Posts by slimboyfat

62

Ten reasons Jehovah’s Witnesses have the true religion (plus a bonus one)

by slimboyfat in

thinking back when i was a true believer these are probably the top ten reasons why i believed jws are the true religion.

1. they show love among themselves by not going to war.

not killing your fellow believers in any circumstances, including war, would seem to be a very basic requirement for true christianity.

slimboyfat

Interestingly, while historians have made estimates, the Jehovah's Witnesses likely know the exact figures but choose not to share them.

The exact figures of what, how many “resisted”? You are trying to put an exact number something that is impossible to put an exact number on. Someone who spoke against the regime, went to jail, renounced their faith in custody, was released, later regretted that decision and rejoined. Did they resist, or not? People who broke down under torture and gave up names of their fellow believers. Did they resist, or not? People who reasoned it was proper to lie on forms to fool the Nazis and got released from prison that way. Did they resist or not? Someone who was a JW for social or family reasons but decided it wasn’t worth it when the Nazis came to power. Is that counted as a failure of JWs to resist? People who were true believers but simply couldn’t withstand the terror, or who compromised to save themselves, or their children, or others. Children who were removed from parents and were indoctrinated by the regime. All these scenarios, and many more complicated situations played out countless times. I don’t think we are in a position to judge except to say that any act of resistance was remarkable in the circumstances. We don’t need exact numbers to make the obvious observation that JWs stood out massively. We don’t need an exact figure in order to draw the same moral conclusion as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum that JWs were an “island of spiritual resistance” and that other churches have had to come to terms with the “widespread complicity” of their leadership and ordinary members.

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Ten reasons Jehovah’s Witnesses have the true religion (plus a bonus one)

by slimboyfat in

thinking back when i was a true believer these are probably the top ten reasons why i believed jws are the true religion.

1. they show love among themselves by not going to war.

not killing your fellow believers in any circumstances, including war, would seem to be a very basic requirement for true christianity.

slimboyfat

… WW2 demonstrates the dangers or neutrality …

If everyone was neutral there would have been no war, obviously, but you’re entitled to your opinion, notsopeacefulpete. Your entire post is a whole lot of cope, attempting to downplay the stand JWs took in Nazi Germany.

Protestant historian Detlef Garbe described the conduct of JWs in the Third Reich as a “ray of light in a dark age”. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum called JWs “an island of spiritual resistance”. Former JWs who attempt to deny reality on this do themselves no favours. It’s a sign of being in a bubble. Not everything about JWs is bad. If you can’t straightforwardly recognise opposing the Nazis as a good act it’s maybe time to reflect.

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Ten reasons Jehovah’s Witnesses have the true religion (plus a bonus one)

by slimboyfat in

thinking back when i was a true believer these are probably the top ten reasons why i believed jws are the true religion.

1. they show love among themselves by not going to war.

not killing your fellow believers in any circumstances, including war, would seem to be a very basic requirement for true christianity.

slimboyfat

StephaneLaliberte this is also a subject I have taken an interest in.

The only real difference was the numbers—there were many more Catholics, and therefore many more traitors and Nazi sympathizers, but the ratios were likely similar.

The ratios are entirely dissimilar. The overwhelming majority of JWs resisted the Nazis whereas only a small number of Protestants and Catholics did so. This is why the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum describes Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Third Reich as:

an island of spiritual resistance to the Nazi demand for absolute German commitment to the state.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/jehovahs-witnesses-in-germany-from-the-1890s-to-the-1930s

Whereas it concludes its article about Protestants and Catholics this way:

After 1945, the silence of the church leadership and the widespread complicity of "ordinary Christians" compelled leaders of both churches to address issues of guilt and complicity during the Holocaust—a process that continues internationally to this day.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-german-churches-and-the-nazi-state

Note the contrast between “an island of spiritual resistance” and “the widespread complicity of ‘ordinary Christians’”.

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Ten reasons Jehovah’s Witnesses have the true religion (plus a bonus one)

by slimboyfat in

thinking back when i was a true believer these are probably the top ten reasons why i believed jws are the true religion.

1. they show love among themselves by not going to war.

not killing your fellow believers in any circumstances, including war, would seem to be a very basic requirement for true christianity.

slimboyfat

If those accusations are true then Barr would be an awful person. But I don’t believe an accusation just because someone makes it. If I remember reading about this case before, wasn’t there serious doubt about the timing of the accusation because some of the people accused were not where they would have had to have been? If I remember correctly there was a possibility that the accuser was mixing up some details including perhaps mixing up one GB member for another. The fact is I simply don’t know, so I won’t make a judgment either way. The things I do know about Barr for sure make me think he was a sincere person.

62

Ten reasons Jehovah’s Witnesses have the true religion (plus a bonus one)

by slimboyfat in

thinking back when i was a true believer these are probably the top ten reasons why i believed jws are the true religion.

1. they show love among themselves by not going to war.

not killing your fellow believers in any circumstances, including war, would seem to be a very basic requirement for true christianity.

slimboyfat

Here are some of mine: I thought they were honest and I thought they really loved me and I thought they really loved Jehovah and I thought they really loved truth and I thought they really loved other people.

Yes, that too. Call me naive, but I do think there were and are many genuine brothers and sisters, including in the leadership. There have certainly been pretty awful people too, such as Leo Greenlees and Ted Jaracz, and some leaders lower down, and local elders. But I still think people like Lloyd Barry, Jack Barr, Geoffrey Jackson, Tony Morris in his own way, Fred Franz even, as well as many elders, and other brothers and sisters I’ve come across could be described that way.

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Ten reasons Jehovah’s Witnesses have the true religion (plus a bonus one)

by slimboyfat in

thinking back when i was a true believer these are probably the top ten reasons why i believed jws are the true religion.

1. they show love among themselves by not going to war.

not killing your fellow believers in any circumstances, including war, would seem to be a very basic requirement for true christianity.

slimboyfat

I’d say the first things that made me doubt were: the fact that Armageddon didn’t come after the generation died out in 1994, and the fact that they didn’t offer a plausible explanation for that, plus they kept changing the explanation. (They should have stuck with the first revision in 1995 that said it was the wicked generation that was around whenever Armageddon happened to arrive. The explanations just got increasingly bizarre after that.) Then I came across the misquotations in the Reasoning book, the Trinity brochure, and the blue Creation book. Then doubts about the blanket opposition to natural selection as an explanation of how life evolved. Plus there was the misrepresentation of data to make it seem like there had been more and bigger earthquakes in the 20th century, followed by the strange cover up and assertion that there didn’t need to be more or bigger earthquakes in order for the prophecy to be fulfilled. Then there was the persistent increases in the anointed when they should be going down. Plus the authoritarian clampdown on brothers doing their own scholarly research in the 2007 Kingdom Ministry. Doubts about the application of specific verses such as Matt 24:45 and Prov 4:18. Doubts about the “gentile times” chronology, obviously, don’t know how I forgot that one. I think those are the main ones.

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Flight MH370 - very thought provoking discussion.

by BoogerMan in

this video presents some sinister claims & info.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79r77zt6jku&t=4234s.

slimboyfat

This seems like a plausible explanation. Governments get up to all sorts of things like this that we never hear about. This could be one of them. Even if it isn’t, governments obviously do sacrifice civilians in order to keep state secrets in scenarios like this and use their control over the media and other institutions in order to cover it up.

It’s now a matter of historical record in the UK, for example, that the government intentionally exposed its citizens to radioactive fallout from nuclear tests and then monitored them to see the results. They used their control of the media and censorship to deny the reality for decades and delayed acknowledgement until after most of the victims had died. Instead of compensating people they called them crackpots and conspiracy theorists until it was too late. If governments can do that, can they bring down a plane or two of civilians when they perceive a national security risk? Of course they can. It’s probably near impossible to prove it in any particlar case because the government has huge resources and censorship at its disposal, and the “conspiracy theorist” label is a powerful ideological weapon. But we can be sure this type of thing carries on today as it has always done.

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Ten reasons Jehovah’s Witnesses have the true religion (plus a bonus one)

by slimboyfat in

thinking back when i was a true believer these are probably the top ten reasons why i believed jws are the true religion.

1. they show love among themselves by not going to war.

not killing your fellow believers in any circumstances, including war, would seem to be a very basic requirement for true christianity.

slimboyfat

Did you go to the summer convention, no-zombie? It was wall to wall Jesus.

Thanks, Earnest, yes I can see that specific situation is powerful.

I could have added that the behaviour of JWs during the Third Reich was also something that convinced me Jehovah’s Witnesses have the truth. The Nazi regime is as close to a laboratory test of who are true Christians as you could conceivably devise and JWs conducted themselves well when so many others did not. That’s not to deny that individuals of other religions showed courage or that some other small groups also took a stand against the regime, but it seems obvious that JWs stood out as a religious group that stood firm under extreme trial.

FreeTheMasons and Vanderhoven and downvoter you’ve either misunderstood the thread or are not willing to enter into the spirit of it. There are hundreds of threads on why JWs are wrong. I thought one thread on why we thought they were right might be interesting. 💡

62

Ten reasons Jehovah’s Witnesses have the true religion (plus a bonus one)

by slimboyfat in

thinking back when i was a true believer these are probably the top ten reasons why i believed jws are the true religion.

1. they show love among themselves by not going to war.

not killing your fellow believers in any circumstances, including war, would seem to be a very basic requirement for true christianity.

slimboyfat

Thinking back when I was a true believer these are probably the top ten reasons why I believed JWs are the true religion.

1. They show love among themselves by not going to war. Not killing your fellow believers in any circumstances, including war, would seem to be a very basic requirement for true Christianity.

2. They honour Jehovah’s name by using it and giving it prominence. Again this would seem to be a very basic requirement for Christians who are said to be called out of the nations as “a people for his name”.

3. They reject the post biblical teaching of the Trinity which uses language that is not found in the Bible and distances people from God by making him appear incomprehensible.

4. They teach the truth about who Jesus is as God’s firstborn and his loyal servant.

5. They point to God’s kingdom as the only hope for mankind as Jesus and the early Christian’s did and don’t get involved in politics or social or protest movements.

6. They preach and publish in more languages than any other group in history, fulfilling the Bible prophecy about preaching to all the earth in the last days.

7. Their founder Russell rediscovered basic Bible truths at a time when technology was in place to facilitate the preaching work worldwide.

8. Jehovah’s Witnesses have increased from a tiny number in one country to be a great crowd of worshippers from all nations of the world.

9. Each of the JW leaders has been just what was needed at the time for Jehovah to accomplish his purpose: Russell to recover Bible truth; Rutherford to arrange a theocratic structure and remove remaining false beliefs and practices; Knorr to organise the logistics of an unprecedented worldwide preaching campaign; Franz to provide a Bible translation that accurately conveys God’s word; the Governing Body in the final part of this system of things to prepare God’s people to come through the Great Tribulation and into the new world.

10. Witness teaching about humans looking forward to endless life on earth makes better sense as our biblical destiny rather than viewing this life a waiting room before we go to heaven.

11. Witness teaching that God’s sovereignty has been challenged and will be vindicated makes sense of human history, gives an explanation for suffering, and offers the hope that it will end permanently in the future under God’s kingdom.

These are the kinds of thoughts and reasons that convinced me JWs had truth. Other groups may meet one or a few of these points to varying degrees, but only JWs meet all of them combined. What were your reasons for believing JW have the truth?

135

Rumour 144,000 literal number teaching to be abandoned at Annual Meeting

by slimboyfat in

say it ain’t so!

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in one sense it’s a no brainer because the figures just don’t add up any more.. in another (negative) sense it’s a no brainer because it’s been fundamental to jws since year dot and might undermine the whole thing?

slimboyfat

Maybe it was the hum of changing opinion

https://youtu.be/Lzlc0-Mx0sk?si=zLB-ay1L67OPl2-n