TrueTomHarley

Yes but every little bit helps.

If there is one thing we have learned about Mathew 4 5784, it is that he bitches no matter what. Before the days of cart witnessing, he was saying, ‘Geez—you keep visiting people who aren’t interested. Why don’t you set up carts so that anyone who is can approach you, leaving the rest In peace?’

In a mellow mode, I strolled into a tattoo parlor. Seeing the fellow at work, on the spur of the moment I asked if when one of his trade tattoos an intimate part of the body, whether he gets a charge out of it, or is it just art. ‘It’s art!’ came the firm rebuke.

Um—she made my take some of her pears. Sorry.

Oh, C’mon! Show a little backbone, why don’t you? Next thing you know you’ll be agreeing with that anti-cult whack job Korelov who calls the United States “the spiritual garbage dump of humanity” and who paints Jehovah’s Witnesses foremost in advancing that cause. I distinctly remember in the 70s working with the tract “Jehovah’s Witnesses—Christians or Communists”—designed to counter just the opposite impression, that Witnesses were agents of Russian communism. https://bitterwinter.org/russia-sensational-revelations-jehovahs-witnesses-prepare-an-anti-putin-coup/

The gruff German grandma down the road loaded me up with enough pairs from her tree to last weeks. I was just walking by with headphones on, the way I do, and greeted her as she was crossing the street. Turned out she had just returned from giving a load to people there, also. My greeting was enough. She pulled me into her yard and made me take some of her pairs. However many I took, it was not enough, and I left with a bag as heavy as I could carry. So I brought them to the congregation get-together where several young children who had never eaten pairs before dove into them, found them delicious, and probably had the runs for a week. My wife has called on this women before in the course of her ministry. ‘I don’t think she’s interested,’ she says. ‘She’s gruff, but underneath pretty decent.’ So I told her my wife’s verdict, which I agree with. I’ve been back since for more pears and even some apples. (I should have told her that city-slicker @JW Insiderwould pay her $40 a bag for whatever came off her trees, even $80 if she serenades him with an accordion band.)

“And I heard a voice as if in the midst of the four living creatures say: “A quart of wheat for a de·narʹi·us, and three quarts of barley for a de·narʹi·us; and how do you like them apples?”

I think they’d call us liars for mistranslating, inserting a phrase that’s not there simply because we like it. You can say ‘a god’ or an adjective like ‘divine’ by handling the indefinite article as we do. You can say ‘God’ by botching the significance of the indefinite article. But by no stretch of the imagination can you say ‘Son of God.’ It’s not there. You have to translate the Greek or Hebrew as accurately as you can, and then let that translation instruct you. You can’t do it the other way around—let your beliefs dictate your translating (as though you are instructing God). ‘Truth in Translation: Accuracy and Bias in English Translations of the New Testament’ by Jason Beduhn, examines John 1:1 in several translations and concludes only the New World Translation gets it right, translating in accord with the actual Greek. It’s most of the other translations that read their beliefs into the translating and thereby mess it up, he says. We never want to be like that. It’s dishonest. It’s taking liberties with the Word of God. https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2009/06/scholars-bias-and-the-new-world-translation.html

Don’t forget Big Defense Are you sure it was for this reason? Or was it that once ‘money’ is backed by debt rather than gold, there is no limit to how much of the stuff can be printed, with any day of reckoning put far far off into the future (though perhaps not so far now).

Any scenario these days of the US govt working for the interests of non-renewable energy company seems a little hard to swallow. Aren’t they public enemies #1 for pumping up climate change? Making trouble with Russia is always a thing, I agree. I recall Trump posing the question, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we actually got along with Russia?” Whereupon outside forces intervened to virtually ensure they would not. You would think so. But the world is so screwy today. And the notion of national leaders betraying the interests of the populace is widespread. Yeah, I guess there was some mix-up as to that. My bad. Well…he’s a big boy. He should know better. There are some topics you can’t let within 100 yards of a Bible person—all of them, really. Nonetheless, I’ll refrain from (maybe) commenting along that vein pending another thread.

The real question, should the United States emerge as the culprit, will be the question of why. Is it to win business for American energy companies? Or is it to enforce a globalist view of breaking free from oil as a power source, in which case there would be many a sympathizer, if not co-conspirator, among their like minded ‘brethren’ in Europe who have satisfied themselves as to their own personal well-being.

I appreciate the ‘research.’ Someone is doing dirty unto others far more than others are doing dirty unto him. Why anyone would waste their time issuing a downvote I’ll never know.

The neat thing about the internet is it doesn’t matter. Write what you write and go to bed. I’ll make sure the ruffians don’t erase it while you sleep. Then when you wake and see ten dumb comments appended to your remark, blast away.

I dunno. In that case we’d all be disciples of you-know-who, who quotes scriptures by the truckload but they never apply.

A little research project I recently did: I was about to comment on how Solomon requests of God an ‘obedient heart’ and that is the last thing you might expect a king to request. Before doing so I checked to see what other translations had done with that expression. To my surprise, ‘obedient’ was almost unique. The vast majority said ‘understanding.’ At first blush, this doesn’t bode well for the New World Translation, Only one other out of 64 translations say it as they do, but upon research, I came away thinking ‘obedient’ is likely the best rendering of all: https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2022/08/an-obedient-heart-or-an-understanding-heartwhich-is-it.html

Claret. I hear that she seriously boozes it up with the Librarian (that old hen) every evening.

Witness said the C-word? I mean, I can do it because I don’t pretend to be shining brightly as the sun, but her!

Those instruments have been described as ‘phallic.’ When I heard that, I promptly threw mine in the trash.

Not only engaged. All but married. (To be sure, not happily married) What prompted the change? The position of the earthly organization is not new.

I put it first on my own blog. It’s also in TTvtA. It didn’t carry the day with that Reddit bunch, but then they ARE a hostile crowd. And even I have to admit those mannerisms do take getting used to, regardless of their origin. I think we have to drop back to Pudgy’s comment: Coming from cynical Pudgy, this is extraordinary praise, the equivalent of ‘Stellar’ from anyone else. It may be just an example of God ‘laughing at the wisdom of this systems’s wise ones,’ proof that his anointed are, as in the first century, seldom of ‘noble birth,’ nor ‘wise,’ but decidedly ‘uneducated and ordinary.’ I’ll take substance over style any day. Turn on the TV and you can see endless people whose ‘style’ is impeccable. Among them are some of the stupidest people whom God ever let roam the earth.

Why would he need one?

Jesus sometimes spoke in hyperbole and so does Lett. You could almost say that the man himself is an hyperbole. A brother in our congregation who works with the deaf, who himself has deaf ones in his family, casts doubt on this. Rather, he says it is from long habit of battling Bell’s palsy, which paralyzes the face and which you overcome by deliberate working of face muscles. In response to my questioning, he said he had it “on good authority,” so I rate it probably 90% as being true.

It’s the same as when you want to buy a house only to find all houses have been taken off the market. They are only available for rent, big business having figured out they can make far more money over the long haul than had they just sold it to you.

Everyone wants subscription these days. Recurring income, and they don’t have to do a thing for it. Lawsuits over tractor-makers for not allowing farmers to fix their own tractors,

I know my word is my bond, just like James Bond says before hurls a villain into a piranha pit*, but I didn’t. I put it on my own blog first as ‘Part 2.’ It’s mostly just a rehash of points made first here anyway. Update Pete Carroll’s pic one comment above to show piranhas at the bottom of the abyss and Bond doing the hurling, and you’re golden.