Don,
I guess sales must be down. Are you going to make a tour of all the boards again?
Slim
The Real Reason Jehovah's Witnesses Refuse Blood Transfusions
by Cameron 22 Replies latest jw friends
-
-
VM44
The current prohibition against blood transfusions and the earlier prohibition agains vaccinations are both due to Clayton Woodworth, editor of The Golden Age magazine who was obsessed with keeping his body pure, free from impurities, also also with each atom of his body vibrating at the proper frequency to avoid diseases and ailments.
Concern about demonic posssession was another of Woodworth's obsessions, and was another reason he was interested in bodily purity.
Woodworth thought that cooking with aluminum cookware was poisioning people, and he wrote many articles in The Golden Age concerning the supposed ills that came about from using aluminum pots and pans when cooking.
Recently I have learned from Barbara Anderson that Woodworth had a forceful and demanding personality, it was only after he died that The Watchtower let up on its ban against vaccinations.--VM44
-
slimboyfat
If you believe Singelenberg, the real sociological reason for the prohibition has to do with purity and danger: Mary Douglas style.
-
jwfacts
Hi Don,
Ignore any comments from brainwashed JWs, your point is spot on. JWs believe what the WTS says, not what the bible says. That allows them to go back and forth on a point and have all the followers swing with them.
One of the most classic examples was the worship of Jesus. For 80 years JWs were told that the bible said they need to worship Jesus. Then one day in the 1950's JWs were told that the bible says not to worship Jesus, and the great majority of followers stopped worshipping Jesus from that day forwards.
In regards to blood Russell clearly identified why the Bible shows that consuming blood is acceptable. When Rutherford change that rule JWs all said it was due to following the bible. But isnt that what they claimed when they believed blood is acceptable.
The bible has nothing to do with being a JW. Repetition of a point from leaders that crush any dissention makes JWs scared to actually think. It is pure mind control.
-
rebel8
What's so interesting to me is the large number of medical superstitions the WTS has abandoned, yet it hangs onto some still. I wonder how they decided which ones to eliminate/keep? Brochure: Bizarre Medical Myths--Believe it or not!
-
willyloman
They started believing it when the Society started teaching it and they stopped believing it when the Society stopped teaching it.
You're a keen observer of dub thought.
An elder who runs the blodless surgery program at a large hospital once told me that 99% of the dubs who come in for surgery have no idea what their own personal opinion is on taking blood fractions and availing themselves of various drugs and technology associated with "transfusion-free" medical management. They always ask him, "What does Mother say?" As part of the hospital team and as a guy who is current with WT teaching, he gives them the most liberal interpretation possible. And every single one of them says the same thing: "Well, if that's what the Society says, I'll take it."
They then proceed to take volume-expanding and red-cell-mulitplying drugs, get hooked up to machinery that saves their spilled blood, cleans it, and puts it back into their bodies, and willingly consume all the various fractions that come from blood - but are somehow NOT blood - and go on living, content that they are doing God's will as the Society has defined it for them. If tomorrow the WTS said, "Screw this fractions stuff, just take the damn blood," he'd pass that information on to his patients and I have absolutely no doubt most of them would take it. Follow the organization is the dub mantra.
-
Cameron
And why is "follow the organization" the Witnesses' mantra?
Because they believe that the organization is God's organizaition. That's the concept holding them captive.
Don at www.CaptivesOfaConcept.com
-
LUKEWARM
If the real reason they believed that teaching was because it was really based on the Bible, then even though the Society stopped teaching it Witnesses should have continued to believe it anyway. But they didn’t. They all stopped believing it the moment the Society stopped teaching it. What does this show?
It shows that the real reason why they believed that teaching was because that’s what the Watchtower Society was teaching. They started believing it when the Society started teaching it and they stopped believing it when the Society stopped teaching it. Therefore what the Bible says at Matthew 24:34 is not the real reason they believed it.
Marking - Great reasoning!
-
Mad Sweeney
I don't think it's news that JWs believe that the WTS is God's organization. They say it multiple times at every indoctrination session, er, meeting.
The question is, what can we do about it? I'm discovering that there is very little we can do but that every little bit helps.
-
OnTheWayOut
If your JW loved one lets you discuss it, you can "plant a seed" within them.
"You say your beliefs are all Bible-based. Was the belief that the 1914 generation would not pass away before Armageddon based on the Bible?"
"Well... there was new light."
"Was that new light based on the Bible?"
"Yes."
"So what was that new light?"
"That the generation was the anointed."
"No, you skipped one inbetween. The new light after the 1914 generation was that the generation was a wicked generation of people seeing the same signs in the last days."
"Well, that was wrong." (or "More new light came since then." or the argument starts to bother them.)
"So which teaching was Bible-based? Which ones did you believe? Which ones did you personally examine and see were Bible-based?"
"The light was getting brighter. The revealed truth was leading to the right understanding."
"And that right understanding is that Jesus evidently meant an overlapping generation? Is that really in the Bible or just the Watchtower? You actually get that from your Bible?"
"Well, um ..."