by betweenworlds 15 Replies latest jw friends
hi, betweenworlds
welcome. her is a thread started by ISP in the study articles topic of the board. it may help you, and it includes what philo said is the latest from the WBTS regarding numbers http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/forum/thread.asp?id=4110&site=3
RHW and Mulan, I didn't realize that the Mormons where that high in numbers! Whew! Maybe they alone have God's favor!
and many other good points on this thread!
peace,
somebody
1 Mormon male + several impregnatable Mormon wives = oodles of new Mormons to swell the numbers.
Expatbrit
hey...that was funny! of course, any porneia head like myself would think so.
seriously, I love your humor,expatbrit.
peace,
somebody
Correction: Mormons are 22 million. JW's 6 million
The mormons baptise their children at 8 years of age and count all them and they also count everyone
who has ever been baptised. You don't get of their records until you die.
The Jw's only count those handing reports ..... but if you count all those who have been baptised
you will get the same figure
JanG
Not exactly true, Jan. Witnesses count all publishers, baptized or not. Inactive ones are still counted, as long as they aren't df'd. If they are in the inactive file for two years, I believe, they are taken off the list. Baptism is not the criteria. It's whether you are out there knocking on doors. And for the record, the Mormons do NOT count those who have left, and those who are baptized by proxy, like your ancestors. I worked with Mormons for a long time, so I know many of their little "ins and outs".
Mulan,
Yes, you have that right, they sure don't count their dead. I thought so for a long time, of course my minister dad swears that they do. The problem with the theory that they count the baptized dead is that if they did they'd have a hell of alot more than 11 or 12 million members. Even if you could imagine only 1 million living on earth today, and knowing that one of the most important things in their religion is baptizing their ancestors, and say they baptized a total of 20 ancestors a piece, we'd then be up to 20 million already, and we know the average number of ancestors is probably over 20, and we can safely assume that there's more than a million living now in Utah alone. Although, the fact that they all have 20 kids a piece can account for some of the numbers, even if they only count them after 8. I was asking a missionary about this recently, and he explained it all to me (although I came up with my happy little calculations myself :), and he said something that impressed me. He said "We do have around 12 million currently but we don't worry too much about that like other religions might. We know that the road to everlasting life is narrow, so we're not judging our truth on numbers". I do wonder though, why the numbers are rising so fast, they don't go door to door like JW's do......they have their missionaries, but the amount of total hours spent has to be much lower than the watchtower over-all, so what is it that they have? What's the difference between to two? Maybe it's the Christmas thing....I have spent some time researching their faith, never coming to any kind of conclusion about them. Perhaps you can shed some light on them. Are they just as fake and false as the JW's? I'm not one to give up totally on organized religion because of one bad apple. And I remember as a small child questioning my (parents) religion. I could never figure out who died and made them boss. I had it in my head at a young age that if and when Christ re-organized his church on earth it would be of a much more spiritual and divine nature, and not just some Pastor deciding one day that Jesus had taken his thrown and appointed him our savior. I became intrigued with the LDS faith a few years ago when I realized they existed, and when I realized that supposedly their faith began just as I imagined it should. I also became intrigued to realize they didn't believe that God is going to destroy anyone at Armageddon, and that is also a belief I've held onto for a long time. I suppose if I hadn't been used and abused by one false prophet I might even be more interested in the Mormons, but we all know how that goes.
