I'm not going to defend Russian concepts of religious freedom. As a United States citizen, it is none of my business what Russia is doing, unless they break international norms of justice or moral codes. A Russian could well find fault with our system. Perhaps b/c it is exotic, but Western Christians have been very taken with the Russian Orthodox Church. It is considered cool. Christians will not visit their churches but patch together car caravans to a Russian Orthodox Seminary for Christmas or Easter. Their ritual seems so rich.
Had the magazines left at my house today and wanted to "SCREAM" after reading this article in the May 1,2011 WT
by StoneWall 39 Replies latest watchtower bible
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metatron
Do you think they are extremist publications? Do they discourage most all association with other people, labeling them as "worldly"? Are Witnesses repeatedly nagged to shun and have as little to do as possible with people who decide not to be Witnesses anymore? Do they break up families?
metatron
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steve2
Russia and the Watchtower are equally practised at calling the kettle black. Each is a bully in its own field.
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Aussie Oz
what a ludicrous load of crap!
40 million (4 billion) copies will be published.
what they are trying to threaten Russia with is the idea that well over half of earths 7 billion people will read this nonsense.
more like 33 million will go to trash and 7 million will sit in JWs cupboards.
oz
what a collosal waste of paper
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hubert
A few years back, there was a Watchtower or Awake titled..."Are the Jehovah's Witness"s a cult"?
Talk about jumping into the fire with both feet.
Hubert
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hotspur
40 million is still 40 million (4,000 million would be 4 billion - although it could be argued that 4 billion is 4,000,000 million)
Doesn't alter the fact they are still being massively hypocritical - grrr!
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Aussie Oz
ahh... maths never was my strongest subject! oops!
still, no way are 40 million copies going to be read.
oz
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the-illuminator81
I think Russia is right in saying that the literature is extremist. It is extremist.
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Maze
Russia, the Soviet Union and the Bolsheviks have a long standing history of attacking religion and the church.
The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College Why did the Bolsheviks attack religion and the Church?
They persecuted the church because they believed it was pro-monarchist and because they believed it was spreading superstition [i.e., belief in God] rather than scientific knowledge. They wanted to try to remove religion altogether, and for many reasons. Among them, of course, ideologically they saw religion as a competitor. Also, religion teaches us to love our fellow human beings. To the contrary, the driving emotional force in communism was hatred, not love. Hatred of certain classes in particular. They preached hatred.The Stalinist apparatus usurped political power from the Soviet working class, betrayed the ideals of the October Revolution and carried out many of the greatest crimes of the twentieth century.
There are still traces of the corrupt Stalinist apparatus in the modern Russian government. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/rs.html Russia's long-term challenges include a shrinking workforce, a high level of corruption, difficulty in accessing capital for smaller, non-energy companies, and poor infrastructure in need of large investments.
Seeing that you're from North Carolina, do you really want a corrupt government here so they'll persecute Jehovah's Witnesses? You reflect thinking that is uneducated and warped. -
sizemik
If the hypocrisy of the WT gets to you . . . I mean REALLY gets to you enough to make you scream . . .
Draft a letter relating what you know to be true about this cult . . . include links where appropriate . . . and send it off to every Russian Govt Dept and as many Russian news agencies you can find . . . and tell them.
It's much more satisfying than screaming . . . and more likely to do some good.
I make a practice of doing it at least once a week to someone somewhere.
The testimony of ex-members, especially long-time ex-members, often gets taken seriously . . . you'll be suprised at the occasional response.
And it only takes 20 min or so.