Golden Age Goodies

by Leolaia 279 Replies latest watchtower scandals

• 

  Jeffro

  misanthropic:

  Aspirin causes heart diseases.

  Stomach ulcers maybe, but not heart disease.

  X-Rays will harm your future grandchildren

  Maybe if you're x-raying your gonads.

  Ultraviolet rays are good for you.

  Well they are good for you in small amounts for the production of vitamin D in the skin, but you only need about 15 minutes a day.

  Appendicitis is caused by worms and is cured by eating peppermint.

  You know how much worms hate peppermint!

  All diseases are intestinal.

  Heart disease is intestinal?

  Chewing gum decreases saliva

  No, it increases it, triggering the stomach to expect food.

  Psychiatry is unnecessary and leads to sin; psychologists are stupid monkeys.

  And the elders are much better qualified to deal with depressed people anyway, except maybe the depression they've caused.
• 

  Jeffro

  When school children refuse to salute the flag because of conscience, the Hierarchy, considering themselves as the "higher powers" and the flag as their own (since Roosevelt), have their religious susceptibilities shocked some more.

  Looks like the poor kid who didn't salute the flag is having his sensibilities shocked more.
• 

  VM44

  The problem with The Golden Age writers is that they thought nothing wrong with passing off as truth their fanciful explainations on any topic that they thought up with their fertile imaginations while sitting at their desks.

  These writers, and the editor Woodworth in particular, showed by printing these crazy ideas and rejecting well established and practical theories just because they didn't understand them, showed that they were very very arrogant. The only truth that matter was what they had thought up, even if it was all baloney.

  If these writers got wrong so many things about medicine and science why should anyone think they got it right when it came to Biblical interpretations?

  --VM44
• 

  Jeffro

  sistab_b (annoying formatting removed):

  Witnesses don't follow the teachings of the Golden age and haven't for many years. There are many that don't even know the publications exist. Why are you indulging in the past?

  Because it's funny. Have a sense of humour. (I even know of active 'faithful' Witnesses who can laugh at these old mistaken beliefs.) Lose the persecution complex, accept things on their merits, and don't be a wowzer.

  What happened in your life that hurt you so bad that you spend all your spare time looking for ways to hurt the organization? What do you get from this?

  If you are so offended, why are you on this forum at all?

  The joy that almost no one that really matters reads this stuff?

  And just who is it that "really matters"...??

  You have to register at this site in order to even be bothered with this hate bashing?

  Why have you registered?

  What about today? How can you entertain us with recent publications of the watchtower or awake that you find inaccurate?

  Don't get me started on 607.
• 

  moomanchu

  sista_b,

  welcome to the forum

  Witnesses don't follow the teachings of the Golden age and haven't for many years. There are many that don't even know the publications exist. Why are you indulging in the past?

  I don't know how old you are or how long you have been a JW but, you might hear these same words from younger ones or not yet born ones as you get older.
• 

  Leolaia

  sistab_b....The main intent is to have a little fun and take a light-hearted look at the kind of "spiritual food" formerly offered by the F&DS "at the proper time". Apparently it was the proper time in the 1920s and 1930s to publish dogmatic statements that make them look foolish today. Some of the stuff published back then is absolutely amazing, almost classic comedic gold. You almost cannot make this stuff up...and yet it's pretty hard to believe seeing it in black and white that they printed this stuff. Of course there is a serious side to all of this. The Society claims to be exclusively used by God to dispense Bible truth. This is not some teaching they came up with in 1978. They've claimed this continuously since the days of the Golden Age. Just as the magazines today are authoritative and you'd better accept what they teach as the "refined truth", so they claimed the same thing back then.

  The usual caveat is that the "light is getting brighter and brighter" and the silly stuff from the days of yore is simply due to the light being particularly "dim" back then. I guess one could try to entertain such a thought until......... one realizes that they claimed at the time that these publications were dispensing divine truths revealed through the organization. Sure the Witnesses no longer follow these teachings of the Golden Age, but why don't they if the organization has been dispensing spiritual food since 1919? If God was using the organization to dispense "the truth", why was the published truth so badly erroneous? There is a logical inconsistency between claiming that the Watchtower publications publish truth revealed by God (a muted claim of infallibility) and claiming that the "light is getting brighter" (a muted claim of fallibility). So either God was using the organization to dispense untruth because that was the proper time to dish it out, or the original claim that "the Lord reveals his truths to his people through the Watch Tower publications" and "the Lord has used the Watch Tower publications to teach his people" (1 December 1933 Watchtower, p. 363) was utterly false. And the implications of either possibility should be troubling to the thinking JW.

  And why should the average JW care? Is all of this just ancient history? I ask you to think of that question the next time you attend the book study and spend 320 hours pouring over the Daniel book, or the Isaiah book, or the Revelation Climax book to learn all about 1919, or 1918, or 1935, or the "trumpet blasts" of the 1920s, etc. etc.
• 

  dilaceratus

  Beyond their great entertainment value, what these posts demonstrate most clearly is that the convictions and rationales of the Jehovah's Witnesses have always been based primarily upon rumor and speculation, incorrect factual information, and geniune facts willfully placed so far out of proper context as to be meaningless.
  
  Even more tellingly, that these absurdities are concealed or misrepresented to current Jehovah's Witnesses (and those to whom they proselytize) by their leadership speaks to the sort of gross intellectual and historical dishonesty that is only engaged in by charlatans (and other fascists).
• 

  dilaceratus

  Dear VM44,
  
  Not surprisingly, there is almost nothing in the Jehovah's Witnesses history that is not lifted from another source. Woodworth's views on vaccinations and germs were part and parcel with the Naturopaths:
  
  (http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/Naturopathy/immu.html)
  
  Naturopathy attributes illness to the violation of "natural laws" and claims that standard medical practices merely suppress symptoms. Benedict Lust, who brought naturopathy to the United States and was its most influential advocate during the first half of the 20th century, was strongly opposed to vaccination. His Universal Directory of Naturopathy, published in 1918, states:
  
  The contemporary fashion of healing disease is that of serums, inoculations and vaccines, which, instead of being an improvement on the fake medicines of former ages are of no value in the cure of disease, but on the contrary introduce lesions into the human body of the most distressing and deadly import. . . .
  
  To understand how revolting these products are, let us just refer to the vaccine matter which is supposed to be an efficient preventive of smallpox. Who would be fool enough to swallow the putrid pus and corruption scraped from the foulest sores of smallpox that has been implanted in the body of a calf? Even if any one would be fool enough to drink so atrocious a substance, its danger might be neutralized by the digestive juices of the intestinal tract. But it is a far greater danger to the organism when inoculated into the blood and tissues direct, where no digestive substances can possibly neutralize its poison [2].
  
  Lust's rant against vaccination was part of his more general disbelief that microorganisms cause disease, a fact that had been discovered by 19th century innovators such as Pasteur, Koch, and Lister. This germ theory -- perhaps the most important medical discovery every made ­- became the cornerstone of medical and public health efforts that ultimately saved billions of lives. However, it refuted the naturopathic view that individuals brought disease upon themselves through their own bad behavior, which naturopaths refer to as the "real cause of the ailment." It would be interesting to know how Lust would regard the fact that vaccination has eradicated smallpox worldwide.
  
  -----
  
  2. Lust B. The principles, aim and program of the nature cure system. Reprinted in Cody G. History of Naturopathic Medicine. In Pizzorno JE and Murray MT, editors. Textbook of Natural Medicine. London: Churchill Livingstone, 1999, pp 17-40.
  
  
  What is most curious is Woodworth conflating these crazy ideas into religious dogma, which is a serious leap.
  
  [Dilaceratus]
• 

  Leolaia

  GAG #9: RUTHERFORD FULFILLS PROPHECY!

  

  Text:

  *** g24 12/3 p. 151 A Remarkable Fulfilment of Prophecy ***

  "And it shall be, that whoso will not come up of all the families of the earth until Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, even upon them shall be no rain."-- Zechariah 14.17.

  On May 6th the Spanish Government refused permission to Judge Rutherford to speak in Madrid in support of his belief, and our belief, that we have come to the time of the establishment of the Lord's kingdom in the earth -- an event described in the Revelation of St. John as "the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven".

  Now whether or not others can see in it what we see in it, nevertheless a most unusual item of information comes to us in a report from our correspondent in Switzerland. The gentleman in question knew of the Spanish Government's action in refusing permission to have the truth regarding the Lord's kingdom presented to the Spanish people, and in a report to us dated August 23rd says:

  "We herewith beg to enclose a copy of the Zurichsee Zeitung of August 21 in which you will find a report, marked in blue pencil, that while the whole of Central Europe is complaining about a miserable summer, no rain has fallen in Madrid, the capital of Spain, since May 6. As this was the date upon which Judge Rutherford was refused permission to lecture in that city, we feel that the matter will be of interest to you. May we assume that there is a connection between the two things?"
• 

  dilaceratus

  Interestingly, Rutherford's drought was only the Minor Fulfillment of Zechariah! While there actually was a bad drought in Spain in 1924, there were worse in 1947. And 2005. The 1947 drought must have had to do with Franco's election. And surely the 2005 drought was in response to Pedro Almodóvar quitting the Spanish Film Academy.