cross-fire of such persons, you might well go online and talk about “the absurdities of [your] experiences,” as the philly.com reporter put it. One can always respond, as I do, that if they carry on about “the absurdities of their experiences,” maybe it is that they remained too shallow to ever experience the real thing. Still, it is a test to get caught up in some of the oddball things that have happened. Increasingly, I like instead to just think of some as do certain scriptures: “Look out: perhaps there may be someone who will carry you off as his prey through the philosophy and empty deception according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary things of the world and not according to Christ.” (Colossians 2:8) And “For there are many, I used to mention them often but now I mention them also with weeping, who are walking as the enemies of the torture stake of the Christ, and their finish is destruction, and their god is their belly, and their glory consists in their shame, and they have their minds upon things on the earth.” (Philippians 3:19) or say what happened to them is what happened to good ol Demas: “Demas has forsaken me because he loved the present system of things.” (2 Timothy 4:10)

Empathy - and just when called for. Get a load of the sympathy I show for that fathead Jack over on the other thread.

Oh, stuff it. Since I plainly reveal what I have just done, anyone with interest can easily see what has transpired. B. W. Is writing scholarly material of lasting significance. That is not so of most that goes down here. What! You would put your irreverent cartoons on the level of ‘War and Peace’?

There is no better way to make the medicine go down that comedy. After all, if you bury the most brilliant counsel in the more repellent package, how many are going to ponder it? It works for genuine ‘apostasy,’ too. The best way to dispose of much of it is with comedy. It must be done sparingly and without losing empathy, but comedy is often the way to go.

I changed “lecturing” to “enlightening.” It suits better. You are right. 28 words is not a lecture. And he is just not sure whether your little cartoon is meant to offend JWs, as most of yours do. He doesn’t rubber-stamp every JW view of a century ago, but neither does he have the ax to grind that others clearly do, and accepts as a given that the players back then were upright persons of integrity.

Please don’t start enlightening B W with your folk ‘wisdom.’

“If diners agree to let McDonald’s know who they are, menus could offer food based on their past orders” This means that I will soon weigh 700 pounds. Only very occasionally do I eat at McDonalds these days, but when I did.... Did you know that if you eat at a fast food place and bow your head to give thanks for the artery-clogging stuff, God gets mad?

Unfortunately, Rachael would have taken a dim view of that, I fear. She could get pretty critical of those who read regularly but did not comment. I once expressed my opinion to her that not everyone saw it that way, and she thereafter took a dim view of me for a day or so.

Say, you have plenty of old stuff lying around. Maybe you two could collaborate. After all, you need a new project. ”The riot squad is restless; they need somewhere to go.” - Bob Dylan

From her sickbed, Rachael de Vienne stirred herself to tell me, through her daughter, that I was wrong. It was just on a tiny supporting fact of a book I was working on and I had only put the fact in so as to give her book a plug. I wasn’t even wrong on the fact—I was wrong on the inference I took from it, she said. I wasn’t even wrong on that, in my opinion. But that’s just it—it was my opinion. ‘Keep your opinions separate from the facts,’ she would have said. ‘There is nothing wrong with drawing inferences, conclusions, and educated guesses. Just label them as such.’ THAT is the kind of historian she was. Sigh—I changed the passage just to suit her, and it probably didn’t. She wouldn’t review my first book, either, or any of the other ones, though I just asked her to do the first, Tom Irregardless and Me. I mean, I had written a nice review for her book. Finally, with some nagging, she said that she might review mine and asked how I intended to submit it. ‘It’s not done that way,’ she retorted, when I told her. Tweeting with a co-blogger about it, as though on a private phone connection and not a social media platform broadcast to the whole wide world, the co-blogger told her that he wasn’t going to review it, either—‘the first chapter is about Prince, and then in places it is a little “preachy”—not pure fact at all.’ It was too much. I tweeted: “YOU GET ON THAT KEYBOARD AND REVIEW IT RIGHT NOW!” but then had second thoughts and deleted the tweet. See what sort of historians she hung out with? During her final few months, she interspersed regular tweets with some detailing her illness, at times getting quite graphic, caring not about revealing the personal humiliation you must experience as your own body is betraying you. Imagine—chronicling your own suffering that way—true to her calling to the last. See what sort of an historian she was? The book that she co-authored with the unwieldy title—as though to make clear that it is scholarly and not a specimen of pop writing—A Separate Identity—Organizational Identity Among Readers of Zion’s Watchtower: 1870-1887’: I admit, I skimmed it. Not through lack of interest—you will never find a more thorough history of non-mainstream events—but through lack of time. I wanted to write a decent and coherent review. I agreed with her (explicitly labeled) speculation that the the reason the Watchtower Society received her completed book without comment after being semi-cooperative in providing source material is that “they are incurious as to their own history.” Yeah. I agree. They are. So am I—I mean, I (and they) am not uninterested—it is just that I am interested in other things more. The ‘Society’ is not rooted in anything, I don’t think. They are progressive. They move on. Separate Identity is the not the only book that she wrote, and I look forward to curling up to it and others when (more likely if) I ever find the time, because it is excellent, universally praised, except occasionally by some hothead Jehovah’s Witnesses themselves because it does not adhere to the party line—it goes where it goes without regard to who has later been christened hero or villain. She co-authored a book about Nelson Barbour, too, and this should interest me even more because I once lived about a hundred yards from where he did (also a hundred years). I had written a blog post about Barbour, a well-known “get-outer” preacher of the late 1800s that Charles Taze Russell for a time partnered with, and I observed that there must have been some relationship between he and a well-known Rochester Presbyterian preacher of the same surname, whose wife Elizabeth is listed as ‘excommunicated and expunged’ or words to that effect. Rachael told me that I was wrong on that, too—the two families were entirely separate. I am not even sure that she liked me, really, but we followed each other on Twitter, and she would occasionally respond to my tweets and even more occasionally initiate some to me. My non-religious semi-serious historical work she let pass with minimal comment. Maybe she was more like my 7th grade social studies teacher, who made everyone literally start every essay paragraph with the phrase in parentheses: “who, what, where, why, how,” so that we would learn to write with substance, and who would say things like ‘Don’t write “In my opinion.” Of course it’s your opinion—you wrote it!’ This doesn’t entirely square with Rachael’s urging, which just goes to show why you mull over all input, but each one must ultimately develop his or her own style. I always liked it that she found such great comfort from her family, to offset her many years of illness—lifelong, it seems. I miss her. Here is her obit, and the blog lives on in other hands, I believe. You will never find a more rigorous example of niche history, digging up letters, notes, minutia and photos 100 years old. https://truthhistory.blogspot.com/2019/03/our-princess.html Let’s end with a review of Separate Identity that says it all. It is reproduced at truthhistory. “Histories of the early Watch Tower movement tend to fall into two extremes, hagiography and polemic. This is because they are usually written from a range of widely differing theological perspectives, not that of a strict historian. Additionally, they tend to concentrate on the figure of Charles Taze Russell to the virtual exclusion of his contemporaries. This volume redresses that balance, written by two historians with an almost fanatical attention to detail as demonstrated by the voluminous footnotes. They appear to strive hard to keep any personal views out of the picture and go where the evidence takes them. The result is a detailed, even-handed history of Russell and his contemporaries - crucially in the context of their times. Many writers on this subject seem to try and graft 21st century attitudes onto 19th century people, not recognising that the beliefs of Russell and others in the second half of the nineteenth century were often far more mainstream than a modern reader might imagine. Even if one has no direct interest in Russell and what came later from his ministry, several groups today count people like Henry Grew, George Storrs, and John Thomas in their antecedents. These men all feature in this book and, certainly in the case of Storrs, you are unlikely to find as much detailed information on his life and work anywhere else. The writers have previously published a volume on Nelson Barbour: The Millennium’s Forgotten Prophet. That too is well worth reading, although the present volume (that takes history up to 1879) is a stand-alone book.”

I like it.

You are right. We have paved the way in some areas, and this matter of Jesus dying on a cross, which some malcontents retreat from, is one of them. Here is an evangelical preacher who created a sensation by writing the same. https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2010/11/did-jesus-die-on-a-cross.html By the way, that brother who I wrote about who would move his hand up and down frantically across his breastbone when coming across something unexpected? That was not Tom Oxgoad, my own fictional character. That was Dave McClure, a circuit overseer who passed away some years ago. What a hoot he was. Everyone loved him. I used to stick to these guys like glue back in the day when I was single. I even got to be his chauffeur in the afternoon, because he liked a break from driving. He had me stop in at one of those Photomat kiosks long ago in a parking lot—places that you dropped off film for developing. I pulled ahead slightly and from the back seat he spoke with the attendant, who couldn’t find his photos and so offered him a free roll of film. “There’s going to be blood in the sun if you don’t find those pictures,” he said, using some hillbilly expression that I had never heard before, “unless you want to take me on another vacation.” He made that girl turn her little kiosk upside down, searching each nook and cranny. “I understand that things happen,” he told me later. “It’s just that cavalier attitude that they should lose my pictures and think I will be satisfied with a free role of film that’s nettling.”

It will not readily yield to change, if history is any guide. About the best I can hope for is some circuit overseer acting similarly as he did with another “crisis.” During a transitional lull from one main point to another, he will say that the expression “Now let us turn the platform over to the next speaker” is ridiculous because it evokes an image of turning the platform over. With that, I eventually heard the expression less, though it still pops up from time to time. It is not easy to correct anyone on anything, especially on a triviality, though occasionally people jump instantly on the trivialities but ignore substantial things. Finding the right degree of emphasis is tough. One recipient will say “Thanks for the new RULE!” and his companion will say “Huh? Did you say something.” There was a certain sister ages ago who enjoyed explaining things to others and eventually left the truth because not enough people listened to her. She had even begun to partake of the emblems. “What the Society is trying to tell us is....” she would often employ as a preamble. She is the inspiration (in this one regard only) for John Wheatandweeds, from Tom Irregardless and Me, who will not let the brothers go in field service in the morning because he insists as the conductor of rattling on and on about the day’s text, and he resists counsel to shorten that part eventually to as short as 7 minutes, and he talks at such length, drawing out comments, that eventually nobody is in the mood to go out anymore. “What the Society is trying to tell us...” he responds to every bit of counsel on the subject. Finally, the Society interrupts him mid-sentence to say “We’re not trying to tell you anything—we’re telling you.” So he finally responds by getting everyone out the door in reasonably short order—not seven minutes, but neither seven years—however he makes up for it by chatting away in the parking lot.

I could be in serious trouble. They just finished remodeling the Kingdom Hall, and there are two quarter walls, one left of stage and one right. Gulp. Will the brother start entering and exiting the platform via those quarter walls, just like I saw them do in the other congregation? https://www.theworldnewsmedia.org/forums/topic/79559-you-don’t-enter-stage-from-behind-the-quarter-walls/ The circuit overseer was visiting, so I started pumping him on it. “‘Don’t let the brothers walk behind the quarter wall to go on-stage,” I told him. I was not too insistent, one mustn’t overdo it on these things. I mean, I don’t want to be the brother who meets him in the parking lot to tell him that all the brothers are no good, and they aren’t loving at all, and they are deadwood in the ministry, and come to think of it, they don’t even like God, and so he, the circuit overseer, has a lot of work to do here, and he says “Yeah, I think I’ve found the problem already.” I did about as much as I could. He seemed to be sympathetic. “Yeah, I know,” he said. “You see them, then you don’t as they walk behind the wall, and then you do as they emerge from the other side—it IS a little funny.” So I gave it a good try. But he was just biding his time to get away from me. He is not going to do anything at all, I don’t think, other than tell the brothers to go on the platform when it is their turn to speak. What does he care how they do it? It doesn’t bother HIM any one way of the other. It’s ME it’s driving nuts, and then he will say “Well, you were mostly there already.” I have always tried to stack the deck. Those elders way back in the day would have a meeting coming up and I would pump various ones separately over multitude of picayune things, so that one of them said at their meeting (as I was told later) “Wait a minute. Who’s running this congregation? You, me, or Tom Harley?” But lo! A miracle has occurred. Never never never NEVER did I think I would EVER agree with @Jack Ryan. But I do on something. Jack Ryan! who if a Bethel brother so much as farts, he starts a derogatory thread on it. Jack Ryan! who has been known to start as many as a dozen critical threads in a single day. Jack Ryan! who I think regards himself as some sort of a secret agent/freedom fighter. What is it with this character? Yet, I saw, yes—I witnessed it while visiting another congregation, brothers clapping after each and every exchange that took place up front, whether li8ve or on video, just the way Jack was complaining about. Suddenly he becomes as a prophet from on high. That too, drove me nuts!—all that clapping. You don’t clap over every single skit of one sister offering a tract to another, who, of course accepts it a just little too eagerly, it seems to me, from what I recall in the actual ministry. You clap spontaneously when something really knocks your socks off. You clap when a child or even anyone gives his or her first talk on the school. You clap when the spirit genuinely moves you, for anything. You clap after the public talk, even giving the speaker the benefit of the doubt if it wasn’t that—um—good. But you don’t clap for every minor exchange of trivial words! It only cheapens the times that there really is something to clap for. I know where this comes from, just like I know where walking behind the quarter walls came from. Some pious brother doubtless wanted to “show appreciation” for everything under the sun and so started up the habit, thinking he was setting a ‘good example’ and that others would follow, and those others, not wanting to seem unappreciative, did follow, even some half-heartedly. However, it is possible that it is not the pious brother at all who is responsible, but rather the one who is too swayed by the new-agey mantra that you have to lavish praise on children non-stop just for showing up, for the sake of building self-esteem, and so they clap if a brother so much as clears his throat. I mean, don’t go pinning this one on “theocracy,” Jack—it could just as well be that trendy “world” that you are so enamored with. This will not the easiest habit to break. I mean, you can hardly sit there and scowl, so as to provide the counter-example. The best strategy is just to contain it, as you might strive to do with a measles outbreak. Don’t send speakers to that congregation for awhile, until the illness passes. I doubt I can even enlist the circuit overseer in any serious capacity on this one. He will probably just roll his eyes when I meet him about it in the parking lot. C’mon, DO IT RIGHT, BROTHERS!

I am scribbling away like mad, taking notes. It is hard to keep up.

Does it really make any significant difference? Mostly you are quibbling over words, while not addressing the actual point. The point is, that after a single year as a Witness, you become convinced of your anointing, with all its implications that you will be a messenger to everyone else, as well as a future (and in some respects present) king and priest. Now, I would be nettled at the GB assuming that role, too, except that they have given serious evidence of their qualifications: They are the spiritual descendants of those who brought the truth to me in the first place, they are “jealous with a godly jeolousy” over those they have promised to hand over to the Lord in an approved state, they make every effort to shelter me from the storm, barring compromising on scriptural things, they are unafraid to discipline me in accord with scriptural principles if needed, and most have served for years of full-time service in assignments more lowly than most of those whom they ultimately lead. I do not expect perfection of them, just as I do not expect the bus driver to avoid every pothole on a dilapidated road. Have you done any of these things? No. Or at least you’ve pointed to no evidence. Am I “impressed with great things?” Not unduly. But neither am I in a hurry to buy snake-oil that offers no evidence of its efficacy. And here you rail about them being where their immediate needs are met. It is hard not to see this as sheer envy on your part. Theirs is no more than not muzzling the ox while it is threshing—and thresh they do. Are they amassing wealth for themselves, say in 401Ks? The day they leave Bethel, if they do, they find their circumstances very modest indeed. When R Franz left Bethel, he took away a lifetime settlement of 10K. For a time, he went back to being a handyman to support himself—and you probably railed about that, too.

So. The role of the anointed that you are among is to rule as kings over the earth, per Revelation 5:10. And yet 144,000 (which I always thought was a lot) is but a drop in the bucket? The true number of kings is innumerable? Just how many kings to you think the earth needs? Do they outnumber those they rule over? (Will you end up being mine?) And your qualifications so that I should accept this future (and present) rulership? Two, that I can see. 1) After a year as a Witness, you said that you were a king by partaking of the emblems. 2.) You tell us day and night that the Governing Body are frauds. With them, I can look at their track record. It is substantial. And what track record of yours have you pointed to? Let us quote the house sage @James Thomas Rook Jr.: “Zip, zero, nada.” Am I missing something here? It is one thing to be critical of the GB. Many do it here. But to hold yourself up as a preferred substitute? Really?

That’s not very many people.

It’s a good thing that Jehovah’s Witnesses have their current organization to make sure that these bad things do not happen.