We're not dealing with sincere anointed who genuinely believe their teachings but scam artists

by truthseeker 28 Replies latest jw friends

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  truthseeker

  Looking at all the doctrinal teachings over the last five years, it's almost impossible for any person of conscience who originated such doctrine to do a complete u-turn and change it and still believe it when the passage of time has proved beyond doubt that doctrine is no longer credible.

  I say this with reference to the Generation of 1914. They were so sure. It was part of the Awake! masthead for decades that those who saw the events of 1914 would also see the Great Tribulation.

  Now, imagine the old GB 1.0. For decades they believed and taught that the 1914 generation would not pass before the GT began. In the 1993 conventions there were rumors that there would be a change and in 1994 there was little mention of the generation of 1914 that year, which was by now already eighty years old.

  Until 1995 - the Awake! masthead removes reference to 1914 and leaves the beginning of the tribulation open-ended.

  So what were the then Governing Body members actually thinking? Could they still believe with all their heart that their 1914 Generation was really true? Surely some doubts must have set in?

  So when the changes begin in 1995 this continues on for the next decade until more changes are announced. The generation of 1914 are first the anointed, then the wicked people living in the mid 1990s, then back to the anointed.

  Until 2012 or so when the generation becomes two overlapping generations.

  Can anyone see how utterly ridiculous this is? We laugh at this and wonder how could the GB believe this crap? Seriously? Two overlapping generations?

  Then this new revised teaching starts to get printed in the new releases at this year's district convention.

  And I'm beginning to wonder about the sincerity of the Governing Body.

  Either they are fooling themselves OR they are perpetuating a SCAM on the body of believers.

  I am now inclined to think, that this is not a group of seven misguided elderly anointed who sincerely believe they have the truth, because no sane person could possibly u-turn so many times on one single teaching and yet still believe they had the truth...so...

  I am of the strong opinion that they have been caught with their pants down - chronology has backed them in a corner, and they have no way out except to change the teaching, but in doing so they have lost credibility among themselves and the flock who wait in perpetuity for the Great Tribulation.

  They are deliberately and wilfully perpetuating a scam to fool the masses because they have to keep the Great Watchtower engine well oiled or the whole thing comes to an end.

  Hence all the distractions, like the grey Bible, the JW.org web site etc.

  We're not dealing with sincere elderly anointed who genuinely believe what they teach but scam artists.

  Truthseeker
• 

  label licker

  Like the one elder said at my judicial meeting and I have it on tape: Our magazines are half truths. Then the other elder says: That's right. The watchtower doesn't have all the answers. Unbelievable and shameful! But they were still proud of the organisation they represent. Their words not mine.
• 

  Apognophos

  I've generally leaned toward the school of thought that the leadership is sincere, but probably the two biggest things that make me doubt their sincerity are the overlapping generation teaching and the allowance of blood fractions. What these teachings have in common is a seeming refusal to admit that they could be flat-out wrong about something they previously said.

  Instead of admitting "We don't know how long a generation is", they've come up with a new definition of "generation" which strains logic in order to explain why we're all still here in 2014. Interestingly, though, they did admit indirectly in 1995 that they didn't know the length of the "generation" when they defined it as basically an "era". Then they debuted the crazy "overlapping" interpretation in 2010 which goes back to making an assertion that they definitely know how long the generation is. But they were almost humble there!... on this one issue... for a period of 15 years.

  With blood, the general agreement among us is that they allowed fractions because they realized that the Biblical argument for not taking blood was weak, and they may have had concerns about coming under attack for the loss of life that the doctrine was causing. But instead of just dropping the doctrine, which could have opened them up to massive lawsuits over lost lives in the past, they said that some parts of blood could now be transfused -- if a Witness' conscience allowed it! Since JWs have been programmed strongly to be repulsed by blood, that means some JWs would still turn down a transfusion even now.

  It's worth pointing out that this "conscience matter" line that they used for blood fractions was also used when the organ transplant ban was lifted. Back then in 1980, long before the current GB, there was a similar refusal to acknowledge that they had caused needless deaths, and a similar refusal to admit that there was nothing in the Bible forbidding organ transplants. Instead of saying, "It's actually totally okay to get a transplant", they weaseled out of the need to admit fault by saying that transplants were now a conscience matter!

  One could say that these three examples demonstrate a lack of sincerity, but there's still an alternative way to look at this, which is that the enormity of the mistakes over blood transfusions and organ transplants were too great for the leadership to contemplate. It's a well-known psychological response to shift the blame away from oneself when one seems to be responsible for something really bad. On top of that, when it was previous leadership that was responsible for instituting the policy, it's easier for the subsequent leaders to shirk the need to apologize since "it's not our mistake".

  However, at the very least, this attitude indicates a lot of pride, or in fact I would say hubris, at the organizational level. They are too full of themselves to be willing to lose face by admitting wrong. And that's not very Christian for a group of men who are supposed to be closer to Christ than all of us "other sheep".
• 

  DesirousOfChange

  Yep.

  Kicking my ass that I was to blinded to see it before now.

  

  Doc
• 

  Crazyguy

  There are ones in the writing department that are sincere yet ignorant and deluded just like most JW's. The fact that the Borg deletes books and removes entries from thier cd rom library, bound volumes and others is proof to me their are ones running the show, that are in fact scam artists like you say.
• 

  smiddy

  Where did you get that photo of me DOC ?

  smiddy
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  OneEyedJoe

  As I heard from one elder when another elder brought up the overlapping generation change: "they had to change it because it was obviously wrong - they're [the 1914 generation] all dead"

  They're just making it up as they go along - there was a lack of a "sense of urgency" on account of the 1995 and 2008 generation changes, so they cooked the numbers to work out a way to create a deadline that is much closer. I think they probably genuinely believe that God is guiding them, but most of the doctrinal changes are pragmatic - miscellaneous random changes to keep the r/f paying attention and bigger changes that are driven by the passage of time, changing laws, etc.
• 

  AnnOMaly

  And I'm beginning to wonder about the sincerity of the Governing Body.

  Either they are fooling themselves OR they are perpetuating a SCAM on the body of believers. ...

  ... They are deliberately and wilfully perpetuating a scam to fool the masses because they have to keep the Great Watchtower engine well oiled or the whole thing comes to an end.

  It's an uncomfortable conclusion when you try to think the best of people.

  Revelation 14:1, 4, 5 - "Then I saw, and look! the Lamb standing on Mount Zion, and with him 144,000 who have his name and the name of his Father written on their foreheads. ... These are the ones who keep following the Lamb no matter where he goes. These were bought from among mankind as firstfruits to God and to the Lamb,  and no deceit was found in their mouths; they are without blemish."

  Surely, because they and their predecessors have continued, in the face of all the evidence, to perpetuate falsehoods and have used underhanded, dishonest means to give the appearance of credibility to those falsehoods, one can suppose that even within the bounds of the JW belief system they have disqualified themselves from being a part of the 144k group.
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  Listener

  That's a very sobering comment AnnOMaly. Time has not run out for them.
• 

  designs

  Our local town newspaper use to run a weekly Sunday article by the famous Evangelical pastor Bob Jones of Bob Jones University fame. Jones was a true Fundamentalist who also believed the Bible supported Segregation. His college would not allow mixed race couples. He believed all of the stories in the Bible as True, from Genesis to Revelation. A sincere and educated idiot.

  I think back now on all of the sincere articles on Religion I have read in my life and see the same pattern repeated again and again. Remember the illustration the Society used of a mold having a defect can only produce an item with the same defect, well that is the basic problem- the defective mold is the Bible.