TrueTomHarley

You have a far more challenging role on this forum than I, JTR, for you are trying to denigrate something that is undeniably good and that has some breathtaking accomplishments to show for it. True, they are human and thus they may misstep here and there. Seizing upon such missteps, for reasons i know not, have become your lifeblood. You can invariably be made to look very small by harping on things, even when true, of an organization going places and doing things that no one has gone to or done before. Anybody with any ability to express thought through words via keyboard can do this. I even believe there are more here who could easily do it but they feel sorry for you somehow and refrain. I try to pick up the slack. For crying out loud, come in from the cold, will you? Call a truce and bring your considerable talents - for you are a Mickey Spillane and who cannot love a Mickey Spillane? - to bear on a cause that will make you friends in high places, just like he did. He was a raucous, bigger than life, no-nonsense character with great humor and humility (and I see that all in you) that undoubtedly locked horns with 'bureaucrats,' and I can so easily see the two of you as interchangeable, if only you would straighten out and fly right - as he did after a few choppy runs. Whatever things have blown up in your face, as things have blown up in mine, count it as discipline from God that he permits - if doesn't cause - and let it mold you into a better person. Run with what you can and keep low-key about what you cannot, since you probably do that in your private person. You seem to have family and friends that care for you, unless you are writing of the past. Mend fences with them if you are & focus on them if you are not. Remember, JTR, you no longer own the Hall that you built with the sweat of your brow. If you do not shape up, I will send an LDC brother to shut it down, sell it to a tomato distribution company, and make you drive 30 minutes to another one.

That's why they call him God. He can make lemonade out of lemons. It did? On mine? On tomsheepandgoats.com? Wow. I'll take it. How's THAT for making lemonade out of lemons?

Ah, now it is a love-in. I, too, am adjusted by your style and outlook in ways I don't always point out.

Yes. Whether it is a great war to fight online who can say? Bethel certainly is not crazy about it, and perhaps that it your answer, because it puts you in contact with many you fight find disagreeable. So as to help sort out the players should you remain for awhile, @Witness, to my mind, is in a world of her own. Her posts rarely stray far from her claim that the 'phony' annointed ones have somehow outmanuevered and cheated the 'true' anointed ones, which she identifies with, and she buttresses her remarks with myriad misapplied (in my view) scriptures.

On the contrary, it has driven massive, lasting, and measureable traffic to jw.org as persons go to check whether or not it is extremist as reported. Of course, they see that it is not. How will they resolve that bit of cognitive dissonance? It is our loyal Russian brothers bringing their gift to the altar among much duress. Any funds spent thereby have proven well worth it. The idea that each Witness worldwide could have a share is invaluable. It is a little mean but richly deserved to point out the value of your blast seeking to denigrate that significant accomplishment:

Though it is neither here nor there, it is surprising to me how much of the book I write here. At great ponderous length I will spell out some position in the book. Then I will answer some character here more effectively in fewer words, and I will discard the dry stuff already penned for what has more the feel of life for actually speaking with someone.

It's an excerpt just written from the next book. It doesn't perfectly fit here. But I wanted to try it out. One of these days I will point out that you seem the best one here at keeping oneself restrained under evil. I'm not sure whether it serves the cause fair or foul to calmly spill the facts to friend and foe alike - the villains seem to cut us no slack for it - but I admire that you are able to so communicate without losing it, which our people do at least as much as the opponent. To be sure, they have the example of Phinehas to fall back on, who was not exactly a nice guy at certain stages of his life.

Time to unload. Confession is good for the soul. I am @JW Insider!!!!! (no.....just kidding) It's probably so. Unfortunately, I can barely unravel my own stories. I'm not even a thinker, really. I am Pastor Ingvist's substitute preacher, specifically selected for his dullness, because the pastor did not want to return from vacation and read his congregation’s disappointment. Instead, he wanted a sub that you would listen to and say: ‘I’ll bet he’s good in the shepherding work.’ Then he would come to your house and you would notice the lack of eye contact and say: ‘maybe he’s a scholar.’ I am not a scholar, either, leave the deep thinking to others – I don’t trust it anyway – but I have a certain knack for refocusing matters and combining ingredients in ways not typically combined, and I am a writer with great command of the language, assuming you are not fussy.

It's a bit much to suggest that God offs people over the details of modern doctrine. My God does not do so, assuming one does not attempt to grab the wheel from the driver. And please don't say he does, or if you do say it, say it on the proper thread. It is territory well-covered lately.

OH NO! I get the 'right' and the 'left' all day in the aspiritual world. Don't tell me it's going to start here as well.

I like to write. This is from a book I penned a while back: If I am returning to the car after a long and productive return visit, I will nonetheless say to Tom Pearlsnswine upon entering: “I can’t believe that person won’t admit that Jesus and Jehovah are different!” I pretend not to notice as he reddens – you should see him! You can almost see the steam coming from his ears: “You kept me waiting an hour to argue the Trinity?!”

I have misinterpreted the remarks - or did I? - of these guys so many times that I have given up. That is not to say it is intentional, though it could be. But it might also be from coming from a very different part of the world or from using English as a second language.

I also like, somewhere in the meeting last night, the synopsis of God's dealing with Israel: 'I let my people get beat up because they were too bad for too long. But then the nations said: 'Look! God can't protect his own people!' So I beat them up too. And I brought my own people back just to show them.' It's no more complicated than that with the great God of all creation? No. It's not. Sometimes we overthink things. Though his wisdom surpasses all understanding and we can see only the fringe of his outer garment, when he chooses to relate to humans, he is breathtaking in his mundane common sense. He's not ashamed of it. He glorifies it.

I confess that discussions of trinity instantly lose me. I have never seen anyone yield on any point.

The 'higher critics' who assume scriptures are human writings until proven otherwise say the same about Paul revising Jesus's teachings. They have him essentially founding another religion. I wonder how that factors in with those who carry on about Rutherford succeeding Russell, or Knorr succeeding Rutherford. On the other hand, regarding someone on a much lesser level who caused considerable unnecessary chaos in the family, when a C.O. tried to soften it as Jehovah sending just the right personality at just the right time, I said 'Look. I know the line. I'm perfectly willing to spin it and even view things that way - God works with people. But I also want to call a spade a spade. The man is an unbalanced nut.' Later when my daughter asked the C.O. about his conversation with her dad, the latter replied: "He was ... frank."

I trust no one takes this thread as encouragement to trust in God, ignore warnings, and tough it out. The thread is a joke. Does Donald Trump talk to hurricanes? Have his hotels even been flattened? He lost a shingle or two somewhere - i don't know the damage, but nothing is flattened. As for Branson the Atheist - well, that's another story.

I'll add a few other points to 'Why Remain a Witness when Bad things happen?' - all gleaned from this week's meeting. These verses all came up for comment. 'For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field under cultivation, God's building' - 1 Corinthians 3:9 it's nice to be in a field and to feel yourself cultivated for the better. Outside of the Christian congregation, you are on your own. There is little to help you become a better person and much to impede you. Some aspects train the mind but almost never the heart, and training of the mind is a mixed blessing unaccompanied by a trained heart: "Sam Harris gave yet another TED talk in which he asked: “Can We Build AI Without Losing Control Over It?” The answer is no; you’ll screw it up like you screw up everything, like you drove Albert Einstein to say 'if I had known, I would have become a locksmith.'" In God's organization, all you have to do is go with the flow and you will be automatically improved. If you step on the gas, all the better. Of course, you must avoid the piss pots of 2 Timothy 2:20. I like, too, how the priests of Ezekiel 44:23 will instruct the people about 'the difference between what is clean and what is unclean.' People don't know. We live in a time where what is good is said to be bad and vice versa. The young have been sold down the river by the old, who have swooned over every means of the trickery of men and every wind of a faddish teaching. Their 'students' reap what they have unwittingly sown and suffer for it, yet, stuck with only the moral compass of this system of things, never know why. The Governing Body sees to it that the Bible's teachings are undiluted and its beneficial doctrine preserved at the meetings of Jehovah's Witnesses. Of course, the meeting did not go without a hitch. The Largatherins made a fuss, insisting on their own teachings as they always do. Harvey and Irma Largatherin are - let us not mince words here - blowhards, pure and simple.

What is this confidence you have placed in the god of Florida? Have the gods of Barbuda, St Martin, and the island where that nutty atheist lives, been able to deliver those trusting in them so that you should say “the god of Florida will deliver me?” And in case you should say ‘Donald Trump will deliver me,’ have I not flattened the hotels of Donald Trump? Now, is it without authorization from Donald Trump that I come? Donald Trump himself spoke to me, saying “grab them by …” well – you know what he said.

"By sheer accident one fine blogging day I came across Brian, a Witness youngster who’d decided that the home team was wrong and that the atheists were right. The atheists! So he figured he’d better tell the Watchtower off. He had his letter of disassociation posted right there on the internet, building up courage to submit it to the elders. The letter contained six “blatant Watchtower errors.” He was worried about the consequences but brave enough to face them. Atheists were in the background egging him on: "‘You could be with us! Forget the fountain of youth; we have the fountain of death! Fifty good years, and then you’re gone! No God to suck up to! No elders telling you what to do! You can be free!!!!!!!!!!’ "But it wasn’t the atheists who would face the consequences of Brian telling the brothers to take a hike. “What is that to us? - you must see to it!” the chief priests told Judas before he hanged himself. Formal disassociation would mean that few, if any, Witnesses would speak to him afterwards. Would the atheists be there for support? Or would they let him twist in the wind? Brian was not sure exactly how matters would unfold. "So I told him. And I suggested how to better submit his letter. Shorten it. Delete five points. If any one of them is enough to justify jumping ship, why include them all? That’s just the atheists stoking the fire. Offer just one point, and then you have the option of discussing more at any subsequent meeting; you haven’t locked yourself in that way. ‘Look, it’s not a good decision, but if you’re going to do it, you might as well do it right.’ Furthermore, I challenged two of the points. Not vigorously, not condescendingly - indeed, the specific facts were not incorrect, they were just skewed in a peculiar atheist light. ‘Here’s another light in which you might see them,’ I wrote. "Next thing you know, Brian has hit the books, uncovered the atheist ruse, torn up his letter, and deleted his blog, leaving the atheists shaking with rage! Trust me, I had no idea such a thing was going to happen. I was even a little sorry about it; I’d looked forward to commenting a few times on his site. They’re slippery, those atheists are, ignoring 2nd Peter 2 and the ‘Enemies’ campaign, masquerading as saviors of the human race. I don’t like them, and they don’t like me. One of them said online that I reminded him “of the ‘too clever’ Witnesses that were in love with themselves.” How did he know?"

I love when the highbrow guy suggested Doc Martin has Asbergers, as he obviously does. Doc shut him down instantly. Good l**k on that.

Perhaps you should return. Are they represented anywhere else? Does anyone else even use Jehovah's name?

Leave him alone!!! He may be an apostate, but he's a NICE apostate - um - I guess. What has he been saying lately?

No offense, Shiwiii - forgive me if I misunderstand you - but it seems you are being obtuse. I said more than once that they have 1000 years to work up to a position they do not occupy now, even if we assume their warfare is physical. Go off to war then if you think it is such a great idea. No one here is saying you can't.

As I say, they have 1000 years to work up to a new position. Moreover, how much is physical warfare on their end is unclear. Surely this forum has proven a genuine battleground, yet not a punch has been thrown. It's 1000 years off. If things 100 years in the past do not interest me overmuch, neither do they 1000 years in the future. Maybe even JTR's points will factor in somehow. Dunno. I'll worry about it when I get there, assuming I do.

The bad ones will have 1000 years to work up a head of steam. You don't think that's enough time?