What Birds Taught Me About Watchtower Dishonesty

by metatron 11 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  metatron

  I have a bird feeder outside my window. It attracts warblers, sparrows, blue jays and multicolored finches , amoung others,

  The generation of 1914 is gone. The Society's prophesy has been abandoned - so I feed the birds who don't peck at human

  remains left behind by an Armageddon that never came.

  Furthermore, the doom and gloom predictions of the Awake proved false too. I've never seen any "Silent Spring" in New England.

  To the contrary, I regularily encounter vast flocks of red wing blackbirds and geese flying south. Some of the ducks have gotten

  lazy because they may enjoy artificially heated ponds created by utilities or businesses for appearance. Sometimes, folks

  a few miles away see hummingbirds in summer buzzing around their sugar feeders. I pick up the latest issue of the Awake,

  with a lonely bird on its cover ("Can We Save Our Environment?"). I look at the birds and wonder:

  How can they continue to print such material? Do these men have consciences? How can they look at themselves

  in the mirror and not feel shame ?

  The bird feeder is made in India or China - which were prophesied to have starved to death by now in books like "Famine 1975"

  - publications that the Society LOVED to quote in the 1970's. Well, the prophesied food "triage" never happened and China

  may be close to agricultural self-sufficiency by now. India is having an "information techonology" boom and may lead the

  world soon in the development of thorium based reactors ( there's enough thorium energy on earth to exceed all the oil

  and gas and uranium put together, but somebody has to use it). Not paradise, but not "worse and worse" either.

  I would be far better off today if I had never paid any attention to the negative poison found in these magazines.

  I would have heavily invested in stocks instead of hoping that Armageddon is "soon".

  I also would have gotten a good technical college degree - instead I believed in a false prophecy that college

  was unnecessary and that I would never "fufill any career" in "this system of things" (Awake May '69)

  All told, you would better off lining your bird cage with these magazines

  than believing them. I know, first-hand.

  metatron
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  Celia

  Wonderful post Metatron. So, you too are in New England ? I live in southern Vermont btw. I feed the birds too, I see more and more Cardinals, they are so striking, tufted titmice, nuthatches, blue jays, pink and gold finches, chickadees, woodpeckers, partridges, turkeys... etc.
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  franklin J

  Very good post, Metatron,

  I agree with you. And I am in the same boat, in the seat reight behind you.

  At this stage, all I can do is look forward, and work at changing my current perspective and my life. It has been an ongoing battle since I left that religion 20 years ago. My biggest consolation has been my wife and kids, ( never had been JWs) who will never know what it was like to be harrassed by school mates as " the kid who does not salute that flag or celebrate xmas, or go door to door". It was a long time ago.

  I also take solace in the nature on my property ( on Long Island) , aside from the bluejays, and red breasts who make their home here, we also have wild racoon, legions of squirrels, and just this summer spotted a family of quails.

  When I do look back, there is much that could have been different, much hurt that could have been avoided. However, it is all part of who I am and what I have today, and with that knowledge, I would not change my current life at all.

  regards,

  Frank
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  Lutece

  Excellent post Metatron!

  Anne
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  happy man

  metatron
  Be happy you dont invest in stocks, i done that and lose evrything, perhps this is a punischment fore my ignorance to the talking from GB to dont bee gridei, I raly regret this, think I cuold handel this but no, lost almost evry cent, even if I not so long ago was realy rich.

  celia, hello, nice to see you, have you join us yet my freind, the end is near dont foreget this.
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  rocketman

  Since jws believe that nothing good can come of this world, they must find a way to see gloom and doom in everything.

  Reminds me of a conversation I had at a door some yrs ago:

  Me: world conditions, blah, blah

  Householder: Yes, but there's much good in the world.

  Me: But, world conditions, blah, blah

  HH: I see so much that is good though

  Me: But, world conditions, blah blah

  I just could not accept that there is indeed good that is hapening.
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  SiouxWoman

  Dear Metatron (great name) I loved what you wrote. Its so much the way I feel. Iam fading, and hope they give up on me soon. They came to my apt. yesterday, but, you have to buzz to come in. All I said was Idont feel well and Im not dressed. Not a lie, because Im in pain all the time, and have to wait for my care giver to help me dress. But they took 25 years of my life, and I too waited for all they promised. I would scalp them but its not right. But they told me I couldent watch football any more and wrestling was a no no. Well by golly I watch all the wrestling I can. Im a newbie, as you can probably tell. But I finally feel at peace after all those years, and I dont feel guilty because the Watchtower was so boooooring. Souix Woman
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  AlanF

  Good post, Metatron.

  JWs don't put forth facts. They put forth what they would like to be facts. As Rutherford so well put it, they set forth the dreams and guesses of mere men as God's word.

  Russell originated the dreaming and guessing, and gradually came to believe that his dreams were reality. Once the dreams of a wonderful future in Paradise took hold of a critical mass of people, the mass dreaming became self-sustaining, largely because enough dreamers were able to isolate themselves from the world sufficiently to not have to look at real facts. JW leaders today are thoroughly insulated from the real world and see it through thick, JW-blinded filters. They refuse to acknowledge facts.

  Imagine how difficult it is for, say, Harry Peloyan (primary author of the 1985 Creation book), and others like him who have been in Bethel for 50-60 years, to acknowledge that most of what they've written about earthquakes, famine, pestilence, war, crime and other imaginary "signs of the times" is nonsense. If they did, they'd have to admit that their lives have been wasted and they're not going to live through Armageddon and they're not going to live on a Paradise earth or in heaven. They prefer to live on in their dreams, pretending that dreams are reality. This is why hopes for internal reform of the Watchtower organization are ill founded. Change will come only when outside events force it.

  AlanF
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  metatron

  Exactly

  No one ever sits back and thinks about the sheer desperation weaved into the Watchtower's message.

  One you stand back and realize what's going on, it all becomes clear. Guys like Harry and the GB

  are speaking out of their fear and terror that their whole lives have been wasted, as you point out.

  The worse this gets, the more empty rhetoric they must spew to conceal their realization that

  it's all bogus and always has been.

  metatron
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  mizpah

  Metatron:

  The reason you are seeing so many birds at your feeder is probably due to the fact that changes were made because of the writings of such pioneer enviromentalists like Rachel Carson. Her Silent Spring made all of us look seriously at what was happening to our enviroment.

  I agree fully with you about the Watchtower's propensity of using the studies of others for their own message of "doom and gloom." But don't disparage the work of those who brought about positive changes that have benefited all of us.