Have you ever wondered. . . How the Question and Answer format got started?

by Lady Lee 20 Replies latest watchtower bible

• 

  Lady Lee

  The Question and Answer from the paragraph format for Watchtower study meetings has become a staple method for indoctrinating new recruits and maintaining control of the JWs thought processes.

  Over the years I think they have played around a bit with the sequence of questions, readings and answers but the contenet has basically remained the same - ask the question, read the paragraph and give the answer.

  So . . . Have you ever wondered who thought this might be a good method to conduct spiritual discussions?

  I never gave it much thought but I assumed Rutherford came up with the tight control over discussions.

  Nope. I was wrong. It was Russell!!!

  The more I learn the more surprised I am.

  In a document I found on the internet called: 16-MANNA.pdf (I have no idea where I got this from but it was on the net)

  The intro is a 1 page intro by Russell about "Profitable Daily Tithing" No not the money kind of tithing. But the following are his comments:

  ---

  PROFITABLE DAILY TITHING

  "Prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to contain it."

  (Mal. 3:10)

  If Christians allow the rush and crush of selfish ambition to deprive them of their daily portion of heavenly food, they must not be surprised, if they grow spiritually leaner day by day, and if "the peace of God" gives place in their hearts to the discontent which is growing in the world, notwithstanding the multiplication of our comforts and privileges. Let us remember the exhortation, "In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths" (Prov. 3:6). Our first edition of "Manna" 20,000 met with far better success than we had dared hope for; and we have been greatly encouraged by the kind words of its many friends far and near. Some call it their "Heavenly Breakfast Food" and tell that they feast upon its lessons as regularly as the sun rises. Surely the little tithe of time daily spent in partaking of its morsels of heavenly counsel cannot fail to profit all who partake. The day opened with such meditations is sure to be the better spent and more profitable. The heart thus turned to holy thoughts is much less likely to go aside from right paths than otherwise. "The wisdom that cometh from above" is thus gradually and easily assimilable, and cannot fail to bear some good fruit in the hearts of the saints, and to awaken reverence in the worldly.

  Every Christian who sees this book is sure to be interested and to want a copy for his own breakfast table. And as it is published, not for profit but to do good, we have put the price so low as to bring it within the reach of all. We do our friends and neighbors a valuable service when we call the "Manna" to their attention and assure them that it is merely Christian-not denominational. Some use them as birthday presents and holiday gifts; others anxious to extend their good influence, purchase them by the quantity and sell them at a slight advance to cover their time and car fare. All are welcome to engage in this service of love to the extent of their opportunity and ability. The book will last a life-time, and can be used year after year, for the sacred message never grows old, but is line upon line, precept upon precept.

  Your Brother and servant,

  C.T. R USSELL

  ---

  Well there is a bonus there - how the daily text got started! But back to the topic. The publisher of the MANNA book addresses the issue of how to use the Daily Manna:

  PUBLISHER'S FOREWORD

  THE original edition of the "Daily Heavenly Manna" was announced in February 1, 1905 (R3498). The compiler, Sr. Gertrude W. Siebert was noted for making her selections with "particularity and carefulness."

  The popularity of the first edition of 20,000 called for a subsequent printing of 40,000 in 1907 (R3967.) This second edition added the feature of interleaved lined pages for use as an "Autograph and Birthday record." Its use as a follow-up for the colporteurs was suggested at that time, and some of their early experiences are recorded in R4561 and R5869.

  By 1911, the popularity of the "Mann" was so great that a reader of the "Towers" suggested the use of the Wednesday text for the weekly Testimony meeting (R4770). A similar suggestion a few months later was amended by Pastor Russell to a suggestion for the Thursday text. (R4833)

  When introduced in 1905, its method of use at the Bethel home was described:

  "At the Bible House breakfast table, we first read the text, ask the questions on it and discuss it, and then read the TOWER extract as the closing comment."

  By 1918 (R6190), a vest pocket edition was available and in high demand. Later, this small edition was reprinted by the Australian brethren, and much later by the Chicago Bible Students.

  The regular edition has been kept in steady supply by the Dawn Bible Students and other publishers.

  Noting the spiritual profitability of the "Manna" for morning devotions, Sr. Phylis Stracy of Yeovil, England, compiled a similar set of quotations for the end of the day.

  These were originally published serially by "The Dawn" magazine fro July 1949 through June 1950. Shortly thereafter they were printed in a bound-book format.

  The popularity and testimonies of spiritual help from both of these devotional books has led to the current decision to join them as one volume and utilizing Bible paper, to produce them in a format fit for vest-pocket or purse.

  The middle section, "Morning Devotions," was added as a divider between the two sections, and is a reproduction of a 1991 pamphlet by the Portland Area Bible Students.

  The design of this volume, with two front covers, was to facilitate keeping the two books separate in their use.

  It is with the sincere hope that this volume will be of spiritual value to the "Household of Faith" that the publishers place it into print.

  CHICAGO BIBLE STUDENTS

  ---

  The Question and answer format was established during Russell's presidency and at Bethel for the morning daily text. Form there it seems the practice was established for all formats.

  It may have seemed like a great idea at the time and perhaps was meant to be helpful (at least I hope it was) but through the years it has become a method of information control that the WTS uses for both indoctrination and maintaining control over beleivers
• 

  OUTLAW

  It was the begining of "No room for intellegent thought"..WBT$ printed a book like that every year right until I left..You were supposed to read it daily..It was no longer called "Manna".I can`t remember what they called it...OUTLAW
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  Bumble Bee

  Just the other day I clicked on a link at the bottom of a message on JWD and it said the question and answer method was a form of hypnotism. I'll see if I can find the site in my history.

  BB
• 

  fullofdoubtnow

  Obviously, they have been using this means of indoctrination for a very long time, and it has been very successful. I guess that's why they stuck with it. I would have thought it originated with Rutherford myself, not Russell.
• 

  Terry

  When the Watchtower prints both the Questions as well as the Answers and confines discussion to this tight pretzel of programmed injection; natural and personal curiousity is short-circuited. The rational and critical analysis is bypassed altogether.

  This is the opposite of what Jesus (modeled on Socrates!) did by answering a Question with a question to get the asker to dig deep within their own self to discover the answer by rational analysis.

  Who do YOU, then, say I am?

  Whose image is on this coin?

  Questions artificially manufactured are not personal manifestations of individuality. They are control mechanisms.

  The pressure is to get the answer right and not press beyond the painted backdrop facade erected by the indoctrinators.

  Try to carry on a natural conversation with a Jehovah's Witness merely asking them their own personal opinion about their answers and you'll hit a brick wall. There is nothing personal attached to the individual intellect. Nothing at all. They will burp out a programmed response and not much else. I'm certain none of them are even slightly aware this is what they are doing.

  The Borg lives!
• 

  Bumble Bee

  Here's the link

  http://www.energeticsolutions.com.au/great_watchtower_deception.html

  A Comparrison Between A Jehovah's Witness Meeting
  And A Clinical Hypnosis Session

  The Compere, the Narrator and the Usher All Jehovah's Witness meetings have a compere who stands in the centre of the stage and reads a special weekly study story, paragraph-by-paragraph, from a Watchtower study magazine supplied from Watchtower head office in America. Then they have a narrator who sits off to one side of the stage, to read the scripture from a bible which Watchtower have written into the study story at the end of each paragraph being read by the compere. After the compere and narrator have finished interacting to read a paragraph followed by a scripture, then another paragraph followed by another scripture, etc, etc, when the study story is completely finished, which takes around twenty to thirty minutes, an usher walks up the isle amongst the congregation with a microphone on a long pole that allows him to reach it in amongst the congregation so members of the congregation can speak into the michrophone to give their answers to the compere, as he reads out a list of questions that Watchtower have written in the study magazine, at the end of the story.

  What shocked me to the core, was that while listening to what was being read out and observing what the compere, the narrator and the usher were doing, it suddenly hit me like a brick to the back of the head, that this method of teaching is what Sigmund Freud taught in the early nineteen hundreds as "Conscious Hypnosis". (I assure you, this is not just simple brainwashing, it is advanced clinical hypnosis which, in time, has the ability to completely take over a person's free-will and mental judgment and reasoning skills and turn that person into a totally non-thinking zombie-like robot who will do anything they are told to do, even if they are told to commit suicide.

  This principal of hypnosis is similar and is, over time, just as mentally overpowering as the one used by television hypnotists who make people selected for the show, believe they are a chook, a dog, an elephant or something that makes them act absolutely rediculous in front of the viewing audience, in order to show how completely overpowering hypnosis can be. Even though people who are not dedicated to the Jehovah's Witness movement, can see that the blood scriptures only relate to not "eating" blood and that refusing a blood transfusion to save your own life, is absolutely rediculous, Jehovah's Witnesses are just as oblivious as the people who carry on like a chook, a dog or an elephant, on television, for all to see.)

  Freud's Four Rules Of Clinical Hypnosis

  Let me explain how Freud's principal of Clinical "Conscious Hypnosis" works so you can compare it with how Watchtower has designed the Jehovah's Witness meetings to be run.

  The story I originally read on Freud's Conscious Hypnosis, explained that in order to affect the unconscious mind so severely that the mind can fully block off to pain, for example: hypnosis used before a surgical operation as a pain suppressant, instead of using anaesthetic, due to the patient being allergic to anaesthetic, or to program the mind to completely block off fears that create phobias of spiders and heights etc, it is essential to use the following four rules of hypnosis, all at the same time.

  1. A therapist using hypnosis must make sure the person being hypnotised, is well-relaxed, because if the conscious mind is excited or hyperactive, hypnotic suggestions cannot get past conscious judgment and reasoning skills, into the unconscious mind to create a totally overpowering hypnotic state. Watchtower puts out a song book with over one hundred songs that have words and music which create a slow subliminal tone to relax the congregation. Not one song in this Watchtower song book, has an up-tempo beat like the songs sung in the Orthodox Church. Every song they play induces relaxation.
  2. After promoting relaxation, a therapist using hypnosis must get the person being hypnotised to focus on something that causes the eyes to repeatedly move from left to right, which prevents a part of the brain that deals with judgment and reasoning, the prefrontal cortex, from focusing on the hypnotic suggestions being spoken, to do it's job of rejecting anything being said which the person being hypnotised, doesn't agree with, or believe in. In other words, getting a person to relax and causing continuous left to right eye movement allows a therapist to bypass conscious judgment and reasoning skills in order to program that person's brain to become so manipulated that you can actually change the autonomic functions of the mind and body. It is so overpowering that it can block out the excruciating pain of a major surgical operation, stop the eyes from being able to see one particular number or word written on a piece of paper and even take away a person's love for life and will to live, sufficiently to cause them to commit suicide. (You cannot possibly do this with basic brainwashing techniques used, for example, by football coaches who have their team repeatedly chant their mission statement before each game and each training session, to become devoted to turning up to practice and to focus fully on winning when they play.)The way that Watchtower has created this left-to-right eye movement, is to have the compere standing in the centre of the stage reading one paragraph of the story from the study book and the narrator sitting off to one side, reading a bible verse after each paragraph. As the congregation watches, not only do their eyes continually move from left to right which stops them from listening and examining the words of the story to reject what they don't agree with, but if they are not watching, their ears will hear the words spoken by the compere on the right and the narrator on the left.
  3. A therapist using hypnosis must also design a story with at least four hypnotic suggestions in it, catering for our four main emotions of reasoning, and, that covers the belief that you want the unconscious mind to become conditioned to believing. To further support the story, it is also necessary to give socially accepted reasoning to the story intermittently as you deliver it to the person being hypnotised. (As a therapist, I used medical research results and other therapists often use basic survey results, but Watchtower simply uses bible scripture.) This procedure is so powerful over normal mind and body functions, that you can use it to have a person eat an extremely sour onion and truly believe they are eating a juicy peach, without that onion causing any tears or allowing the person to realise that they are biting into an onion. It is also so powerful that it can make a person refuse a blood transfusion if their life depends on it, or even worse, make parents stop medical doctors from giving their young child a blood transfusion, when his/her life depends on it, thus causing death to their own child. This is the ultimate form of hypnotic mental takeover and the leaders of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society have applied it to their study procedures, in an extremely effective manner. The leaders of Watchtower have designed their study stories to have the four hypnotic suggestions within the story they want their Jehovah's Witness followers to believe in and have added bible scriptures after one or two paragraphs, in order to give the compere and the narrator their job to do to create left and right eye and hearing movement to produce the hypnotic effect. These study stories are so important to Watchtower to establish a hypnotic effect in all Jehovah's Witnesses worldwide, that they insist to all the leaders of each individual congregation centre in every country, that they must not stray from using the study story in every meeting or change the position of the compere and narrator or leave out the use of the usher for the all-important question time, held at the end of each story. Watchtower head office in New York, supplies every Jehovah's Witness meeting hall in every city of every country, with new study books each month, so that every Jehovah's witness world wide is subjected to this hypnotic process every time they attend a Jehovah's Witness meeting at any meeting hall. Even the Jehovah Witnesses who come to your home in pairs to study with you, are told to study from the Watchtower booklet sitting with you at your table, and one of them will read the story and the other will read the scripture, so that the exact same hypnotic effect is at work on you, in your own home even before you actually decide to commit yourself to attending the local Jehovah's Witness meeting hall as a congregation member. Jehovah's Witness followers are usually beautiful God-loving people who do not have a clue that this is going on, but I assure you, several managers at the very top of the Watchtower organisation in New York, are fully in control of this sinister deception that is killing more than a thousand Jehovah's Witnesses every year.) Reference for this statistic:- "Blood On The Altar" by author, David A Reed.
  4. When the therapist's hypnosis session is completed, at a time immediately after the left-to-right eye movement has been stopped, the therapist must ask a list of at least four questions which cover each of the four versions of the hypnotic suggestion story, so that the person being hypnotised, begins to think consciously about what was done during the hypnosis session, to bring the newly-programmed belief out of the unconscious mind and establish it as a fully accepted conscious belief. This last part of the session is essential as it joins the conscious mind with the unconscious mind to expand the brain's total acceptance of the hypnotic effect.
     
     This task is covered extremely well by Watchtower's use of the questions supplied at the end of each story printed in the Watchtower study magazine and the usher who Watchtower has instructed to walk the isle to extend the michrophone to those who wish to answer the questions.

  BB
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  juni

  Thanks Lady Lee. Is it true (I've been out for 14 years now) that you cannot add anything further to your comments unless it's from the paragraph of the study article/book?

  Examining the Scriptures Daily - wasn't that what the title was? The Bible text and comments that were considered before field service in the morning in that little tan pamphlet.

  Juni
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  TD

  All Jehovah's Witness meetings have a compere who stands in the centre of the stage and reads a special weekly study story, paragraph-by-paragraph, from a Watchtower study magazine supplied from Watchtower head office in America. Then they have a narrator who sits off to one side of the stage, to read the scripture from a bible which Watchtower have written into the study story at the end of each paragraph being read by the compere.

  I haven't set foot in a Kingdom Hall even as a casual visitor in about 12 years, so maybe I'm out of the loop. This is not the way I remember Watchtower studies being handled.

  At the center of the stage was the conductor (compere) who asked the questions, decided when they had been answered fully and then had the marked paragraph read by the assigned reader (narrator) who usually did sit off to one side. In the mid-70's this was switched around and the paragraph was read before the questions. Regardless, the conductor did not read the material out loud himself and never did. When scriptures were to be read, the conductor usually solicited the audience for volunteers. The metronomic eye movement required by the paragraph/scripture/paragraph sequence the author describes did not exist.

  I agree that Watchtower studies were (and probably still are) mind-numbing, sleep-inducing affairs and in that sense I can understand why they could be called "Hypnotic." Like the JW "Written Review" the whole procedure has gradually been "dumbed down" to the point where little, if any thought and/or effort is required from the audience. This was not always the case though. There was a time when JW's were encouraged to do research outside of the study article itself and present this in original comments. Among the JW study conductors I have known, this trend has been a cause of considerable irritation.
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  Bumble Bee

  yeah, I wondered about that too TD. Maybe it's done like that in some areas, not any in Canada that I've heard of though. I just thought it was an interesting article.

  BB
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  VM44

  Here is an online link to the MANNA PDF file.

  http://www.heraldmag.org/olb/Contents/devotions/MANNA.pdf

  --VM44