Most of the people I know think that Jehovah's Witnesses are a harmless Christian religion. Even those brought up in high control cults themselves.
They are not allied against you, they don't really know who you are.
This is so true of the majority of the people that I know. I remember back when I was on a Christian retreat with other students from college we had a group session discussing whether or not there would be world peace if the whole world was Christian. The obvious answer is NO but some students attempted to say that it would be a 'step in the right direction.' Perhaps, but the biggest problem is all the differing religions and their bickering over what is the 'correct doctrine.'
We agreed that we should be more open and tolerant to other views and someone suggested that we include the Jehovah's Witnesses. None of us saw anything wrong with it, and I too was pretty much in agreement. Perhaps that is why I allowed myself to get married to one and why I studied with them. I just did not see them as anything but a harmless Christian religion. I even believed their propaganda on blood.
BOY WAS I DUPED! At least I researched them first before considering becoming one of them.
Spade, if you are a non-witness who sees nothing wrong with them and sees others criticizing them as them saying something out of ignorance, I understand. I used to be you. I remember going to a church where the pastor came out and said at the beginning of his sermon, "Mormons, false religion, Jehovah's Witness, false religion..." So I paid attention to his sermon and caught him in error himself.
I remember going to another church where the pastor was going over the book of Revelations every Wednesday night. When he got to the part concerning the 144,000 he said something along the lines of, "Jehovah's Witnesses used to think they were the 144,000 but their numbers got too big and they had to do something about it..." I remember thinking, "wrong," because I knew about the two class Christian system then. However, what I did not know what that the two class system is their current doctrine. At one point in time, Russelites did indeed believe that they were all the annointed class and that the two class system was invented to do something about the increasing number of members. So in essence, that pastor was right.
