From humble Bible Students to CULT MEMBERS under Rutherford's compulsion

by Terry 19 Replies latest jw experiences

• 

  Dogpatch

  Terry's on another rant!

  Can TERRY BE STOPPED??

  OMG

  Good one! I will link to it. :-))

  Russell was too much of a romantic to start a clutsy, Borg-like organization that appears to have the intelligence of its lowest common denominator, much like most religions. The LCD is what makes organizations scary. Some have actually learned to capitalize on it, by touting their acceptance of virtually anything as cool, as long as you hang with them.

  I was assistant pastor of Hope Chapel in Venice, Calif, for a year, and we used to feed and hang out with the homeless people and burned out kids on the boardwalk. Bob M. was the pastor. They were kinda like our "church," and we were proud of them! We even opened a half-way house for the homeless for 9 months or so. Too expensive, and useless. Doesn't work unless you are very strict religiously and demand they go to church and all this other crap.

  But we never did that. We were proud of our grace (and rightfully so!). It was fun for awhile, I always did the rebel church motif and was drawn to it. I could have been a Russellite I suppose, if I lived back then. Their Jesus was a little more tolerable. :-))

  But a follower of Rutherford? AAaaack!

  I think only redneck troublemakers really like this guy, from what I've seen over the years. There are a few that are actually PROUD of him (who was it, Fred Hall?) but it is like my Republican roommate who thinks Bush is cool: A good 'ol boy thing.

  Good 'ol boys in rebel circuits ARE cool.

  but not in religions, since herding people with such high-level weapons is obscene.

  Rutherford really sucks. He epitomizes many of the old guys at Bethel still.

  Randy
• 

  Terry

  Dogpatch writes:

  I think only redneck troublemakers really like this guy, from what I've seen over the years. There are a few that are actually PROUD of him (who was it, Fred Hall?) but it is like my Republican roommate who thinks Bush is cool: A good 'ol boy thing.

  Good 'ol boys in rebel circuits ARE cool.

  but not in religions, since herding people with such high-level weapons is obscene.

  Rutherford really sucks. He epitomizes many of the old guys at Bethel still.

  Randy

  I read a book once about American religions. One of the conclusions of the author startled me. He said the lenient and laid back ministry never lasts because it doesn't demand enough from people. But, religions which exert excessive participation and loyalty always flourish because the drama welds people into a unit.

  I think of Americans during WWII who were called upon to scrimp and save and plant victory gardens and contribute to the war effort and compare them to the soft bellied generation of today who are called upon to go shopping and I see a contrast that is very telling.

  The changes in society wrought by WWI and WWII churned the waters of humanity and all sort of personality types bubbled to the surface. Rutherford tossed chum into ecclesiastic waters and the sharks arrived. He jumped in the water with them and fought them bare-handed.

  They don't make many people like that any more. The grudging admiration he acquired was for his toughness in the face of self-generated adversity. For some reason, people really end up loyal to a tough leader who takes on the world.

  Look at how the Russian people cried in the streets when Joseph Stalin died!! A man who killed more Russians than he did Germans and they wept openly for their "papa" who pulled them together as a nation during the hard years! It was his cold, brooding, unstoppable toughness that they actually worshipped!!

  Rutherford gave a certain personality type (religious fringe adventist types) a common purpose in taking on the world and seemingly beating it!

  Go figure!
• 

  bennyk

  Under Russell the 144,000 little flock were glorified resurrected christians who went to heaven along with non-glorified Great Crowd christians who also went to heaven.

  Rutherford saw his membership figures climbing beyond 60,000 and threatening to exceed 144,000.

  This would be embarrassing. Consequently, a doctrinal change or "new light" emerged making the Great Crowd an earthly group of Jehovah's Witnesses distinct in kind and nature from the heavenly anointed.

  Your point about how membership numbers forced the new doctrine of the great crowd ...

  The increasing numbers of Bible Students affiliated with the Watch Tower Society did not force the change in doctrine. The Watch Tower Society taught the following in the 1917 publication The Finished Mystery on page 103:

  FM103

  Was ten thousand times ten thousand, and

  thousands of thousands

  .— The number of the

  Great Company will apparently exceed one

  hundred millions. Num. 4:46-48 and Ex. 28:1

  indicate but one priest to each 2,860 Levites,

  which would make the number of the Great

  Company approximate 411,840,000.— T118,

  119; Dan. 7:10. 5:12
• 

  Dogpatch

  Terry says,

  They don't make many people like that any more. The grudging admiration he acquired was for his toughness in the face of self-generated adversity. For some reason, people really end up loyal to a tough leader who takes on the world.

  exactly. no one likes the wimp in office.

  Rutherford gave a certain personality type (religious fringe adventist types) a common purpose in taking on the world and seemingly beating it!

  He was an iconoclast. But he made the WT emulate it's enemy, the Catholic church, in many ways. So in the end it was cowardly by not maintaining its iconoclastic fire. If there is ever a split in the WT, it will be over their cowardice in being "not of this world."

  whatever that means at any given time!

  Randy
• 

  Terry

  bennyk writes:

  Under Russell the 144,000 little flock were glorified resurrected christians who went to heaven along with non-glorified Great Crowd christians who also went to heaven.

  Rutherford saw his membership figures climbing beyond 60,000 and threatening to exceed 144,000.

  This would be embarrassing. Consequently, a doctrinal change or "new light" emerged making the Great Crowd an earthly group of Jehovah's Witnesses distinct in kind and nature from the heavenly anointed.

  Your point about how membership numbers forced the new doctrine of the great crowd ...

  The increasing numbers of Bible Students affiliated with the Watch Tower Society did not force the change in doctrine. The Watch Tower Society taught the following in the 1917 publication The Finished Mystery on page 103:

  You might be right--I don't know for certain. I'll need to read in depth about the two-tier system of heavenly hope vis a vis the earthly hope.

  My current view is that there were mostly converts with a heavenly hope coming in and that means they were to be viewed as anointed ones. The people willing to give up heaven and move to the back of the bus on earth would not threaten the literal 144,000 number.

  The Organization today faces the same "problem". They've tried to close heaven before to new recruits! I personally wonder if the Great Crowd on Earth idea wasn't a default category for overflow of that literal number in the first place.

  I'll get back to you on this.
• 

  mcsemike

  To Sweetstuff: I share your opinion. Let's find Marty McFly from Back to the Future and borrow his time machine. I'll hold him and you hit him. He was a drunken bully and a demented mental case. One of my college psych books, "Abnormal Psychology", briefly mentioned his type. He was well over 6 feet tall but always had a few "bodyguards" with canes walking at his side. Whatever happened to "turn the other cheek"?

  It amazes me that JW's think the entire world is insane if they don't become JW's and even more insane if they ever were JW's and quit. Well, it shouldn't surprise anyone. They have up to 40 times more mental illnesses than the population in general. I think that says it all.
• 

  mcsemike

  Terry: More excellent work as usual. However, being a musician for over 50 years, I will always like your musical compositions and your sense of humor best. You are very gifted.

  It's funny, but I never really saw how the WT looked to the public until I told the elders where to go and quit. They are NOT a religion. They are a CULT. And to be more accurate, the closest definition that fits them IS that they are a very large corporation whose main product is publications. The fact that the TOPIC or THEME of those publications just happens to be religious is just a coincidence and it is immaterial when considering their conduct as JW's, to other JW's, to those who left or were DF'd, and to the public. They are like annoying and inept vacuum cleaner salesmen who won't stop coming to your door once a month to sell you a Kirby for just $100 dollars and then after you buy it, they sell you the switch to turn it on for $900 more.

  It's the same with study/baptism. They love you while you are studying, hide their history, and once you take that special "bath", you are in for good (or else). I don't know one single person who ever got baptized due to the example Rutherford set.
• 

  Terry

  It's funny, but I never really saw how the WT looked to the public until I told the elders where to go and quit. They are NOT a religion. They are a CULT. And to be more accurate, the closest definition that fits them IS that they are a very large corporation whose main product is publications. The fact that the TOPIC or THEME of those publications just happens to be religious is just a coincidence and it is immaterial when considering their conduct as JW's, to other JW's, to those who left or were DF'd, and to the public. They are like annoying and inept vacuum cleaner salesmen who won't stop coming to your door once a month to sell you a Kirby for just $100 dollars and then after you buy it, they sell you the switch to turn it on for $900 more.

  It's the same with study/baptism. They love you while you are studying, hide their history, and once you take that special "bath", you are in for good (or else). I don't know one single person who ever got baptized due to the example Rutherford set.

  Above all, let's not ever forget how deeply intellectually dishonest all parties to this religion have been at the top.

  Russell deliberately changed his pyramid measurements as his predictions failed! He sent a copy of his pyramid writings to Piazzi Smith and got his approval in writing--THEN, changed his measurements and showed the letter AS THOUGH Smith had approved!

  That makes him a liar and a scoundrel.

  Rutherford, as has been repeatedly shown, was a low-life scoundrel.

  Knorr was more of a businessman who deliberately ordered Fred Franz to justify things which were not scripturally sound and Franz obeyed him! Like a bad CEO who tries to cover up by ordering underlings to lie, Knorr took opposite sides of the same issue at times!

  It is a religion rotten to the core.
• 

  james_woods

  Quite right, Terry. Of course, Rutherford really took the cake for hypocrisy and paranoia - but -

  One thing we have to remember about Russell was that he was an absolute mental case in his own right. Get out on the search engine and look for religious medical quackery - this guy had some of the most astounding homeopathic-idiocy ideas that you have ever heard. Stuff that would probably get you arrested in today's world. It all got continued up into the 20s at least - the anti-vaccine stupidity even made it into the 1950s, apparantly.

  He was a con man - and like many con men, he was easily conned by others. Like the story of the "invisible presence" - he swallowed it whole - hook, line, and sinker - and then gave it a brush-over and claimed it as his own idea.

  Further, if you read some of the evidence given in that divorce trial, you begin to get a good idea of the real internal character of this guy.

  I am sorry, but here I am just like Terry: this cannot possibly have been an honest or authentic teaching on CTR's part: he must have known full well he was using stolen doctrine for his own dishonest purposes - and then just shrugged it off as part of being the voice of the Lord..
• 

  Terry

  Further, if you read some of the evidence given in that divorce trial, you begin to get a good idea of the real internal character of this guy.

  I am sorry, but here I am just like Terry: this cannot possibly have been an honest or authentic teaching on CTR's part: he must have known full well he was using stolen doctrine for his own dishonest purposes - and then just shrugged it off as part of being the voice of the Lord..

  My former best friend (who got me into the Jehovah's Witnesses) has been an active member since 1959.

  He said to me about two years ago (back when he'd sneek a lunch visit with me) that he didn't consider anything that happened before 1925 in the Watchtower Society to have been important!

  I told him that was very convenient mental surgery on his part.

  I turned to him and said that I didn't consider anything Hitler did after 1939 to have been important either.

  He got the point!