For JWs: Ducking the Hard Questions

by Room 215 17 Replies latest jw friends

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  Room 215

  Hi all,

  ``I mean, what have they eery been right about?'' ``What have they ever done to merit such relfecxive, unflinching loyalty?''

  These two questions I've posited several times to the apologists on this bards, with nary a response to date.

  By this I'm not really referring to JW doctine. After all, it ins't that the basic foundational doctrines of soul sleep, hellfire, etc. cannot be effectively defended scriptually by a skilful JW. The major problems lie elsewhere.

  One, of course is the Society's inveterate penchant for speculation and chronology; another is its insistence that its every utterance be unquestioningly acceptance under pain of banishment.

  Another related problem is the Society's bloated sense of self-importance. Unbowed by the failure of every one of its major predictions, its insistence on superimposing its rather checkered modern history on every prophetic book of the Bible is trul tragi-comic.
• 

  YoYoMama

  ``I mean, what have they ever been right about?''

  One example is a talk that Nathan Knorr gave in 1942. He talked about Revelation. Although the world was involved in WWII, he said that a period of peace would soon come. He also talked about the United Nations, before it even existed.
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  blondie

  http://www.un.org/aboutun/history.htm

  The UN came into existence January 1, 1942 several months before Knorr's talk.

  The name "United Nations", coined by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was first used in the "Declaration by United Nations" of 1 January 1942, during the Second World War, when representatives of 26 nations pledged their Governments to continue fighting together against the Axis Powers.

  The "Declaration"

  http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/decade/decade03.htm
• 

  Satanus

  Yo

  >Although the world was involved in WWII, he said that a period of peace would soon come.

  He predicted that the war would end? Wow, that was a daring prediction. Havn't all wars ended sooner or later?

  SS
• 

  OUTLAW

  Yo-yo the encyclopedia of misinformation.If you make things up as you go along,you know we are going to have fun with you.LOL...OUTLAW
• 

  blondie

  Armageddon in 1941

  The Watchtower, Sept 15,1941 p.288

  "Receiving the gift, the marching children clasp it to them, not a toy or plaything for idle pleasure, but the Lord's provided instrument for most effective work in the remaining months before Armageddon"

  Doesn't sound like Rutherford expected things to last past 1942.
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  Adonai438

  no offense yo but predicting WWII would end is not a daring prediction and comes after a long line of predictions that have failed miserabley and they still predict the end after that date as well. How many failed prophecies do they need to make before people realize that they are what the Bible calls false prophets--
  Dueteronomy 18:20 states
  "But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded him to say or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods MUST BE PUT TO DEATH"
  I'm not saying that under the new covenant the WT leaders should be put to death but they should not be trusted for a tree is recognized by its fruit.
• 

  jayhawk1

  YoYoMama,
  Like you did me, prove it. If Knorr said that, where is the transcript? As I recall, the Society has changed its interpretation on Revelation often. The Babylon the Great book is much different than the Revelation book, although both claim to interpret Revelation.

  BTW, was Knorr ready to get his UN library card just as soon as the UN opened for business?

  "Hand me that whiskey, I need to consult the spirit."-J.F. Rutherford

  Jeremy's Hate Mail Hall Of Fame.
  http://hometown.aol.com/onjehovahside/ and [email protected]
• 

  AlanF

  Blondie, nice job pointing out YoYo's misinformation.

  YoYo is a typical example of how naive JWs absorb the Society's lies and misrepresentations. Until Rutherford died, the Society was heavy into predicting that the ongoing war would lead straight into Armageddon. After he died in January 1942, Knorr took over as administrator and Fred Franz became essentially the "head theologian", so they started teaching their own views and began scrapping a lot of Rutherford's nonsense. Interesting how God leads "his people", no?

  This claim that Knorr predicted the end of WWII and the rise of the U.N. before it even existed is a fine example of how the Society uses half-truths to convince its followers to believe nonsense. The only other "event" that JWs can point to as having fulfilled a WTS prediction is "the end of the Gentile times" in 1914. Naturally they also use half-truths to support this claim, because in actuality not a single, observable event that Russell predicted came true -- not one! The only thing the WTS has left is the invisible -- that "the Gentile times", whatever they were, somehow "ended" and resulted in events in heaven that we can't see.

  So much for Watchtower predictive ability.

  AlanF
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  Nathan Natas

  I think that what was being overlooked here, as Alan F points out in the above post, is that the WTS has kept us all informed of the latest events in the invisible spirit realm, a realm to which mere mortal reporters have no access.

  The importance of such events should not be under-estimated.

  Watchtower, February 24th 2002:
  "Yesterday the ruling King of Kings and Lord of Lords had a ham sandwich for lunch. He said it was, 'Perfect.'"

  ...and around the world faithful Dubs, in their best Homer Simpson voice, mutter, "oooooo, hammmm" as they underline the words.