by Witness 007 42 Replies latest watchtower scandals
WHY PREACH?? Those who don't hear the "truth" will get a second chance in Paradise, so we are just condemning people to death who close the door on us! Also babies and children of worldly people will be killed with their parents which contradicts this first policy.....any thoughts??
I'm doing my bit to save people by sitting on my ass!!
I never understood that whole thing. My jw couldn't wrap his head around what I was saying either. Just kept repeating he was doing 'life saving work' or whatever the jw saying is on that. jw's do not like to think of the babies being destroyed and birds munching on baby soft skin, wispy hair and birds plucking out those beautiful baby blues much, unless they are in full dub mode of thinking, then they get the attitude of the gb years ago when they compared worldly children to nats or was it nits? somehow jah will take away all unpleasant memories after the big A from what I could get out of my jw.
You've stumbled across a glitch in JW/WT theology. This is the reason that the WT has to (at least implicitly) teach that only JWs can survive the battle of Armageddon. Otherwise, the "preaching work" is not really a life-saving work.
I see two main alternatives:
The problem with #2 is that it contradicts the WT teaching that their preaching is life-saving. As the OP pointed out, this belief would transform the preaching work into mere busy-work--basically the modern-day equivalent of God telling Ezekiel to lay on his side for a year (Ezekiel 4).
Thus, the WT is pinned into a theological corner. For obvious reasons, it does not want to go on record stating that only JWs will survive the imminent end. But it also doesn't want its all-important, life-saving preaching work relegated to mere busy-work. Thus, you get what we have today: a confusing, inconsistent, contradictory doctrine.
I would say that the JW doctrine about who survives Armageddon is every bit as confusing as Christendom's Trinity doctrine...and probably has less Scriptural support.
WHY PREACH?? Those who don't hear the "truth" will get a second chance in Paradise, so we are just condemning people to death who close the door on us!
Taken to its logical extreme, it would be far more effective to murder people than preach to them.
Given the change to the "sheep / goats" interpretation (no one is judged a "goat" until Armageddon starts), everyone who dies before the start of Armageddon gets an automatic resurrection into the 1000-year reign.
Murder someone - he gets a free pass to paradise, a 100% success rate.
Preach to someone - there's a 99+% chance he'll say "no" and thus when Armageddon comes he gets zapped. A 1% (or less) success rate.
I am uncomfortably certain that a significant proportion of JWs would be willing to do just that, if a Watchtower recommended it.
Each year that Jehovah waits on bringing Armageddon equals another 70 million people that he will have to slaughter.
Yeah, that makes sense.
The WTS has a family merit teaching.
It is how they explain why it was right to destroy eternally all the children who died in the flood and in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
*** w87 4/15 pp. 12-13 par. 12 Gaining Peace With God Through Dedication and Baptism ***Should even youths consider baptism? Well, recall that Jehovah told the six armed men in the vision: "Old man, young man and virgin and little child and women you should kill off—to a ruination. But to any man upon whom there is the mark do not go near." (Ezekiel 9:6) Of course, children too young to make a dedication would be protected by a parent’s "mark" if that parent is striving to bring the children up to love Jehovah and if they are obediently responding. (1 Corinthians 7:14) Yet, if a child is intelligent enough to make a personal decision and has reached the point where he "knows how to do what is right," do not presume that he will continue indefinitely under the merit of his parent’s "mark."—James 4:17.
*** tp chap. 15 p. 174 par. 25 Why Care About Other People? ***Another powerful reason for a believing parent to be loyal to God when faced with opposition is the children. God gives assurance that the young children of his devoted servants will be preserved through the coming "great tribulation." Even if only one parent is a servant of Jehovah, He counts such young children as "holy." (1 Corinthians 7:14) But if the parent were to "beg off" from doing the will of God, what then? Such parent would give up an approved standing before God not only for himself or herself but also for the young children. (Hebrews 12:25) What a tragic loss that would be!
Yep...the cunundrum. They cant possibly preach to all the people of the world so they came up with the "community responsibility" thing where if you were unfortunate enough to be BORN in mainland China and wont ever be able to hear the JWs SAVVVVVVING words at your door, you will die because by virtue of your living there where they dont support the preaching work...and you deserve to die. So that eliminates with large swoops, huge portions of the population the JWs cant get too and so they can still "preach to all the earth".
If you go to a door and they reject you even if you stutter and stammer and dont know how to answer their objections, and they dont accept a bible study from your lame ass presentation, they have just, in essence, committed suicide. They heard, they rejected, they're goats, they're doomed. This morning when they got up and made coffee they were still on the list to just die and be ressurected in the New System...and this JW comes along and blows all that out of the water.
Makes SENSE??? Hell no it doesnt make sense. But nothing they do ever does.
Renaia....how about explaining this to all of us eh?
Carla ~ I heard roaches. "Little roaches grow into big roaches." It was so nice for me to hear myself referred to as a roach.
St. Ann
Now wait A MINUTE, Who says that God OWES everyone a witness? IMO, everyone has demanded of others what he/she is guilty of doing/not doing. Humans are witnesses against themselves. God owes us nothing but judgment.
I was talking once to a Ba'Hai friend many years ago, and she said that to her, JWs were a violent religion! I was taken aback, as I was still somewhat into then. I was always proud of the fact that Witnesses are so against war. She said, "I know you don't believe in war, but you believe that God will kill all these millions of people in front of your eyes and you will not be affected by that?"
I started to think of that. Witnesses are taught to shun violence, to practice war no more, and that and their lack of racist feelings are the best things about them. But, I know how watching a violent movie affects me. I'm horrified by violence. I tried to watch "Saving Private Ryan" and ended up covering my eyes and somewhat traumatized by the violent war scenes.
And yet...we're supposed to rejoice when Jehovah destroys people in front of our eyes, when the blood is ankle deep and the birds of the heavens and the beasts of the earth are feasting on the flesh of fallen millions.
I can't imagine anything more ghastly, it's unimaginable horrible to me. I once said to another Witness, being rather flip, "It's a good thing there will be a thousand years after that...I'll need a thousand to quit having nightmares about watching millions of people die."
Of course, as I got a bit more "worldly" IE, unbrain-washed in my thinking, I came to view those sanitized pictures of Armageddon in the Witness literature as laughable. They're ludicrous! Worldwide destruction would be unimaginably horrible, and the trauma of seeing it equally unimaginable and horrible. There's going to be body parts everywhere and blood everywhere in that sort of destruction, not people neatly and conveniently falling into cracks in the earth.
I suppose some JWs believe that God will take care of that horror with some convenient miracle, but there's no mention of that. No....not at all...they speak of standing still and observing Jehovah kill millions with some sort of joy at the vindication of his name. I tell you, unless you're a sociopath, that's not how you're going to feel watching God mow down your neighborhood in a righteous bloodbath.
I prefer to take Revelation and other apocalyptic Biblical visions as a bit more...metaphorical. Because taken literally, it's pure crack.
