Sheep and Goats

Category: Tweeting the Meeting

  • Tweeting the Meeting—week of February 7, 2021

    The speaker wove scenarios of taking certain calls (even holding up his own phone to illustrate, with the request, “please don’t call it now”) and letting others slide to voicemail for further review, to make various points about prayer.

    Lots of similar illustrations. More than anyone in a long while, he captures Jesus’ technique of using mundane situations of life to illustrate greater spiritual things.

    I know this fellow well. He is maybe ten years my junior. I know his disadvantaged background that he has outgrown, “pulling himself up by his own bootstraps,” so to speak.

    He might never be a “heavy hitter,” but he has become far more amenable as a general utility, practical, fatherly, and outgoing, with plain intent to help where he can and be faithful no matter what….1/2

    More practically useful in the congregation than me, who has become a specialist of limited general value…2/2

    He closed with prayer and got choked up. It is allowable, b/c his wife recently became very ill and he has had well-wishing. He and wife “got their start” in this cong, it is like a homecoming, and after meeting he reminisces with many.

    The fill-in #Watchtower conductor issued his standard request that comments be under 30 seconds. Good. He is not a Nazi about it. I have seen what happens without that coaxing, how very wordy people almost take over meeting & others give up, thinking wordiness is required.

    Hard to livestream during the #watchtowerstudy since I was the reader. “Stand by, brothers—I’m putting something on the internet” will not do. Besides normal participation, you must check ahead, so as not to screw up reading.

    Is it only me who sees that smashing picture and thinks of the bathfitter ad? There is something to be said for smashing. Those two guys can’t wait, because the rot has to be smashed for the rebuild—only in the ad the bathfitter guy beat them 2it  Not in reallife #watchtowerstudy

    “someone will say: “How are the dead to be raised up? Yes, with what sort of body are they coming?” You unreasonable person!” Why the rebuke for just a question? It is the context of challenging, undermining the resurrection, maybe so as to promote here today gone tomorrow.

  • Tweeting the Watchtower Study

    Zoom meetings make possible things that you could not do at the physical Kingdom Hall meeting. Such as tweeting your comments. Conductor didn’t call on me? So be it. I’ll tweet it to the world. Even if he did call on me I’ll do that. You can only get two or three comments in at any given congregation meeting—there are other people there, too.

    Also, other comments made by other people—those that strike my fancy I can tweet them out too. Is this going to be a thing? It may be.

    The Watchtower Study Sunday was from the study article, “The Resurrection—A Sure Hope.” It took a look at 1 Corinthians 15, which is largely devoted to that topic. It’s actually a form of both taking notes and advertising the kingdom at the same time when you tweet out remarks. And to think that I railed at Twitter’s decision to expand 140 character into 280. “No! Force the windbags to be concise!” I said. Now I use up every one of those 280 characters and sometimes issue multi-tweet threads.

    So here are the tweets that went out Sunday, remarks on various paragraphs. Brackets if I am just fluffing it out now for the blog:

    Every so often a brother will say that the Christian life is so good, even were it not true it would still be worth pursuing. Paul said no. If there is no resurrection(& what it entails)one’s faith is useless. (1 Cor 15:17) Might as well use the world to its full #watchtowerstudy”

    “Paul was so sure that Jesus had been raised from the dead that he was willing to die defending his belief.” The reason for undercutting the resurrection hope is so he will not do that, so he will cut and run when difficulty presents. #watchtowerstudy [Yeah! It may not always be the human one, but it is always the superhuman one. Undercut the resurrection hope so that you can manipulate people to do horrible things.]

    “There is an expression ‘sold down the river.’ It has ugly origin from the days of slavery. But it fits with Adam. Once you have been sold down the river, you do not claw your way back on your own. You need repurchase out of slavery. #watchtowerstudy”

    “I have hope . . . that there is going to be a resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous.” Acts 24:15, [This is an] indication of an earthly resurrection, since the “unrighteous” are not heaven-bound. Joe made the comparison of the rabble crashing the pearly gates…1/2

    of the Capitol building as a foreglimmer of what it would be for the “unrighteous” attempting to crash the actual pearly gates of heaven. [That scene the TV never tires of replaying—with the painty-faced horned guy and his cohorts ecstatic at having invaded the building—I can just picture same in heaven.]  He can always be depended upon to come up with something unique….2/2

    You can even tweet the non-study material, such as announcement at the end, using good judgment, of course, but I have that in spades. Such as:

    “The Witness organization affirms that neither blood or fraction is a component of Covid vaccines to date, a universal point of interest for JWs. Otherwise, it states that, “Medical care is a personal matter. We do not attempt to make choices for others.”

    And you can tweet asides that you would never actually say at the meeting. Such as (from the midweek meeting):

    “HEY, WHO POSTED THAT EZEKIEL CREATURE WITH A HEAD OF A WARTHOG, A DONKEY, A SKUNK, AND MY FACE? THAT’S NOT FUNNY!! TAKE IT DOWN RIGHT NOW!!!”

    It’s like that Superman climactic scene when the Man of Steel squares off against some equally powerful SuperVillain. “This is gonna be good!” one of the regulars says as he runs for cover.

    …..

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