by Marvin Shilmer 28 Replies latest jw friends
Vow of Obedience
Today I uploaded a document issued in year 2002 to members of the Religious Order of Jehovah’s Witnesses. This document highlights something new Watchtower began requiring of members of this Order.
Previously members had been asked to make a vow of poverty. As of 2002 each member also had to declare a vow of obedience.
The presentation is titled Vow of Obedience and is available at: http://marvinshilmer.blogspot.com/2011/03/vow-of-obedience.html
Marvin Shilmer
Inducing JW's to give their all to them while absolving themselves of any responsibility toward JW's.
Slick.
Syl
IMHO, the document serves one primary purpose in the United States: It prevents WT from paying mandatory FICA taxes for each Bethelite.
Let me also tell you this. As new Bethelites, you are not encouraged to actually examine/study the stack of papers that you are asked to sign during your first week at Bethel. Rather, you're informed that if you do not sign them, you will be sent packing. IOW, either sign the papers, or return to your home congregation in shame. It's a high-pressure event in which the documents are a formality.
It sounds like they are trying to cut down on G-work.
JK
It sounds like they are trying to cut down on G-work.
Yes, it SOUNDS that way. However, this language is not new.
Bethelites will always do G-Jobs, because they cannot clothe themselves and their wives on the stipend they are given. You must either be bankrolled from an outside source, or you must work G-Jobs.
#6 of that vow is the MOST CULT-LIKE thing that I EVER read about the borg. If after reading that, if the red flags don't go up you are in JW land forever.
All of it smacks of cultic control.
I don't see how they can sneer at Christendom for having such religious orders.
Hypocrites!
Syl
What a Faustian Pact you bethel boys signed !
I presume that traveling D.O's and C.O's etc. sign this too ?
If so, every time they put the green handshake money in their wallet, they are going against the Vow, they should declare it to the WT, and then see if theWT wants to give it back to them, I'm sure the WT would,...... not.
Just a little off thread topic, but still related. Close bethel couple to my ex-wife and I were very upset when they HAD to sign a paper to allow the bethel office access to their private medical records. That was just before the big bethel layoffs of 2007 or about. She was especially upset. They got put out anyway. The inference of signing that medical information release was that they would or did lie on their medical health assessement questionier.
"The Order"?? Wth? My culty sense is tingling! How many JWs have ever seen that paper before they got up in the ranks high enough to sign it?
