January 2018 Message of Judgment - What Is This?

by dubstepped 26 Replies latest jw friends

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  NikL

  Well there was something a bit different and more hard line in the January Watchtower.

  I had my attention drawn to it after I saw a video from bridget fromAZ video on youtube.

  It's an article about attending the memorial. it says

  4 Reflect on the importance of attending the Memorial. Remember, congregation meetings are part of our worship. Surely Jehovah and Jesus take note of who makes the effort to attend this most important meeting of the year. Frankly, we want them to see that unless it is physically or circumstantially impossible, we will be present at the Memorial. When we show by our actions that meetings for worship are important to us, we give Jehovah added reason to keep our name in his “book of remembrance”​—“the book of life”—​in which the names of those who are in line to attain to everlasting life are inscribed.​—Mal. 3:16; Rev. 20:15.

  So attend the memorial or get erased from the book of life.
  

  It then goes on to say...

  5 In the days leading up to the Memorial, we can set aside time to examine prayerfully and carefully our personal relationship with Jehovah. (Read 2 Corinthians 13:5.) How can we do that? By ‘testing whether we are in the faith.’ To do that, we do well to ask ourselves: ‘Do I really believe that I am part of the only organization that Jehovah has approved to accomplish his will? Am I doing my utmost to preach and teach the good news of the Kingdom? Do my actions show that I truly believe that these are the last days and that the end of Satan’s rule is near? Do I have the same confidence in Jehovah and Jesus now that I had when I dedicated my life to Jehovah God?’ (Matt. 24:14; 2 Tim. 3:1; Heb. 3:14) Pondering the answers to such questions will help us to keep proving what we ourselves are.

  I thought Geoffrey Jackson said that would be presumptuous?

  Anyway, it seems to be a harder line then they have sang in a while.
  
• 

  waton

  If the hard ball (of ice) message is to start being preached, the anointed leadership of the WTBtS must already have disappeared.

  Is not that message a feature of the great tribulation? and do not the anointed rise to their reward at the beginning of that disaster? and do not the angel dispose of the bodies of the anointed, like Jesus'>,--- just reading the tea leaves of past wt publicity. 2075 is far off.
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  Xanthippe

  That Watchtower threatening being taken out of the book of life if you don't attend the memorial in 2018 sounds like they're setting it up as a loyalty test to trap faders.
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  neverendingjourney

  I firmly believe that most JWs can't reason and defend their religion anymore. Heck, the whole org can't defend itself anymore. More and more it's becoming such that JWs less and less know their own history and their own beliefs.

  They're really in a catch-22. It doesn't take a brilliant mind to realize that the JW prophetic framework failed. Everything JWs were promised didn't come true and has been replaced by overlapping generations nonsense and "wait on Jehovah" platitudes.

  So the religion needs to rethink and make wholesale changes to its doctrine and prophetic structure.

  Yet to admit this and move forward on that plan is to admit that they don't really have the truth and aren't God's special people.

  They can't make the changes that are desperately needed without conceding defeat, so instead we've had this 20-year long period of stagnation hoping that somehow the things they believe in come true even though there's no signs of that occurring anytime soon. Meanwhile, I've seen my parents generation who came into this religion with young families grow old and die. Wasted lives, no retirement plans in place.

  It's sad.
• 

  stan livedeath

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    Londo111

    This has been in the JW mythos for a long, long time. And that is, during the great tribulation, the “door would close”. Then JWs would cease preaching the good news and preach a message of judgement, basically telling people they were going to die.

    oh bring it on ! groups of batshit crazy old women going out door knocking telling every one theyre going to die, just the new image jayworg needs.

    
    

    
    
• 

  Crazyguy

  Yeah this has been mentioned before it’s another way to get people thinking the end is close, yet they never actually do it and the end never comes either. Rinse and repeat rinse and repeat, JWs are so gullible!
• 

  Finkelstein

  ‘Do I really believe that I am part of the only organization that Jehovah has approved to accomplish his will?

  Its just the same tactical spin to control people by imposing Fear, Obligation, and Guilt.

  The WTS uses the implication of life or death to control people they way want to direct and control people.

  When you do everything the GB tell people to do and unquestionably uphold all the doctrines the GB make, then your assured to be in god's grace and appeasement.

  The WTS's interpretive version of the memorial of Christ is weak to say the least, other Christian based faiths have it a little more accurate to the words in Scripture.
  

  
  
• 

  steve2

  The hardball message in the January 2018 Watchtower strongly suggests that vigilance around memorial attendance ain't what it used to be.

  I'd be interested to know what the 2017 worldwide memorial attendances were.

  You only hammer a message when you notice a slow down in zeal. Otherwise you commend the zeal and sing the praises.
  
• 

  Kevin McFree

  it is as stated above an internally dreamed up justification for the reduction in magazines but it does have a feel of 1975 to it. remember they had the truth book and you had to study for only 6 months and then if they dont want to take steps to baptism, dump them. because you know, the end is nigh

  now they are suggesting dump your route calls we only want people who make progress to baptism.

  so in the minds of jdubs, they hear, THE END IS NIGH. they cant say but they know the end is nigh. time is short, its not even just around the corner, its so close you can taste it. blah blah soon, blah blah very soon. do more do more lol
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  neverendingjourney

  remember they had the truth book and you had to study for only 6 months and then if they dont want to take steps to baptism, dump them. because you know, the end is nigh

  I was a regular pioneer in 1997 and we received the same instruction in connection with the Knowledge book. If the bible student doesn't take steps towards baptism in six months, dump them and move on. Time is running out. Focus on those who are rightly disposed to "the truth."

  It's a reoccurring theme.