I posted a topic about this a few months ago. As some have pointed out, this event was made into a short movie. The link to my prior thread contains links to the movie itself. The parallels to JWism are striking.
neverendingjourney
JoinedPosts by neverendingjourney
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The Third Wave...a 1972 Social Experiment....
by AK - Jeff inhttp://www.vaniercollege.qc.ca/auxiliary/psychology/frank/thirdwave.html.
this is a fairly long read.
please read it.
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Disorganized religion
by nomoreguilt infor so many years now the borg has spoken condesendingly of organized religion.
this raises many questions then on their part.
what do jw's call the people that have oversight on all jw's?
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neverendingjourney
The WT has always said whatever they needed to say to suit their purpose at the time. At the height of their attack against "organized religion" they were a tiny, ragtag group of loosely organized Bible students. This was mainly back in the 20s and 30s during Rutherford's reign as president. However, as they began to grow, they began to look more and more like the object of their derision. Consequently, their attacks on organized religion shifted and began to focus on "false" religion.
However, there is still a legacy of organized religion bashing left within the WT, especially by those who have spent many, many decades within it. I remember seeing a picture in the Proclaimers book of some bible students back in the 1930s or thereabouts holding a sign that read "religion is a snare and a racket." Somewhere along the line they must have had some new light that clarified that only "false" religion was a snare and a racket, not the hyper-technical and ultra-organized bureaucratic religion that they had morphed into. -
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Noah, Jerusalem, and Divine Judgment. How would you answer this?
by neverendingjourney injesus compared the last days with the days of noah 1 .
the wtbts says that noah preached for 40 years 2 before the flood came so that he could give his contemporaries a chance to repent and be saved.
when jehovahs time came, he closed the doors of the ark and brought a global deluge that killed everyone but noah and his family.
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neverendingjourney
That's an interesting response. Of course, that answer assumes that God was unwilling or incapable of rapidly multiplying the number of preachers in order to warn the world's population within a 40 or 50 year time period. It also assumes that God was unwilling or incapable of using radio or television to reach large masses of people with relative ease. Plus, the JWs teach that their preaching work isn't designed to reach every individual person, just "all nations." So, why would Jehovah need 100 years to raise up an army of JWs to reach "all nations?"
Mental gymnastics of this kind drives me nuts. JWs dogmatically embrace whatever they are told and defend those positions however illogical they may be. Even when I was a zealous JW, having to come up with these silly responses to questions embarrassed me, especially when the difficult questions were posed by people I encountered in the door to door work.
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LATEST OFFICIAL WORLDWIDE REPORT ON JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES - WHERE IS IT?!
by steve2 inby this time of the year, the previous year's worldwide preaching activity of jehovah's witnesses has usually already been published in the watchtower magazine.
for decades, the january 1st edition detailed the wordlwide activity, country by country.
two years ago, the annual report was shifted to the february 1st edition of the watchtower.
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neverendingjourney
I'll add that the society's website still has the old statistics as of August 2006
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LATEST OFFICIAL WORLDWIDE REPORT ON JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES - WHERE IS IT?!
by steve2 inby this time of the year, the previous year's worldwide preaching activity of jehovah's witnesses has usually already been published in the watchtower magazine.
for decades, the january 1st edition detailed the wordlwide activity, country by country.
two years ago, the annual report was shifted to the february 1st edition of the watchtower.
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neverendingjourney
I was wondering the same thing myself. I'd also love to see a copy of it.
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Noah, Jerusalem, and Divine Judgment. How would you answer this?
by neverendingjourney injesus compared the last days with the days of noah 1 .
the wtbts says that noah preached for 40 years 2 before the flood came so that he could give his contemporaries a chance to repent and be saved.
when jehovahs time came, he closed the doors of the ark and brought a global deluge that killed everyone but noah and his family.
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neverendingjourney
tidingsbearer,
From your post, my impression is that you are a person of faith who’s trying to get me believe that although the Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t possess that elusive truth, such truth can be found somewhere else.
I have nothing against faith. It’s an important part in the lives of millions of people. I’m no one to denigrate that. But it’s just that, faith. Even the book of Hebrews says that faith is the assured expectation of things hoped for, the evident demonstration of realities though not beheld. Faith and truth should not be equated. They are separate things.
If someone tells me that placing my hand on an open flame will result in burns, I can test that. I can follow through on that and realize that what I was told was indeed truth. I can’t do that with faith. By definition, faith can’t be proven or it would cease to be faith and would become truth.
I respect most of what’s written in the Bible and I think most Christians are moral, upstanding people. However, faith isn’t for me. I tried it and I refuse to live that way anymore. If God exists or has a plan for me, I’m going to need proof before I believe in him. Noah, Abraham, Moses, the Apostles, they all were given proof. Why should I expect anything less? Absent that proof, I have no way of discerning whether the truth is to be found in the Bible or in the Quran or in the Torah or in the writings of L. Ron Hubbard. I refuse to make life’s most important decisions based on what somebody else claims is truth. -
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Greetings from a recovering mormon
by FormerMormon ingreetings from the other side of the street,.
i just loved having you guys proselytizing on the other side of the street when we were tracting.
i am a recovering mormon with a believing spouse / family.
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neverendingjourney
Some folks on this forum who have never been JWs come on here because they find our XJW experiences interesting. However, I get the feeling that some of this fascination is similar to the interest people on the interstate show when they slow down to catch a glimpse of the car wreck on the side of the road. It's voyeuristic and it creeps me out, quite frankly. Some of these people have been taken to task regarding the flaws in their own religious beliefs, and they have often gotten defensive about it. If you're going to come on this forum and engage in some JW bashing, you better be willing to face the music when your own religious beliefs come under scrutiny. Anything short of that is hypocritical.
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Greetings from a recovering mormon
by FormerMormon ingreetings from the other side of the street,.
i just loved having you guys proselytizing on the other side of the street when we were tracting.
i am a recovering mormon with a believing spouse / family.
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neverendingjourney
our god is indeed harder to please than yours
From what I've learned, the LDS beliefs are more unorthodox (and thus perceived as wackier by the general Christian public) than JWs, but JWs rules and regulations are much more harmful and overbearing. I've always respected the fact that the LDS encourage higher education and that they don't kick people to the curb as easily as JWs do. That said, both are high-control religions, in my opinion. I would seriously caution anyone thinking about joining either of these two groups.
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Greetings from a recovering mormon
by FormerMormon ingreetings from the other side of the street,.
i just loved having you guys proselytizing on the other side of the street when we were tracting.
i am a recovering mormon with a believing spouse / family.
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neverendingjourney
Who knew there'd be pissing match between current and former Mormons on an ex Jehovah's Witness forum. Fascinating!
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If you are a Jehovah's Witness,
by rmcgill_leader inif you are a jehovah's witness please understand that i am not against you as an individual.
i am not an apostate from the watchtower organization and, of course, i was never baptized as a jehovah's witness.
however, when i was 17, i studied with the jehovah's witnesses for a couple of months, but quit.
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neverendingjourney
If you're looking to pick a fight with Jehovah's Witnesses, you've come to the wrong place. The vast majority of us are former JWs or never were JWs to begin with. I have no desire to replace one oppressive set of beliefs for another. We are intelligent people who are quite capable of deciding which spiritual road to take ourselves. I don't really care about reading your version of how I can protect my soul from eternal damnation more than I care to sit through another meeting at the kingdom hall.