Danish book now in English: Judgment Day Must Wait: JWs-A Sect Between Idealism and Deceit, Poul Bregninge

by AndersonsInfo 19 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  AndersonsInfo

  Judgment Day Must Wait: Jehovah's Witnesses- A Sect Between Idealism and Deceit [Paperback]

  Poul Bregninge (Author)

  Publication Date: July 16, 2013 Fear of the apocalypse that never comes! It is what holds a Jehovah's Witness power-bound by the Watch Tower Society in Brooklyn. Armageddon is always just a little way around the corner.
  
  Poul Bregninge in this, his second book on the Witnesses, presents a complete history and ideology of the Society and why it keeps a keen focus on the Day of Judgment. He tells of multiple "days of reckoning" that pass uneventfully and how each failure of Christ to reappear is reevaluated by the Society to foretell of yet another apocalypse still to come. It is the fear of that moment that keeps Witnesses firmly in the fold. Judgment Day is the carrot dangled before them.
  
  Every American knows the Jehovah's Witnesses, right? Those somber people who appear at our doors, offering literature and the everlasting salvation of our souls? What do we know about them? We see at our door their facades-their Society-devised disguises-directed to convert anyone willing to follow their Witness-ways of believing and living. In this book you will confront the thinking that motivates those beliefs.
  
  Poul's book is a comprehensive view of JW history, its upheavals and struggles, and a raw demonstration of the manipulation and cruelty dealt those it charges with expanding its membership. By keeping Judgment Day ever coming, the Watch Tower Society ensures a ready supply of workers to proclaim the ever-coming coming.
  
  The author dismantles their main biblical storage battery, Matthew 24, from which the movement takes their many "signs" of the impending end. His reinterpretation of these readings is a virtual bomb beneath the understanding they find in those key biblical texts.
  
  Poul Bregninge was born and presently lives in Copenhagen. He was raised a Witness but informally left the movement in 1959. In 1964 he published several letters, articles, and features about the Society that the Witnesses deemed unacceptable. A three-man committee expelled Poul. Two years later he published his first book, Jehovas Vidner under anklage (Jehovah's Witnesses Accused) in Danish. This book, Judgment Day Must Wait, is a massive reworking (two and one half times its size) of his first book, now propelled by many years of continuing investigation that brings the history to the present in a text edited for the American reader.
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  Gayle

  
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  Band on the Run

  It has been decades since I read a book without some idea of who the writer is and what her/his agenda is. The publishing company edit sounds nice and so bland. Has anyone personally read this book? Is there a bio of the author around? For example, is he a former Witness, an academic, an author of great books explaining religion or just another hack writing an antiWitness book.

  Some of us here do care. Every antiWitness is not my friend or places on my reading list. Since this author is not British or American, I have no idea where to place him. It could be the best book about the Witnesses or the worst.

  There is good antiWitness lit, topped by Ray Franz, and bad Witness lit. When I see fundamental Christians make fun of the Witnesses on YouTube, I want to attend KH. They are ignorant as anything. Their time would be better spent actually reading their Bibles.

  No, any fool who writes an antiWitness book is not good enough. Whenever I post something about a book, I have read it or I already purchased it and discussed it with people.

  No LinkedIn or college site would just print what the publishers write. I'm not asking for a dissertation about the book. A short five word summation would be enough for me. When do we hold ourselves to a higher standard than the Witnesses.

  If you wrote the blurbl personally, I apologize. It is just that people who personally read books have posted here and I learned so much. Others, usually fundies, insist that I read something and I want to kill them while I read it. For me, "I liked it," "I heartily recommend it," "the authors has biases they are.....," "the discussion of x is the best I have read," matter to me.

  We can all set alerts on our computers.
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  laverite

  Looks interesting. I wonder why 2034 figures so large on the cover design, though? I understand where 2034 comes from and why it's of interest here but I don't think most JWs are thinking of 2034 as especially significant. I understand where in the literature the groundwork for this has been set up (120 years from 1914) but I think most JWs who see this cover would immediately think 2034 is NOT being held out as a date of signficance. Hmmm...
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  DATA-DOG

  " but I think most JWs who see this cover would immediately think 2034 is NOT being held out as a date of signficance. Hmmm... "

  It may start some synapses firing for doubters. " 2034??? What's this..." 2034 is the next " logical " date.
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  Nathan Natas

  2034 for the benefit of the arithmetically impaired, is 120 years after 1914. 1914 is the year King Jesus is said (by the WTB&TS) to have begun to rule. 120 years is supposedly the amount of time Noah spent selling subscrptions to AWAKE! to the antediluvians. As per the WTB&TS algorithm, take two unrelated numbers, combine them and voila! "new light" shines forth.

  The WTB&TS began making squeaks about 2034 almost a decade ago.
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  slimboyfat

  I'll look for it on Amazon. Not there yet.
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  AndersonsInfo

  I did not write the blurb about the book. I found it on Amazon where the book is being offered for sale.

  This book is the English translation of an important Danish book about JWs that came out in 2006 and updated in 2009 in Denmark published by an important book publisher in Denmark. I was contacted by the author of the book back in 2005 and asked to write a chapter about WT's child abuse problem which I did. Then the book publishers contacted me and asked me to write 40 or 50 pages about myself and my discoveries which they then posted on their website both in English and Danish. Out of that endeavor came my essay named, Discoveries of Barbara Anderson, that can be found on the Freeminds site and also on my Watchtower Documents website. if you do a search here on JWN for a thread with the name Poul Bregninge in it, perhaps you can find the announcement of the publishing of the book in Danish circa 2006. Poul is a former JW and an excellent writer and from talking with him, I believe he knows his subject well. However, I can't vouch for a book that was written in Danish which I couldn't read, but I did read a number of pages in English when it was being translated some time ago. Poul is a respected author in Denmark and this book is not his first.

  I'm ordering a copy from Amazon and after I read it, then I can critique it. If you're curious what Poul has to say about the JW religion, especially from a European point of view, you'll have to order a copy.

  Barbara
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  slimboyfat

  Oh yeah so it is, I was looking on the UK site. It's a bit expensive.
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  L3G

  Scroll down to 'Available Now' for some more info on the author.

  http://www.ybkpublishers.com