Rank & File Unfamiliar with WTS former NGO Status?

by megs 23 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  megs

  So, my pioneer lady sent me an e-mail with the following sentence:
  

  You had asked about the UN. We have never belonged to that organization and never will. What was your source of information?

  Being the good little doobie I am, I provided her with a link to the Guardian story, as well as the letter from the JW Info Dept in London, the letter sent out by the UN, the letter sent out by the WTS to the elders and a copy of the e-mail sent to the head librarian at Dag Hammarskjöld .

  Have they really not told the rank and file about the association? She's a long-time JW, I had assumed she would have known about this! It is also interesting that of all the points I raised, this one is a sticking point for her. At a book study I went to with her, she was vehement about the UN being the whore of Babylon, I wonder if this will lead her to question?
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  Lady Zombie

  I never heard of it until I went apostate and looked at the evidence/proof.

  So I would have to say the average R&F member has no idea about the UN scandal. Chances are, even with proof, most R&F Dubs won't believe it. They've been conditioned to believe everything, unless it is printed by the WTS, is apostate literature and therefore lies.
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  tresdecu

  I bet just the elders in my hall know, and maybe a select few others. Unfortunately this is not common knowledge.
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  StAnn

  When I brought it up to some JW family members, they dismissed it as, "Oh, yeah, they just filled out some papers to get a library card and the apostates made a big to-do about it."

  I gave them copies of everything you gave BUT I had printed them off the internet. The response was: "How do we know this is legitimate? Anybody can put anything they want on the internet."

  At that point, I tried to get the UN to actually mail a letter from their office on their letterhead in their envelope with the appropriate postal mark but they said that they had too many requests for info to do that.

  So, good luck.

  StAnn
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  momzcrazy

  I was a born-in, pioneer, elder dad. Center of activity in all the halls I went to. I had NEVER heard about the NGO thing, neither had my sister. My mom and MIL still do not believe me, even though I forwarded the letter from the UN website.
• 

  Seeker4

  The WTS almost never brings up any of their controversies in the congregations - ESPECIALLY the ones that have some validity.
  
  The only ones I've heard addressed are the old rumors about someone in the art department burying subliminal pictures in the WTS art. That was a "safe" one as there was a reasonable explanation and not much validity to the stories.
  
  Stuff like the UN membership, the pedophile law suits, their comments to the East European government (Romania??) essentially lying about the JW stand on blood transfusions, etc. will NEVER be addressed openly. The rank and file only know about these things if they get their info from an outside source. That's why the typical apostate knows WAY more about what's happening in the WTS than the average active Witness.
  
  S4
• 

  Gopher

  Yknot,

  That announcement must have been made after the story broke in the Guardian (October 2001), as a means of damage control. They did their best to hide their NGO affiliation from the rank-and-file up until then.
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  james_woods

  I told Betty Dunlap about this around three years ago or so...although she has still some family contact with the JW, and a large circle of ex-JWs who had left, she could still scarecly believe it.

  Her immediate reaction was - "how could they possibly do this - they always hated the U.N. as badly as they hated the Churches".

  She had to have me tell her the details over a couple of days before she could believe it. The "library card" thing she found especially hilarious. But still, given their background - she thought that this must be just some urban legend until I showed her some evidence. I told her that I would never have known myself, except for it being pointed out on this board. She was also stunned that the perpetrators of the NGO application were apparantly not disfellowshipped on the spot for it - after the way that they had treated Ed.

  Remember, this was no R&F supporter - this was the "hyper-apostate" wife of the late Ed Dunlap from the Ray Franz days.
• 

  VoidEater

  of all the points I raised, this one is a sticking point for her

  I still see the Whore of Babylon illustration in my nightmares...it was *drilled* into us in the 60's. It may have been the one modern event to make me release any delusions that the WTS was anything more than a bureaucratic entity living off its members.
• 

  Rohag

  Personal Experience: Several months ago "my" Witness shows up at the door to drop by copies of The Watchtower and Awake. This time he's accompanied by one sister. I had planned to carefully broach the UN topic by relating personal history.

  I told the Witnesses that back in the mid-1990s I had brief contact with individuals temporarily serving in low-level UN positions/personnel slots. In those days all sorts of groups maintained an association with the UN, to include the Watchtower Society registered as an NGO with the UN Department of Public Information.

  I expected denial and perhaps anger. They presented neither, although I may have noticed some suppressed surprise.

  The Witnesses accepted my story and even seemed to believe the Organization was still registered as an NGO with the UN. According to them, the association is justified for legal defense. Being a UN-associated NGO allows them to defend themselves in human rights cases such as those involving religious freedom in Russia and elsewhere, securing them the right to appeal to the World Court in the Hague. Biblically, they cited Romans 13, being in submission to worldly governments is legitimate for true Christians.

  They stressed they did not consider the individuals I had known who worked for the UN as evil; it's the UN organization as a political entity (?) they consider a Satanic agent of Evil (?).

  Further, they offered the analogy of the incorporation of local congregations for legal status and defense – people cannot sue the elders, they have to take on the congregation as a legal whole. I asked about the status of the individual Witness liaisons with the UN; they evaded answering and moved the conversation toward registering for the military draft. Witnesses can register but will refuse to serve in military forces. Alternative service is OK, and they gave me examples of brothers who, at the time of the Vietnam war, chose to go to prison and another who accepted alternative service.

  Impression: These folks had no sure knowledge of these issues. I strongly suspect they were impelled to tell me anything semi-logical to clear the Organization of hypocrisy.