1MKnight

He went a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree, and he asked that he might die. He said: “It is enough! Now, O Jehovah, take my life away, for I am no better than my forefathers.” 5 Then he lay down and fell asleep under the broom tree. But suddenly an angel touched him and said to him: “Get up and eat.” 6 When he looked, there at his head was a round loaf on heated stones and a jug of water. He ate and drank and lay down again. 7 Later the angel of Jehovah came back a second time and touched him and said: “Get up and eat, for the journey will be too much for you.” 8 So he got up and ate and drank, and in the strength of that nourishment he went on for 40 days and 40 nights until he reached Horʹeb, the mountain of the true God. (1 Kings 19:4-8) When Elijah was at his lowest, Jehovah strengthened him with a little food and a lot of sleep. Great points brother. Thanks for sharing.

Yup. Saw him in person back in January.

Some related terms are “Deep time,” “Infinite monkey Theorem”, and maybe “Platonic Perfection.” Most people (I assume) don’t tend to think in terms of deep time when contemplating the new world. They think in terms of hundreds, thousands, and maybe millions (without really comprehending how long millions is). For instance, you will never be able to live in your house “forever” because it will inevitably be washed away by the sea, taken over by mountain, sunk into a deep canyon, or something. That’s not even taking into consideration that the house you build 1000 years from now, will not be the same house (even if it looks identical) to the house that sits there 6000 yeas later. All things decompose, and parts need to be replaced, and in no time (well… quite. alot of time) you’ve got yourself a “house of Theseus.” If you put a million monkey’s in a room with typewriters, and they can live forever, eventually, one will accidentally write the complete works of Shakespeare, with perfect spelling and punctuation. Give them long enough and one will eventually write the entire Bible in it’s original languages. So, in theory, your point about the arrangement of visual media is identical, just even more astronomically diverse than characters on a page. As to the human memory being able to remember everything: there is no biblical basis for such an idea. I hear often people claim that we’ll remember everything in the new world. Or I’ll hear people say we’ll be masters at every possible skill eventually. There is no biblical or other foundation for such a belief. These sorts of ideas (that perfection = superhuman) are related to Plato’s and other hellenistic philosophies about perfection. Philosophers imagined a definition of “perfection”, then, knowing that God is “perfect” put him into that box. That’s where Christendom gets the idea of predestination. (“Perfect knowledge must mean God knows all things that ever were, are, and will be, thus everything that will happen has been preordained, even the rebellion in Eden.” But that’s a very unbiblical view.) Similarly, many today imagine a definition of “perfection” then put future perfect humans into that box. But, Jesus became tired, hungry, thirsty. Adam felt indecisive. The human brain is a finite thing. It would not physically be possible to remember everything, forever. Anything with infinite memory would take up infinite physical space, no matter how efficient it is at storing memory. It is my personal opinion that we won’t be substantially different than how we are today. Our brains will be perfectly healthy, our bodies without disease, but still finite and squishy. We won’t have chronic ailments, but we may experience pain in reasonable amounts on occasion. We’ll have more time and less stress allowing us to focus on skill acquisition, but we’ll still forget, and it’s unlikely most of us will be Olympic level athletes or musical virtuosos at the same time. We may experience brief moments of loneliness, but then we’ll fix that by socializing and praying, just like you fix the pain of hunger by eating. We may remember more, but most likely a time will come where we have completely forgotten the thrilling climax of armageddon, and the only recollection we’ll have is by reading about it. Eventually, our own personal history will become as difficult to decipher as putting together ancient manuscripts of the Bible. (Hopefully we won’t have to copy by hand though lol) But, despite these “limitations” we will be happy, healthy, and fulfilled. We will feel “fresher than in our youth.”

I can personally attest that Jackson’s beard/goatee is real. It was the graduation for SKE class 153 in Florida. There was not a single mention of beards during the program, but about 3 graduates and Jackson had beards during the program. Multiple people mentioned this, but it was not the ASL class of SKE. That was held in Patterson, this was an English class in the Palm Coast Education Facility in Florida. At that facility there were dozens of COs who were sporting beards at various stages as well. I guarantee that it’s real lol, but alls I have is my word.

The reason for that is a safety guard on the learning algorithms. In the past, other companies have made similar chatbots based on live feedback with participants and what inevitably happens is the chatbot "learns" to become an argumentative, foul mouthed, Nazi supporting, social justice warrior, conspiracy pushing 14 year old. Basically, they learn the worst behavior of the ENTIRE internet and people who start arguing with it, and they become that for the next people to trigger it. ChatGPT is only going to give you made-up information. These unrestrained bots will start yelling racial slurs at you in just a few replies. The point: ChatGPT forgets the conversation it had with you. Even if it saves your "thread" so that you can continue it later, that thread doesn't influence ANY other conversation it will ever have. Every conversation is completely isolated so that the core of ChatGPT doesn't learn the bad behavior of it's users. When ChatGPT 3 was released, I believe everything it had ever been exposed to was from the year 2020 and before. It had no knowledge of the more recent years.

Hmm, I just tried to get an AI to add beards to a group photo of the GB... Probably for the best I couldn't figure it out haha

Now THAT is a nice beard! Sorry for you loss

I've yet to see a single brother in person in my 12 years of full-time service in the PNW sport a beard in any official capacity. However... I have seen an image of a brother a few hours away giving his first public talk. I asked my wife: "Why are you showing me this?" "Look at his face." *squints*... "OHHH." Brother had a beard and was giving a public talk. I do not personally know him but I have it on good authority that it was authentic, local, and recent. (last year or so) Funny, beards are so common in this area for everyone (except for Witnesses) that I didn't even notice he had one haha. I also know that beards haven't been seen at any PNW assemblies as far as I know.

The joke is: some brothers don't like the cart song, but I think it's a banger. Know Your Meme.

Whoa now... Still need to trim those beauteous bristles.

This is one I've had for a year or more, but I don't think I ever posted it.

(EDIT: I meant to put this in the MEME thread. Oh well...)

This really surprised me. I have always been under the impression it was up to each BOE in the US except for Assemblies. Huh. Especially given what was said in the 2016 Watchtower I'm even more confused. I had heard in the past someone tell me that the CO came through and made someone shave their beard, but I thought that was just hearsay, or the CO overreaching, or a very specific scenario with some behind the scenes details I was missing. Well, whichever it was, I guess that's water under the bridge now Yeah, I'm pretty confused about the previous direction in the US. Apparently I knew less than I thought lol. But I'm happy with the clear as day clarification. I especially love that the specifically mentioned Circuit Overseers, Bethelites, Special Full Time Servants, etc. That removes any doubt. Two thumbs up.

has there been an update on this? just wondering if anyone’s heard anything or if there’s been a comment on this i’ve missed.

Hmmmmm. I’ve been thinking about a project for a few months now, maybe I’ll do it here. Has this always been a feature?

I feel it is my duty, when I see true art, to point it out: that last gif nails the joke 😂

The is a complex question. There could be a literal drought of acceptable partners, or they could be blinded by unrealistically high standards. I had a pretty strict set of qualifications, but these weren’t cultural or physics restrictions, just goal oriented ones. If they didn’t have the same goals as me and hadn’t done anything to show they were pursuing them, I wrote them off as non eligible in my mind. That being said, I know others who also have a pretty strict list, but it far more specific than mine and has a lot more superficial qualifiers like “he can’t br shorter than me” etc. Because of that, they’ve passed on quite a few really good, really spiritual guys. I genuinely don’t know if they’ll ever get married in this system, which is a frustration for them. my point being: having standards is good, especially goal/spiritual oriented standards. But, being overly picky about other things can prevent one from seeing good potential spouses. as to where to find them? I started dating my wife because we both pioneered together, but we’re inThe same congregation. However, we made friends with people in many other congregations near and far and invited them out in long service days as well, this way we all got to know a wider variety of people. The goal wasn’t dating (not in my mind anyways), just making friends and having fun. But this incidentally introduced single people, some of which dates (or at least pre-dated). A huge component to finding more people socially or romantically is being more social and making strong friendships. As your social circle expands your likelihood of meeting someone you’re interested in expands.

to add to this context: - After the Holocaust, many Jews were displaced and looking for a way to heal their people. This started the Zionism movements (there are several which come in different flavors). Basically, this was the idea of Jews returning to Palestine to reform the nation of Israel. -The U.N.’s proposition was never (as far as I can read) accepted by the Palestinian Arab leadership and they publicly vowed that they would not allow the UN to take their land away from them and just hand it over to the Jews (Arabs outnumbered Jews there by a large margin). Read more here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine - Once Israel had control and legal authority granted by the UN they fought against the Arab population and surrounding nations winning. Then, according to the supporters of Palestinian Nationalism, Israel has continued to oppress and marginalize the Palestinian natives into a state of apartheid. - At this time, one of the first acts of aggression was an Israeli man committed a mass shooting at a Palestinian mosque killing dozens. Apparently, this man is memorialized today by many Israelis. This lead to some of the first violent riots. As @Semer said, it then proceeded to go back and forth for the next several decades till today. I’m not fully sure of many of the details, and finding unbiased information is exceptionally difficult as this is so politicized. This is a conflict that can be highly emotionally charged. Every fact I and Semer stated is probably contested by someone, and cited with counter facts.

Like Jason, I too image a deep, strong voice, but also calm. Like Jason, I also imagine the voice of a famous film villain: Josh Brolin. his voice is just one of the most calm, cool, collected, and simultaneously powerful and manly. And those are the qualities that I imagine Jehovah to have. He is always in control. Someone in control acts calm, cool, and collected. Yet Jehovah is powerful and “manly.” Without having personally heard the voice of God, I can imagine no better voice for the role.

Yes. Couple of my favorite games are Scythe and Dune. Dune is a particularly “heavy” game. But it’s super fun with the right people. Don’t get me wrong I love party games as well. We have a thriving board game scene among the congregations in my area.