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Is the end really coming?
by themonster123 41 Replies latest watchtower medical
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funkyderek
themonster123:
Well, as anyone on this board knows I"m a newbie....
Welcome to the board!
and Witnesses kind of are scaring me with their "end is coming" business.
That's their intention. If you're not scared, you'll leave their silly little cult. Fear keeps people motivated.
1) The last convention was called "Jehovah's Day At Hand!" (or whatever the tract we put out about that was called-where we invited everyone to the assembly
The public talk at one of their previous district conventions had the similarly apocalyptic title: "It Is Later Than You Think!". That was in 1949.
Contrast Luke 21:8
2) the very last tract we put out "False Religion's End is Near!"
Some previous Kingdom News Tracts:
1944 Kingdom News No. 13, Education For Life In the New World
1944 Kingdom News No. 14, Overcoming Fear of What Is Coming
1973 Kingdom News No. 16, Is Time Running Out for Mankind?
1981 Kingdom News No. 30, Is Planet Earth Near the Brink?
1982 Kingdom News No. 31, Are We Nearing Armageddon?
And some other Watchtower publications:
1920 Millions Now Living Will Never Die
1944 The Kingdom Is At Hand
1955 You May Survive Armageddon Into God's New World
1973 God's Kingdom of a Thousand Years Has Approached
1974 God's Eternal Purpose Now Triumphing for Man's Good
1975 Man's Salvation Out of World Distress at Hand
1977 Our Incoming World Government - God's Kingdom
1981 Babylon the Great Has Fallen! God's Kingdom Rules!
(See http://www.freeminds.org/sales/wtpubs.htm for a complete list.)
Monster, all those publications were released before you were born! Jehovah's Witnesses have been preaching the imminent destruction of most of mankind for well over a century. This is nothing new.
3) Studying the Revelation book now in bookstudy (Not me personally, i don't go anymore-but that's what they're studying in bookstudy now)
They've studied it three times before. I know, I had to sit through it. I remember the certainty people expressed that the end could only be a few years away at most. That book was released nearly 20 years ago.
SO!..... It seems like everything is getting so concentrated, like the Society is... getting ready?
They're always getting ready. That's their thing. They need the average JW to be scared and therefore motivated.
Also, the way EVERYONE and all my friends and stuff were/are talking, like, "You can just feel we're SO close to the end. I mean, the SOciety is totally getting ready."
That's because everyone you know is a JW. At least three times a week, every week they are told how horrible and depraved the world we live in is, and how difficult their lives are, and that soon, all the hardship will be over and they will get to live forever in beautiful happy surroundings. It's no wonder that these people latch on to any indication that this utopia is coming soon.
And in all the recent talks, they keep saying stuff like, "We're not in the time of the end, we're in the last SECOND of the time of the end."
It's meaningless rhetoric, but absolutely necessary to keep the doctrine alive. They have been saying we are in the last days since 1879. Just to put that in perspective, that's the year Albert Einstein was born, and the year Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. It is the time of your great-great-grandparents. Bible Students then expected to see the end within months or years.
Why is all their tlaking about the time of the end getting so concentrated?
Because they need to create some excitement. The life of a JW is not a happy one, numbers are dwindling, new converts are rarer and rarer. They need to be given something to look forward to.
For those who have been in or left the org. for many many years, can you clue me in-has
"the end" always been so talked about like it is now?I hope you can see now that it has. It ebbs and flows, sometimes they give it more focus, but it's always there . . . just around the corner.
or is it just in their heads?
Well, yes, it's all in their heads. The Watchtower Society has deliberately put these ideas in the heads of JWs to keep them active and hopeful. The longer a JW has been involved, believing the end will come any day now, the more desperately they have to keep believing so as not to realise they've wasted their lives.
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DanTheMan
I tend to find myself in the minority among ex-jw's in that I am thoroughly convinced that there will be complete social/economic/environmental breakdown in the coming years, the four horsemen out the wazoo. I just no longer believe that I'm part of a special group that will be spared from the suffering, or that any such group exists.
As I was walking out of work today, the news headline on the TV in the lobby was "America going broke". Ponder that scenario.
I'm thinking about going out and buying a few cartons of cigarettes. I hear that in times of crisis cigarettes become very valuable bartering tools.
As Newt Gingrich said recently, America hasn't faced as many parallel problems as it has now since the 1850's. I think that's putting it mildly.
Dan, lost-my-faith-in-the-future-as-a-teenager-and-never-got-it-back
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Hortensia
There's a really interesting book on that subject, "Archetype of the Apocalypse: A Jungian Study of the Book of Revelation" by Edward F. Edinger. He was an ex-JW. He says that apocolyptic fears are cyclical and that they follow increasing violence in the world. His prediction is 500 years of increasing violence followed by another more peaceful era. By the way, his book isn't connected to or against any JW doctrine, he is a pscychologist or psychiatrist as I remember and this is a subject he has researched. I imagine his JW experience contributed to his interest in the subject.
Here is a link to a really interesting discussion of his book:
http://www.meta-religion.com/Psychiatry/Analytical_psychology/archetype_of_the_apocalypse.htm -
Nathan Natas
Hey Dan, no doubt about it -- bad things CAN happen.
An "extinction class" meteor could hit the planet.
The Yellowstone caldera could pop.
Iran could rain down nukes on "infidel Europe."
Israel could preemptively nuke the living daylights out of Iran.
Pakistan could nuke India; India could nuke Pakistan.
Argentina could claim Canada as sovereign territory.
The world could fall into another fun-filled economic depression.
The grays could align with the Deros who live under Mount Shasta in California and enslave humanity (again).
What all these possibilities have in common is that none of them involve the participation of any imaginary invisible "spiritual" creature. Jehovah of the Watchtower is as real as Superman, and just as effective in the world of reality.
When mankind finds itself in terminal extremity, the universe will not notice.
"How pretty - such a gorgeous supernova!"
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abbagail
I'm with DanTheMan about being in the minority re: the forthcoming "social/economic/environmental breakdown... four horsemen out the wazoo."
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Hi Monster123:
Just because the WTBTS made a deal with the devil decades ago and doesn't know jack about prophecy interpretation, that doesn't mean the prophecies themselves are somehow in error, but only the WT's egomaniacal interpretations of them. So "Shoot the Messengers" (WTBTS) but not the "Message-Book" (Bible).
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I DO agree the WT has "played its hand" a few times tooooo many as far as getting the R&F "revved up" for "the end," but the fact is, scripture remains and it will be fulfilled -- just not in the way the WT has promoted it.
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The "last generation" who will "not pass away until all these things occur" is the generation that saw the "fig tree" begin to blossom, and the fig tree is Israel which "blossomed" again in her land in 1948, after 2000 years (w/subsequent recapturing of Jerusalem in 1967).
So start counting your "generation" from then.
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All is not hopeless, though. That same 2000 year period is also the "Age of Grace" (sometimes referred to as the "Church Age") and the door is still open. While Israel was scattered by God throughout all the nations, the Lord was gathering in the Gentiles (and any believing Jews). That was the reason for allowing Israel-as-a-whole to become "blind" during that time frame, so as to gather in the Gentiles.
Hint:
Little Flock = ISRAEL/Jews.
Other Sheep Not of This Fold, These Also I Must Bring... = GENTILES.
But when the "fig tree blossomed" God brought Israel back to her homeland in unbelief (a mostly secular nation) which is exactly the prophetic setup so God can turn His attention to her again (her and the unbelieving nations) during the tribulation (a/k/a "the time of Jacob's trouble" for Israel). It's a thrilling study, I promise.
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Unfortunately, the WT has made it so JWs cannot see what is happening right in front of us, in the daily news, due to WT's teaching of "replacement theology" (replacing Israel in scripture with itself, the Borg -- a big mistake). The "WT elite" have the JWs looking for the WRONG THINGS, prophecy-wise. Israel is, and always has been, God's Timepiece re: prophetic events, so keep an eye on Middle East events (something WT always said meant nothing whatsoever -- a big fat lie steering JWs in the wrong direction) and forget most everything the WT taught, and start fresh. Christians do not even have to be looking for "Armageddon" (as that is God's war with the unbelieving nations and unfaithful Jews). Christians are told by Paul to be looking for their Savior who intends to remove his "Body" ("church") out of harms way of the tribulation.
It's a fascinating and exhilirating adventure to finally be able to SEE truth that was there all along, clouded over by WT's convoluted interpretations.
Hope this helps ease some of that anxiety! ;-)
/ag -
nvrgnbk
Hello tm123,
I want to give credit to who pointed out the following recently here on JWD but could not find the source.
Anyway, here goes:
"Shortly, within our twentieth century, the "battle in the day of Jehovah" will begin against the modern antitype of Jerusalem, Christendom."
The Nations Shall Know That I Am Jehovah- How? (1971) pg. 216, par. 9
Nvr
In other words, the end already came. Nobody noticed.
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zack
The JW's had me in fear all of my childhood. The END will come-- it comes to all of us, friend.
Live, love, laugh, do good to others, be kind, be generous..... and let God worry about sorting everything out. And do not be afraid. There is no joy,
or love in fear--- no future. Live with hope. The human spirit is a beautiful thing. Look for it in others and you'll find it. And GET OUT of the JW's--- they
will scar your soul.
Zack-----
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Junction-Guy
Dan The Man, I never figured you to believe in that anymore, that kinda surprised me when you said that.
Actually I guess im in the minority of christians who dont believe this is the last days. I believe they are still ahead in the future sometime. I believe in the 2nd coming, I believe in Armageddon, but I definitely have a different take on it since leaving the JW's.
I believe in the coming of the Antichrist, I believe there will be a one world government, but none of this will happen until the United States can be subjugated. -
moshe
I remember back in the 70's when the ruling came out, "no more smoking"- it was said at the assembly it was because the end was imminent and we had to be totally clean to enter into the new order.