When I saw it on the ABC News, I must say I was both concerned and sad.
Another 500 "qualified" shunners!
by BLISSISIGNORANCE 17 Replies latest social current
When I saw it on the ABC News, I must say I was both concerned and sad.
Another 500 "qualified" shunners!
Another 500 prospective "shunnees."
Blondie
JWs love publicity; they love numbers. No doubt many were encouraged to withhold baptism until the convention, in an attempt to make an impressive figure. After all, they were able to pull off the largest baptism on record in Australia.
60,000 attending... 500 baptised. That comes out to 0.83%
The only way they can get a "mass baptism" to happen is to bring 60,000 people together. Not very impressive.
Let's not forget that not all of those 60,000 are Witnesses and that 10,000 of them are delegates from other countries. So more than 1% of the Witnesses there are new ones.
Nodody should have to wait for anything if they desire to do this. Your friend could baptise you in your bathtub if you so desired. Phillip and the eunich had "no audience".
That was one of the things my Christian friend (non dub) surprised me with..the fact that in her congregation anyone could perform a baptism who was a baptised christian themselves..and let me tell you there is certainly no baptism into a "spirit directed organization" either.
I see from the press report that the ages of those being baptised was 10 -70.
10 yrs old !! In my congregation you had to be at least 14 to be considered for baptism at one time and that was considered quite young.
I wonder how many youngs ones there were and were being baptised because of family pressure. Many of the young ones would be from JW families so you couldn't exactly call then "new" ones, as if they had been met on the door to door work.
For a while there was pressure to make sure those being baptised were old enough. I think the problem is that they are fed such a steady diet of rubbish that they know all the right things to say to make the elders think they are spiritually mature enough to get dunked. They certainly don't realize what they are getting into at that age, it's sad really. I think elder and m.s's kids are pressured more. I know of a ministerial servant who is pressured because his 17 year old son isn't baptised yet. Clearly he must be doing something 'wrong'