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TrueTomHarley

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Everything posted by TrueTomHarley

  1. Ah well. The smoking gun began smoking two or three concurrent generations before my time. Should I make it into the new system, then I will be living forever and if they try it again I will catch them in the act!
  2. Yes. If you are going to go hogwild over critical thinking, then go all the way. Turn it upon the Bible itself. The reason we can look at the Bible the way we do is because we have 'tasted and seen that Jehovah is good.' It is experience that determines how we look upon things. But if you hail from the world of criticism, you cannot conceive of unity. You have never seen it. Leave these people to their own devices and there is no Bible book written as presented. Every one of them is a hash of conflicting authors with warring agendas. It is the only reality these scholars have ever observed and it colors all of their scholarship. Bethel will never let go of 607, I don't think, because it enabled them to hit the nail on the head. The entire world only goes to war for the first time ever once in all millenia and they hit the year. Other years are known for various world leaders losing their library cards. Nothing packs the punch of 1914. If the entire world going to war concurrently for the first time ever isn't peace being taken from the world, what is? Even if the overlapping generations threaten to separate - and I wouldn't hold my breath on that - they could simply say that a generation is a loose term of a certain time period - say, like the 'industrial age.' In 1974 a brief snippet in the Watchtower quoted some source with that outlook, and I recall thinking that that view might surface again some day. @JW Insider can find it, no doubt. It was in the Watchtower's equivalent of 'watching the world' - a series that ran for awhile of 3 items to a page. A few weeks ago there appeared in the meeting the Kingdom Rules book on Isaiah 11. Discussing the return of the Jews from Babylonian exile and how they would be encouraged by Isaiah's prophesy about the animals, it said: "The lion would eat straw in the sense that it would not devour the Jews' cattle." They didn't have to do it. They could have said "God will supply them with bales of hay in order to feed the lions." Okay? They are not hung up on whether words are literal or figurative. 'Generation' will go more unconventional yet if it has to. I am handicapped in the 607 discussion by not knowing anything about it. But it is less of a handicap then one might think. @Ann O'Maly trots out the 100 year old quote that profane history cannot be trusted because it is written by men of conflicting motives in a Satan-controlled world. She hopes anyone reading the quote with think the GB stupid. The quote differs hardly at all with 'history is written by the victors,' which she probably quotes with an air of superiority in other discussions. @Arauna pointed out before what anyone with discernment knows already - that the land of scholarship is one of big egos (she was speaking Egyptology, I think, but it is across the board) where the 'victors' to all they can do discredit whoever they have temporarily out-argued - defunding them, even banning them from access to materials. You don't go slobbering over critical thinking as the be-all and end-all. It is too easily outmaneuvered by other interests.
  3. This sounds ignorant. "History is written by the victors." This sounds learned and it is accepted wisdom today. How are the two statements fundamentally different?
  4. Fortunately for her the old boy is married at the moment, hopefully for good.
  5. Obviously the two women needed to have their heads examined. An old-timer told me of when he was fiddling with his slide rule at McDonalds. A young employee asked him what it was and how it worked. He showed him. The kid's eyes grew big: "Wow! You should patent that! You'd make a fortune!" But we are running away with the thread of @Shirley Ann Lowery and I feel guilty about that. Especially as she is a newcomer and hers is a concern that many have had.
  6. Any man who loves dogs cannot quite be the character he sometimes appears to beÂ
  7. The apocryphal Gospel of Howard tells that the Lord asked Matthew to join him, but he had to go bowling. Andrew had a date at the horse races. John, Peter, and Nathaniel were off to the tavern. Both Judas' commended him for his fine work but said they were busy. The remaining ones of the twelve all said that their wives handled the religion in their households - not they. So the Lord roamed far and wide with the wives of the twelve. James approved of the arrangement. He confided to a friend that "a man can only stand so much religion anyway." He was happy to have his wife out of the house, where she could nag him less. He afforded her great freedom, so long as she returned at the end of the day to fix his dinner while he watched the game. The religion of the female twelve spread like wildfire. Simply put, the women were just not the jerks their husbands were and they actually listened to what the householders said.
  8. If they had kept their insurance premiums up to date they wouldn't have been destroyed at all.
  9. There is excellent competition for categories of 'shocking' and many involve large scale killings, torture and rape. The ban on Witness activity in Russia does not yet rate on this scale and likely will not - though one never knows. It is head-and-shoulders the most important story as regards freedom of worship, but this is only one of many human rights. The list is compiled according to stories most publicized. To that extent, the Governing Body must be given much credit, for they did not allow this thing to be done in a corner. Still, there is another list on the HRW website of ten videos - of shocking blood and guts violence - the the Witness ban does not even appear on this one. There has to be gore galore to make a dent today in the world's greater consciousness. The Witness ban, while it is the most spiritually shocking event, is not the most physically shocking, or even close.
  10. There are no rules of any sort. Except for a family head who is authorized to set rules for his family. And since Bethel is a 'family' - many persons living in voluntary close quarters for a specific reason - there are quite a few rules there. But they do not carry over into the general congregation (though there are always some who would have it otherwise). There is counsel and peer pressure. It will be (relevant to this thread) based on the concept many have noticed that men and women are attracted to each other, yet cannot enjoy the intimate closeness of sex relations unless married so it is best not to allow themselves to get all pumped up. The counsel varies from place to place and culture will have something to do with it. If you enjoy privileges in the congregation - servant, pioneer - you will find that you are expected to be an example and you can lose privileges by flying in the face of such counsel as to what is locally acceptable or has been published. Otherwise, no. Jehovah's people are not belligerent or headstrong and are not inclined to blow off counsel as nothing. Elders are not control freaks or micro-managers, though some are - in about the same proportion as the general population, I would guess. Efforts are made through training so as to get those ones to be less that way. There is such a thing as 'brazen conduct' - it used to be translated 'loose conduct.' It has the air of contempt & outrageous disregard of customary standards & an in-your-face attitude. That can get a person in trouble. Since it is more vague than outright immorality, it will not always be applied consistently. But always it is associated with persistent defiance of accepted conduct - just look up the word 'brazen' to get a sense for it. But it is never a matter of petty rules enforced by people who just like to meddle. Anyone like that jeopardizes his reputation as a reasonable person - one of the criteria for serving as an older man.
  11. Who are the world's seven greatest librarians? What qualities make them such? A thread for each one, if you please.
  12. On Facebook, one of my countless friends said: "Hussein's rebuilt Babylon was smashed to bits in the first gulf war. A Syrian brother told me the local Iranian word on the street was basically "Why did they bomb Disneyland?"
  13. Homeschooling the kids, we used to color in on a world map each year the various countries - with colors corresponding to penetration of the good news, as in 'publisher to general population' ratio. It was a fine way to teach both theocracy and geography We used the rainbow. Red was the greatest concentration. Violet was stone cold. Alas, today it might all be misconstrued as the advancement of gay rights.
  14. What do you do when you spy the woman of wickedness trying to climb out of the ephah jar? (Zech 5:7) You grab the brazen hussy by the scruff the neck and boot her back down into the jar from where she came. (taking care in these volatile times that you do not get accused of harassment) Then you summon the two with wings to ship her back to Babylon. Maybe it was a reminder to the Jews who had just come from there to check their own ephah jars - or even their shoes, lest they had tracked something in. Incidentally, present at our meeting was an Iraqi man who has responded to the Arabic group. The actual Babylon means something to him, unlike to anyone else. He says it is the site of a festival each year, with music and food. Also that there is the slogan everyone knows: 'Babylon will rise again.'
  15. Why would you want them weary over something so serious as that?
  16. I’m gettin’ up in the morning—I believe I’ll dust my broomKeeping away from the womenI’m givin’ ’em lots of room - Bob Dylan
  17. Nobody even knew that it was still the king of the north after glasnost. I think there was a published comment once that the identities of those kings was then unclear. The terms have not been used for some time. No, I don't think it is. What is unthinkable (except by those who do it) is to rebel against them. Everyone knows they are people and can make mistakes. But Jehovah's people also exercise faith, which has been borne out from the oldest times, that God works through humans and does not take kindly to ones that trash them.
  18. Shortly after construction of the Henrietta Assembly Hall, Kodak purchased adjacent land. The brothers were delighted. It probably meant the land would be rural forever. There was already a high-tech Kodak facility nearby and there apparently just wanted bigger buffers. (there was a rumor that they also wanted to buy the Hall itself) We all know what happened to the K. The land was resold long ago and there is now a housing tract abutting the Assembly Hall.
  19. It translates into 'El Presidente' in some languages. Hence there is COBE. It caused me trouble. I do nothing but raz our COBE, and he me, and we are on good terms. When a new Bethel bigwig came to visit and was staying with our COBE, I said to him at our first meeting: "Are you the hotshot from Bethel who comes down to straighten out our no-good COBE?" Only I didn't say COBE. Inadvertently, I said CO. He got a shocked look on his face and wilted away. When I realized my mistake I called the COBE by phone and said he had to bail me out. He did - but he said I owed him one or two (or three).
  20. He specifically tried to sell him a deed to a summer cottage he did not even own of the Sea of Galilee without telling him violent waves kicked up by frequent storms making seafront property worthless for that body of water - AND that it was polluted with the carcasses of 1000 pigs that had leapt off from the precipice above!! You call yourself a Bible student? It makes as much sense at hiding an elephant under a bath towel for the Russians to discover the ruse.
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