I went to the meeting today to hear the Public Talk given by the visiting CO. The talk dealt with Jehovah's secret dwelling place and how we can all be taking advantage of "fleeing to safety" as it were, especially as the days are getting wicked as he mentioned. He brought out the dangers of listening to apostates (there were 2 people in the congregation who disassociated themselves recently, which automatically meant that they were apostates according to the CO's comments). Then he further elaborated on the fact that there were about 14,000 witnesses disfellowshipped in the USA each year and in Canada 1400, about the size of a circuit assembly - also he said how terribly dishonorable it would be to be df'd and be as a dead person as it were (I felt so embarrassed as I am df'd) - During the talk he brought out two points which were extremely misleading if not outright lies: He said that just after the disaster of Sept 11th, thousands of people "wanted to flee to security to the Watchtower building and that they felt that they needed this security". This is complete nonsense; first of all, people were running north and east from the collapsing WTC and the only alternative was when going east to run to the Brooklyn Bridge and voila, what stands at the end of that bridge? Of course the WT headquarters; many people passed that building and undoubtedly, the doors may have been open to invite some of the people who were on the run, where perhaps many received shelter of some sort. But to say that people were literally looking only to the WT for security is simply not true. Then he said something else: he mentioned that the Society is not misleading their people and the proof is that the organization allows witnesses to check their bibles, otherwise they would not be encouraged to do so. So in other words, the very fact that you can always check the bible is the absolute proof that the Society is not misrepresenting their followers. They forgot to mention of course that the only times you can check the sciptures would be when the Watchtower or other publications quote and refer you to the bible, yet to be checking God's word on your own and using independant sources is strictly forbidden. By doing so, you would certainly be branded as an apostate using the WT reasoning. Yes, as the CO reiterated many times during his talk: showing allegiance to the organization is paramount to serving Jehovah since God is behind this visible slave class. How easy it is to continue to brainwash and manipulate their people into total submission without any free will of any sort, yet never doing enough for Jehovah, always doing more and more, constantly feeling inadequate as one never does enough to please the Society. It's a never ending cycle - everybody is afraid to be kicked out and be df'd or even to be left out by not being accepted as a spiritually strong person - it's extremely tiring and debilitating to the stability of someone's mind and emotion - no wonder why there are so many mental illnesses including suicides among Jehovah's people...
Richie :*)