A Weekend with Thousands of Jehovah’s Witnesses

by betterdaze 5 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  betterdaze

  Posted by Rabbi John Rosove @ JewishJournal.com
  
  
  

  Their families are patriarchal and their denomination is autocratically led by an all-male religious leadership that maintains discipline, demands obedience, compels commitment, forbids independent thinking, and insists on conformity.

  Those who violate communal belief and behavioral norms risk “disfellowship” and “shunning.” However, if an individual is judged adequately repentant, he/she can be reinstated.

  One has to ask why would so many people would subject themselves to such dogma and strict doctrine?

  
  
  More at link.
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  WTWizard

  The problem is that Jehovah's Witlesses religion is a hybrid Jewish and Christian religion. It is not wholly Jewish because they believe that Jesus paid the ransom for sin. It is not totally Christian because they take so much out of the Old testament and structure the religion similar to the old Jewish system. Much of the structure of the events is borrowed from Judaism. As such, they take the worst elements of each program and combine it into one.

  And that one program is responsible for ruining countless children's lives.
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  Chariklo

  That's a very good article you've discovered, betterdaze, and it puts into a nutshell the main markers of the JW religion better and more succinctly than anything else I've met.

  Thanks.
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  sseveninches

  It's because they lure you in with so many promises, that seem too good to be true and 100% possible at the same time, since "nothing is impossible for God".

  Then you get (kind of) unknowingly enter a binding contract with the WTS, where the unwritten but very real agreement is to believe everything that comes out the arse of the WTS as truth, whether it really is true or not. Anyone can break this contract, but there's an 'early termination fee' of sorts, that you never stop paying.
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  apostatethunder

  First of all, witnesses are manipulated into entering the cult, none of them has all the facts when they join, and don’t have a clue who and what agenda is running this corporation. As far as they are concerned they have just being offered a free bible study, no strings attached.

  From then on they are being subjected to propaganda, manipulation, and strong social pressure. Some leave but some are not strong enough, don’t have enough support, or just can’t for various reasons.

  The fact that they are not allowed to voice them, doesn't mean that they don't have any doubts, and personally I never met anyone that was truly happy in this cult. What keeps them in is the fact that they are trapped in, in one way or another. It’s not that they enjoy being enslaved as this rabbi seems to believe.
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  Kudra

  Good and accurate article.

  I suppose the JWs would say a huge part that he left out in the drive to fit in and obey is the hope of making it to the new world.

  That is what motivated me, but I suppose it could fit in under his "certainty" reason.