The Experts- Jehovahs Witnesses

by jean-luc picard 23 Replies latest jw friends

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  steve2

  You're spot on jean-luc. I have stunningly vivid memories of being in awe of the older seemingly knowledgeable witnesses in my congregation throughout my younger and more impressionable years. I looked up to them as fonts of wisdom and - to use that mis-used phrase beloved by the organization - their "accurate knowledge".

  Looking back now as an older man just a few years shy of my retirement, I realize what total religious nutters and ignoramuses these pathetically well-intentioned men and women truly were.

  I was particularly in awe of a very tall, imposing Presiding Overseer who spoke with a big, booming voice - back in the days before the elder arrangement was introduced.

  I remember him standing erect and motionless on the platform on numerous occasions in the late 1960s holding up his left hand and pointing to his five palmed-up fingers and declaring with a solemnity befitting of a method actor playing Moses:

  "Brothers and sisters, we will be in the new system in fewer years than the fingers on my left hand!" He had 1...2...3...4... 5... - five - fingers on that hand, so that meant only one thing.....Even the dull-minded in the congregation got the point.

  Wow! I recall the awed silence in the congregation and then the thunderous applause, each one of us hostage to the Watchtower-endorsed end-times idiocy masquerading as "The Truth".

  One of my family still in that congregation informed me that this Big Booming-voiced JW died in his sleep in his eighties about five years ago. I guess he was just bad at math. I wonder if he ever remembered his Moses routine?

  As we grow up, we have a choice: To remain hostage to our youthfully ignorant fancies and fantasies, or consciously decide to grow up, take responsibility for our lives and step into adulthood with its attendant challenges. We question those who tell us what is or is not "the Truth". We use our brains more so than we use our hearts, because the world is full of people who earnestly believe they know what life, meaning and purpose is all about. All they need us to do is to become child-like, listen, squelch any misgivings and simply follow in their footsteps...
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  jean-luc picard

  steve: I knew a simiar elder back then. I remember my dad giving my a diary from his job, in 1974. This elder looked at it one day and told me: you know, the date of armageddon is in there (as it had the calendar for 1975 in the front page).

  As a young boy I was all in awe.

  Hes dead too.
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  Band on the Run

  The world did not go backwards when the Roman Empire ended. Historians have re-evaluated what was once termed the Dark Ages. Scholars don't even use the term. Europe continued to have a vibrant civilization. The uniformity and power of the Roman Catholic Church gave Western Europe a social and political cohesion that was very important. When the Vikings were making great strides invading Northern Europe, Irish monks kept Western civilization alive. My outlook is very Protestant. The control of the Roman church bothers me.

  To automatically think that civilization ended b/c of the Roman Church is dated and biased. Protestants have not done much better. Given US history, antiCatholicism provokes fear of immigrants.

  Florence and Rome were bright lights. My father was rabidly antiCatholic from his years under Rutherford. JWs tend to despise Catholics. Roman Catholicism ranges from the sublime and intensely intellectual to ignorant folk worship that is more ancient than the Roman Catholic Church. The history is complex.

  I don't know much. There is so much time to cover. Americans can't fathom it.
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  SAHS

  Oh come on now people! You’re just not considering the absolutely stellar track record of accurate knowledge we have received from the Faithful and Discreet Slave Class Governing Body about organ transplants being bad good bad acceptable for us. And let’s not forget all the practical medical advice we have received from the magazines, such as the advertisement for Joseph Rutherford’s radioactive radium belt (the “Radio-Active Solar Pad,” manufactured by the Radium Appliance Company of Los Angeles, California) . . . . oh, wait, he died in 1942 from bowl cancer. Okay, what about that fantastic new light about blood – now we can take it all, just in little, um, sub-parts at a time. And more importantly, what about all those accurate Bible predictions from Jehovah that have proven true false. . . . . Oh yah, of course. . . . . I guess I didn’t put much thought into this (. . . . or did I? Muah ha ha ha ha haaaaa!).