Things That Drive You Crazy About the Faith—and How to View Them: Part 6
Things That Drive You Crazy About the Faith—and How to View Them: Part 7

My Meeting Notes, Week of May 30, 2022 (with musings and flashbacks)

Live With Soundness of Mind in a Depraved World’ is the public talk title.

The speaker looks at these verses of 1 Corinthians 2 to explain how Christians know what they know: “For it is to us God has revealed them through his spirit, for the spirit searches into all things, even the deep things of God. . . . Now we received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit that is from God, so that we might know the things that have been kindly given us by God. These things we also speak, not with words taught by human wisdom, but with those taught by the spirit, as we explain spiritual matters with spiritual words.

“Trust in Jehovah with all your heart, And do not rely on your own understanding. In all your ways take notice of him, And he will make your paths straight,” says Proverbs 3:5-6.   “Jehovah can keep us from wandering abuout figuring things out on our own, but we have to trust him,” the speaker adds.

“Soundness of mind allows one to compare now with ten years also and know we are deeper into thee end of this systems of things,” he adds. Yeah, like how mass shootings have become routine. An uniquely American problem, I am told. Elsewhere it is knives.

There is a phrase that you can’t judge a book by the cover. “I dare say that’s why the cover’s on the book,” says the #publictalk speaker.

 

#watchtowerstudy article: “Elders​—Continue to Imitate the Apostle Paul“. Theme scripture: “Become imitators of me.”​—1 COR. 11:1.

Para 1: “On one occasion, “quite a bit of weeping broke out” when the elders from Ephesus learned that they would never see [Part] again. (Acts 20:37)”  I asked the CO in the late 70s if this verse would apply to his final meeting. He said if any weeping breaks out it won’t be for that reason.

Para 4: elders wear a lot of hats and it is easy for those not elders to forget that, become critical that someone is not doing this or that.

Para 5; 17: 16Now while Paul was waiting for them in Athens, his spirit within him became irritated on seeing that the city was full of idols, infuriated, says Refference Bible (others?)

Flashback to the bro who said how you fix something around the house & your boy want to help, but you can do it quicker on your own. The trick is to ask what are you doing? Fixing a gadget or training a child.

Bro apologized for not calling on me. That’s okay I said—I could see all the other hands, it’s a good problem to have.

Thing is, the violence of today dovetails so well with what the Bible foretells. ‘Faint out of fear, but knowing the meaning of certain things, one can see the same things, take cover but also comfort, lift up your eyes….kingdom of God is near (Luke 21)

One sis commented on zoom and all I could think of was her mom, who speaks with the same inflections and timbres.

Para 8: Privileges of service like the salt that enhance the dish but too mcuh can ruin it. Conductor speaks of how one bro gave him a ‘no’ button—15 different ways to say no.

Para 18: “Earlier, Paul had been a headstrong, harsh persecutor of Christians. But later, he acknowledged his shortcomings and was willing to change his attitude and personality.” (1 Tim. 1:12-16) The guy that was headstrong and harsh does not instantly change upon leaning the truth, still headstrong and harsh, he just has new target.

Para 16: you forgive anyone for anything, I do also. In fact, whatever I have forgiven (if I have forgiven anything) has been for your sake in Christ’s sight, so that we may not be overreached by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his designs…..harsh, judgmental, overcritical, hypocritical,

Para 17: “Nevertheless, Paul knew the difference between bad conduct and bad people. He loved his brothers and focused on their good qualities. If his brothers and sisters were struggling to do the right thing, he assumed that their motives were good and that they simply needed help.”

 

#midweekmeeting: May 30–June 52 SAMUEL 7-8

Just once I would like one of those student talks with a workplace setting end, “I’d love to speak further but our break is almost over. Oh, hang it! The the boss to kiss off. This is important!”

6AD8AB0E-EC02-490D-8976-91CE4AA9CA68“or this is what Jehovah says, The Creator of the heavens, the true God, The One who formed the earth, its Maker who firmly established it, Who did not create it simply for nothing, but formed it to be inhabited.” (Isaiah 45:15) It’s not like when my chum worked hours “for nothing” on a centrifuge part, looked at the sloppy result and said, “This might be okay for the toilet but not a centrifuge.”

Love this point: “Human get credit for the designs they’ve copied from nature, so who should get credit for the original?”

Fly and we see tips of the plane tipped upwards. They never used to do that. A design copied from nature, counterintuitiely it makes for better economy, probably stability too.

“The Bible uses the word “kind,” which is much broader in meaning than the word “species” as used by scientists. Often, what scientists choose to call the evolution of a new species is simply a matter of variation within a kind, as the word is used in the Genesis account….This concept is sometimes referred to as microevolution.”

Was the universe created?

“The Bible book of genesis says that there is a creators but the account is often misunderstood or even dismissed as a myth.”

“it focuses on the creative process that took place on earth over six creative periods of time, which the Bible calls days.”

“The writer describes the creative periods as they would have appeared to an observer on the earth,” a “process that took place on earth over six creative periods of time, which the Bible calls days.”

From: https://www.jw.org/finder?srcid=jwlshare&wtlocale=E&lank=pub-lffv_61_VIDEO

 

Musings & Flashbacks: (I had to hand it to the church people—it was kind of cute. There was my buddy John Cuyler at his work station, the booklet, “The Word—Who is He, According to John” on his table. The tricksters appended “Cuyler” at the title’s end!)

“YOU are here to tell ME about suffering?!’ hurled the guy in the wheelchair at me after I’d brought up the topic. ‘No,’ I told him. ‘I am here so you can tell me.’ One must be flexible.

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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