Hi everyone
Apologies if this has already been posted about. I just checked back on the last 3/4 pages of threads and couldn't see it, so here goes.
I stumbled on the following Danmera video about an article on attending meetings by a non-Witness...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs2uXZpAqKU
Intigued, I thought I would check it out, and it's hilarious!
Best bits...
What if these are real-life zombies? This thought flashes into mind as I'm standing in the entrance to my local Kingdom Hall with people milling around me. The Jehovah Witnesses have been coming to my door for more than two years acting like they have the answers, so I'm finally taking them up on the offer to come to their Kingdom Hall. It's just down the street from my house.
Inside, people are milling about. Maybe what they say is true and here are some of the multitudes whom Jesus has made rise from their graves. Their happy expressions and business-casual attire carry the whiff of inauthenticity. It's like they're trying too hard to seem alive. The atmosphere in the building can only be described as funereal: fake plants, floral carpet, mauve wainscoting. No windows, the only light emanates from fluorescent tubes. Décor best appreciated by the dead. I keep expecting someone to turn and have an eyeball dangling from a socket.
AND
I take a padded seat near a polyester plant while she fetches me a small song book called "Sing to Jehovah." The cover is illustrated in the familiar style, wiht the hordes of happy people of all colors and ages. Here they cradle hymnals and float in a golden light. The tinkling of piano keys begins and we stand to sing hymn number 19, "God's Promise of Paradise." We warble the first verse:
A paradise our God has promised,
By means of Christ's Millenial Reign,
When he'll blot out all sin and error,
Removing death and tears and pain.
The pace of the piano is so slow that everyone is forced to linger, but we each draw out different words and in different ways. The result is a sound I'd liken to a gang of angry, drugged alley cats. I scan the room for the culprit. "Where's the piano?" I whisper to my companion. She points up. Suddenly it makes sense. It's prerecorded and piped in through speakers in the ceiling. The playing is so mechanical that I doubt it's the product of human hands. As we yowl our way through the rest of the hymn, I'm hoping earplugs will be available in the beautiful paradise we sing about.
AND
In the sanctuary of the Kingdom Hall, I'm seated directly behind a young woman with Down syndrome. She could be as old as 20. She is with her mother. The reason I know the woman is her mother is because of the two empty seats between them; at a certain point, the more distance we put between ourselves and our guardians the more obvious our dependence. She's holding a tablet of paper with extra-big spaces between lines. Someone has written in big, fluid script, "I will not listen to Satan" three times down the sheet, leaving room for her to copy the words underneath. Throughout the morning, she works, painstakingly forming each letter and then holding the page close to her face to admire her work.
The Jehovah's Witnesses have brilliantly solved the whole 144,000 dilemma. It's kind of the whole point. That relatively small number only refers to a special group—what they call the "small flock"—that will help Jesus run the new earthly paradise, in official administrative positions. The small flock includes the original apostles and draws on all the faithful who ever lived, so you'd have to be exceptional to make it in—though past and present leaders in the Jehovah's Witnesses organization are shoo-ins. But you can still be an inhabitant of the new earth without being a member of the small flock. It sounds like the better deal, because it means you get to live in paradise without taking on any management duties.
Anyway, here's the link to a thoroughly recommended piece of intelligent writing...
http://gawker.com/5986407/time-of-trouble-knocking-on-the-door-of-the-jehovahs-witnesses
Cedars