i haven't been on here in quite some time so i apologize if i missed a similar thread already (i did look for one :) ) anyways, just to be clear i think the jw response to covid in general has been really positive and proactive and they've done really well trying to educate people on covid, doing zoom meetings, etc to prevent spread within the congregations.
the part that i find interesting is how compliant and non-apocalyptic the branch has been during all of this.
even as someone who's a bit of a skeptic i found myself wondering if this might be the beginning of the end between covid, economic upheaval, and blm.
sir82 - "More valuable to them is the control the exercise over, and the adulation they receive from, their adherents."
To a degree.
Far more so, however, it's the Concept that they're Captive to...
Ray Franz - "...the strongest force is their devotion, even reverence, for the concept of organization, and of the Watch Tower organization’s claim to being exclusively God’s channel..."
Everything they say and do...
...everything...
...is in service to maintaining and reinforcing that fiction.
i find it ironic that jw.org publishes an article about homosexuality on the day i received july 2020 issue if the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints magazine "ensign" which also has an article on same-sex attraction.
.
regardless, the lds article comes across as more caring than the jw article although in the end members in good standing cannot act upon their same-sex attraction in either religion..
Downtowner - "... the LDS article comes across as more caring than the JW article..."
Unsurprising.
I've long thought of the LDS as the WT's weirder but nicer older cousin.
...
I actually suspect that (unlike the WTS) the Mormons will eventually come around as time goes by and they evolve to survive...
...other mainstream Christian denominations are, after all.
for a long time, i thought pimi (physically in, mentally in) jws were unique in their inability to simply type and read the latest "google" news results about "jehovah's witnesses " or "watchtower".
however, it appears it is not uncommon for a large portion of the population purposefully to avoid facts...on purpose!
"why do people avoid facts that could help them?.
Balaamsass2 - "Why do Jehovah's Witnesses avoid examining their own religion?"
Because they might find something that they don't like.
........the great reset launch.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5pxhsndr4u.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lanwf9r759s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8raitdq-nvy.
@ truth_b_known...
Oh yeah, a lot of loyal JWs are susceptible to conspiracy theories.
So many of 'em can be retconned into the WTS' eschatology with a minimum of effort, especially by rank-and-filers who've been waiting a long time for the End to come.
we have to get rid of these racist relics.
i propose that we destroy all these bottles of syrups and burn every pancake box !
we need to get rid of anything that reminds us of anything negative concerning slavery.. in boston they decapitated the head of christopher columbus and got rid of his statue.
Fortunately, here in Canada, we have maple syrup...
...and trees don't have racist origins, so it's all good.
tonight there was an 8 minute segment allocated to reporting on jws regarding child abuse and the redress scheme.
it was presented by lisa wilkinson for the project.the australian branch has issued a statement to the show advising that they will not be joining the scheme.. they state:.
statement from the jehovah’s witnessesthe religion of jehovah’s witnesses does not have the institutional settings that the voluntary national redress scheme is designed to cover.therefore, the ministry for families and social services has been advised that jehovah’s witnesses will not join the scheme.jehovah’s witnesses have responded and will continue to respond directly to individual claims for redress in a caring, fair, and principled manner, taking into consideration the unique circumstances of each claim.. https://10play.com.au/theproject/articles/statement-from-the-jehovahs-witnesses/tpa200621ycelq.
The more I think about it, the more I wonder just how dependent the Org's business model is on its tax-exemption, particularly in the US...
...especially due to how hard (albeit quietly) they've fought over the years to keep it.
tonight there was an 8 minute segment allocated to reporting on jws regarding child abuse and the redress scheme.
it was presented by lisa wilkinson for the project.the australian branch has issued a statement to the show advising that they will not be joining the scheme.. they state:.
statement from the jehovah’s witnessesthe religion of jehovah’s witnesses does not have the institutional settings that the voluntary national redress scheme is designed to cover.therefore, the ministry for families and social services has been advised that jehovah’s witnesses will not join the scheme.jehovah’s witnesses have responded and will continue to respond directly to individual claims for redress in a caring, fair, and principled manner, taking into consideration the unique circumstances of each claim.. https://10play.com.au/theproject/articles/statement-from-the-jehovahs-witnesses/tpa200621ycelq.
Although...
...I wouldn't put it past a quietly and increasingly desperate (as a result of facing multiple crises) WT leadership to try and passive-aggressively provoke Satan's World into cracking down on them early anyway, in the hopes that Jehovah would step in and bail them out by kicking off the Great Tribulation (remember, all the available anecdotal evidence we have indicates that the guys at the top really are full-on True Believers).
And if that didn't work... well...
...every other authoritarian regime in history has preferred to crash-and-burn rather than capitulate to their opponents.
tonight there was an 8 minute segment allocated to reporting on jws regarding child abuse and the redress scheme.
it was presented by lisa wilkinson for the project.the australian branch has issued a statement to the show advising that they will not be joining the scheme.. they state:.
statement from the jehovah’s witnessesthe religion of jehovah’s witnesses does not have the institutional settings that the voluntary national redress scheme is designed to cover.therefore, the ministry for families and social services has been advised that jehovah’s witnesses will not join the scheme.jehovah’s witnesses have responded and will continue to respond directly to individual claims for redress in a caring, fair, and principled manner, taking into consideration the unique circumstances of each claim.. https://10play.com.au/theproject/articles/statement-from-the-jehovahs-witnesses/tpa200621ycelq.
@ skin & menrov...
Ah, but there's a problem with that.
The WTS's eschatology is very specific; "Babylon the Great" - aka "false religion" - is supposed to be attacked and destroyed first...
...and only after all its various iterations are eliminated does the "Wild Beast" and "Satan's World" turn their attention on "God's Exclusive Earthly Organization".
They've never diverted from that.
Sure, the Org leadership might try and spin it the way you guys describe, but this is a significant departure from their End Times script that could create a tremendously difficult theological dilemma...
...either they were very, very wrong about their understanding of Revelation, begging the question "WTF else are they wrong about?"...
...or...
...they themselves are part of "Babylon the Great".
i would like to ask the ex-jws on this site to put their ‘apologists hat’ back on for a moment, so that i can go through the overlapping generation teaching in an attempt to make sense of it.
i apologise if these points have already been addressed on this site.a quick background for the reason for my request… having never confronted a jw apologist on the topic, i recently engaged with a jw regarding the official understanding of a ‘generation’ and unfortunately he didn’t have an answer to the points i was making.
i was left a little confused as to what the official jw response would/should be.so i was hoping that my thoughts below might be considered from an apologist’s perspective.the point in question relates to this section of the watchtower article below from 2008, as well as the jw.org video explanation of the overlapping generation:---:w08 2/15[box on page 25] can we calculate the length of “this generation”?the word “generation” usually refers to people of various ages whose lives overlap during a particular time period or event.
waton - "The wt doctrine calls for all anointed sealed partakers to be called to their heavenly reward at the outset of the Great Tribulation, not just the Governing Body, so... how about the other 144000? dispersed everywhere, not of the Governing Body?"
Interestingly, a significant portion of the Org's recent internal publications regarding rank-and-file partakers seem to have the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) goal of smearing them as posers and/or mentally unstable.
I wonder why?
i would like to ask the ex-jws on this site to put their ‘apologists hat’ back on for a moment, so that i can go through the overlapping generation teaching in an attempt to make sense of it.
i apologise if these points have already been addressed on this site.a quick background for the reason for my request… having never confronted a jw apologist on the topic, i recently engaged with a jw regarding the official understanding of a ‘generation’ and unfortunately he didn’t have an answer to the points i was making.
i was left a little confused as to what the official jw response would/should be.so i was hoping that my thoughts below might be considered from an apologist’s perspective.the point in question relates to this section of the watchtower article below from 2008, as well as the jw.org video explanation of the overlapping generation:---:w08 2/15[box on page 25] can we calculate the length of “this generation”?the word “generation” usually refers to people of various ages whose lives overlap during a particular time period or event.
There's another consideration, too.
Sure, they'd (theoretically) escape secular justice, but the scenario you've described would absolutely have to be maintained...
...indefinitely and using increasingly draconian means...
...simply because no hint of their self-imposed exile could be allowed to be publicly exposed.
Doing so would reveal that...
a) ...they're cowards for hiding, instead of bravely defending their convictions the way Jesus' apostles did, and...
b) ...they're egregiously deceitful for letting the rank-and-file think they'd been "raptured" away...
...and both would too deeply undermine the Org's claims of authority and exclusivity, which can never be permitted.
No matter how comfortable they'd be, it would amount to a life sentence.
