Isn’t It A Materialistic, Even Selfish Hope

by BluesBrother 7 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  BluesBrother

  As Witnesses we always looked forward to the New World but the talks were more about the incoming king and man’s freedom from oppression. Although we looked forward to the good things ,we recognised that initially things may be hard . We would have to cope with physical work , and lack of many things we were used to today. We did not mind because it was “the Kingdom “!

  The videos nowadays are very different.People sit about in shop bought clothes , living in grand houses and, in the recent offering “ Jehovah Guides Us In The Way Of Peace , I see an expensive sailing yacht , obviously manufactured in a boatyard . These things are available today, in this world, to those who ignore God and seek and gain enough money.

  We used to have a name for this : materialism. We would criticise those who set their heart on such things as we focused on what we considered “spiritual things”. The modern Watchtower’s message panders to human’s inbuilt materialistic tendencies at the expense of the spiritual.

  Selfish, why do I say that ? For millennia mankind has lived a normal life cycle. We are born, grow up , procreate , grow old and die . That leaves the world to the next generation who build on what has been done before. This has given countless people the opportunity to enjoy life and has thrown up a few geniuses who have benefited mankind greatly.

  The Watchtower teaching changes all that . This one generation ,declared righteous, will sit on the earth forever. The gene pool stagnates with them and no new life is born . They deny anyone else the opportunity to enjoy what they have.

  That is my thoughts anyway.
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  joao

  Selfishness, greed and materialism has always been the driving force of most Jehovah's Witnesses and that hasn't changed a bit. I could see that right from the beginning even though I tried not to give it too much thought.
  
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  WTWizard

  As I have seen, they split things into two categories. Physical and spiritual. The physical person strives after things that make him/her comfortable, and this includes following the laws of nature. The spiritual man (if you can call asceticism "spiritual") denies all these things and instead seeks the interests of that abomination that they call a god. Effectively denying the laws of nature in favor of rules that are intended to enslave the whole planet.
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  jhine

  I have just read Jesus's words to the Sadducees who asked about the resurrection

  " those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage and they can no longer die , for they are like Angels. "

  I have heard that Witnesses go round choosing the best houses to live in after Armageddon. Yes that is simply conforming to the world's standards , something that we are warned against.

  Jan
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  road to nowhere

  It took me 2000 years to grow and train oak trees into shapes for that yacht and build it. Then the GB confiscated it for themselves.
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  FedUpJW

  Some years ago when I first began to "fade" I asked a PIMI man in the congregation, "If you were informed that 'New Lite' was that there was no such thing as a paradise, no eternal life, no resurrection, none of the things that JW's strive to run the hamster wheel in hope of getting someday 'soon', and all you had was your professed love for God, would you keep running the hamster wheel or live this life as the only life you will ever truthfully have?"

  I mentioned that JW's only do what they do because of the things they hope to get for themselves out of it, not out of any real love, or selflessness.
  

  Got the dear in the headlights look, followed by the accusation of turning apostate.
  
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  ThomasMore

  FedUpJw, apostasy is the new racism. Anytime JWs don't like what they hear, they get out the apostasy paintbrush. They cannot be honest with themselves, much less anyone else.
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  LongHairGal

  FEDUPJW:

  I’m glad you asked that JW if he would still be running the ‘hamster wheel’ if there were no paradise, etc. The true answer is No, he probably would not be.

  Neither would the majority of Witnesses, I would wager. After all, the whole premise of the religion all along was the promise of some maybe never having to see death after Armageddon wiped everybody else out - and then living in the ‘new earth’/‘paradise’ with promise of resurrection, etc. This is the carrot on the stick that a significant amount of people were attracted to.

  The fact that the recent Covid pandemic of the last two+ years did not bring about the End of this ‘system of things’, has been a major disappointment to many of the older JWs.. Many of them have been living on the edge and never planned properly (or even at all) for their retirement - and they made sure they knocked anybody who did! They were told they ‘didn’t need’ careers or retirement planning since Armageddon was going to solve that problem. Now they are worried and angry in some cases.

  The whole religion’s claim to fame is its promise of a paradise life here on earth. If it didn’t have that it would resemble the other religions that teach about a heavenly afterlife. Wouldn’t it be a shame for all those JWs who ‘sacrificed’ for years if ‘new light’ were to take that promise away!