watchman
09-15-2008, 01:09 PM
Greetings Friends
This month of September marks the sixth year since e-watchman first came online in 2002. At the time I had no idea where my endeavors might lead, but with full faith in Jehovah's word and confidence in his determination to bring his house and this world into judgment, I have just kept pounding away at the keyboard.
Over the course of the past year and some months I have become more and more inclined towards podcasting and videos as a more powerful and intimate form of communication. In the Spring of 2008 that inclination led me off the Internet to begin broadcasting a weekly shortwave program on European Gospel Radio to Europe, Africa, the Middle East and a separate program to India and Pakistan, which are intended as an outlet for a ministry to reach those who are unfamiliar with the teachings of Jehovah's Witnesses and who may be out of reach of the Internet or even Jehovah's Witnesses on the ground. I might add, though, that due to the expense of the shortwave broadcasts it may not be a long term project, as it remains to be determined whether the money might be better spent promoting e-watchman via the internet. At any rate, as an outgrowth of my endeavors in broadcasting, at this time I would like to announce that a new e-watchman media site is now online @ e-watchman.tv. (http://e-watchman.tv) Although it is likely that there will be a few bugs to work out. Please let us know if you have any problems.
The domain is the same as before but the site will now be home to all the podcasts, videos and the archives of the shortwave programs as well as a new feature called View from the Watchman, which is intended to be a brief, regular video commentary. To kick off the launch of the e-watchman media site I am pleased to offer a new video entitled Just as the Days of Noah. The video will also appear on You Tube as well as God Tube.
(For you technophiles, I might add that I am aware of the somewhat amateurish quality of the currently available videos; I had been using primarily Adobe's Premiere Elements video editor, which is a powerful but limited, entry-level program. Not that I have mastered that program by any means, however, after my latest PC meltdown a couple of months ago and the near-simultaneous breakdown of my multitrack Roland recorder, which until recently was used for podcasting, I have at last switched to an Apple Mac Book Pro. (Wish I would have done it years ago) I am presently taking a crash course in Apple's Final Cut Pro at the Apple Store and via online tutorials. Final Cut Pro is a professional, studio-quality software suite, including the programs Motion, Compression and Color, all with a pretty steep learning curve for a techno-challenged guy like myself. Hopefully, though, I will be up to speed later this year and be able to produce more professional looking videos in the future. For the podcasts and shortwave I will now be using Apple's Garage Band software, which comes standard on every Mac. More recently I also upgraded my microphone to a studio-quality mic used by professionals and purchased a reflective filter that attaches to the mic stand and sort of wraps around behind the mic to compensate for inferior room acoustics by preventing an echo affect. Hopefully listeners will notice an improvement in the overall sound quality of the most recent programs, which admittedly has been a problem. However, the View from the Watchman programs will probably all be recorded via the camcorder.)
Timothy has also revamped the page layout of the more than 100 essays and commentaries and mailbag pages on the main e-watchman site and added some flashy features to the essays and commentaries menus. We have also produced an overview of the site's content in the form of a brief slide show presentation accessible from the main page e-w icon and a slide show presentation featuring photos that have appeared in the daily pictures on the forum. (I have been having fun with Apple's Keynote program, which is their version of Microsoft's Power Point.) We even have a new podcast theme song composed specifically for e-watchman by a former member of the discussion board!
Unfortunately, the e-w media site and even some features of the main e-watchman site are not at all dial-up or low band-width friendly. Broadband users may even face 20-30 second load times. Even the "contact" page on the media site is a mini movie.
Because of connection speed challenges we are retaining the html menus on e-w and hope to make the podcasts and videos downloadable so that those who are stuck with slow Internet connections and cannot stream the programs may download them, perhaps using the overnight period to allow their computers to work while you sleep. It may be that if the videos hang up on you you might want to view them on You Tube. I am told that they have a proprietary method of further compressing videos for better streaming. For the dial-up friendly version of the main e-watchman site look to the bottom of the main page for the classic e-watchman button.
At this time e-watchman will also begin featuring a monthly newsletter, which is a colorful two-page (one-sheet, front and back) tract-like message -- designed to be printed out by you, dear reader, and distributed among Jehovah's Witnesses in your area; or elsewhere far-afield via snail mail or email attachment. (The two page format is intended to be printed front and back on a standard size sheet of paper by first printing one side then re-inserting the flip side of the page into the printer.)
As a preview, the September newsletter is a primer on the Watchtower's NGO affair -- seven years after. It coincides with a 6 minute View from the Watchman video of the same topic and a new 16 page brochure available as an essay, a PDF and professionally-produced color brochure on Lulu.com. The brochure is a distillation of the Strange Bedfellows chapter from Jehovah Himself Has Become King. (The October brochure and corresponding newsletter and View from the Watchman video are entitled The Day of Jehovah -- What Will it Mean for Jehovah's Witnesses and the Watchtower?)
Unfortunately Lulu's brochure template only allows for the printing of a 16 page brochure. I would have preferred a 32 page format to mimic the familiar formatting of the Watchtower and Awake magazines and the Society's brochures just to enhance the richness of the irony of announcing Jehovah's judgments against the organization that boasts of "Announcing Jehovah's Kingdom."
The newsletters and brochures are designed as a convenient and practical way to confront Jehovah's Witnesses who may avoid the Internet with vital information in a familiar form; thus circumventing the Watchtower's information lockdown. But since there is only a limited amount of information that can be printed on a single sheet of paper the newsletters are basically a teaser intended to promote e-watchman sites online.
Up until now e-watchman has largely only been appreciated by disaffected JW's and those who may be estranged from the organization in varying degrees for one reason or the other. However, I believe the time has come for the issue of Jehovah's future judgments to be interjected more forcefully into the mainstream, particularly into the leadership, as a prelude the the actual judgment.
If you are similarly inclined to that view then I invite you at this time to join me in this endeavor by reaching out to Jehovah's Witnesses with the information provided on the e-watchman sites. (If not now, when?) I encourage as many as are inclined to distribute the newsletter or brochure within your sphere of contacts -- including JW email contacts, or perhaps with an article cut and pasted from one of the essays, or simply with a link to either e-watchman.com, the blog or new media site.
I will be utilizing these and other avenues of publicizing e-watchman, such as You Tube and other video sites, pay-per-clicks, banner ads and press releases.
It has long been my conviction that the world is destined to be plunged into an unimaginable nightmare of financial collapse (see latest blog entry), nuclear war, genocide and tyranny and that the Watchtower Society will collapse as an expression of Jehovah's anger. With the dark clouds of the next great depression and world war three looming ominously on the horizon it appears as if the time of the end is about to begin, if it hasn't already. I am, therefore, committing myself to re-doubling my efforts to announce Jehovah's judgments in the most effective manner and to the broadest extent possible.
I am quite excited by the prospect of the realization of the things of prophecy I have been writing about over the course of these many years, dating back to 1997 when I first began writing to brothers at Bethel. My motive has always been to provide Jehovah's Witnesses with the scriptural insights into prophecy so as to enable them to comprehend the yet-to-be-unveiled judgments of Jehovah -- soon to be manifested in an unprecedented global tumult -- hopefully, to the end of assisting as many of Jehovah's Witnesses as possible to keep their faith in Jehovah and Christ intact.
To do less than all I can do to convey the message I have been entrusted with would be a faithless act of negligence on my part.
It is my hope that the revamped e-watchman site and the new media site will provide a more appealing and compelling presentation of the available information at a time when Jehovah's Witnesses and the world at large are about to be plunged into a situation that, while, it may stumble many, as Jesus foretold, it will also, inevitably, make some persons more receptive to the truth.
Thank you all
Watchman
This month of September marks the sixth year since e-watchman first came online in 2002. At the time I had no idea where my endeavors might lead, but with full faith in Jehovah's word and confidence in his determination to bring his house and this world into judgment, I have just kept pounding away at the keyboard.
Over the course of the past year and some months I have become more and more inclined towards podcasting and videos as a more powerful and intimate form of communication. In the Spring of 2008 that inclination led me off the Internet to begin broadcasting a weekly shortwave program on European Gospel Radio to Europe, Africa, the Middle East and a separate program to India and Pakistan, which are intended as an outlet for a ministry to reach those who are unfamiliar with the teachings of Jehovah's Witnesses and who may be out of reach of the Internet or even Jehovah's Witnesses on the ground. I might add, though, that due to the expense of the shortwave broadcasts it may not be a long term project, as it remains to be determined whether the money might be better spent promoting e-watchman via the internet. At any rate, as an outgrowth of my endeavors in broadcasting, at this time I would like to announce that a new e-watchman media site is now online @ e-watchman.tv. (http://e-watchman.tv) Although it is likely that there will be a few bugs to work out. Please let us know if you have any problems.
The domain is the same as before but the site will now be home to all the podcasts, videos and the archives of the shortwave programs as well as a new feature called View from the Watchman, which is intended to be a brief, regular video commentary. To kick off the launch of the e-watchman media site I am pleased to offer a new video entitled Just as the Days of Noah. The video will also appear on You Tube as well as God Tube.
(For you technophiles, I might add that I am aware of the somewhat amateurish quality of the currently available videos; I had been using primarily Adobe's Premiere Elements video editor, which is a powerful but limited, entry-level program. Not that I have mastered that program by any means, however, after my latest PC meltdown a couple of months ago and the near-simultaneous breakdown of my multitrack Roland recorder, which until recently was used for podcasting, I have at last switched to an Apple Mac Book Pro. (Wish I would have done it years ago) I am presently taking a crash course in Apple's Final Cut Pro at the Apple Store and via online tutorials. Final Cut Pro is a professional, studio-quality software suite, including the programs Motion, Compression and Color, all with a pretty steep learning curve for a techno-challenged guy like myself. Hopefully, though, I will be up to speed later this year and be able to produce more professional looking videos in the future. For the podcasts and shortwave I will now be using Apple's Garage Band software, which comes standard on every Mac. More recently I also upgraded my microphone to a studio-quality mic used by professionals and purchased a reflective filter that attaches to the mic stand and sort of wraps around behind the mic to compensate for inferior room acoustics by preventing an echo affect. Hopefully listeners will notice an improvement in the overall sound quality of the most recent programs, which admittedly has been a problem. However, the View from the Watchman programs will probably all be recorded via the camcorder.)
Timothy has also revamped the page layout of the more than 100 essays and commentaries and mailbag pages on the main e-watchman site and added some flashy features to the essays and commentaries menus. We have also produced an overview of the site's content in the form of a brief slide show presentation accessible from the main page e-w icon and a slide show presentation featuring photos that have appeared in the daily pictures on the forum. (I have been having fun with Apple's Keynote program, which is their version of Microsoft's Power Point.) We even have a new podcast theme song composed specifically for e-watchman by a former member of the discussion board!
Unfortunately, the e-w media site and even some features of the main e-watchman site are not at all dial-up or low band-width friendly. Broadband users may even face 20-30 second load times. Even the "contact" page on the media site is a mini movie.
Because of connection speed challenges we are retaining the html menus on e-w and hope to make the podcasts and videos downloadable so that those who are stuck with slow Internet connections and cannot stream the programs may download them, perhaps using the overnight period to allow their computers to work while you sleep. It may be that if the videos hang up on you you might want to view them on You Tube. I am told that they have a proprietary method of further compressing videos for better streaming. For the dial-up friendly version of the main e-watchman site look to the bottom of the main page for the classic e-watchman button.
At this time e-watchman will also begin featuring a monthly newsletter, which is a colorful two-page (one-sheet, front and back) tract-like message -- designed to be printed out by you, dear reader, and distributed among Jehovah's Witnesses in your area; or elsewhere far-afield via snail mail or email attachment. (The two page format is intended to be printed front and back on a standard size sheet of paper by first printing one side then re-inserting the flip side of the page into the printer.)
As a preview, the September newsletter is a primer on the Watchtower's NGO affair -- seven years after. It coincides with a 6 minute View from the Watchman video of the same topic and a new 16 page brochure available as an essay, a PDF and professionally-produced color brochure on Lulu.com. The brochure is a distillation of the Strange Bedfellows chapter from Jehovah Himself Has Become King. (The October brochure and corresponding newsletter and View from the Watchman video are entitled The Day of Jehovah -- What Will it Mean for Jehovah's Witnesses and the Watchtower?)
Unfortunately Lulu's brochure template only allows for the printing of a 16 page brochure. I would have preferred a 32 page format to mimic the familiar formatting of the Watchtower and Awake magazines and the Society's brochures just to enhance the richness of the irony of announcing Jehovah's judgments against the organization that boasts of "Announcing Jehovah's Kingdom."
The newsletters and brochures are designed as a convenient and practical way to confront Jehovah's Witnesses who may avoid the Internet with vital information in a familiar form; thus circumventing the Watchtower's information lockdown. But since there is only a limited amount of information that can be printed on a single sheet of paper the newsletters are basically a teaser intended to promote e-watchman sites online.
Up until now e-watchman has largely only been appreciated by disaffected JW's and those who may be estranged from the organization in varying degrees for one reason or the other. However, I believe the time has come for the issue of Jehovah's future judgments to be interjected more forcefully into the mainstream, particularly into the leadership, as a prelude the the actual judgment.
If you are similarly inclined to that view then I invite you at this time to join me in this endeavor by reaching out to Jehovah's Witnesses with the information provided on the e-watchman sites. (If not now, when?) I encourage as many as are inclined to distribute the newsletter or brochure within your sphere of contacts -- including JW email contacts, or perhaps with an article cut and pasted from one of the essays, or simply with a link to either e-watchman.com, the blog or new media site.
I will be utilizing these and other avenues of publicizing e-watchman, such as You Tube and other video sites, pay-per-clicks, banner ads and press releases.
It has long been my conviction that the world is destined to be plunged into an unimaginable nightmare of financial collapse (see latest blog entry), nuclear war, genocide and tyranny and that the Watchtower Society will collapse as an expression of Jehovah's anger. With the dark clouds of the next great depression and world war three looming ominously on the horizon it appears as if the time of the end is about to begin, if it hasn't already. I am, therefore, committing myself to re-doubling my efforts to announce Jehovah's judgments in the most effective manner and to the broadest extent possible.
I am quite excited by the prospect of the realization of the things of prophecy I have been writing about over the course of these many years, dating back to 1997 when I first began writing to brothers at Bethel. My motive has always been to provide Jehovah's Witnesses with the scriptural insights into prophecy so as to enable them to comprehend the yet-to-be-unveiled judgments of Jehovah -- soon to be manifested in an unprecedented global tumult -- hopefully, to the end of assisting as many of Jehovah's Witnesses as possible to keep their faith in Jehovah and Christ intact.
To do less than all I can do to convey the message I have been entrusted with would be a faithless act of negligence on my part.
It is my hope that the revamped e-watchman site and the new media site will provide a more appealing and compelling presentation of the available information at a time when Jehovah's Witnesses and the world at large are about to be plunged into a situation that, while, it may stumble many, as Jesus foretold, it will also, inevitably, make some persons more receptive to the truth.
Thank you all
Watchman