Elders meet with Pioneers & Missionaries Dec 2017 - Jan 2018

[Jack Ryan]

ELDERS MEET WITH REGULAR PIONEERS, SPECIAL PIONEERS, AND FIELD MISSIONARIES PROGRAM FOR DECEMBER 2017 THROUGH JANUARY 2018 S-211-18-E 9/17

[Jack Ryan]

Situation: A brother who has pioneered for a number of years faces financial difficulties and becomes discouraged. He begins to wonder what his life could have been if he had pursued higher education and obtained a well-paying job?

Ahhh - he would be happier and have some security and satisfaction in his life!

[Jack Ryan]

Under the subheading, "Iron Sharpens Iron" lies this amusingly-worded gem

"...one friend may succeed in sharpening the intellectual and spiritual state of another."

Thank you all for sharpening me... ;-)

 

[Guest Nicole]

Only  if happines, security and satisfaction depend on higher education and well-paying job  

[Evacuated]

4 hours ago, Jay Witness said:

Ahhh - he would be happier and have some security and satisfaction in his life!

Surely you know Pro. 18:11 "The valuable things of the rich are his strong town, and they are like a protective wall in his imagination" ?

I mean, I'm sure these guys had pursued higher education and obtained a well-paying job: 

1. – On January 26, 2014, former Deutsche Bank executive, William Broeksmit, was found dead at his South Kensington home after police responded to reports of a man found hanging at a house. According to reports, Broeksmit had “close ties to co-chief executive Anshu Jain.”
2. – Gabriel Magee, a 39-year-old senior manager at JP Morgan’s European headquarters, jumped 500ft from the top of the bank’s headquarters in central London on January 27, 2014, landing on an adjacent 9 story roof.
3. – Mike Dueker, the chief economist at Russell Investments, fell down a 50 foot embankment in what police are describing as a suicide. He was reported missing on January 29, 2014 by friends, who said he had been “having problems at work.”
4. – Richard Talley, 57, founder of American Title Services in Centennial, Colorado, was also found dead on 4 Feb 2014 after apparently shooting himself with a nail gun.
5. – 37-year-old JP Morgan executive director Ryan Henry Crane died last week, 3 Feb, 2014.
6. – Tim Dickenson, a U.K.-based communications director at Swiss Re AG, also died last month (Jan 2014), although the circumstances surrounding his death are still unknown.

Maybe it was just a bad month for bankers, but to be perfectly blunt, you need to sharpen up on your game in this particular area!!   

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

.

How many Carpenters, ditch diggers, house cleaners, window washers or Dentists and Doctors, and Civil Engineers committed suicide during that time, in relation to the percentages of their professions to the general population?

Without a considered and careful analysis of things like THAT ... the empirical anecdotes of Bankers and Financial consultants, etc.,  committing suicide are interesting, and entertaining ... but MEANINGLESS!

One thing about those folks with a a sufficient means of life... they PROBABLY died with a well repaired set of teeth, and did not live a life of misery because they could not afford such things, and the list is endless, LIKE heat in the winter, a balanced diet, decent respectable clothes to wear, eyeglasses and money to socialize, and pay a hundred different types of bills.

OF COURSE ... we COULD live like John the Baptist, whom God and Christ loved, who we have no idea where he slept (under a rock, in a cave?) but who had to eat LOCUSTS, ... green slimy gooey ( but crunchy also!) LOCUSTS. 

I Imagine John the Baptist with teeth rotting out of his head, and green locust juice on his face ( where would YOU clean up if water was four miles away and you had to walk?), and cleaning his teeth with his finger or the end of a chewed stick, like my mother did when she grew up in extreme poverty ... and the infections in his gums destroying his heart valves.

I imagine John the Baptist wearing dirty clothes that were rags, discarded by someone who threw then away, fit only for rags.

... like the Brothers I saw in the jungles of Zaire, in the mid 1970s ... who ate rats, and cried because the Americans had soap, and they could not afford soap ... or carry drinking water from the river in a wash basin at a 40 degree angle, because it was rusted out in the middle and had a hole big enough to put an open hand through.

It is hard to keep your mind on spiritual things when you are starving, unwashed, full of bacteria and pain, and coughing your lungs out and praying ..please God! one more breath! ... or you have no money to replace your broken eyeglasses.

But, for all those things ... there is a solution that is available to EVERYBODY for situations impossible to solve,  no matter what their station in life ... both at the high income level, and at the bottom, where most of us are ....

DIE.

However, IF ( remember IF?) you are one of those few that can live like a sub-human, alongside people who don't have ANY problems  with finances .... it is the way to go.

Self induced poverty is NOTHING to brag about.

Many have died from a hand scratch, because they could not afford a dollar bottle of alcohol.

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

On 9/29/2017 at 11:54 PM, Nicole said:

Only  if happines, security and satisfaction depend on higher education and well-paying job  

In a race... the win is not always to the swift.

In a battle, the victory is not always to the strong.

... but THAT"S usually the best bet.

"Thrice armed is he  hath his quarrel just,

and four times he who gets his fist in first"

  -  Josh Billings.

[Evacuated]

4 hours ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

Without a considered and careful analysis of things like THAT ... the empirical anecdotes of Bankers and Financial consultants, etc.,  committing suicide are interesting, and entertaining ... but MEANINGLESS

Only if you miss the point. The point here has no connection whatsoever with relative suicide rates.

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

6 minutes ago, Gone Fishing said:

Only if you miss the point. The point here has no connection whatsoever with relative suicide rates.

Good Detectives perhaps see differently than poorer Detectives.

Occasionaly, the reverse is also true.

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

On 9/29/2017 at 11:54 PM, Nicole said:

Only  if happines, security and satisfaction depend on higher education and well-paying job  

For the great majority of people on Earth .... YES,  IT DOES!

Consider Puerto Rico and the hurricane devastation there.

There is nothing more portable than people with money.

I was once asked if it bothered me to be in great peril during such things (long story...) and I replied "Not as long as I have my satellite phone, there is a helicopter withing 300 miles, and I have my American Express Credit Card ....".

In a natural disaster of cataclysmic proportions, the simplest solution is ... to be not there.

That necessitates at least two things ... education and money.

People that "have money" do not have to worry about a thousand things that consume the lives of that great majority of mankind,  other things being equal.

Only  if happiness, security and satisfaction depend on higher education and well-paying job?

Being ignorant and financially desperate as a lifestyle ...  does not guarantee happiness, security and satisfaction either ....  and the probability drops like Wylie Coyote chasing the Road Runner off of a high cliff.

 

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

These excerpted quotes are from JW.ORG

https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/102000121

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" A Terrible Efficiency

These statistics, although shocking, are just cold numbers. They cannot convey the loneliness of life without a cherished mate, the frustration of lost independence, the despair of a lingering disease, the emptiness of chronic depression, the hopelessness of a fatal illness. The sad truth is that while young people may attempt suicide as a reckless reaction to temporary problems, older people are usually faced with problems that seem to be permanent and unsolvable. As a result, they often approach suicide more determinedly than the young and carry it out with a terrible efficiency.

“Not only is suicide significantly more prevalent among older persons, but the suicidal act itself reflects important differences between old and young,” notes Dr. Hendin, in his book Suicide in America. “In particular, the ratio of attempted to actual suicides shifts quite markedly among older persons. Among the population as a whole, the ratio of attempted suicides to actual suicides has been estimated to be 10 to 1; among the young (15-24), it has been estimated to be 100 to 1; and among those over 55, it has been estimated to be 1 to 1.”

What sobering statistics! How depressing to grow old, lose physical strength, and suffer pain and sickness! Little wonder so many commit suicide. Yet, there is powerful reason to treasure life—even under very difficult circumstances. Consider what happened to Mary, who was mentioned in the introduction."

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The mental illness and  suicide rate among older Jehovah's witnesses is 5 to 10 times that of the general population .. be a sport ... look it up.

It is my considered opinion ...  that the CHIEF REASON for this is FINANCIAL DESPERATION, which also in my opinion,   CAUSES almost all of the symptoms and effects mentioned in the  Society's incomplete analysis  of this problem.

Elderly people did not get to be elderly by being naturally suicidal.

They are driven to it by problems that in most cases education and money would solve.

Now the older people, and I mean Brothers and Sisters,  are unemployable ... at ANYTHING ... and are poor and desperate ... and for many ignorant and destitute Brothers and Sisters, suicide appears to be their only reality based option.

TWENTY EIGHT YEARS AGO ... the Society gave the following advice, as pervasive and chilling as a pouring rain ...

[Evacuated]

I am going to make one post here because we are going off topic:

1 hour ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

The mental illness and  suicide rate among older Jehovah's witnesses is 5 to 10 times that of the general population .. be a sport ... look it up.

I did!  BUT, the only comment I can find alongside this claim regarding Jehovah's Witnesses is:

"The exact number of suicides is impossible to obtain for a variety of reasons.  Secular intuitions such as hospitals and police departments do not keep track of the religious organizations of the deceased"

(This is a quote. I am not sure what "secular intuitions" are  )

So if anyone could provide a single, verifiable, accurate, unbiased report on actual suicide rates, comparing Jehovah's Witnesses with other groups, please post as a separate thread to allow an informed debate.

If this cannot be done, then (with respect)  I am afraid the claim will have to be consigned to the fake news bin.