Tweeting the Meeting: Week of August 2, 2021
At the Wilkes-Barre Regional Convention

Hard to Believe Five Years Ago Was the Good Old Days

Even after one book defending the faith in Russia, and one book defending the faith in the West, my first one was just described as my opus.

Hard to believe that I wrote Tom Irregardless and Me in the “good old days” of 2016. Before pandemic, masks, vaccines, and non-stop uproar over it. Before pedal to the metal on crazy climate, routine torrential rain and flooding, insane heat, before wild conflagrations devouring towns, before the house of cards that is national cooperation and even sanity dissolving before our eyes. Before gender morphed into something that can be incorrectly assigned at birth. The good old days: just five years ago. Before Russian persecution and Western accusation thrust Jehovah’s Witnesses foremost on the world stage:

Wrote Paul: “True, some are preaching the Christ through envy and rivalry, but others also through goodwill. The latter are publicizing the Christ out of love, for they know I am set here for the defense of the good news; but the former do it out of contentiousness, not with a pure motive, for they are supposing to stir up tribulation [for me] in my [prison] bonds. What then? [Nothing,] except that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is being publicized, and in this I rejoice.” (Philippians 1:15-18)

The ebook is now polished up for Amazon print as well as digital.                                                           

What others have said in review:

This book is hilarious.…makes you think about what you know, how you know it, and why you believe it. 

The parts of this book that aren't humorous are eye-opening.

Read the whole book almost in one sitting. (Don't start it just before anything important!) Very funny book with many things well said….And yes it's true that we have better things to do than stop to kick at every dog that barks at us, but seeing as this guy's already done it for laughs, we could do worse than read his book.

Had me laughing out loud one minute and thinking deeply the next. Tom Harley has a great sense of humour and says a lot of things that many JW's think but don't often say. 

Despite writing a number of things that only witnesses would 'get', those who malign without knowing the facts would benefit by reading this light-hearted, yet serious, book.

It had me laughing out loud over and over again. Tom Harley makes no apologies for being one of Jehovah's Witnesses, and neatly skewers most of the objections raised by opposers and apostates….at the same time acknowledging their own foibles and puncturing sacred cows, but doing so with an obvious 'mild manner and deep respect.'

I haven’t met any of the people in this book but feel as though I have.

Author’s note: 

Kermit Way from the book was a real person, referred to by his real name. At his funeral it was said that, not only was he a gentleman, but also that he was a gentle man. Both were true. A more refreshing person would be hard to find.

Kermit in the book is the one who successfully dissuades a brother from using the word 'Irregardless.' He commended the talk but asked the bro do him a favor. “Look up ‘irregardless’ in a dictionary. “I never found it,” the brother told me years later, and he never used it again.

30 years later, heartened by this experience, I tried to get someone else to stop saying it.

Alas, unlike in Kermit's day, the word WAS found in the dictionary. True, it was labeled 'irregular,' but that was a point far too subtle for the one I was speaking with. If anything, he doubled down on it.

…..“If, then, you are bringing your gift to the altar…” (Matthew 5:23)

Digital and print at Amazon.

Digital on Smashwords & other ebook retailers.

 

Defending Jehovah’s Witnesses with style from attacks... in Russia, with the book ‘I Don’t Know Why We Persecute Jehovah’s Witnesses—Searching for the Why’ (free).... and in the West, with the book, 'In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction'

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