Har-Magedon JW-Style -- You Really Believe It?

Room 215

Hi all,
Despite an occasional denial or duplicitous ``we can't say, nor can we judge'' for public consumption, I guess all of us are aware that the official WT line on who lives and who dies at the Big A is all unbaptised people (99.9 percent of humanity) as well as those among them who got baptised but are lax at getting to meetings and field service (maybe half or more of the present memebership).
My question is: what percentage of the rank and file buy fully into the party line on this? I know inevitably there are hard-liners who spout it, but my experience is that the average dub, while not protesting vocally, has more or less privately concluded that it JUST CAN'T be that way... too many really decent, well-motivated people are out there in ``the world,'' (and the corollary to that axiom, too many stinkers inside the organization, for that matter).
Babies dying? C'mon! And nice old Uncle Ned? (ever notice how even dyed-in-the-wool JWs will cut their ``worldly'' relatives or unopposing mates lots of slack when it comes to the Big Axe?
So many rightly reason that their capacity for recognizing the good in others, or at least the absence of flat-out evil that would merit capital punishment, cannot be greater than that of the Bible's God of Love.
So, I ask: What say you? What do you believe? What have you observed about the prevailing attitude of the average JWs you've known.

DIM

my experience has been that the average JW will not admit to these simple facts and will try to brush off your questions. And they do this to me, an active JW (right now)

metatron

Better than 90%, I'd say.

It goes hand in hand with the rest of the peer-pressure
driven fanaticism - you gotta attend all the meetings,
you gotta go out in service, never enough, never enough.

I can well remember from years ago at Bethel that brothers
THERE would judge each other - "stay away from him, he's
going to die at Armageddon".

metatron

TheOldHippie

Never has there been the belief that all un-baptised people will die. And never can any living person stand up and tell who will likely die and who will not. 90 % of the Witnesses with who I talk, over and over again state that if one survives, then after these events the survivors will look at each other and be surprised to state the least when they see who made and who didn't.

COMF

Armageddon sounds very much like a pouting child's rendition of what will happen to the kids who didn't let him be captain of the baseball team. According to the Genesis account, one angel is capable of passing through all of Egypt, touching the firstborn sons so that they died. It seems that they died in their sleep, without a fuss.

If it's time to remove evil from the earth, and evil means everybody who didn't paint the doorjambs of their hearts with the lamb's blood, then what's with the earthquakes, blood up to the horse's bridles, flesh rotting out while still alive, and so forth? Those people are going to be dead. They are not going to say, "Oops... I slighted you, God, and now I must pay." They are not going to turn to the gathered throngs of surviving JW humans and say, "Give glory to God, because we're rotting away while still alive, thus proving you were right about him... he really is love." They're just going hurt for a little bit, and then die. And once dead, they're dead, period. Gone, inactive, not with us.

So... what's the big deal? When you're scouring your kitchen stove, do you torment the greasy stains and dried food drips as you scrub them off? Do you laugh with glee that now they know: you are powerful, and so your word must be obeyed, and the cleansed new stove will be a place where only food drips that stay in the pot will exist?

No. You just wipe it clean, and you're done with it. Why not clean the earth the same way? Why have an earthquake? Why make the flesh rot away? What point does it make? To whom?

Isn't this entire Armageddon scenario nothing more than some child's self-pitying "Someday you'll pay" routine gone out of control? Bobby You Know as The Man Who Would Be Team Captain?

Bullshit. A god would just make them disappear, if he needed them out of the way. It's men who fantasize about suffering and torture. Immature, pouting, frustrated little men.

COMF

Seeker4

Have to agree with you 215 and disagree with TOHippie. It has generally been taught that only those baptized will survive the Big A. Based on the verse about baptism being the thing that saves you ("the request made to God for a clean conscience" 1 Pe. 3:21).

The only other way to get into the New System is to die before the Big A. As an elder told me once privately - salvation seemed to depend an awful lot more on your timing than anything else. He admitted it made no sense to him. Probably true of a lot of JWs - but something not making any sense seems to be no problem at all for the Witnesses.
S4

metatron

More deceptive nonsense, hippie

The reality of actual belief and feeling amidst the
average publisher-zombies is what counts - not theory.
The judgementalism of JWs gets seen in the endless
encouragement of obsessive compulsive behavior - gotta
get to all the meetings, gotta get out in servive,
gotta stop masturbating, gotta contribute more, gotta
stop being depressed, gotta study with the kids more,
can't salute the flag, can't celebrate holidays, can't
go to the birthday party, can't vote or argue politics,
can't/gotta, can't/gotta ........

In this sick atmosphere, extreme judgements that just
about "nobody will make it" becomes easy. Circuit
overseers love to manipulate this feeling..... as you would
probably attest , given that you felt forthright about it.

metatron

Undine

~Room 215~

Your post struck a familiar chord with me
because when I was thirteen and my mother was studying
it was made entirely clear to me that "unless I was baptized"
then I would surely not be an Armageddon survivor.

I still remember the terror I felt at not being baptized.
I feverishly studied right along with my mother so that I
could be one of the "approved". After I was baptized, at thirteen,
I breathed heavy sighs of relief.

When I became an "adult jw" this
"belief" within the organization seemed to diminish. (Or
maybe it was just one of the "unspoken truths")? I really
am not sure. But I do know for a fact that twenty nine years ago
I endured the emotional ridiculousness of believing I was
doomed unless baptized.

Also? I think mainly why I've posted is because my ire was
slightly raised when I read the first line in ~THEOLDHIPPIE'S~
post, being: "Never has there been the belief that all un-baptised people will die."

"Never"??????? Hah!!!!!!! Capitol "W" Wrong!!!
(But I'd have welcomed you telling me this when I was thirteen ~¿*)

Undine

DannyBear

Capt COMF,

Outstanding comments on the absurdity of the whole 'Armageddon' senario.

Your simple illustration of grease on the stove, has to give pause, to anyone who claims god will resort to all the horror of Revelation.

Man continues to belittle his own power's of reason, by buying into fantasies. We humans can be so vindictive, that it seems rather easy for us to ascribe all our petty jealousies and hatred on a personage who no one has really even seen (not even Moses), or directly heard from. No wonder God has lost interest in his 'thinking, reasoning'(?) creation. Or has he?

Danny

Gopher

Certain scriptures are emphasized which make it appear almost nobody can be saved through day of wrath. Examples:

The righteous man will be saved, with difficulty

and

Seek Jehovah, you meek ones, and probably you may be saved in the day of his wrath

and

Many shall seek to get in and not be able

These are all effective "sticks" in the "carrot and stick" approach the WT Society uses to stir its flock.

GopherWhy shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Har-Magedon JW-Style -- You Really Believe It?

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