Similarities and differences: JWs & WWCG

by cog_survivor 14 Replies latest jw friends

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  cog_survivor

  Some folks expressed curiosity about the doctrines of the Worldwide Church of God and how they were similar to JWs

  So heres the down and dirties of what I think we had similar

  1. Armegeddon - Yep we referred to it as the great tribulation followed by the Day of the Lord. It was referred to constantly so that we could make sure we were worthy to escape. Do JWs believe the Catholic Church is the Great Whore of Babylon in Revelations?

  2. Soul Sleep - No conciousness after death. Hell is anihillation. Not forever torment

  3. We're the only ones with "the truth". Everyone else is blinded by Satan.

  4. Trinity - pagan in origins. The "truth" is that God is a family comprised of Father and Son. The Holy Spirit is not a person

  5. Crosses - bad. I'm curious though did JWs see the cross as a symbol of Tammuz? We're were heavily influenced by Alexander Hislops "Two Babylons"

  6. No politics or voting

  7. No Birthdays - Only one in the Bible was Herods and we know how that ended. All fun and games until someone lost their head:)

  8. No Christmas, Easter or other holidays - These are pagan in origin But they didn't prohibit the 4th of July (go figure) or Thanksgiving (this made it a lot easier to relate to my non WWCG family.

  9. Worldly associations - Bad. Certainly no marriages between a baptized and non baptized individual. Women who came into the wwcg without their spouses were often referred to as "spiritual widows"

  10. Higher Education - Pretty iffy. Forget it if you wanted to go into psychology, or sociology. Hard sciences like engineering okay. But it is probably a wasted pursuit as the end of days is near. Unless you went to "God's college", Abassador College founded by Mr Armstrong in Pasadena (I spent a couple of years in it)

  11. Medical care - Also pretty iffy. Getting it meant you were weak in the faith. Early on vaccinations were frown upon as "monkey pus". Chiropractors and dentists were okay though.

  12. Salvation - not assured God gives and God can take away if you aren't good enough. (Meaning obedient to the Church)

  13. Shunning - We called it disfellowshipped. People could be "marked" to avoid if they were considered apostate and "causing division". Otherwise people could use their own judgement about associating.

  Here are some concepts on which I think we weren't the same:

  1) Seventh Day Sabbath - Kept Holy. No work sundown Friday through sundown Saturday. No TV, no participation in sports, dances, parties or weekday activities. (strictness about this varied from place to place and time to time. Some were against eating in restaurants on Saturday others said it was okay). This was based on British-Israelism that stated that England and America were two of the lost tribes of Israel

  2) Seven Annual Holydays from the OT. Attendance was mandatory The biggie in the fall was the Feast of Tabernacles. Lasted eight days. Two servicess on the first and last days, one every day in between. The old timers said people got soft because they had two services every day.

  3) Tithes and offerings (Do JWs tithe?) we were expected to give a first tithe from our gross income. Save a second tithe to be used for the Feast of Tabernacles, and every 3rd year give a 3rd tithe for the poor in the church (although I think they saw precious little of it and most of them who gave could have dearly used it themselves). Plus there were offerings every Holy day. A recommended level of giving was a tithe of the tithe.

  4) Anyone who was called by God and faithful to the end would be rewarded by being changed into a spirit being like God. Becoming a true son or daughter of God. I think this is similar to what the mormons preach

  5) Second chance for non believers - everyone who ever lived would be resurrected in the millenial reign of Christ on earth and be given the chance to know "the truth". But believers now had better stick with it. There were no second chances for them.

  6) No pork shelfish or anything listed on the prohibited foods in Leviticus

  7) Only Mr Armstrong evangelized through the broadcasts and his contact with world leaders. Members were expected to pray, and pay to support the work and worry about their level of rightness before God.

  8) People couldnt just show up. They had to study and receive a ministerial vist to prove they were ready for attendance.

  9) No buildings - we rented our locations to meet (except headquarters where no expense was spared) The cynical side of me often wonders if there were no local buildings so that most of the assets could be kept liquid in case someone wanted to make a quick get away with the cash.

  10) No baptisms under age 18

  11) Makeup - women couldn't wear it (although there was a brief time in the 70's where they could)

  12) Divorce and remarriage - Before 1976 (ish?) anyone who had been divorced and remarried was living in adultery. If the a person was in this situation, they had to leave their adulterous relationship before they could join the church. (This was one of the more damaging and evil policies they had resulting in numerous broken families) This changed after Herbert Armstrong received a revelation to God that people who divorced and remarried after before joining the church were no longer bound to their first spouse. Which was awfully convenient when he decided to marry a younger divorcee around that time.

  13) No interacial dating or marriages - The funny thing is that I found out later that this rule was not enforced in South America where interacial marriages were extremely common.
• 

  cofty

  Really interesting post thank you.

  Do the WWCG and the Watchtower share a common link?
• 

  wannabefree

  Welcome cog_survivor

  Incidently, my awakening to the JW scam was instigated by examining beliefs of COG in preparation for a return visit to a man who had recently jumped into the old-time Armstrong version of COG.

  While researching I came across the video on Youtube "Called to Be Free" ... recognizing the similarities COG had with JW's began my unraveling.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWAtvE1xiRk
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  Black Sheep

  4) Anyone who was called by God and faithful to the end would be rewarded by being changed into a spirit being like God. Becoming a true son or daughter of God. I think this is similar to what the mormons preach

  Very similar, except restricted to 144,000 individuals. Everyone else has an earthly hope.
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  Black Sheep

  5) Second chance for non believers - everyone who ever lived would be resurrected in the millenial reign of Christ on earth and be given the chance to know "the truth". But believers now had better stick with it. There were no second chances for them.

  Identical
• 

  Black Sheep

  12) Divorce and remarriage - Before 1976 (ish?) anyone who had been divorced and remarried was living in adultery.

  Similar. If the other spouse has committed adultery, they are free to remarry. This leads to extreme pressure on ex's to own up to adultery. If they won't, it can lead to stalking to spy on who comes and goes from their home, as an unsupervised overnight stay by a member of the opposite sex is considered evidence of fornication.
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  jgnat

  BTW, the WWCG has dropped most of these doctrines, at the cost of about half their adherents.

  http://www.wcg.ca/history.php

  I would say the leadership shows far more integrity, humility, and courage than the WTBTS leadership.
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  mP

  The idea of death on a cross, tree and so on is a universal symbol found in all religions all over the world. The idea is of course related to solar worship the only common theme in all religion. Take a loook at the Aztec solar calendars and have a look at similar xian imagery such as Jesus with a cross in the background. WHile superficially different both are representing the same concepts. Both religions also talk about someone who will return, and other concepots people think are unique to Jesus but are not. The Romans when they established the Roman Catholic church, knew this and thats why their universal church (catholic means universal in Latin) was so successful at absurbing so called Pagan religion into the start which began wth Jesus. Justyn Martyr himself acknowledges the similarities between Jesus and the pagans, he of course says the devil knew Jesus would come along and his scheming ways created the pagan form.

  Funnily the Hebrews themselves used the T or cross as a special symbol in much the same way xians think of crosses.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tav_(letter)

  Ezekiel 9:4 depicts a vision in which the Tav plays a Passover role similar to the blood on the lintel and doorposts of a Hebrew home in Egypt. [1] In Ezekiel’s vision, the Lord has his angels separate the demographic wheat from the chaff by going through Jerusalem, the capital city of ancient Israel, and inscribing a mark, a Tav, “upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof.”

  In Ezekiel's vision, then, the Lord is counting Tav Israelites as worthwhile to spare, but counts the people worthy of annihilation who lack the Tav and the critical attitude it signifies. In other words, looking askance at a culture marked by dire moral decline is a kind of shibboleth for loyalty and zeal for God. [2]

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammuz_(Hebrew_month)

  Tammuz is the month of the sin of the golden calf, which resulted in Moses breaking the Ten Commandments.
  Month Number:	4
  Number of Days:	29
  Season:	summer
  Gregorian Equivalent:	June–July

  Interestingly Tammuz was a solar god. He died every year just like Jesus

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammuz_(deity)

  In a translation of an ancient Nabataean text by Kuthami the Babylonian, Ibn Wahshiyya (c. 9th-10th century AD), adds information on his own efforts to ascertain the identity of Tammuz, and his discovery of the full details of the legend of Tammuz in another Nabataean book:

  "How he summoned the king to worship the seven (planets) and the twelve (signs) and how the king put him to death several times in a cruel manner Tammuz coming to life again after each time, until at last he died; and behold! it was identical to the legend of St. George which is current among the Christians." [11]

  Ibn Wahshiyya also adds that Tammuz lived in Babylonia before the coming of the Chaldeans and belonged to an ancient Mesopotamian tribe called Ganbân. [10] On rituals related to Tammuz in his time, he adds that the Sabaeans in Harran and Babylonia still lamented the loss of Tammuz every July, but that the origin of the worship had been lost. [10]

  Strange that the Jews would keep this diety alive, by honouring him w/ by naming a month Tammuz. Its also strange that xians also follow similar customs honoring a dying savior in much the same way Tammuz was honoured.
• 

  Phizzy

  Cofty's question about any link between the COG and WT has been answered by others on your other thread, Armstrong Snr denied any connection apparently.

  I find the number of similarities, and even timing of doctrine changes, to be too close to think that they were arrived at totally independently.

  The WT from the time of the great plagiariser Charles Russell has always read and plagiarised the writings of others, I would suggest there is more than a distinct possibility that Herb Armstrong was similar, taking on board for his own use whatever he felt would work, a two way cross fertilisation of ideas.

  Let us hope the WT shares in a similar fate to the C.O.G
• 

  cog_survivor

  Phizzy and cofty - I didn't know Charles Russell tended towards plagiarizing. Herbert Armstrong may have denied connection, but he is now known to have cannabilized the works of others and then pretend they were revelation from God. Who knows, there may have been an indirect exchange of ideas. "New Truth" was our buzzword rather like your "New Light"

  Wannabefree - I'm so glad that the called to be free video was helpful to you. As an insider, there were parts of it that felt like a slap in the face because of how they sanitized things. But if it helps anyone else to question whether they are in an abusive cult, then I'm really glad.

  Black Sheep - Thanks for pointing out a few shared doctrines I was unaware of. I didn't realize that JWs believed anyone had a second chance.

  Jgnat - It was thanks to the fact that the leaders did change things that I was able to leave when I did. I was somewhat headed that direction before because I was beginning to see how the beliefs were taking a toll on my mental health (the cognitive dissonance was very severe) but when the changes happened it accelerated the process. The process of reforming a new identity and loss of community was still severe but at least I had a little company along the way:)

  mP - Interesting. I tend to think that humans like symbols and there are only so many of the ones we find aestheically pleasing to go round. So we recycle. My personal take is that the symbol isn't so important as the meaning we attach to it. Language itself is symbolic. Consider all the ideas attached to the word "bible".