"Right now three things remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love." - 1 Corinthians 13:13
"By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." - John 13:35
“[Jesus], which is the great commandment in the law?” And he said to him, ’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.” - Matthew 22:37
Let us now see how this love is manifested in the religion that not only claims to be a special religion, but the ONLY religion which has the approval of Almighty God Himself. One would think that a religion with this unique approval would be the penultimate example of following the the directions of the above three scriptures. If so, one would be wrong. Very wrong. If you do not have a strong stomach, have a barf bag handy. You'll need it.
Love and tolerance for other's religious beliefs:
"A Resolution . . .
As JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES, we testify that:
(1) WE ABHOR the reproach that Babylon the Great, and Christendom in particular, has cast upon the name of the one true and living God, Jehovah. . . .
(2) WE ABHOR Christendom’s adherence to Babylonish teachings, notably those of a triune god, the human soul’s immortality, eternal torment in hell, a fiery purgatory, and worship of images — such as the Madonna and the cross. . . .
(3) WE ABHOR anti-God philosophies and practices, so common in Christendom, such as evolution, blood transfusions, abortions, lying, greed, and dishonesty." (The Watchtower, 4/15 1989 p. 18)
Love for their children who disagree with their teachings:
"They cannot endure to have even their own child speak falsehood in the name of Jehovah. They must pierce him through because of his false prophesying. They must consider him as spiritually dead to themselves, as one with whom to have no religious association and fellowship and whose prophesyings are to be rejected." (The Watchtower, 10/1 1961, p. 596)
Respect and love for human life:
"We are not living today among theocratic nations where such members of our fleshly family relationship could be exterminated for apostasy from God and his theocratic organization, as was possible and was ordered in the nation of Israel in the wilderness of Sinai and in the land of Palestine. . . . Being limited by the laws of the worldly nation in which we live and also by the laws of God through Jesus Christ, we can take action against apostates only to a certain extent, that is, consistent with both sets of laws. The law of the land and God’s law through Christ forbid us to kill apostates, even though they be members of our own flesh-and-blood family relationship." (The Watchtower, 11/15 1952, p. 703)
Rejection of hate in their lives:
"Haters of God and his people are to be hated, but this does not mean that we will take any opportunity of bringing physical hurt to them in a spirit of malice or spite, for both malice and spite belong to the Devil, whereas pure hatred does not. We must hate in the truest sense, which is to regard with extreme and active aversion, to consider as loathsome, odious, filthy, to detest. Surely any haters of God are not fit to live on his beautiful earth." (The Watchtower, 10/1 1952, p. 599)
Religious tolerance and allowance for disagreement:
"Some apostates profess to know and serve God, but they reject teachings or requirements set out in his Word. Others claim to believe the Bible, but they reject Jehovah’s organization and actively try to hinder its work. When they deliberately choose such badness after knowing what is right, when the bad becomes so ingrained that it is an inseparable part of their makeup, then a Christian must hate (in the Biblical sense of the word) those who have inseparably attached themselves to the badness. True Christians share Jehovah’s feelings toward such apostates; they are not curious about apostate ideas. On the contrary, they "feel a loathing" toward those who have made themselves God’s enemies, but they leave it to Jehovah to execute vengeance." (The Watchtower, 10/1 1993, p. 19)
Compassion and forgiveness for the wicked:
"In Bible times persons who were considered as deserving of a resurrection were given a respectful burial. The ones slaughtered at Armageddon are shown as being left as food for the carrion-eating birds of the heavens. They will not be buried with military honors nor have graves with markers to memorialize them for mourners and idolizers. Those destroyed in this war will not be mourned, for the reason that they have shown themselves undeserving of mercy. By their removal the earth is cleansed." (The Watchtower, 7/1 1967, pp. 407-8)
"Men can spray a field with chemicals that kill weeds but spare crops; too bad they cannot spray cities with bombs that blow the bad to bits but leave the innocent intact." (The Watchtower, 7/15 1955, p. 436)
A religion such as Jehovah's Witnesses which claims to be motivated by love should have a motivater to set a good example for showing love and forgiveness, and here they are, "Jehovah" and "Christ":
"From his heavenly habitation, Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, he [Jehovah] roars with a battle shout loud enough to set heaven and earth rocking at the shock waves. He orders his King, Jesus Christ, to tread his enemies, who have been made as a foot stool for his feet. Into the valley of decision, as into a vast wine-press trough, the King leaps with his army of holy angels. SQUASH! The treading of the nations, including Christendom, begins.. . . Never before in all human history will so many human creatures have been slaughtered. Blood, as representing human lives poured out, will run deep and over a vast distance. Revelation 14:20 paints the appalling picture, saying: "And the wine press was trodden outside the city [God’s organization], and blood came out of the wine press as high up as the bridles of the horses, for a distance of a thousand six hundred furlongs [or, 200 miles]." (The Watchtower, 12/1 1961, pp. 725-6)
"A practical literal benefit will come because of allowing the birds to clean the bones of these enemies of God a health benefit. Many have been the epidemics that have been caused by the wholesale destruction and devastation of past wars. . . . This victory will be a feast, not only for the literal birds, but also, in a sense, for those who survive, for they will feast because of the end of wickedness." (The Watchtower, 7/1 1967, p. 408)
Yummy!
"The bodies of the slain will not molder in honorable burial places. Unburied, their flesh will be picked away clean to the bone, beyond identifying the bare skeletons. Because of the multitude of the slain, it will be a huge feast for the scavengers.. . .So, instead of having their bones eaten clean of all decaying flesh by the maggots at the Valley of Hinnom (or, at Gehenna), the carcasses of the slain enemies at Har Magedon will, as it were, be eaten clear to the bone by nature’s sanitation force, the carrion-eating birds and wild beasts. . . Quite evidently there will be many more bodies strewn over the earth as a result of the war at Har Magedon than there will be scavenger birds enough to dispose of them all in a reasonable time for human health reasons. So it is reasonable to expect that God will dispose of excess bodies by other means.. . .What a well-deserved, contemptible end for all these opposers of Jehovah and his Messianic kingdom at Har Magedon!" (Man’s Salvation Out of World Distress at Hand!, 1975, pp. 275-6)
(Jesus asked his Father to forgive those who crucified him, for they did not know what they were doing, and Jehovah's Witnesses also follow his example and express this same love of humanity and forgiveness:)
"A flesh-eating plague will destroy many. . . . Eaten up will be the tongues of those who scoffed and laughed at the warning of Armageddon! Eaten up will be the eyes of those who refused to see the sign of the "time of the end"! Eaten up will be the flesh of those who would not learn that the living and true God is named Jehovah! Eaten up while they stand on their feet!" (From Paradise Lost to Paradise Regained, 1958, p. 209)
Now we've seen it. The kind of "Love" that is demanded by the Watchtower Printing Corporation and as practiced by those who worship it.
Originally posted 9 years ago:
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/5525/1/Motivated-by-Pure-Love
Farkel