Did you REALLY think about the 'Great Tribulation'?

by jw07 13 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  jw07

  According to WT doctrine Jehovah's Witnesses will be singled out and persecuted during a time described in this way: "for then there will be great tribulation such as has not occurred since the world’s beginning until now, no, nor will occur again." According to the Watchtower the devil will turn on God's people will all his might (if he really exists, why hasn't he done so already?) in an attempt to wipe them out.

  Also, it's not promised that all JWs will escape unscathed during this period of time.

  Even before I woke up fully to TTATT I really thought about what that meant. If that time period is to be WORSE than anything mankind has ever seen, then we could expect the levels of suffering being dished out to be worse than the genocides and suffering during WW1 & WW2, worse than the suffering of the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, worse than the suffering of the Vietnamese, Koreans, Afghans, Iraqis, Syrians, Israelis, Chechnians during times of war, worse than the Spanish Flu, and Black Plague, worse than the suffering of peoples tortured and killed by Genghis Khan, The Crusades, slaughtered by Roman, Assyrian, Babylonian, Sumerian, and Egyptian legions, worse than the goddamn supposed global flood of Noah's day!

  Now you tell me, have current JWs really thought that they could have their heads bashed in? Fingers and toes sliced off? Bled to death slowly over the course of several days? Tortured for months for info? Have their testicles crushed, slices off, jumped on, bored with hot metal, splashed with acid? Have their limbs shot off one by one? Have their family members drowned, strangled, gassed, or burned before them? Be raped and have their friends and family brutally raped before them regardless of gender???

  Did you think about and prepare mentally for these things? Not surface thinking, I mean really DEEPLY think about possibly going through those things to 'prove you were faithful'? Did you think about what seeing and feeling those things would be really like, or did you passively go along with that craziness like the rest of WT doctrine?
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  Xanthippe

  Yes I really did. I commented on a question in the Watchtower study not long before I left and said we don't know how long we will have to suffer terrible things before Jehovah rescues us. The study conductor started arguing with me from the platform and said it won't be that bad! I am not sure when I got over the thought of being tortured to death, it stayed with me a long time.
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  villagegirl

  Like so many WT doctrines ; you can't start with the premise that the doctrine

  itself is true. Example: "the faithful and discreet slave" its a mental picture in the

  minds of JW's of an actual entity, in truth, the concept itself is flawed

  from the beginning and yet discussions are set up to analyze a flawed concept

  as if it exists. The FDS doctrine is a misappropriation and misuse of

  scripture and so is this doctrine of the "great tribulation", which could

  apply easily to WWll is which 80 million people died

  all under horrible circumstances, burned, thrown in mass graves.

  and in 1919-1920, 50 million people died of the Spanish Influenza,

  my grandmother was one of them, it acted quickly and killed in one day.

  There have been several global disasters that, before they happened,

  had never happened before, and have never been repeated.

  The Black Plague, comes to mind,which killed 200 million people

  between 1348 -50 CE.

  There is no scriptual support for this "persecution" and mass

  hunting down of Christians, that already happened in Rome

  2,000 years ago.
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  keyser soze

  Definitely, when I was a kid. Much less so when I reached adulthood, and started to take note of serious holes in WT doctrine, and the bible itself.
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  leaving_quietly

  No, not really. I think it's because it's such a vague notion that anyone has of what it really is. It all hinges on when the "disgusting thing that causes desolation" is standing in a holy place. Both Mark 13 and Matt 24 mention this and both say parenthetically "(let the reader use discernment)", or, literally, "the one reading, let him understand". This tells me that, just perhaps, neither Mark nor Matthew actually understood what this meant either. Neither one was present when Jesus stated these words. And, just what that "disgusting thing" is is anyone's guess. There's definitely been a whole lot of speculation by a whole lot of people over the years.

  To me, it's very possible that we are already in the great tribulation. We have already seen atrocities that are worse than the Flood of Noah's day. The word for tribulation could also mean "persecution, affliction, distress", possibly even "internal pressure". This is a time where anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues have been at their worst in human history. Terrorism has people in a constant state of fear... maybe not outwardly, but certainly inwardly.

  I just don't know what that "disgusting thing" is. WTBTS says it's the United Nations, and a "holy place" is "This is a symbolic place representing everything that the religions of Christendom control and hold sacred—their whole field of operation and claimed religious rights." - w75 12/15 p. 742

  Noteworthy is that Matt 24:15 in the NWT says "a holy place" whereas most translations say "the holy place". This is key because any Christian would read Daniel's words and the words of Christ and think: "holy place = somewhere holy TO GOD". But this translation leaves room for "holy place = somewhere holy TO PEOPLE". BIG difference.
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  designs

  1975, 1995, everytime its gets brought up 1000s leave.
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  Crazyguy

  I felt the stress as a kid even later the pressure to be good, but the stress. I remember one time at meeting being a teenager and thinking about this must be what it felt like to live in London during ww11 and at any moment bombs would drop down on you. This is unhealthy for children .
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  Ucantnome

  i always thought the great tribulation wasn't on Gods people, like the Christians who left Jerusalem in 70. The persecution came before it like touching Gods eye and he wouldn't be happy
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  jam

  Not really but my kids it was frighten. My son told me, Dad

  all the talks you gave when I was young, that one scared the

  living day light out of me. I thought about that talk on persecution and

  this was the time of the Malawi crises. I detail the persecution of the

  JW's in Malawi, the hacking, raping and murders. My son said, Dad I was

  around 8 years old, can you imagine what is going on in the mind of a 8 year old.

  Picturing your mom being rape your dad getting hacked to death your baby

  sister being rape.

  What a sick religion...... I apologized to my son. What a terrible thing to tell a

  young child, in other words this is what you can look forward too as a JW.
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  notsurewheretogo

  The JW's believe the scripture in Matthew 24:13 - "But the one who has endured to the end will be saved".

  The end is the start of the Great Tribulation therefore they assume no righteous person will perish in between the GT and the Big A...and it is generally accepted that the time frame between the two events will be very small since Babylon The Great goes down "in one hour" (Rev 18:10).

  So whilst there will be a peroid of great suffering their explanation makes no sense...if I KNOW I am saved right at the point of the start of the GT then no matter what happens I know I am safe...guess it might be different if I had a gun to my head but an old WT used to say Jehoover would stop the mechanical parts of weapons during the GT....

  When I first got the "truth" I understood the Big A was salvation but some JW's might perish during the GT and the Big A but the organisation as a whole would go through but I was firmly corrected on this by an elder who stated that it was the start of the GT that signifies the start of "the end" and thus Matthew 24:13 comes into play then...

  So again I repeat...a stupid idea...oh the GT will be nasty but see when it starts...if you have been faithful you are guarenteed salvation then so no matter what happens DURING the GT you will be alright.

  Was quite funny, we recently had a talk about honesty and the speaker did not mince his words and said that Jehoover has no time for liars or people who cover up sins...I was still an elder at the time and a young wife who was married just a year came up to us at the end of the meeting and confessed to giving several boys oral sex in the congregation...she wanted to come clean so she could survive the GT...husband was raging naturally...