There are really TWO Watchtower Societies

by Terry 67 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  Terry

  When I went before my Draft Board to answer questions I had my Make Sure of All Things with me which I had studied topically for the occasion.

  Unknown to me at that time the very argument I was making had ALREADY been invalidated!

  I based my approach on the teaching that Romans 13:1 referred to Superior Authorities in heaven: Jehovah and Jesus.

  That was an adjusted teaching! (Note: Christendom's understanding of this scripture became, at last, the Watchtower understanding!)

  Since the job of the FDS is to feed the sheep AT THE PROPER TIME there is great irony in my later discovery how quietly my "defense" using the Watchtower publication had been undermined PRIOR to 1967.

  There is no bulletin board with Red Flags when changes occur. The Society goes quiet (stealth mode) and doesn't mention the old teaching.

  According to "current" teaching ALL MY ARGUMENTS based on GB interpretation were garbled gobblety gook!

  What principle was I standing up for? Obedience to GB teaching?

  Obedience is better than a sacrifice but I had to do BOTH!

  I was serving---not Almighty God---but a Watchtower Society which NO LONGER EXISTS for all practical purposes!

  If Truth is Eternal and Watchtower "truth" expires---how do we get to the point we are obeying the Watchtower without jeopardizing the eternal???
• 

  designs

  Terry- When I was facing the trial and having been arrested by the FBI I sought help, I got a Letter from the Wt. stating bascially- 'You're on your own sucker.'
• 

  Nickolas

  A thoughtful and insightful post, Terry.

  An enduring impression, gently proffered, is many people, like you, have been left so deeply scarred by their Watchtower experience they are unable to turn their backs on it and walk away. Truly walk away and put it behind them. It seems they and you haven't actually cast off the Watchtower but remain captive to it. How else to interpret your consistent, impassioned treatises, your 14-and-a-half thousand posts - many of them long and carefully structured like the one above - on what is arguably a single, dominant subject? This is only my perspective, of course, and again not confined to you alone. Like many in here the Watchtower not only looms large in your psyche it is your single greatest waking preoccupation. And it is not as if that preoccupation brings peace of mind and happiness. It instead fuels your rage and resentment over what it did to you, what it cost you, what it took away. Its poison burns you still. It consumed your youth and continues to consume much of what is left of your life. One might argue there are not two groups but three, the third being those who have left the Watchtower but who continue to live in its shadow. What will it take for you to be truly free, or is that even possible?
• 

  straightshooter

  Thanks Terry for the insight. I came to realize a problem only when I became an elder. When the WTS stated to never mention to anyone that the Legal Dept was ever consulted for certain matters, then I knew that their was a private and public Watchtower organization. That greatly disturbed me and they wanted me to lie to protect them. I would say that the majority of the flock never knew or cared to know about this division. The other thing that bothered me was when "new light" changed established knowledge, yet many individuals never questioned it, but just blindly and happily followed the revised information. It was really sick when the WTS could say that the end would come around 1975, yet years later, the majority of the flock would say that the WTS never said anything like that.
• 

  Terry

  I have been sitting here reflecting on the layers of "impressions" I had starting from the beginning of my encounter with Jehovah and the religion which

  claims Him.

  Roughly, as best as I can recall, the layers go like this.

  1.Crackpot nonsense fake religion (1959)

  2.Sincere misguided zealots totally oblivious to reality.(1960)

  3.Honest Truth Seekers with a caring concern for others (1962)

  4.Committed true Christians surrounded by a clueless world (1963)

  5.The Only True religion and last bastion of pure teaching on Planet Earth (1967)

  6.Reckless and misguided bureaucrats indifferent to the damage they wreak (1975)

  7.Corrupt, hard-hearted automatons cranking out make-believe w/o conscience. (1977)

  8.Crackpot nonsense fake religion (1979)

  The above list of layered impression spans a period from 1959 through 1978/79.

  I would add to the above my current impression that the word "evil" must be carved in stone and keenly observed if one is to have

  any dealings at all with this Watchtower Society.

  They are malevolent, devious, intellectually dishonest manipulators hellbent on deflection and domination at whatever means is necessary.
• 

  heathen

  All I can say is that in revelation all those that obey the command of , Thou Shalt not kill, are sent to prison , not to alternative service .. I never did agree with alternative service myself , so your complaint is another flip flop but in the end you got out of fighting a stinking war that nobody wanted accept defense contractors ..... YAY you , gulf of tonkin was a false flag ....
• 

  Finkelstein

  Until it effects the real estate, the $ money and especially their own person, that is the

  nature of a dictatorship. Like Stalin, Hitler, Chinese Communist leaders.

  Good point VillageGirl

  The WTS leaders have always been inherently corrupt toward creating its power and control over people.

  This corruption really got developed I think by no other than J Rutherford, a total user and abuser of people, who exploited the belief in

  bible to circumvent his own perceived power and control .

  This created power play all got started by the insinuation that god had specifically chosen the WTS. and its leaders,

  (which by the way helped in attracting attention to the WTS. literature) from that point on those leaders have caused so

  much maligning grief and personal damage, to thousands and perhaps millions of people's lives.
• 

  Ding

  I never did agree with alternative service myself

  Because it's wrong to go to war, it's also wrong to work in a hospital (unless you are sentenced to do so, in which it's okay)?

  I think Terry's point is that it wasn't HIS conscience that prohibited doing alternative service; it was the organization's command to him. Not only that, but he was instructed to lie and claim that it was his conscience... He wasn't to disclose the instructions he was given.
• 

  Nickolas

  They are malevolent, devious, intellectually dishonest manipulators hellbent on deflection and domination at whatever means is necessary.

  It appears they've succeeded. For more than half a century they've maintained a dominant influence on your state of mind.
• 

  Terry

  heathen says:

  All I can say is that in revelation all those that obey the command of , Thou Shalt not kill, are sent to prison , not to alternative service .. I never did agree with alternative service myself , so your complaint is another flip flop but in the end you got out of fighting a stinking war that nobody wanted accept defense contractors

  On a human level (which is, by the way, where ALL OF US live) we must be real. Evil people threaten us both domestically and from foreign shores.

  If we refuse to defend our loved ones we are worse than a person without "faith".

  The concept of "Peace" sounds wonderful---in the ABSTRACT. It is beautiful.

  But, up close and personal--where the rubber meets the road---the threats up close and personal are ugly, vile and horrifying.

  If we don't defend the innocent, the young, the idealist and the builders of better worlds from those who are bent on chaos and bloodletting

  we have no value to anybody and cannot claim "goodness" for ourselves.

  When I was a Jehovah's Witness I was an ignorant young man full of half-twisted ideals.

  I saw things in terms of black and white thinking. Nuances were lies to me.

  Now I am a fully grown and mostly dead old man at age 67. I have life experience under my belt.

  Fighting, killing, dying aren't just words.

  They aren't even principles.

  They are realities which cannot be wished away with dove feather and a prayer.

  I never faced going into the Military at all. The law provided me with the opportunity to work in a Hospital helping the sick.

  For twisted reasons I chose to waste two years of my young life memorizing cult propaganda which did NOBODY on this earth one bit of good.

  That my heart was in the right place literally means NOTHING!

  I may as well have been asleep for all the positive influence I had.

  I can't go back and redo any part of it. The past has passed.

  But, I owe myself the courtesy of BEING REAL about it all. I'm ashamed that I wasted that time, distressed my parents and grandparents and knocked on so many doors feeding lies to strangers under the banner of "Truth".

  It is disgusting how utterly worthless all the millions of hours spent by 7 million brainwashed knuckleheads amounts to in the grand scheme of things.

  Remember, if you are a bible banger, the Superior Authorities are the ones that came up with Alternate Service and made it law of the land.

  My legal choice could have benefitted those in the hospital I never helped.

  My religious choice amounted to a bucket of warm spit.