I’ve actually been having nightmares about a dark storm approaching since childhood thanks to such morbidly terrifying drawings, such as this one from the big orange book published 1958 called From Paradise Lost to Paradise Regained:
Photo from Bible Teach book was one of the top posts on /r/WTF today
by Richard_I 18 Replies latest jw friends
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Village Idiot
jhine,
"What is it about their drawings that is "off ""
Their illustrations used to be childish and crude. I remember a friend from school requesting a specific booklet that had been advertised in a leaflet. When I gave him the booklet he laughed at the cover. This was in the early 70s - the booklet from the 60s.
Then they got a little better but when they illustrated crowds of people it looked like they had been cut and pasted. One had a bunch of people going through a mountain pass walking towards paradise. The people in it were gazing in different directions making it seem like they were oblivious to each other.
An example:
They have also been known to 'steal' other people's illustrations. Such as this slightly altered one:
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Esse quam videri
They got the dumb thief correct. The victim gets a hole in each cheek but look where the bullet ends up. -
compound complex
Jehovah's Witness art is perhaps best known for depicting scenes of destruction or paradise. While fundamentalist Christians have been depicting biblical scenes in the My Book of Bible Stories vein for over a hundred years, the frequency with which Jehovah's Witnesses have painted scenes of Earthly chaos, divine retribution, Armageddon, and literal depictions from John's Revelation have earned them a reputation among the general public of being doomsayers. It's worth noting, however, that Watchtower artists have depicted scenes of eternal Earthly paradise with the same frequency. The argument can be made that works of either persuasion serve as effective pieces of art, self contained slices of Americana and religious lunacy with more than a tinge of eeriness, accentuated by the poor quality of their construction rather than harmed by it. The scenes of paradise seem, to me, even more frightening and eerie than those of destruction. Everlasting conformity and the horrendously artificial smile adorned by the subjects haunt me more than the scenes of heavenly warfare.
http://www.reddit.com/r/exjw/comments/1yks2t/the_iconography_of_jehovahs_witnesses/
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Crazyguy
Left as a tip, not surprised. -
smiddy
"The casting of Satan and his Demons out of heaven brought woe to the earth"
What a dumb statement to make , by an organization that promotes itself as based on the Bible,
All of what is depicted their in the illustration has been occurring for centuries , since Cain killed Abel just after creation .
Not only that ,World War One started before Satan and his Demons were cast out of heaven .
Then again , Satan , and presumably his Demons have always been free to roam about the earth and even the heavens according to Job , and other Bible writers of 2000 years ago ,"the whole world is lying in the power of the wicked one". so what`s new ?
smiddy
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jhine
Compound Complex , while reading your post the words " The Stepford Wives " came to mind . Eerie is a good description .
Jan
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steve2
That child ain't gonna die of starvation cause the intercontinental missile zeroing towards it, will rip the poor creature to smithereens in a split second.
The child also sports an old woman's face.
I especially appreciate the depiction of a white thug mugging a black dude. Very PC. Although if that gun fires, the bullet will rip through the dude's face and also fatally pierce the thug. Rule Number 1 could easily be, when aiming the gun at your victim, ensure collateral damage is minimized. The oversight here is totally daft.
If this is the drawing that made it to publication, I can only imagine how horrific the drafts were.
Yes, other posters have correctly noted that the online edition of the book has a new drawing. Even the editors must have belatedly realized how God-embarrassing the original drawing was. It's comfortably in the category of "So bad, it's good". Was the artist subsequently ever used again?
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