TrueTomHarley

For some reason that I do not understand (is it my imagination?) I seem to rankle you even more than I do the nefarious JTR, who simply prepares another cartoon -  though I would have it the other way around. I consistently find myself agreeing with almost everything you say, and at times being corrected by you.

Some things, though, can be taken too far. Though I agree in some measure with 

1 hour ago, Arauna said:

One wants to use ' money /banks' to control the world (I will not mention the religious backers) The other:  who want to fight with weapons to rule the world (of which ISIS is a good example.)

it could also be pointed out the king of the south these days bombs more countries than the king of the north. Money, in this instance, powers the south to manufacture weapons as much or more as the north. Publicly traded arms makers must report quarterly - and those quarterly reports better look good, or hordes of stockholders threaten to abandon ship and go look for 'greener' pastures. Corporations reach a point where they must create their own market, and not just wait for the market to come to them, as a private company might do. Hence, the many Washington lobbyists who ever push the perception that there are many many enemies who must be kept in check by weapons, which, as it turns out, can be supplied by the outfit that they represent.

It is not just the king of the north who loves weapons.

5 hours ago, Arauna said:

I think you are talking absurdities! 

Do you really know what a 'religious political' movement is?

I don't think I said that I viewed us that way. I said that the Soviet government did. It is in Baran's book and is well-supported.

Who cares what I think? The brothers were not trying to operate where I governed. They were trying to operate where they governed. I simply meant to note their point of view, not indicate agreement with it.

1 hour ago, Israeli Bar Avaddhon said:

Agree. Do not check the scriptures. We would not want to find something we do not like

During Soviet times when the government was atheistic and could hardly be expected to pick up on religious nuances, it turned out they looked askance at being labeled the 'king of the north' who 'put his trust in the god of fortresses.' 

They were suspicious - and remain so to this day - that the Witnesses were but a political movement disguised as a a religion, taking orders from US based Brooklyn.

1 hour ago, TrueTomHarley said:

As it turns out, I did go to college and I do have a degree. It didn't help me a bit.

Furthermore, while I am more well-read than many, college had nothing to do with it.

I once calculated I had read 55 of the 100 'most important books in history' on a list put out by the BBC. Nobody I encountered had read more.

I read almost all of them via 'Books on Tape' while working a humdrum job in which only my body had to be engaged, but my mind remained mine. Possibly I can credit college with stimulating an already existing appreciation of reading. But it's a rather expensive route just to take away that lesson. I'll share it for free: Read.

(that'll be $5.99, please)

And even with all that reading, I have found Bible-based literature to be the best framework for evaluating everything else, simple though that writing is.

 

17 minutes ago, Bible Speaks said:

Oh yes! I have FORTUNATELY (FORTUNE) ? met you. Keep up the Good Works Brother.

It has been my good fortune to ... ah, no. Fortune......Luckily I ....no, strike that. Luck It is my good destiny to .....um, no..strike again. Destiny. What a wonderful quirk of fate that ....uh oh ...Fate    

Ah, forget it!

 

1 hour ago, Gone Fishing said:

I, (thankfully), am one of those under-educated, college dropout JWs highlighted in another thread. Funny, it made no difference to me financially on comparison with siblings and peers who availed themselves of "the king's shilling".

As it turns out, I did go to college and I do have a degree. It didn't help me a bit.

It is my fault, not theirs. Nonetheless, I'm quite certain that both GF and JWI made more dough than I, and probably even Bellyacher-in-Chief JTR.

17 minutes ago, Anna said:

Wasn't the bound volume printed well before the Y2K problem?

I can see you don't know anything about science.

Everyone knows what extremism is and they know that Jehovah's Witnesses are not it. 

And Jehovah's Witnesses alone were banned as a religion. But others may follow. Every non-majority faith is harassed.

1 hour ago, JW Insider said:

Turns out that "LUCK" was more than likely just a term for success or loss that came into English from middle German where a lot of gaming and gambling terms came from in the 1500s. So we all replaced it with a word based on FORTUNE

Actually, I only crossed it out because I wasn't sure I had spelled it correctly.

2 hours ago, Bible Speaks said:

I know you might go to the Kingdom Hall when signs of Armageddon comes?

The same chapter of the Kingdom book that spoke of the first use of 'Kingdom Hall' also spoke of the first time Witnesses met in their own building. A church group had been divided because half followed Russell's teachings and half did not. There were two groups but only one building, and for a time (this was in the 1880's) whoever got to the building first used it for services.

I realized that our salvation lay in this account. The tyrannical and mean organization regularly abuses their authority by reminding Witnesses to get to meetings on time, even a little early for the sake of visiting.  I realized the answer to the problem was to share our Hall with the Mormons or Catholics or Rastafarians. Then our people will get there early to prevent the others from using it.

might it be, though, someone asked, that only one person would arrive early, and not the whole congregation? Not a problem. In that case, he or she can save seats. We're good at that, too.

All these explanations are wrong. It becomes tiresome. 

Luckily Fortunately for everyone here, I will elucidate. The answer is found in our family folklore.

I invited my profane great uncle to a meeting long ago. He attended only one. He sputtered and groused throughout the talk and Watchtower study, just like some on this forum. Afterwards in the parking lot he grumbled to a brother, who turned out to be hard of hearing: "What is this nonsense about a Kingdom? Hell, I don't believe a word of it!"

The brother mistook his remark as appreciation. He thought it would make a really cool name for something that had, up to that time, been called a "place."

The term caught on. Brother Rutherford heard about it one day and said: 'Yeah. I can live with that."

4 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

Can't tell if you are trying to solve the Society's "generation" crisis, or trying to sell books, or just don't want to throw out your obsolete neckties.

I'm trying to sell my obsolete neckties to the Society, who brought this all on.

1 hour ago, JW Insider said:

You think that the real reason the correction was made was because they understood the potential that a software glitch would have made us revert back to the end of the 19th century, doomed to repeat the last 100 years like a "Groundhog Day" for centuries instead of days. All I can say is what you said . . .

8 hours ago, J.R. Ewing said:

Conspiracy theorist got to love them!!!

It is not a conspiracy theory. Just look what happened to me:

Stuck in an evil time warp. At last I understand.

23 hours ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

Are you just noting, TTH ... or chastising ... that one person has not answered another's questions?

Arauna asked many fine questions of Witness, none of which were answered. They are not the kind of questions you ask, but they are the kind that strike to the heart of her claimed area of expertise. She is the truly annointed one, she says, so does she do anything that one would reasonably expect an annointed one to do? How can you not ask those things?

I looked into this. In fact, I expanded upon it. One question Arauna did not ask of Witness was 'does she provide any nourishing spiritual food?' as the faithful and discreet slave are said to do. It is a good thing she did not ask it, because Witness has. She has provided us the diatribe of that fellow complaining that his permanent home at Bethel did not materialize.

THIS is where you ought to demand a transcript, for a transcript allows one to quickly get the gist of something without having to plow through a videoed complaint. I could get no further than 'the Watchtower will throw you under the bus.' Please. To use his vernacular, they never said they wouldn't. They never promised lifetime residency. I live not that far from Warwick. Many responded to the invitation to help in building. All knew that it was not a permanent gig. That point was made clear from the get-go. Nobody had reason to misunderstand it. They all understand the nature of an organization that exists to serve, not to be served.

Even were he already a full-time Bethelite, lifetime residency has never been promised. 'Try it for a year,' prospective Bethelites were once encouraged, or, going back, four years. The fact that some have ended up staying a long long time does not mean that anyone crossing the threshhold door has a lifetime connection. For a long time, while brute force was the commodity, many did, but as Arauna says, technology changes everything. Bethel would be robbing the worldwide brotherhood were they not to adapt to changing times and strive to combat bloat.

Look, it is not as though I cannot empathize with the kid. The experience of panic that ensues when any phase of life ends is real. 'What will I do next?' is the fear. People handle it differently, but most know the feeling to some degree. High school ends. College ends. Military ends. Grants end. Secular employment ends - many work assignments in the States are temporary, after which the employee is back to square one. Young people have even become used to so-called permanent employment being temporary - the lifetime employment of my Dad's day went the way of the dodo bird long ago. 

Witness or her friends have used this kid and made him look like a loser. He will actually be one if he does not shake their influence. Have they helped him to readjust and manfully face the next aspect of life, or have they encouraged him to cry like a baby for the sake of their own ax they live to grind? Hopefully, he will recover and move on in life, as all of us must many times for many reasons. However, when he is respectfully employed somewhere and happily readusted to life, perhaps with wife and family, perhaps even restored to full-time service, Witness will still be running this video iimmortalizing him at his lowest - shedding bitter tears, sulking and hitting back at those he thinks have wronged him. He will forever look small, whereas he would probably rather look big someday.

And unless there is positive evidence somewhere within the video, there is always the chance that the whole thing is made up - though I am willing to take it at face value.

So let no one say Witness does not provide spiritual food. She does.

7 hours ago, J.R. Ewing said:

If people like Bill Gates had foreseen the problem with only having a 2-digit year embedded in our software, instead of a 4-digit year, the Publishing Department might have caught the fact that, on the year 2000, the 20^th century in PRINT, would have reverted back to 1900 hundred (19^th century), thus nullifying the 20^th century presentation, completely, therefore, a need to become in “our day”, just in case the Y2K would have become disastrous for print.

It works for me. I like it.

Or one could just say 'they changed that.' They have never said they don't. Everyone knows Jehovah's Witnesses have thought Armageddon is just around the corner for a long while. It is. It simply turns out that it is one heckuva corner. But there is no question that this human experiment with self-rule will not turn out well. 

Hmm. I'm listening to Lynard Skynard and @JW Insider is at the London Museum.

That probably says it all.

Forty years ago Lynard Skynard's plane went down, killing six. I didn't know it at the time. It was during my righteous period when I was not listening to music. But in the years since I have heard song after song that I have liked, starting with 'Sweet Home Alabama,' only to find it is one of theirs.

My righteous period lasted nearly 20 years. It didn't end until my kids reached the age where they wanted to attend concerts like their friends and I wasn't too happy about it. But I realized you cannot stop lava and so I gave in, with the stipulation that I would go along too. The first concert was Weezer. Everyone held their hand out in line to get stamped, so I held mine out too. "You don't need a stamp," the attendant said - I little disrespectfully, I thought. (it was to verify drinking age) So I shot back: "Aren't there any grownups here?" Oh, yeah, the boy was thrilled to have me along. But I rather liked Weezer, or at least I did not dislike them.

1 hour ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

Are you just noting, TTH ... or chastising ... that one person has not answered another's questions?

Surely when questions are asked they ought to be answered. I always do yours.

8 hours ago, Arauna said:

Additionally, you have not answered my questions.

No, she has not.

8 hours ago, Arauna said:

Do you preach every day  in public? And do you belong to a congregation where you can attend meetings?

8 hours ago, Arauna said:

do you preach about the Kingdom? That is a future government? with subjects on earth?  And a government of 144,000 in heaven?   Jesus was really dead for 3 days because he did not have an immortal soul ?  Jesus is not God and we pray through him to God. 

Where did you learn all that? was it by yourself ?

These, too, are fine questions that were not answered. 

17 hours ago, Arauna said:

Mr Rook: Your hope can be dashed to get the transcripts. You are setting yourself up for disappointment and then you will have a new rod to beat the GB with.  As I said before - they do not have time for petty requests from every Tom

I have never asked. However, Mr. Rook, though your respectful request for a transcript may fall upon deaf ears even if you send both Putin and the GB a check for $20.....I am better than both of them put together.

I solemnly swear that if you send me a check for five dollars and ninety nine cents I will send you a complete transcript of 'Tom Irregardless and Me.'

22 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Since there is one large hole in this story (why isn't the perpetrator in jail?) and one blatant untruth, (JWs are prohibited from telling authorities) everything else must be viewed in this light. Thus, the judge's reported exasperation over the Witnesses' defense may be exaggerated, misrepresented, or even concocted

Pure guesswork follows, I admit, but it is educated guesswork. It could be wrong. But it could well be right, seeing that the reporter has shown herself either partial or inept.

Any decent lawyer will raise objections at any trial. Some are sustained. Some are over-ruled. When overruled, the judge will say why, which invariably can be taken as a slap at that lawyer. A biased reporter, if she was one, could report that as the judge's 'exasperation' or sharp rebuke - implying that the lawyer really pushed her buttons, whereas in fact such retorts are routine. 

A vengeful reporter, if she was one, would surely report things this way. We should not assume that she isn't. In the field of politics today, many reporters are vengeful, for either one side or the other.

6 hours ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

BOTH SIDES in OUR court cases are supposed to be seeking JUSTICE

Neither is. That is not even the nature of a tort case. One side is equating money with justice. The other side expelled a scoundrel (you have described expulsion as a fate worse than hellfire) once his deeds were known and presumably saw him jailed for a long long time, though that doesn't seem to have happened - but if it did not happen, it is clearly the legal system's screw-up, not ours. 

Unless there is some reason he should not be jailed, a reason not reported, and a reason that would alter everything.

4 minutes ago, Srecko Sostar said:

13 hours ago, Witness said:

Disfellowshipping is a spiritual “stoning”

excellent compare !   

What in the world is a 'spiritual stoning?' 

Who is to say it is bad?

17 hours ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

With a suitcase full of money, I highly suspect you could get a COMPLETE BETHEL TOUR ... any morning you showed up.... REALLY.

Yes, I have no doubt that you really highly suspect that.

6 minutes ago, Gone Fishing said:

But we cannot change the fact that the writings of dead men will only ever be open to interpretation, as those men are not alive to verify our understanding of their words.

This reminds me of a passage in 'Up the Down Staircase' in which a student was given a failing grade for wrongly interpreting a poem. He protested. The grade stood. It stood even when the student brought the poet himself to school and the poet said 'yes'- that's exactly what he meant. 

The only satisfaction he received was to see school policy changed. From that point on, only dead poets were used in connection with assignments. 

I will go further.

Since there is one large hole in this story (why isn't the perpetrator in jail?) and one blatant untruth, (JWs are prohibited from telling authorities) everything else must be viewed in this light. Thus, the judge's reported exasperation over the Witnesses' defense may be exaggerated, misrepresented, or even concocted. Maybe it is like the media reporting that Trump and Tillerson do nothing but argue and that Tillerson is about to resign - and so Tillerson calls a news conference to say they get along just fine and he has never once thought of quitting. And they say: ‘well, did you call him a moron as we said?’ and he answers ‘where I come from we don’t have time for such petty nonsense

I mean, the San Diego case might be as reported, but the story is flawed enough and the reporter negligent enough, perhaps hostile, that it makes you wonder. 

It's not great to see JWs mentioned in courts in this connection - there is no positive way this can be spun. However, no tort lawyer wants to go to court - he or she wants a much-easier out-of-court settlement. The fact that this case is, nonetheless, in court indicates that one side or the other (or both) has dug in and is intransigent.

People are used to seeing lawyers employ every type of legal maneuvering. If it is for a cause they like, they praise them for it. If it is for a cause they do not like, they condemn them for it. There are no legal loopholes in court because if it is legal, it is not a loophold. It is a chaotic and inconsistent system, not of our doing, and one must operate according to whatever flies legally. I'd rather not see such things play out in the courts, but if they do, most people realize that lawyers will do what lawyers have to do given the adversarial system they operate in.