i've done a thread on this before, but i've made new observations at the hall (trust me, i just go now for entertainment value and baptism has been put off until forever) thus have new questions i want to ask the "great crowd" here.
i might be imagining it because i've become so skeptical of jehovah's witness behavior, but when i ask them certain things, they shut down as if i'm heavily criticizing or they imply that only "spiritually up building things" should be spoken about.
it's bizarre.
Before my first visit to a Kingdom Hall, I was left with the impression that attending a JW meeting was a mind-altering experience:
- going by all the hype that I had heard beforehand, anyway.
However, the reality proved to be rather more like your first experience! Then, for a long time afterwards, I thought that it must be me - that there was a point that I was somehow missing. Reality did take a long time to finally sink in.
Bill.
coming off a topic that terry started recently concerning what if j rutherford never grabbed a hold of the wts.
corporation.. i thought it might be interesting to accumulate a list of things that would never have happened due to the wts/jws .
existence and expansion over the years.
I, too, would never have met my wife:
- thus sparing her, me, and the three children from untold misery.
(As you might have deduced by now, that didn't work out too well!)
Bill.
out now.. yes, yes, yessssss!
on p. 26-27 they talk about how the lunar positions on vat 4956 fit 588/7 bce!!!.
"clearly, much of the astronomical data in vat 4956 fits the year 588 b.c.e.
It is a technique called "muddying the water":
- usually resorted to by people who know that they are wrong, but no way in hell will they admit to this!
Bill.
one of the most firmly established new religious movements which bases its mission on apocalyptic predictions is jehovahs witnesses.
jehovahs witnesses believe that we are living in a harvest period, the end days of the present world, and should dramatically change our lives accordingly.. the movement can be traced to the 1830s, when a baptist leader named william miller announced that the bible is full of secret numerical clues.
according to his interpretation of scriptural passages, he wrote of his prediction that christ would return to earth some time between march 21, 1843 and march 21, 1844. an estimated 100,000 people accepted his message and formed an informal network to anticipate the second coming, often leaving their mainstream christain churches in the process.
Further to theBibleResearcher's comments, C.T. Russell adopted the date 1874 from the Second Adventists - but after the event, and by which time they had modified its significance to beginning the "invisible return" of Jesus Christ. (The meeting between Russell and the Second Adventist's N.H. Barbour occurred sometime in 1876). The Second Adventists were a result of the wreckage of William Miller's Adventist movement. The JWs, however, were only very indirectly so.
However, both Russell and Barbour both believed that 1914 would mark the end of the "last days", and definitely see the end of the world. (Barbour later abandoned this idea, but Russell never did - until 1914 came and went, after which he amended it to 1915, according to his The Time is at Hand of that same year).
Likewise, in the early 1920s, the Witnesses did predict that the end would happen in 1925 (WT 7/15/24, p.211). This was the thrust of J.F. Rutherford's bombasts that "Millions Now Living Will Never Die." (Incidentally, the "understanding" about the Other Sheep came about ten years after that, in 1935).
Once again, the JWs were expicit about expecting the end to happen in 1975. While they may not have anywhere in writing said precisely that "Armegeddon will happen in 1975", that thought was left hanging there repeatedly:
- so as to leave the reader with no doubt that this is what the WTS believed; and furthermore, what it wanted its readers to believe. (Either that, or the WTS made an abysmal job of communicating what they did believe!).
Just a few examples of many include Life Everlasting in Freedom of the Sons of God (1966). Around about page 29, after extensive discussion about 1975 marking the 6000th anniversary of human creation, the expression "appropriate" was used to describe the sequence of events should God pull the pin on "This System" during that same year.
Further to that, a series of Watchtower articles in 1968 added fuel to the 1975 fire :
- WT 5/1/68 p.271 spoke of the "gap" as being "less than one year."
- WT 8/15/68 p.499 talked of "weeks or months - not years."
During those years, I was an avid reader of everything that the WTS printed, and I saw first hand how their writings about 1975 were interpreted:
- both by Witnesses and non-Witnesses alike.
In addition to what was written, much more was said from the platform - much of it quite specific that the end would be in 1975.
So what Mankelli says concerning JW predictions about the date of "Armgeddon" are quite correct - and it would take a great excercise in weasel talk to try and talk their way out of that one (particularly the 1975 date). Not to say it hasn't been tried, however!
Bill.
out now.. yes, yes, yessssss!
on p. 26-27 they talk about how the lunar positions on vat 4956 fit 588/7 bce!!!.
"clearly, much of the astronomical data in vat 4956 fits the year 588 b.c.e.
Regarding Rolf Furuli, and what he might know that nobody else does, I thought that his area of expertise is in the ancient languages?
- His profile gives occupation as lecturer in the Semitic Languages at Oslo University
i.e. Rolf Furuli is not an historian, an archeologist or a chronologist - making him more of a JW apologist on this matter, rather than any sort of an authority.
Bill.
my town will no longer collect old books like that as trash and they're pretty hard to burn.
my solution has been to include one in every bag of used cat litter when i clean the cat boxes.
i've gotten rid of around 30 that way and i'm about halfway there.
I would like to be able to say that I got rid of mine by means of a box of matches and about a gallon of kerosene. However, my JW family snaffled them first, so it didn't happen!
Bill.
are jw husbands bad people?
would you want your daughter to marry one?.
i ask because a male jw relative was baptised.
This was something that I never was comfortable with, particularly as my wife was one of those unusual persons whose IQ is clean off the top end of the scale - which is set at 200. (That her talents were completely wasted with the JWs is another story!)
My first introduction to domestic violence was with the JWs. I will say that in that particular case, the wife was not after equality in the relationship, she wanted to dominate -and in a non JW family, she definitely would have (thus making her husband well and truly "hen pecked"). However, the elders leaned heavily on him to excercise his "headship", even to the point of suggesting he use his fists to emphasize who should be in control. (One elder's exact words were that this husband "should clobber her.") If this wasn't exactly giving official sanction for violence, it was certainly telling that brother that the elders were going to look the other way when he used it.
Needless to say, the results of all this pressure was predictable.
The greatest irony of the lot, in my opinion, was that book the WTS printed in the late 1970s, Making your family life happy." The JW way of life is almost gauranteed to do the opposite!
Bill.
this quote is from the watchtower 1980 8/1.
"are you profoundly shocked and unduly disturbed when you see or hear of a christian you know yielding to doubts, cooling off and perhaps even becoming rebellious to the point of deserting the christian congregation and trying to draw others away with him?
if so, you may be comforted in knowing that, sad as such occurrences may be, the scriptures forewarn us that they will happen.. among the various causes of apostasy, one of the foremost is unquestionably a lackoffaith through doubt.
More of this "Jehovah's happy people" nonsense - and by contrast, all "apostates" are supposed to be sad.
Interestingly (and not at all surprizingly) the common theme that I hear from people around me when the subject of JWs comes up is "they never look happy." Sounds like all the active JWs around here must be apostates in disguise!
Bill.
does the watchtower give or create community, and take or steal faith and salvation?.
It is all about taking, and very little to do with giving.
W. Stevenson summed it up concisely in his 1975 - Year of Doom? "No other religious group demands so much from its members, in return for so little."
Bill.
as part of my objective analysis of four month's worth of watchtower study editions from july to october 2011, i found the following gem from a question from readers, on page 22 of the august 15 magazine.
the question under discussion was "how are we to understand the figures in the annual service report?
", and it goes on to provide an idiot's guide to what the figures mean, including the following.... "memorial partakers.
From my experience with ones who more recently began "partaking of the emblems", mental illness is all to common amongst them.
I should know, I was married to one such person.
(Bi Polar Disorder, and another condition that medical science has only been able to identify now, some 25 years after the event).
If that is a commentary on the calibre of WTS leadership, no wonder most JWs are so messed up!
Bill.
