by steve2 28 Replies latest watchtower medical
Thanks Blondie. That's almost 2 years ago for the Awake - Sept 2012 and more than 2.5 years for the Kingdom Ministry.
It would be interesting to do a content analysis of the more recent articles on the subject compared to earlier ones. It does look much more convoluted the more they nit-pick over what is and what is not allowed.
I think that part of the reason for the lack of publications dealing with the blood issue in recent times, could be that their study magazines are now being made available online for download by the public. I think you should expect to see less and less Watchtower articles that explicity cover such controversial topics. Instead, I think such issues will be dealth with in inhouse publications like the 'Our Kingdom Ministry'.
Thanks Island man. Yes, that sounds like a reasonable conclusion. The magazines are increasingly like PR programs for the organization, with a downplaying of anything controversial. Gone are the days when they magazines routinely condemned the churches of Christendom and called all non-Judeo-Christian belief systems pagan and under Satan's control.
The blood doctrine is not going away.......can you imagine? This isn't some doctrine nobody already understands, or thinks is part of their belief system anyways like overlapping generations. This is BLOOD.
Its in the top three of what JW's are known for.
1) No holidays or borthdays
2) Compulsory door knocking
3) No blood under any circumstances (depending on circumstances).
It isn't going away. They are just going to stop with the gestapo schtick over it, because its bad press, and they will get kicked out of some countries if its compulsory.
If they really changed this doctrine, don't overlook how many people would be gone, and how many law suits would spring up.
Well no, I agree with you problemadict: it won't go away. They've painted themselves into a corner over it. If they did away with it, legal and ethical questions will surge to life over the numberless Witnesses and their minor children who have died as a direct result of obeying the organization's blood prohibition.
Wrongful law suits would spring up like bacteria on a rotting chicken carcass.
More likely, however, is a very graduated easing up on - to use your wonderful phrase - "the gestapo schtick over it". Even now, I sense that young JW parents are soooooo relieved when the law courts take decisions about transfusing children out of their (parents' ) hands. The prefect 'excuse' for having blood: The doctor and the courts made me.
It will increasingly become a non-hammered issue, allowed to informally die its long overdue death - with no transfusion to save it.
There's no greater proof that it is a sick, legalistic, 'false religion' than this doctrine. Child-sacrifice to Jehovah on the organisational alter of fanatical, legalistic false interpretation.
They have replaced Molech with Jehovah!
EVERY SINGLE SCRIPTURE PROHIBITING BLOOD INVOLVES THE DEATH OF A SOUL. BLOOD TRANSFUSIONS DO NOT INVOLVE THE DEATH OF A SOUL!
How utterly BLIND and cruel can the fanatical, pharisaic, heartless Watchtower leaders be to perpetuate this murderous creed! Even the strictest modern-day Jews have the sense to realise the ancient edicts do not apply to blood transfusions.
They used to cite the blood ban as being a distinguishing feature of them as being the true religion.
Watchtower 78 4/15
From that time forward, true religion included respect for blood, which God himself said was to represent life that came from and belonged to Him...
Has this distinguishing feature of true religion since been abandoned? Though most churches disregard or do not teach what the Bible says in this connection, it is still a identifying mark of genuine Christianity
However not one mention of it was made in the recent Awake 07/14 mag under the title 'Can true religion be identified?"
Marked
They need to keep it.
It makes them 'special'.
There is another good reason too. Charlie Manson used it. Getting someone to do something that they would abhore as their normal non-cult self and the incentive to leave you, or betray you and admit to their peers that they committed, condoned and encouraged such acts without good reason because they were influenced by a nutter cult leader, stupidity, failure to do proper research on the creeps in charge, etc., is an extremely powerful control tool.
