What do you think of Carl Olof Jonsson's books?
by binadub 4 Replies latest jw friends
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jws
It's been over 15 years since I read them, but I liked them.
Gentile Times Revisited was a bit to get through. It's just dull material. But I wanted to get through it to see how solid the evidence was against the JWs. Sounded like he had a pretty solid argument.
The other one, what was it? Last Days, when? Or something like that. I enjoyed that one a lot more. It helped me really undo that doom and gloom mindset.
It helped me realize that all of these things the JWs try to prove are getting worse really aren't. They cherry-pick quotes to make it look that way. But in reality, things are about like they were. In many ways better.
JWs used to always use any epidemic as a sign we were in the last days. Haven't seen anything like the Black Plague that took out 1/3 of Europe recently.
And it's math too. Sure, we've got greater death tolls today, but we also have a LOT more people. Even a small earthquake can kill a lot of people in a dense population whereas centuries ago, the effects of a larger earthquake may have been minimal. And if some disease wipes out a million people, that's a lot of people, but that's a small fraction of 1% of the population.
I think without reading the history he presents, I would have watched every disaster (tsunamis, earthquakes, volcano eruptions, swine flu, etc) and thought to myself, "Hmmm, maybe the JWs were onto something".
Now those thoughts never cross my mind. Except to maybe chuckle and say "I'll bet the JWs are freaking out over this one".
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OnTheWayOut
Doctrine was everything to me, in the early days of waking up to the truth about "the lie."
So C.O.J.'s book, GENTILE TIMES REVISITED, was pretty important. It demonstated in so many ways that, if your so-called scholars would simply check on everything, you could clearly see that 607 BCE is wrong.
But if you are not about the details of doctrine, it's a dry difficult read. Borrow the book and read the summaries at the end of each chapter.
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irondork
JWS: Gentile Times Revisited was a bit to get through. It's just dull material.
Dang! I just ordered that one yesterday.
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Dagney
What JWS said.
In my heart I always felt the society's calculation of the 2,520 years was a huge leap of faith...and hear myself explain it as a JW made me feel like an uncomfortable fool. So GTR helped me see that the WTBS would say or do anything to make their predictions fit even in the face of solid historical information.
Same with "Last Days," being raised a JW you don't give much credence to secular history, unless of course it fits the WTBS' rendition. So seeing the data about the "last days" really blew my mind. It's heartbreaking to learn the WTBS are so deceiving and dishonest with their information. But they are, and when you accept that, you can move forward into an aware and free life.