Publictalk: Rescue from World Distress,

WatchtowerStudy article: Revelation: What it Means for God’s Enemies

Para 2, not a verse usually selected to highlight neutrality: ‘If anyone is meant for captivity, he will go into captivity. If anyone will kill with the sword, he must be killed with the sword. This is where it calls for endurance and faith on the part of the holy ones.’ Rev 13:10

Para 4: “The key to understanding it is to allow the Bible to explain itself.”

Para 9 ‘and it had two horns like a lamb, but it began speaking like a dragon’ One might think of ‘lamb’ & how its founders are from tradition of christianity, another lamb, some devout, others not so much, as though ‘a Christian nation’ but in a hurry it is seen not to act that way

Para 10: This one looks almost the same as the seven-headed wild beast with the exception that it is scarlet-colored, why the scarlet cover?

Para 11 It’s not so much brainwashing that powers complain of but brainwashing that is not theirs.

Para 13, Recalled how Bro Jackson told of the challenge of neutrality when one party benefits you personally. Sigh—but they all do things underhanded & ungodly. If you link up with them, so do you, ‘sharing in their sins.’

Para 14: The apostle John mentions that he “was greatly amazed” by something else he saw. What was it? A woman riding one of these ferocious beasts. You’d do a double-take at that, one sis says, because it ‘doesn’t look right.’

Midweekmeeting, Assigned reading: 2 Samuel 20-21

Huh! The speaker said he unexpectedly met Nancy Yuen and was tongue-tied as though with a celebrity! He had been determined to spiff up his Chinese by greeting any Chinese person he saw. She was surrounded by “an entourage” at Bethel, “but I’m oblivious to those things.” The woman once imprisoned years in China was humble, gracious, and almost crushed his hand with her firm handshake.

‘Looking forward to hearing encouraging thoughts about the lovely details of 2 Samuel 20:10,12’ someone texts me. Tough sledding, some of these verses are.

Is that ofJoab the hitman? Or is that Rizpah chasing away the “birds of discouragement” that are in reality the vultures picking clean the bones of her sons?

Being assigned the Gems for his bible reading is worse than being the COBE of Michael Jackson’s old congregation. There he is acting outrageously and everyone’s looking to you to do something about it.

Obstacles regarding moving to areas of greater need reminded me of a chum receiving a letter on how to combat bugs, lizards, and snakes in the new land. All could be dealt with—but the letter went on for many paragraphs!

(Photo: Jan van Kessell)

You can change it.

the gist of that 5-minute midweekmeeting part

You think it’s easy writing presentations for the whole wide world?

If you think it’s a clunker that would never work where you are, you can change it

Just adhere to theme and and you’re golden

I wish I knew how to stop the app from switching to the Reference version all by itself when what I want (and everyone else is on) is the Study version. Doubtless it is in the instructions, but who can be bothered with that stuff?

*** Yikes! My son went with me to a boomer concert but he commented on the ‘geriatric’ nature of the conversations: ‘How’s so-and-so?’ He died. What about … him, too. ‘Say, whatever became of…. pushing daisies. Sigh—I probably only have minutes left myself.

Came across a couple necking in the park! Reasonably secluded, but it WAS a park and it WAS in my pathway. “Oh uh,” I said as I approached. “Don’t worry about it,” I said as I walked by. “How do you think I met my wife?” It just seemed a good line at the time, if not strictly accurate.

Alas, my knowledge of (trending) #Hegel is sort of like the guy who knew everything about anthracite coal but nothing about bituminous coal because he had not yet reached the ‘b’s of his serial store-bought encyclopedias.