Morpheua, you are an excellent devil's advocate - and I agree with the point you are making about the picture not being fear-mongering to the JWs in Russia. Equally, however, you could argue that the picture IS fear-mongering to Witnesses in Western countries where secular laws are strong on human rights and, indeed, even the United Nations has spoken out against the persecution of Witnesses (and other groups) in specified lands.
Ridiculous Picture!
by Iamallcool 32 Replies latest jw friends
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redvip2000
There are so many legal hoops that modern democratic countries would have to jump through to get to the police-state conditions that would enable raids on church groups that at this point, the idea is almost laughable.
Interestingly enough, i just had this same debate with my JW family over thanksgiving vacation. After receiving a preaching jab about "world is gonna end", and "you will be destroyed", I made a very similar point. I basically pointed out that it's best to wait until we see all of the democracies of the world begin to amend their constitutions to disallow freedom of religion, since this is a prerequisite for their prediction about the governments of the world banning religions. This of course will only make sense if all countries do this. So in essence it's a matter of waiting and seeing until we see all governments do this. Then we would know that at least the ORG could be right.
I couldn't help notice their faces as their considered how unlikely this sounds. Hard to imagine that even one country, say the US, would become a dictatorship and remove freedom of religion.
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Vidiot
redvip2000 - "I couldn't help notice their faces as their considered how unlikely this sounds."
I used to love those moments.
I particularly remember one nitwit elder who thought that dinosaurs died out at the Flood, and clearly expressed as much... in a group setting, no less.
Never having had much tolerance or patience for the stupid, I led him into the trap by asking him to clarify, "So, you're saying that dinosaurs and humans were contemporaries, then?"
"Of course."
"So, why are there no cave paintings of them? Why are there no human remains in the same layers of rock as dino fossils?" (I wanted to use the word "strata" but I honestly didn't think he'd know what it meant.)
The look on his face was priceless; to his credit, he wasn't angry, but stuff like that had clearly never even occurred to the guy (most everyone else there who knew me smiled, unsurprised; I was a bit of a shit-disturber even back then). He stammered, "Well... those are... certainly... very good questions...", and had enough presence of mind to never bring the subject up again.
I'm very proud to say that by the time I'd hit 30, very few fellow JWs tried to get into arguments with me.