The GREAT tribulation

PoppyR

Does anyone else remember horror stories about the great tribulation and what they would do to the witnesses etc.. I remember this being the big topic of conversation for years, then like lots of JW doctrine, they quietly swept it out of the arena, and now it's never mentioned. I remember pioneering with a girl who couldn't sleep at night and kept praying she'd be strong enough to endure it! I actually have a talk on tape from a member of the GB where he spoke about ministers swinging from lamposts.. gruesome or what!! Looking back was this just another mind control method, that has since been dropped because newer ones just wouldn't hack it!

Poppy x

under74

mmm...well, I'm not sure that they don't use it now. BUT I do remember the stories from when I was a kid.

ICBehindtheCurtain

This I think was a major cause for my depression, and anxiety, I remember that when I was a child I pictured and had nightmares about them taking my mom away, torturing her and me until we told them whatever they wanted, and wondering if I would be strong enough or if I would deny Jehovah, a child shouldn't have to worry about horrific things like that. Then when I grew up and had my own children, it was worse, now the fear that what if they take my children and torture them in front of me, will I be strong? What if they torture me in front of my kids? or will I betray my beliefs? WHAT CRAP!!!!!!!!!

I will tell you, that when I found out it was all a LOAD OF BS!!! It was like lifting an elephant off my back, the joy and happiness I have felt after that is immense, the people I have been able to enlighten feel the same way, we have a new lease on life, and life is wonderful, of course there are ups and downs that is part of growing as person, part of life, but I no longer fear the BS of TRIBULATION or ARMAGGEDON!!

I enjoy gardening and other extracurricular activities that before made me feel guilty, because I felt I should be preaching instead or studying for meetings etc, now I can do things to actually help others not get them to join this friggin CULT!

IC (of the It's great to be enlightened class)

glitter

When I was little (under 6 or 7) I remember if anyone knocked on the front door when I was in bed I thought it was *them* come to *get* us. I thought my dad would betray us cos he wasn't a JW.

I also used to practise hiding and being really quiet with my little sister, *just in case*.

My mum didn't know anything about this until I told her after I was out - being a JW she blamed herself for not "explaining it to me".

Oh and at the bookstudy when I was 8 we were doing the Revelation book and the conductor was talking about the Great Tribulation - and said (no bullshit) that *they* might burn my mum at the stake and make me light it!

bull01lay

when I was 8 we were doing the Revelation book and the conductor was talking about the Great Tribulation - and said (no bullshit) that *they* might burn my mum at the stake and make me light it!

Such sweet bedtime stories. Just what a growing child needs!

I remember talks about the great tribulation being possibly a "near death experience" for most of Jehovahs faithful followers. What a wonderful reward - lifelong enslavement to the WTBTS only to enjoy a 'trial by ordeal'

So loving!

Bull!

TheListener

imho,

It's still taught but not nearly as focused on. The spin is much more generic now. They might talk about everyone being rounded up or thrown in prison, but not so much with the bamboo shoots up the fingernails and the electric shock on the unmentionables.

I agree, though, that in the 70's and 80's there was a major push to scare the crap out of everyone. I remember a specifc yearbook, perhaps '84-'87? that dealt with much of the torture African witnesses went through. It made many of us a little ill.

Virgogirl

They scared us almost to illness from the platform before 1975, helping us to "mentally prepare ourselves." We were told to expect electrocution and beatings and that praying to Jehovah would distract our minds until we mercifully passed out to escape the pain. I had such awful nightmares as a child! I had a beloved cat I talked about in the cargroup once. The elder turned around to me in the back seat and said, "Don't you know, your kitty is just an animal and wouldn't hesitate to eat your flesh during the tribulation if she was hungry?" I never forgot that remark.

Effervescent

"Don't you know, your kitty is just an animal and wouldn't hesitate to eat your flesh during the tribulation if she was hungry?"

What the.....????

*Looks around at my four cats*

Ya- I remember the nightmares from the visual images they just loved to give when talking about the GT. I can remember at a very young age just knowing that I wouldn't be able to stand the torture and probably betray Jehovah. That didn't make it any better. Guilt piled on top of horror.

Gopher

I remember quite clearly as a child hearing about bans and persecutions and that it was only a matter of time before we JW's in America would be hunted down for our faith.

The prophecy from the WT was that all religions would be put out of business by the world governments, perhaps by the United Nations itself. Then, as the last remaining religion, JW's would have the WHOLE WORLD out to get them, and the special targets would be members of the 'anointed class'. (How the worldly governments would be able to determine who is and is not anointed among JW's was never explained.)

This was a frightening thing to think about as a child, and I did think on it quite a lot back in the 70's.

Looking back, I believe that this "us against the world" hysteria that the WT Society inspired in its followers was a way to increase loyalty / unity and it probably worked for a while.

PoppyR

A couple of years back they did a census here in the UK and for the first time a question about religion. And there was a lot of talk in the congregation that it was a 'test of faith' that we could just wimp out and put Christian, or we could stand up and be counted and put 'Jehovahs witness' but this of course would point us straight out in the tribulation!! I put Christian! But all your replies have really brought it all back to me! So weird looking in from the outside and all the things that should have been obvious just weren't and are now like flashing lights and sirens!

Poppy xxx

The GREAT tribulation

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