Thomas Walker

Beautiful sentiments brother Tim, and perfectly timed. A good friend of mine is having some real trouble this week, and I wasn't sure what to say. I do believe I'll be forwarding this on.

Modern Christendom in a nutshell. I heard an interview with Jim Lovell's kid. While Lovell was up on Apollo 13, fighting for his life, his teen son was taken aside by his science teacher, who said: "Don't worry. The moon missions are all fake. Your dad isn't in any danger."

From this week.

An interesting point was made in my Cong during the study of this week's WT. 2024 has more elections than any other year on record. All democracies have term limits in some sense, but those term lengths change from country to country. This year, simply by how the numbers line up, 64 counties are hitting their election cycle. Half the human race will be eligible to take part in one, and in at least a few of the most contested countries, the result is a foregone conclusion, or certain to be rejected by whichever side loses. Even in fair elections, more power is changing hands this year than at any other point in history.

They've changed up the Announcements of new things. There was a time when Releases/Announcements were given at Regional Conventions, back when we called them 'District Conventions'. But that doesn't work anymore, because people like us can talk about Releases months in advance of later Conventions. So they started releasing new information at Annual Meetings. But that's going around the grapevine while the AM is being translated for the rest of the organization. But new announcements/understandings/publications all come from the GB now, and the GB has the monthly updates now. We get the themes of Conventions, new mandates on Dress and Grooming... Odds are the announcements for songs and such will come from there too.

I never know where to put the Code in either. 😅

I never thought of the Daniel parallel, but dang. It's perfect. A suspended sentence is the law saying 'We're watching you for this exact thing.'

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/18/climate/ocean-heat-record-year-climate-intl/index.html

In my territory, there are plenty of suburbs where people will just not answer the door to someone in a suit and tie. Is it someone from the Council? A landlord? A Cop? Someone sent by Child Support, or to solicit money? If nothing else, it'll shake up the territory a little.

They make this announcement right before the Special Talk/Memorial. Going to be an interesting night. My Cong has the Special Talk in four hours. We're going to see who watched the update right away. Now, if you'll pardon me a moment, I'm just going to light a small bonfire for my ties...

If some science lab announced tomorrow morning that they had cracked an 'immortality serum', you know what would happen. Everyone would fight for first dibs. The Rich and Powerful would get priority, and then suddenly realize that the world would fill up too fast, and limit access. If, for the sake of argument, everyone was given eternal life anyway, by means other than Paradise, under Divine Rule? Then what? You'd spend eternity working off debts that somehow kept growing for all eternity, the way student debt does now. Someone would raise the cost of food dramatically, because 'you can't really die, so do you need to eat, given how many mouths there are to feed?' The only way to be wealthy now is if you inherited a huge fortune from your parents. if they never die, do rich kids spend eternity on their old allowance, working in Daddy's company, with no chance to ever do anything different? If the world could have granted eternal life even 200 years ago, the Class Systems would ensure that slaves would never be freed, and spend eternity under the whip. The Aristocrats would despise poor people even more than they did already. The powerful would find some way to exploit the absence of death for their own profit. Even the very patient, who saved little coins, one at a time, for a billion years, and eventually have their fortune? imagine the bitterness that would come from centuries of denial, prejudice... If the secular world could have granted eternal life in the time of the Pharaohs, or the Emperors, or literally any point in human history, then society would have become static. With the same people in charge forever, nothing would ever change from the way it is. If a King, or a President could rule for longer than a Term Limit, or even a lifetime, the world would become fixed. Watch any period piece, any move set as recently as the 90's, and you'll see how times have changed. You nod and say "That was how we thought back then." Now imagine that you never get to see any 'new' faces on television, or hear any new leadership ideas. Believe me, Eternal Life is the least of what will make it a Paradise. *** As to the other question, "Would you step away from God's Rule if you could, without losing His Promise?" I don't know. Probably a few more movies/books/video games I'd normally avoid. It's not like going out to bars, or smoking a cigarette holds any appeal to me.

How did I not hear about this in May 2022?!

I find myself wondering about places like North Korea. The way they're brainwashed over there, they'd eat their kids before admitting their leaders don't give them enough food. Millions of people regulated into military-level 'sameness'. How do you read the heart in a life that demands you never think or feel anything of your own? How do you judge people like that? It goes so far beyond 'outward appearances'.

Ahh, I would have paid a hundred bucks to read this seven months ago. The study of it is going to be an emotional one. Everyone in my Cong is living with this worry, for at least one or two people that they love. Some of them a lot more than that. It rewrites everything we think about the GT. For some, it's the one thing that makes them hope it's further off than we think. Hoping someone will make the Big Choice before then. There's a point where we can't be any more prepared for it to happen. Taking some of the fear away is no small thing.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/07/25/world/gulf-stream-atlantic-current-collapse-climate-scn-intl/index.html https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/25/gulf-stream-could-collapse-as-early-as-2025-study-suggests https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-66289494 I'm old enough to remember when The Day After Tomorrow was a sci-fi movie. I know this seems weird, coming from me, but Climate Change is the only aspect of the Last Days to still give me existential dread. Politics is a joke, poverty and crime are things people can recover from, and things that the Cong helps with, when times are hard for our brothers. Climate Change is the one aspect of the time that still gets me low enough to think "It's not coming. The Bible is a fairy tale after all." Never for long, but it's the battleground I'm fighting on. If Paradise doesn't come, then the long range forecast is: We're all gonna die. And the last man to starve/freeze/thirst will look back on our legacy and say: "At least we made profits for a few shareholders." Of course, the reverse is also true. I've always believed that the 'Sovereignty' issue is answered when the Earth gets to the point where our extinction is inevitable. If the System hasn't ended yet, then we aren't at the point of no return yet. Verses like the 'four winds' in Revelation tells me that Jah is counting down the seconds. Jesus even said 'If those days lasted, no flesh would be saved.' When I was younger, I thought that was talking about GT, but in truth, it applies to the Last Days as well.