What’s the Central Belief of Jehovah’s Witnesses? The very core of the religion?
Some people, AlanF for example, have at times suggested that it is nothing more or less than “We (WTBTS) speak for God” . The Watchtower claims to be the sole channel of divine instruction for mankind and everything flows from that. As a consequence, it doesn’t really matter what the doctrines may actually be from time to time, just as long as you believe the latest “New Light” you’ll be a good JW. Their claim to spiritual authority is the bedrock belief.
I can see the logic in saying that, but I think I disagree, to this extent: For the average JW the very idea that there should even be “someone speaking for God” at all in our modern-day, only flows from another, deeper, more fundamentally-held idea. The idea that we are in the Last Days, and Armageddon is coming.
That’s what gives rise to the need for an FDS, for a preaching work, an Organisation, and everything. That’s what gives any of it any point. Armageddon is the core belief.
You might argue here that the Armageddon doctrine is only there in the first place because it is something taught by the Watchtower, so it can’t be THE core belief, just one of the teachings devised by the WTBTS, so you’re back to Alan’s position again.
To which I’d reply, just see what would happen if they ever attempted to dismantle the last days/Armageddon doctrine. How long would they last? Not very long! With no Armageddon coming, there would really be no point to the whole JW-religion.
Anyway, whether you buy that proposition or not, that was my long-winded way of saying that, in this post, it’s Armageddon that I want to talk about.
It was the sheer brutality of the whole Armageddon-idea as taught by JW’s that was one of the chief causes of my stumbling from the faith, all those years ago. It is a childlike (in the sense that young children can be thoughtless and cruel) and simple-minded concept. “Bad people in the world? Kill ‘em! Kill ‘em all! Men, women, kids – kill the lot of them!”
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I once had the misfortune, many years ago, of sharing an office at my place of work with an individual who was the local-area organiser for the British National Front party. For those of you not in the UK, the NF is pretty much indistinguishable from out-and-out Nazis. Extremely far-right politically, they generally hate all foreigners, but especially blacks and Jews. They want them all “sent home where they came from.”
This chap – Trevor - was a hate-filled bully of a man, whose primary mode of conversation was sloganeering, and who would seek to provoke arguments with every one he came into contact with. He was deeply, deeply stupid and was eventually sacked from his job (he did bought ledger) for his incessant anti-social behaviour.
Sitting across a desk from him over the course of a year or so, I endured many a long afternoon listening to Trevor tell me what was wrong with the country and how to fix it. This was in the mid-seventies and one topic he returned to every now and again was the Irish question.
Then, as now, Northern Ireland was a thorn in the side of the British body politic, especially since the IRA had recently been so active on the British mainland with pub bombings in the towns of Guildford and Birmingham.
“ Duncan, you want to know how to solve the Irish Problem? You really want to know?”
I really didn’t want to hear his entirely-predictable nonsense views, but made the mistake of momentarily looking up at him, so he continued.
“It’ll take nerve, and courage. ‘Course, none of this lot have got any, not since Churchill anyway, but the British soldier is the finest in the world, we just need to use him right!”
“More soldiers?” Me, having given up pretending to ignore him.
“Nah, not more soldiers. Not …. as such . But we need to Deal With Things”
“ Deal with things?”
“ Yeah. In a single night. It might take the whole of the Army, but it could be done. You’d have to keep it Top Secret of course, but - in one blow - we could solve things. For ever, for all future generations…”
I was used to Trevor’s idiotic opinions, and pretty much immune to their shock value, but even I started to wonder about the spectacular scale of the madness about to come.
“ In a single night… if you had prepared right…. knew where everyone was …. accounted for them all… In a single night …. a bullet in the head of every single Irishman, every last one, well, say, over the age of sixteen. …Must be done in a single night though, too many complications otherwise …In a single night - problem solved!”
And he believed it.
No consideration was given to how evil in itself his plan was. He didn’t worry about the effect such a monstrous act would actually have on the people of Ireland, the people of the UK, of the soldiers actually asked to do the killing. No complications or considerations about the massive impracticality of carrying-out such a plan were allowed to taint the purity of the idea in his head. You couldn’t argue with him.
I haven’t seen Trevor in almost thirty years, and it still isn’t long enough.
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Apart from the fact that it is a simple-minded, unthinking, violent-out-lash, stupid solution to things, not in any way befitting an all-wise, all-powerful deity, my most fundamental objection to the whole Armageddon idea is that it is so unnecessary.
Yes. Unnecessary.
Just, for a moment, for the sake of argument, allow that it is the case that there is a Jehovah, who was challenged by Satan, and these are the Last Days, just like the Watchtower teaches.
The main reason that most of the world – the part that is non-JW – does not believe in that scenario is not that everyone is a evil-possessed Satan lover, it is that they have never been offered any convincing evidence that it is true.
All Jehovah God needs to do is provide, by some reasonable means, something that could be taken by reasonable people as convincing evidence. I don’t care what it is, a short statement from the Heavens maybe. It only needs to be a few sentences. As long as it’s unmistakeably from God – who in the world would oppose him?
“Everyone!” – goes up the Witness cry! “The whole world is lying in the power of the Wicked One!” But that is surely, self-evidently false.
An act, or sign, unmistakeably originating from God, would profoundly affect the way people view things. There may even be, for all I know, a dedicated hard-core percentage of humankind determined to oppose him, but surely that would be a vanishingly small minority. Most reasonable people would unfailingly want to be on the side of God. Once they knew, unmistakeably, what side that was.
And this remarkable transformation could be achieved by a few Divine words. Millions don’t need to die. Nobody has to break out in boils or have their tongues rot in their heads. God doesn’t need to send Earthquakes, Tidal Waves, Pestilence, Wars. He doesn’t have to blow up bridges and knock down sky-scrapers, crash trains, burn up families in wrathful fireballs, or cause schools, hospitals and churches to collapse upon the people inside them. It’s all so unnecessary.
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Okay, as a final thought – let’s allow that there ARE wicked people in the world, who really do need to die – violently – in order to “Uphold Jehovah’s Sovereignty” or whatever it is supposed to prove. I’ll be the first to admit there are evil people in the world. I didn’t much care for Trevor, as it happens.
What percentage of people would that be? 90% 10%? 5%?
How about if Jehovah decided that he really DID want to visit his Old-Testament Armageddon upon us, with all the rotting-tongues and pestilence and Hollywood-style special effects? But, what if he just killed the world’s worst 1% of sinners – with the whole works, lightning, explosions, blood?
Wouldn’t that be just as good, from a Vindication point of view? 1% is still MILLIONS and MILLIONS of people. Lots of deaths. Everyone would know someone. Wouldn’t 1% do the trick?
Imagine if 1% of the world’s population – the most evil 1% - died “in a single night” at the hand of Jehovah – wouldn’t that be just as good a Witness? Wouldn’t the other 99% thereafter be the most theocratic, upstanding, God-fearing, moral, loving people (even if they hadn’t been all those things before)?
Why not a 1% Armageddon?
Or is Jehovah, at heart, just like Trevor? It’s got to be “every last one” dead.
Duncan.