Good Work Neon! I wholeheartedly believe that their is no shame in speaking the real truth. JW's believe that it is essential to spread the word to worldy non believers. Why should they expect less from people who disagree with their beliefs? Don't hide your light.One day you will be rewarding for the seeds you planted.
DF'ed for Organ Transplants?
by NeonMadman 34 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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hamptonite21
great thread! let us know how it works out?
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NeonMadman
Glad you reminded me. A few days after I sent the last message above, she responded. Here's the exchange:
cindeeva: Sorry I was out of town there for a few days.... you still are going upon your own assumption on the matter of the D'fing. Thats never been stated and never was a factor. I think you assumed alot of things about the TRUTH and made it all in your heart to be true. I have proven your accusations of such information false and reaffirmed yet again that following the footsteps of Christ in the manner that I am is TRULY the only way of life for me. As for your choices, they are yours to be had.
My response:
cindeeva: Have a pleasant weekend.breezyone2001: You are welcome to believe whatever you want to. Does it really make a difference whether they df'ed for transplants? You have read the 1967 article - if you can't see that they were saying not to have transplants, then you're not reading it honestly. You haven't proven anything false, only given yourself an excuse in your own mind to do what you want to do. Which is your prerogative. The Society also forbid smallpox vaccinations up until 1952, and earlier in its history, called aluminum "Satan's metal" and strongly discouraged the use of aluminum cookware. Does this really sound to you like a group that is being led by God? And what about the false prophecies for the end to come in or by 1914, 1918, 1925, 1975, 2000 and 'within a few months' from 1941?
This all happened several days ago, and I haven't heard back again. I suspect that I won't hear from her again, but at least I hope that I've planted some seeds that the Lord can use later on. I suspect she may be a cut above the average JW in terms of intellectual honesty, since she does seem to want to look things up and verify them. But I know the sort of walls that go up immediately when someone attacks "the truth (TM) ". I was there once, too.
breezyone2001: How can a group that is getting its information from God be so consistently wrong? They talk about how they have fearlessly sounded the warning of Jehovah's day, and things like that, but every single prediction they have made has failed, 100% of the time. How can you believe them now when they say the end is near?
breezyone2001: The teaching that the 1914 generation would see Armageddon was presented as "the Creator's promise" and "Jehovah's prophetic word". Now that teaching has been abandoned. What does the Bible say about one who presumes to speak in Jehovah's name a prediction that doesn't come to pass? Deut 18:20-22.
breezyone2001: Do you really want to be found a follower of a false prophet? When you have to account to Jesus, it would be a terrible shame to have to say, 'I put in thousands of hours in your name, placed tons of books and magazines in your name, conducted dozens of Bible studies in your name,' only to hear him say "Get away from me" because you followed men instead of Him.
breezyone2001: The Watchtower tells people they should investigate their religion - except for JW's of course, they are supposed to accept what the Society says without question. If they study, they are not supposed to 'prove whether these things are so' like the Bereans, they are only supposed to study with the intent of confirming what the Society has told them. I strongly suggest you do independent research. Look into the Society's history - not the one they publish in the whitewashed Proclaimers book; go to the library and search the internet. You'll come to understand that they have not been honest with you.
breezyone2001: Or, you can reject what I say out of hand, as you have been doing. I hope you are a more honest person than that. I'll do whatever I can to help, if you really want to know the truth about the Watchtower. It goes much deeper than what we've discussed here. A lot of the details are at the site www.freeminds.org. It's a good place to start.
breezyone2001: As far as the transplant issue goes, maybe I was wrong about whether you could be df'ed. That was what I understood at the time. But try this: put yourself in the place of a regular JW in 1967 reading that article, and ask yourself whether, upon reading this information from God's organization, you would have felt that you had freedom of conscience in that matter, or whether you would have felt bound to refuse a transplant. People did refuse them, and they died. Those people might well have lived, except that they followed the admittedly false teaching propagated by the WT Society. Whether or not it was a df'ing offense is really irrelevant, though you are using my statement on that as a wedge tp "prove me wrong". What is relevant is that people gave their lives for what the Society now
breezyone2001: admits was an incorrect teaching. Will you continue to nit-pick my statement about df'ing, or will you look at the larger issue? Is the Watchtower really any better than David Koresh or Jim Jones when they spread teachings that people feel obligated to give their lives for, then turn in a heartbeat and reverse those teachings, just because they changed their minds?
breezyone2001: You need to look - honestly. I know the JW mindset. You think that you already know the truth, so instead of looking openly and honestly at an issue, you try to take it apart so as to put the Society in the best light - in other words, to verify what you already believe. That's how I started out, too. But that is dishonest. You need to openly and honestly investigate issues like this that arise, if you really want to be sure that what you have is the truth. Just because an organization calls itself "the truth" doesn't make it so. Jesus said that HE is the TRUTH, not some set of doctrines, or an organization of men. Turn to Him, and you can't go wrong.
breezyone2001: But if you follow men, just because they claim to speak for Him, you'll be misled every time. -
JT
We accepted that The Watchtower speaks for God, and The Watchtower said organ transplants were considered (by God) the same as cannibalism and detestable to Him. We simply accepted the Watchtower and Awake articles on medical treatments as truth . . . period. We were loyal to God's will as we understood it and trusted it from the pages of The Watchtower. We did not reject an organ transplant because we were afraid of being disfellowshipped. We never even gave being disfellowshipped a serious thought, nor did we check to see what the consequences to us would be if we took a transplant. We were accepting the Watchtower for what it was presented to us as, namely, the word of God.
VERY POWERFUL POINT
you are right-- i believe that most would not have accepted it-- not from fear of being DFed---- but cause we believed it was the WILL OF GOD
we viewed it as a DIRECT violation of god's words since the wt had quoted a ton of scriptual to "support" that dogma we just figured that this is what these text mean
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garybuss
Hi JT,
We were faithful like children. We were trusting and we never had to defend our beliefs from critics. We just gladly accepted the information as it was presented to us and looked forward to the soon to come, promised rewards. The meetings were sometimes long and the seats were hard and I often didn't understand the atypical examples or the formulas involved in the timelines. It was all temporary and soon we would be living in leisure and comfort in the new world.
The assaults and the harassments came from within, from elders, from convention attendants, from circuit servants, from the brothers. The more I tried to reconcile what I was seeing and the more I asked for explanations for the way I was being treated, the worse it got. They made leaving easy.
gb