About 10 years ago AlanF and I were talking and I asked him if he thought the WT was a cult. He thought long and hard before he said he didn't think so, but he did think they were a high control group. Now those of you who know Alan are aware that he knows more about the WT religion than everyone in Bethel (including the GB) put together. That was ten years ago, but look what has happened since.
About 8 years ago AlanF was making a business trip to New York City and he asked me if I wanted a copy of the WT CD ROM. I said I did. I asked him how he was able to get one and he said that since the WTS was a non-profit publishing company they were forced by law to make all the literature available to the general public. They had a literature "store" at their building on Furman Street. He just walked in, asked for two copies of the CD, gave a donation and walked out with them.
The next time he tried it a couple of years later, he was told he could only order them from the local Congregations, since the store was "out of stock." Bullshit liars!
A few years later James Thomas (one of my favorite people) who used to post in here as "JT", "a brother" and before that as "elder" said he would visit his KH and order the latest CD ROM for me. They turned him down because (apparently) dubs could only own one copy. Moderator note: James Thomas as already "outed" himself on this board.
The WTS was definitely clamping down.
About 5 years ago or so a large contingent representing silentlambs marched on the WT headquarters in Brooklyn. A group of WT victims went inside and demanded to see the Governing Body to account for the fact that they were raped and molested by JWs and the religion did nothing to help them. While the WTS demands that a little girl of say 7 who is raped by a JW MUST face her accuser in a Judicial Hearing, the girlie girl Governing Body were too cowardly to come out and face their OWN accusers personally, for not just covering up one crime of child rape, but for covering up thousands and thousands of child rapes. These are the very men who boast that they will sit at the side of and reign over the Universe with Jesus Christ for eternity. But Jesus Christ had the balls to personally stand up against a bunch of Pharisees and oiverturn their money changing tables. The Governing Body doesn't even deserve to GO to heaven, much less the job of cleaning toilets for ever and ever there.
I zoomed in on this comment by snakesinthetower in a recent thread of his where he asked a "concerned" elder who wanted to "help him out", if the elder would bring him the latest copy of the study Watchtower. The elder wouldn't do it:
:So I have to go to the Kingdumb Hell if I want a freaking 32 page Washtowel?
This got me to thinking about what has actually happened in the last ten years or so in WatchtowerWorld. About 8 years ago AlanF (I believe it was him, but whatever apostate it was doesn't matter) subscribed to the magazines. Anyone could subscribe to them back then. Then later, the subscription would not be renewed. Alan did some digging and found out that the WTS had stopped honoring subscriptions to "known apostates." They sent the subscription money back with some lame excuse.
Why would they do such a thing? Shouldn't "apostates" be able to receive the gift of the "waters of truth" (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!) even more than anyone else? I guess not. The "good news for all" thus became the "good news for people we think should have the good news."
Not long afterwards, the whole subscription program, which had existed for 120 or so years was dropped. Why? Postage rates too high? Why not just up the rate to compensate then? Magazines could only be obtained at the KH or at the door. A new "simplified arrangement?" When did the WTS make ANYTHING simple?
Decades ago when I was a dub, there was no problem with reading and even joking about the idiocies in the old Russell and Rutherford literature. Those idiocies were brushed off with comments like "look how far we've come since then." We could look at the elaborate drawing of the Great Pyramid in Studies in the Scriptures Vol. III and look at the elaborate calculations using pyramid dimensions to see how it pointed to 1914 and laugh about it. Today it considered an act of apostacy to read and comment about old literature like that.
Back when I was a dub KMs were given out to all baptised dubs at the KH and on occassions delivered to your home if you had missed a meeting. I don't know, but I would guess those ever-so-precious KMs (sales training pamphletts) are handed out more discriminately these days. Maybe even requiring a secret handshake to get one.
Now there are two editions for the WT magazine, one for good little dubbies and the other for "them." Why? How dangerous to the WTS are their study questions, anyway? Will there come a time when the dub issues will have different "insider information" than the rags they hand out to the public. Or has that time already come? Is there one "good news" for good little dubbies and another "good news" for everyone else?
Now there are secret letters or even more suspicious than that, secret VERBAL instructions given to elders, some of which are dispensed to the flock, and some of which aren't. "Mr. Phelps, this message will self-destruct in 15 seconds."
Elders are not to turn over congregational files on suspected pedophiles to authorities unless forced to do so by subpoena. Some of those files have vanished even when a subpoenia is executed. How much does the WTS really care about dealing with the pediphilia problem despite what they say?
Elders are told that if they have to report a suspected dub pedophile to police authorities but ONLY if the law requires them to do so, they are to do it from some neutral place, like a public phone. Is that transparency? Only if you believe in tooth fairies, demons and 607 B.C chronology.
Elders schools have "secret directives" which are to be written in the margins of their coursework and in the latest incarnation of their super-secret "Flock" book, do they not? Actually the Flock book is not super-secret. Virtually everyone in the universe knows about it except rank and file dubs.
What's next? Secret passwords in order to get inside a meeting? Retina scans to gain admission to District Assemblies? DNA tests when an elder moves from one congregation to another to determine if he is the real deal? Special tattoos administered after baptism? Microchips implanted into the cranium?
Well AlanF, I know you don't read this board anymore, but I'm sure you've changed your mind about the whether the JW religion is a cult or not since we talked about it those ten long years ago.
Yep. It's definitely a cult. And getting cultier by the month.
Farkel
...OUTLAW