Years ago an evangelical Christian couple invited me into their home on a hot summer day. Over glasses of lemonade they shared their amazing theory about the Watchtower Society, a twisted but insanely plausible one that has mentally percolated over the years. Every now and then their theory surfaces in my thoughts with occasional "what if" scenarios about the true nature of the mysterious "men behind the curtain in Oz" (with Oz being a metaphor for the Vatican City of Jehovah's Witnesses' world that is headquartered in New York state).
Twisted but insanely plausible
The Watchtower has always emphasized that each person who receives a "witness to the truth" from the Bible by one of Jehovah's Witnesses is faced with a choice: Accept the truth, get baptized, and live forever; or reject the truth and face divine execution at the war of Harmageddon where their soul dies and they cease to exist forever and ever.
Upon this teaching, the evangelical Christian couple built a remarkable and twisted but insanely plausible theory. They proposed that organized religion with its hypocrisy and lust for money, prestige and power is turning hundreds of millions of people away from Christ. Many religious organizations that exist just outside the gates of Christendom claim to offer an alternative to the jaded form of Christianity preached in Christendom's churches. These small splinter groups like Jehovah's Witnesses claim to offer pure Christianity as practiced in the first century by Christian congregations to whom Christ's apostles ministered.
The truth, they explained to me, is much different. These religions that offer a "last stop" for disenfranchised ex-church goers and those who were too turned-off to religious hypocrisy to ever attend a church, are actually engaged in the ultimate removal of any vestiges or remnants of faith in Christ and God. They went on to say how many people's faith in God is mortally shaken when they attend churches, having put their complete trust in those professing to steer them toward God, having donated to the church coffers out of a desire to please God, and then seeing for themselves the gross hypocrisy of ministers who profess to represent God.
Jehovah's Witnesses cast a wide net outside the gates of Christendom and catch many who are on their way out. Getting baptized and worshipping God as one of Jehovah's Witnesses is the last stop for a large number of those whose faith in God was shattered. How so? By the misconduct of their church ministers and observance of the rotten fruits of fellow church goers.
It's as if Christendom was being used to drive the sheep through the gates into the darkness.
But what about the issue of "universal sovereignty" that the Watchtower Society preaches?
They asked me to consider that since the early rebellion of the first man and woman in the Garden of Eden, the Watchtower correctly teaches that God's adversary who calls himself "Satan" and "Devil" has terrorized Earth's population while awaiting divine execution. Satan has taunted that God's laws are inherently unfair, and that God is essentially an unfit father over his creation. Satan expressed the ambition to take God's place, and claimed that everyone including God's son Jesus Christ could be turned away from God for selfish reasons.
Few people recognize the issue of universal sovereignty, or understand the reasons for Jesus Christ's suffering and violent death during his life as a man on Earth. While Christendom has served Satan well in driving people away from God, it has failed miserably to develop worshippers of God whom -- understanding fully the epoch issues of universal importance surround Christ and God's universal sovereignty -- would willfully renounce those divine values.
In sharp contrast, Jehovah's Witnesses have stationed themselves outside the gates of Christendom and educated the disenfranchised with details about the importance of taking sides with God, through use of the Bible.
Once the Watchtower Society has gained the unquestioning trust of those whose faith was shattered by their former religious affiliations and hypocritical religious ministers -- baptizing them and convincing them to spend huge amounts of personal time going door to door to distribute the Watchtower's publications -- then a rude awakening slowly occurs. The Watchtower controls every aspect of their lives. Jesus Christ's "yoke" becomes a burden that becomes heavier to carry as each year passes.
A sense of hopelessness, despair and desperation sets into the average Jehovah's Witness who prays for Armageddon to come soon with each passing year.
The terrible truth sinks into their subconscious. Armageddon may not come in their own lifetime. They could be knocking on doors well into their 70's and 80's as they hobble on a crutch to the next household. These terrible "unuplifting" thoughts are constantly forced out of mind, but haunt the subconscious.
As the years pass it becomes evident to the average Jehovah's Witness that everything that Jesus Christ was quoted to say in the Bible -- like the part about his load and yoke being light, not heavy -- is viewed with increasing cynicism. It's like a person handing you a box with a dozen wine bottles, letting go, and your back starts to ache. You are expected to carry this box to the car, come back, take another one, and so forth, until the car is filled. All the while, the one giving you this back-breaking burden is telling you his load is not heavy, and his yoke is light. You mumble to yourself as you feel the ligaments of your back tearing, "yea, right, sure your load is not heavy." The problem is, this is Christ, so you dare not mumble, even though you fail to recognize IT IS THE WATCHTOWER NOT CHRIST who handed you that back-breaking load.
The average Jehovah's Witness -- not wanting to face the maws of spiritual "death" and a life of atheism or worse, a disdain for God whom it seems didn't deliver his promises -- continues to service the Watchtower for as long as humanly possible. Finally nature mercifully steps in, and the flesh fails, the body no longer yields to the cruel burdensome yoke of the Watchtower, and something snaps. Meeting attendance suddenly stops. The elders go through the charade of "checking in" on non-meeting attenders who are "inactive," but they know all too well this is a natural part of the journey through the Watchtower. For you see, that journey is through a place that one might liken to "Satan's boot camp" or a fire that those who became Jehovah's Witnesses -- in their last-ditch effort to save their fragile faith in an unseen God -- are passing through.
Like all sorts of metal including gold loaded onto a conveyor belt, only the gold survives the inferno when it emerges covered with black soot on the other end. Washed off, that gold is as lovely as it always was. All the rest was burned, the souls of the faithless having been relegated to a lifetime of spiritual darkness, perhaps blaming God himself, thus hating God himself, or simply denying God ever existed.
Yes, how I remember years ago when an evangelical Christian couple I met at their door as I suffered in the heat of a suit and tie, invited me into their home on that fateful hot summer day. Over glasses of lemonade, I'll never forget their sharing an amazing theory about the Watchtower Society. Indeed it was a twisted but insanely plausible theory that has long since mentally percolated in my mind and heart. Every now and then, their theory surfaces in my thoughts with occasional "what if" scenarios about the true nature of the mysterious "men behind the curtain in Oz" (with Oz being a metaphor for the Vatican City of Jehovah's Witnesses' world that is headquartered in New York state).
I have walked through a geriatric ward of men who have been enslaved to an unseen force for most of their lives, and approached the proverbial Watchtower altar. Pulling the curtain aside, I expected to find those elderly men hunched on walking sticks. Then I remembered the mechanical breathing sounds I had gotten used to over the years, like one gets accustomed to a koo-koo clock at night as one sleeps. They were in their beds on respirators, and I stood agape at what was behind that curtain. What I found hiding behind there, believe it or not, was an apparition that was feeding off the energy of faith that dissipated from the ceiling vents of thousands of Kingdom Halls everyday.
Covering my mouth and barely containing myself, I ran down the hall, into a restroom lined with beautiful marble like one finds decorating mausoleums for the wealthy, and fell on my knees before a familiar porcelain edifice. My soul immediately disgorged the undigested spiritual food that the apparition, unbeknownst to myself, had laced with cyanide.
-Contributed-
Source: http://www.aimoo.com/forum/postview.cfm?id=311102&CategoryID=2967&startcat=1&ThreadID=161283
Derrick
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
-- William Blake (Auguries of Innocence)