http://www.kentuckylaketimes.com/special/religionwatch/index.php?010619122901
Jehovah's Witnesses - Who are they and what do they believe?
Unlike in the case of Christians who are persecuted in other lands for talking about Jesus Christ, Jehovah's Witnesses are largely persecuted for following the teachings of their corporate headquarters.
The deadbeat Watchtower corporation pays no municipal taxes on their buildings, without even one charity to compensate the community.
Jehovah's Witnesses at your door -- who are they?
The Watchtower is Big money, being one of the top 40 New York City Corporations making nearly one billion dollars a year. That's just from one of their many corporations.
Jehovah's Witnesses follow the teachings begun during the second presidency of the Watchtower, when Joseph F. Rutherford took over in a corporate flap and began changing doctrines quickly in the Watchtower belief system. He claimed that angels directly conveyed "truth" to some of those in leadership. He coined the name "Jehovah's Witnesses" to make them stand out from being witnesses of Jesus, a typical evangelical expression (and a Biblical one).
Rutherford dumped holidays, birthdays and the 1874 date for the invisible return on Christ, and invented an "earthly class" of Witnesses, since only 144,000 can go to heaven according to their teaching. The rest, meaning all 99.9% of Witnesses still alive, will live forever on a cleansed earth, under the rule of the Watchtower corporate headquarter leaders in heaven, who will keep them in line by local elders known as "princes."
If you have been "witnessed to" by Jehovah's Witnesses and you reject their message, you will likely die "shortly" at Armageddon with all the other non-Witnesses, since theirs is the only true religion, and (if they can live up to all the rules) they are the only ones to inhabit this "new earth." If you believe Witnesses seem rigid now, any non-conformist during the future "cleansed earth" will be directly destroyed by their god. Even now a Witness will be disfellowshipped (excommunicated) for any one of many gaffs, such as smoking, taking a blood transfusion, or even voting.
To even vocally question the teachings of the Jehovah's Witness organization will result in complete cutting off, with family and friends usually being forbidden to talk to them. The Watchtower is a truly Orwellian world, in a time when Orwellian societies are nearly obsolete.
In his "Adams Versus God," Melbourne broadcaster Phillip Adams said in 1985 that, according to US studies, "Jehovah's Witnesses are more likely to be admitted to psychiatric hospitals than the general population".
"According to an article in the British Journal of Psychiatry," he said, "they are three times more likely to be diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia and four times more likely to be paranoid schizophrenics.
"As a writer in the American journal Free Inquiry puts it: 'Either the Jehovah's Witness sect tends to attract an excess of pre-psychotic individuals who may then break down, or else being a Jehovah's Witness is itself a stress that may precipitate psychosis. "'Possibly both of these factors operate together ...'"
References:
www.freeminds.org ( type in a search word to find articles easily )
www.silentlambs.org ( latest news on the child abuse lawsuits against the Watchtower )
About the author Danny Haszard: Former Jehovah's Witness X 33 years and 3rd generation. Now a counter-cult educator. My home page, WATCHTOWER WHISTLEBLOWER: www.DannyHaszard.com