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  4

  Any information please

  by link in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  can anyone tell me what the jehovah,s witnesses currently believe regarding the date that cyrus destroyed the temple at jerusalem.

  i asked a witness and they told me that they now believe that cyrus arrived in jerusalem in 607 bce but did not destroy the temple until 20 years later!!!!

  this still makes a nonsense of 1914!!!.

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  Thanks.

  They all seem to have their own ideas on this, as with many of their other doctrines.

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  4

  Any information please

  by link in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  can anyone tell me what the jehovah,s witnesses currently believe regarding the date that cyrus destroyed the temple at jerusalem.

  i asked a witness and they told me that they now believe that cyrus arrived in jerusalem in 607 bce but did not destroy the temple until 20 years later!!!!

  this still makes a nonsense of 1914!!!.

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  Can anyone tell me what the Jehovah,s Witnesses currently believe regarding the date that Cyrus destroyed the Temple at Jerusalem. I asked a Witness and they told me that they now believe that Cyrus arrived in Jerusalem in 607 BCE but did not destroy the Temple until 20 years later!!!! This still makes a nonsense of 1914!!!

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  4

  Do they make it up as they go along?

  by link in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i havent been around here for a couple of years but i wondered if anyone would be interested in commenting on the information given at the web site: http://www.lawphil.net/judjuris/juri2003/aug2003/am_p-02-1651_2003.html.. it is extremely long but i found it interesting.

  it concerns jehovahs witnesses living as man and wife without being married.

  in the philippines there is no divorce so a witness cannot remarry unless they get an annulment which is extremely expensive and beyond the reach of most fillipinos.

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  Thanks for the responses but if everything about the religion is based on scripture, where do they get this one from? I don't recall anything in the Bible about signing a bit of paper written a group of old men being a marriage licence. As far as I recall the Bible mentions marriage ceremonies.

  Apart from that, even after signing the document, the partner who was married before signing is still married in the eyes of Church and State. Or does the document also dissolve any previous marriages and if so under what law is this disolution legal?

  I have a personal interest in this.

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  4

  Do they make it up as they go along?

  by link in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i havent been around here for a couple of years but i wondered if anyone would be interested in commenting on the information given at the web site: http://www.lawphil.net/judjuris/juri2003/aug2003/am_p-02-1651_2003.html.. it is extremely long but i found it interesting.

  it concerns jehovahs witnesses living as man and wife without being married.

  in the philippines there is no divorce so a witness cannot remarry unless they get an annulment which is extremely expensive and beyond the reach of most fillipinos.

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  Hi,

  I haven’t been around here for a couple of years but I wondered if anyone would be interested in commenting on the information given at the web site: http://www.lawphil.net/judjuris/juri2003/aug2003/am_p-02-1651_2003.html.
  It is extremely long but I found it interesting

  It concerns Jehovahs Witnesses living as man and wife without being married. In the Philippines there is no Divorce so A Witness cannot remarry unless they get an annulment which is extremely expensive and beyond the reach of most Fillipinos. In this case they are trying to convince a Court of Law that The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society allow such people to live together if they sign a declaration.

  However they are saying that this is a Rule of the Jehovahs Witnesses in the Philippines. I had never heard of this before in the Philippines or any other place. Has anyone else?
  Can you imagine the anarchy and chaos if the regulations of the WBTS overruled national laws? The mind boggles.

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  121

  Who Was Shocked By the Watchtower UN NGO Scandal?

  by AlanF in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  .

  i'd like to get comments from people about whether and how much they were shocked, surprised, or otherwise bothered by the watchtower society's becoming an associated non-governmental organization (ngo).. note that i'd like to see these comments because they might lead to some interesting publicity, so please comment accordingly.. alanf

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  Unfortunately I have not had time to read every comment on this thread so my apologies if I am repeating anything.

  I have found that reaction to the UN involvement falls into two areas. Firstly there are those who were, and still are, profoundly shocked. It gave their faith a severe jolt.

  Then there are those (in the majority) who claim that they would have been surprised if the Society were not affiliated in some way as they needed to ensure that they were aware of what was happening on a global scale from "the centre of activity". These people also say they are disapointed that the Society claims to no longer be an NGO, as they feel that this puts them at a disadvantage.

  At no time in any discussions that I have had has any comment been made about "the wild beast" or the "harlot" nor any comment regarding the JW teaching on such matters or their previous strong condemnation of those "churches of christendom" who are registered as NGO's

  On the whole I have found their reaction to be one of complete acceptance with no excuses called for, let alone acceptable excuses. Just totally hypercritical.

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  17

  WT & Hitler Info required

  by aniron in

  1. jw
  2. friends

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  can anyone direct me or provide the information of how many jw's actually were sent to and died in the nazi concentration camps.

  i believe that the jw's claimed so many numbers, but the actual figures were lower.

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  Even the Society cannot give you a straight answer. The following is some of the information they have put out in their literature over the years. It is from my own research and includes some of my comments.

  I started with the earliest reference that I could find and this came from the Watchtower magazine of 15 May 1950, just five years after the end of the war:

  *** w50 5/15 153 Organized for United Testimony ***

  11 The most notorious case of persecution for living up to the name is that of the witnesses in Germany. They were banned by Hitler soon after he signed the concordat with the Vatican in 1933. Their property was confiscated. Ten thousand ministers were placed in concentration camps. Only eight thousand were released after World War II; two thousand had been murdered.

  As can be seen, it says that 10,000 Witnesses were placed in concentration camps and only eight thousand were released at the end of the war. It says that the other 2,000 were murdered. Moving forward a few months I found that this is roughly confirmed in the Watchtower magazine of 15 December of the same year although it does say that 1,000 of the 2,000 who died, were executed.

  At this point I believed that I had the evidence that I was looking for, but then I came across the article on page 13 of the Watchtower magazine of 1 January 1964 which says:

  *w64 1/1 13 ?

  Hitler, a Roman Catholic, the arm of his church in Germany, forbade Jehovah?s witnesses to preach the kingdom of God, and these modern-day Christians had to say to Hitler?s Gestapo police: ?Whether it is righteous in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, judge for yourselves.? They kept preaching even though 10,000 of them were put in concentration camps and over 4,000 died there. The rest nearly starved to death. The war?s end aided their survival.

  Here the figures change with 4,000 of the ten thousand inmates of the concentration camps dying and the remaining six thousand being released at the end of the war. But there are more changes to come. Thinking that this could be a simple error I checked further and found the following in the Yearbook for 1974.

  *** yb74 212 Germany (Part One) ***

  "But despite the hard conditions, how those who worshiped Jehovah rejoiced! They had been privileged to prove their integrity to the Sovereign Ruler of the universe. During Hitler?s rule 1,687 of them had lost their jobs, 284 their businesses, 735 their homes and 457 were not allowed to carry on their trade. In 129 cases their property had been confiscated, 826 pensioners had been refused their pensions and 329 others had suffered other personal loss. There were 860 children who had been taken away from their parents. In 30 cases marriages had been dissolved due to pressure by political officials, and in 108 cases divorces had been granted when requested by mates opposed to the truth. A total of 6,019 had been arrested, several two, three or even more times, so that, all together, 8,917 arrests were registered. All together they had been sentenced to serve 13,924 years and two months in prison, two and a quarter times as long as the period since Adam?s creation. A total of 2,000 brothers and sisters had been put into concentration camps, where they had spent 8,078 years and six months, an average of four years. A total of 635 had died in prison, 253 had been sentenced to death and 203 of these had actually been executed. What a record of integrity!"

  These figures were confirmed in the Watchtower magazine of 1 July 1979 which says the following:

  *w79 7/1 7-8 ?

  By way of illustration, please consider the years 1933 to 1945, when Adolf Hitler?s "Third Reich" tried to exterminate Jehovah?s Witnesses in the German Reich. Their activities were banned and 6,019 were arrested, several of them two, three or more times. Two thousand suffered in concentration camps. A total of 635 Witnesses died in prison, 203 being executed.

  So now we have a completely different picture with 2,000 Witnesses placed in concentration camps, not 10,000 ! 635 Witnesses died with 203 of these being executed. There is an enormous difference between this figure and that of 4,000 that died, as given in the 1964 Watchtower.

  In the hope of being able to understand these figures a little better I used the Society?s CD Rom to look up the actual numbers of Witnesses in Germany just before and just after the war. This confused matters even further.

  The Watchtower magazine of 1 January 1971 had this to say:

  *** w71 1/1 16 Have You Entered the Great Contest of Faith? ***

  35 In 1932 when the last report was received from Germany and before the ban was placed on Jehovah?s witnesses, there were 14,453 sharing in the Kingdom declaration.

  By 1946, following the collapse of the German war machine and the opening of the gates of the concentration camps ? but not the graves ? there were 11,415 dedicated Christians still in the great contest for the faith. Ten years later this number grew to 50,530, and by 1970 in Western Germany there were 86,252 Christian witnesses of Jehovah.

  It appears that this could not have been put plainer or more accurately yet the Awake magazine for 22 February 1975 says:

  g75 2/22 22 ?

  Yet among the 19,000 German Jehovah?s witnesses in 1933, "a higher proportion (97 per cent) suffered some form of persecution than any of the other churches."

  This means that between 1932 and 1933 there were nearly 4,500 baptisms in Germany? But that?s not all. We see in the Awake magazine for 22 May 1987 that the figure given for the number of Witnesses in Germany at the end of the war had moved back from 11,415 to less than 9,000.

  *** g87 5/22 15 Part 6: 1946-1959 Deceptive Prosperity Amid a Peace That Was Not ***

  Jehovah?s Witnesses preserved Christian neutrality during World War II and thereafter. Rebounding from Hitler?s attempts to destroy them, the number of active Witnesses in Germany increased from fewer than 9,000 in 1946 to over 52,000 within five years.

  But it gets worse. The Awake magazine of 22 August 1995 says that there were 25,000 persons who admitted to being Jehovah?s Witnesses in Germany before the war began!

  *** g95 8/22 10 The Evils of Nazism Exposed ***

  
  Why were Jehovah?s Witnesses so well acquainted with the concentration camps? When World War II started in 1939, there were already 6,000 Witnesses confined in camps and prisons. German historian Detlef Garbe estimates that the Witnesses constituted at that time between 5 and 10 percent of the total camp population! At a seminar on the Witnesses and the Holocaust, Garbe stated: "Of the 25,000 persons who admitted to being Jehovah?s Witnesses at the beginning of the Third Reich, about 10,000 were imprisoned for any length of time. Of these, over 2,000 were admitted to concentration camps. This means that the Jehovah?s Witnesses were, with the exception of the Jews, the worst persecuted by the SS of all the religious based groups

  IN SUMMARY

  The Society?s publications give all of the following information:

  The number of Jehovah?s Witnesses put into concentration camps in Germany during the second world war was 2,000 and also 10,000. The number that came out at the end of the war was 8,000 and also 6,000. The number who died was 635 and also 2,000 and also 4,000.

  The number of Jehovah?s Witnesses in Germany before the second world war was 14,453 and also 19,000 and also 25,000.

  The number of Jehovah?s Witnesses in Germany at the end of the war was

  11,415 and also less than 9,000.

  Some of these numbers have to be wrong!

  CAN YOU EXPLAIN?

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  763

  Daniel's Prophecy, 605 BCE or 624 BCE?

  by Little Bo Peep in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  hello all, i've been reading your site for a couple of years now, and have found, for the most part, it to be very helpful.

  i must say, at first i was very "scared" at what i might find, but contrary to what i grew up learning, there is a "wealth" of information outside of the watchtower organization.

  i haven't attended meetings for about two years now, and like many i've read about, have spent many hours researching, telling myself "i'm not wrong for searching", and doing more research.

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  The sadest part about this thread, in my humple opinion, is that it appears to basically have nothing whatsoever to do with chronology. It seems to me that here we have a very sad situation in which a practicing Jehovahs Witness is desperately attempting to justify the basis for the Watchtower teachings. To his way of thinking the fact that the Society could be in error is something that cannot be allowed to enter his mind - the possibility just does not exist.

  The reason is quite simple: If this Jehovahs Witness (or any other) were ever to admit the simple fact that the Society holds to an incorrect interpretation of Scripture, particularly the very one upon which all their beliefs and teachings are based, their worlds would come to a sudden end. For them it is a matter of life and death - literally. I believe that this is precisely why the Governing Body are unable to correct something that started out as a simple misunderstanding and has had to be allowed to grow into a lie which must now continue forever.

  The fact that not a single Watchtower supporter has come to the aid of our struggling Witness in his attempt to justify an obviously wrong scriptural interpretation speaks volumes. The fact that it cannot be justified means that it is a topic that, for the majority of Witnesses, must be avoided.

  Any thoughts?

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  27

  More fun with witness urban myths.....

  by integ in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i have heard many urban myths associated with the watchtower society and its hapless adherents.

  i like the one where an "interested one" accepted the invitation to attend the memorial one year, and sat next to a "sister" who let the confused attendee use her bible to look up scriptures as they were presented.

  afterword, the "sister" walked the man up to the circuit overseer, who had delivered the talk that year, and introduced the dupe-filled "study" to the co. the co complimented the man on his spiritual interest and asked what impelled him to come up and talk to him.

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  The only people to survive the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima were Jehovah's Witnesses. They were being held in an underground prison for refusing military service!

  This always brings two questions to mind. What abour the guards, they must have survived also, and how did they all survive the radiation when they came out?

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  'mankind's search for god': a worldy person's opinion

  by Pleasuredome in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  someone i know was given 'mankind's search for god' book.

  he read it because he thought it would be interesting to know about other religions.

  he told me that he soon realised that after so long in each chapter that explained a particular religion, the text started to become biased and sometimes patronizing against that religion.

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  VM44,

  That is exactly what I was trying to imply in my post but I could not have explained it that well. My problem was that it took some years to see it ? perhaps because I had an untrained eye and was not looking for problems at that time.

  Pleasuredome was asking for the opinion of a worldly person ? which I was, so that was mine at the time.

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  'mankind's search for god': a worldy person's opinion

  by Pleasuredome in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  someone i know was given 'mankind's search for god' book.

  he read it because he thought it would be interesting to know about other religions.

  he told me that he soon realised that after so long in each chapter that explained a particular religion, the text started to become biased and sometimes patronizing against that religion.

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  Mankinds search for God was the first Witness book I ever read and the most meaningful words in that book were these:

  Logic tells us that a correct conclusion can be deduced only from a correct premise. If one starts off with a faulty premise, it is unlikely that one will reach a sound conclusion.

  It was only years later that I realised the significance of these words and the fact that this was the very reason why this could not be "the truth".

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