TrueTom vs the Apostates!

[TrueTomHarley]

A former Witness who departed for atheism expressed amazement that her former faith, oddball and backwater in her revisionist eyes, would become front & center on the world stage. Yet it has happened with Jehovah’s Witnesses, in both Russia and the West, for completely separate reasons.

“Therefore settle it in your hearts not to rehearse beforehand how to make your defense...”. Luke 21:14

Actually I did rehearse a little. For the book ‘Dear Mr. Putin - Jehovah’s Witnesses Write Russia,’ I rehearsed it here, and I am grateful to both @admin and @The Librarian (the old hen) for providing the forum that made it possible...a forum in which ‘heroes’ and ‘villains’ freely intermingle. A writer needs more than a muse. He also needs a ‘villain,’ and here there are many.

I never dreamed that a second book would come out of the forum, but come out it did (aided by Twitter). The title is even inspired by The Librarian (a fine woman), even though I was initially aggravated that she should assign me to head up that so-named thread, ‘TrueTom vs the Apostates’...I mean, it’s not as though I went out of my way to pick fights with these characters. All is forgiven now, and I have the sense...a big deal for someone who pretends to be a writer...of ‘bringing my gift to the altar’....defending the faith against attacks in Russia, and now in the West:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/917311

No cheap shots. No one disrespected. No patronizing. No ‘You’ll be sorrys.’ No one called a liar. As good a behavior as can be expected from a PIMI amidst many POMOs. 

Both ebooks are free.

 

 

[JOHN BUTLER]

Just cheap advertising for your books then. No feelings for God nor humans.  

But there is no defence for Child Abuse and / or hiding pedophiles in the JW Org. 

However being a writer i expect you will concoct some excuses. 

[TrueTomHarley]

2 hours ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

But there is no defence for Child Abuse and / or hiding pedophiles in the JW Org. 

There are at least six chapters on the topic.

Failing to acquiesce to your point of view is not a crime, particularly when you repeatedly point out that you are but a simple man with limited education, and that many things are over your head, and that (the obvious upshot) you really don’t understand anything about anything at all, but you do know what you like and don’t like and you want your rants to carry the day.

[Matthew9969]

I'm not particularly fond of pizza anymore and stopped eating it, would that make me an apizstate?

[JOHN BUTLER]

Quote "There are at least six chapters on the topic"

As i said 

'However being a writer i expect you will concoct some excuses'.

And it's only books, which anyone could write from their own viewpoint, if they wanted to cheapen the subject. 

There is only one book or collection of writings that has / have any importance, and they were not written by you TTH. 

[TrueTomHarley]

18 minutes ago, Matthew9969 said:

I'm not particularly fond of pizza anymore and stopped eating it, would that make me an apizstate?

When they distributed food items at the Assembly Hall, I was placed in charge of the crew. A popular item was “a pasta salad.” I must have rechristened it a hundred times as “an apostasy salad” - long before I ever heard of The Librarian, and perhaps even the Internet.

[TrueTomHarley]

11 minutes ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

And it's only books, which anyone could write from their own viewpoint, 

Do you know of any other kind?

[JOHN BUTLER]

52 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Do you know of any other kind?

Well some books are plain facts, statistics. Then there is God's word, inspired from God's viewpoint. 

Then there are JW books which the writer's pretend to be 'guided' by God's Holy Spirit. 

So, i think there are different types. 

It's funny how you guys love to shorten my sentences though, when you semi quote me. 

That complete sentence had a meaning which you have deliberately removed. 

But then it seems to be the way of JW's to misquote people, or to only quote half of something so that it loses its true meaning. 

Takes me back to Srecko's findings when he researched a Watchtower misquote.  What a sly way to mislead people. 

[TrueTomHarley]

1 hour ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

That complete sentence had a meaning which you have deliberately removed. 

You can get around that problem by being internally consistent.

[TrueTomHarley]

There were a crazy number of mistakes - typos, misspellings, juxtaposed words, and so forth in No Fake News and Dear Mr. Putin. I was chasing those around for the longest time. It is ever so hard to proof your own writing, because you read, not what is there, but what you THINK is there.

There were very few in ’TrueTom vs the Apostate!’ because I wrote in a different venue, with no thought of connecting it at first, and proofed it as I went along. I have also discovered that putting it on a blog first and proofing it on a device- the smaller the better - is a tremendously effective tool.

Even so, I have made some corrections to TrueTom and added two entire new chapters, one on the Christensen trial coming right down to the wire (Chichalov speculates that the court keeps delaying a verdict because it is in a panic over the import of Putin words:)

and one chapter on a 1933 Ruthrford letter to the Fuhrer.

[TrueTomHarley]

 

@JW Insider   Whenever I post something about my book in answer to a question, I will put a copy of it here. It is partly to help me keep track, and partly because I want to address a few questions that obviously come up, like:

Why is a brother addressing apostates? Does he think he is above theocratic counsel?   (He does not)

Does he disagree with counsel not to engage apostates?  (He does not.)

Does he think he is some kind of ‘exception?’   (He does)

Is he crazy?  (Arguably, he is.)

Will he, in the course of accumulating these posts, try to make the case why he thinks he is an ‘exception.?’    (Yes)

Does he seriously expect anyone to buy it?  (Time will tell)

Is @The Librarianreally ‘the old hen’ that he keeps saying she is?  (No. She is a male who had long played along with a gag that he acquiesced to and even said he enjoyed, though it has probably worn thin at times, such as when I’ve described her with more negative adjectives than Paul uses at 2 Timothy 3:1-5)

Why doesn’t he write what he has to say here in the first place, rather than posting an answer somewhere else, with a copy of it here?  (Because he is not smart enough to do it that way. His best writing comes when he is responding to a real person.)

Will he continue to annoy The Librarian (the old hen) by spamming to his own blog? (As sparingly as possible. Often he posts the entire article here as well, and he will strive to keep things in-house. His own site features no comment section at all, or one that will be expired by the time he links to it, so linking may even increase traffic here, since if you spot anything there worthy of comment, you must come back here to give it.)

Do the elders of his congregation know what he is doing?   (Yes, to the degree they wish. Two of them met with him to say they would like to use him more, but does he associate with apostates? He told them that he does not, but what he does comes close enough that it could easily be taken that way & for that reason he did not feel that he should be used in any representative capacity.)

Does Bethel know? (He has written them as to what he is doing and why.)

Have they endorsed him?  (No)

Have they said ‘no?’  (They have not.)

Have they responded in any way on this topic?  (No)

Does he expect them to?   (Who can say?)

Is he worried that they may reply with direction not what he would like?    (He is old, and is not worried about much these days. His worrien days are done. He doesn’t miss them. They caused him trouble.)

Would he comply with direction if it were not what he would like?    (He does not consider himself above theocratic counsel.)

[TrueTomHarley]

On 2/1/2019 at 12:06 PM,  FelixCA said: 

. I'm, sorry friend, the world doesn't revolve around JWI, for as much as you admire his limited knowledge of Bethel.

TTH:  I'm going to have another go at this.

I do not think that 'TrueTom vs the Apostates!' is a great book in its writing. It is adequately written. It gets the job done. It is even a little haphazard in its organization. Another person might do it better.

However, it is a great book in that it is the only one of its kind. And it should not be. There should be more, but there are not. I am convinced that there are many friends and onlookers who need such material. Maybe there shouldn't be, but there are.

@JW Insider, more than any single person, helped me in my writing of it. His input was very slight, no more than a sporadic word or two on occasion, sometimes publicly, sometimes not. Where I was too aggressive or undiscerning, his observations put me back on track. Where I was flat-out wrong on a few things, he bluntly corrected me and thereby made my work more effective. He knows where I am coming from. Where I ignored him I afterwards came to realize why I shouldn't have.

Whether it is wise for him to carry on at such length as he does here I do not know. But I do know why he does it and why he does it the way he does it. I respect him for it, and I cannot detect an ill motive. That is not to say that he might not be loony, but in my case, he has proven more valuable than he knows.

•