Do the angels guide people to the witnesses?

undercover

I remember growing up that we used to hear experiences of people who felt lost in life or weren't happy and miraculasly a JW showed up at the door and brought life-saving good news to the distressed one who moments ago was seeking help from God in prayer.

And there were the experiences of people who led a life of debauchery until realizing that they weren't happy and they had to change. Enter JWs as a study was started and the former evil-doer was transformed into a zealous servant of God.

We've all heard the stories. They were always shared at assemblies and public talks to impress upon us that God's spirit was acting upon either the witness who found the searching on or that the spirit moved the searching one to find the organization. I remember when they said that the angels were directing the work and sending people to us or us to them.

Well, I read a newspaper article about a guy who used to be in a rock band but realized there was more to life, or so he thought. He developed an interest in the Bible and started reading it. He had grown up Catholic, but was unsatisfied with the answers that he got from the priest. So he started searching elsewhere. Who do you think he found?

I'll just post the part of the article that I thought was interesting:

[His] search for truth began in smoke-filled clubs and anonymous motel rooms when he was on the road with his band.
He began reading the Bible between sets after a friend recommended that as a way to find answers to life's questions. It took him several months to work his way through.
"When I finished reading the Bible, I knew God was telling me, 'I want all of your life, completely,'" he said.
-------
After he quit [the band], he moved back home with his parents in Bethlehem, Pa., and began a spiritual odyssey.
He made an appointment to talk with a Catholic priest, the faith he had been raised in, Tarole said.
He asked the priest to point to the place in the Bible where the pope and other traditions of the Catholic Church are mentioned. The priest's answers didn't satisfy him. Tarole called a Baptist minister, who was too busy to see him, and knocked on the door of a Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Hall, but no one answered.
One day he was walking down a street in Bethlehem, when he saw a sign that read, "Gospel Meeting, the Church of Christ meets here."
He went inside.
He was impressed at how much the people cared about each other, he said, and by the way the Bible backed everything in the sermon up.
He returned to the Church of Christ and began studying the Bible with the minister there. In 1975, he was baptized in that faith.

Here was a guy who was reading the bible and searching for truth but when he looked at the JWs, no one was home.

I know that you can argue all kinds of reasons why he didn't find a JW that day, but the experience tells me that JWs don't have a patent on people finding them through soul-searching or prayer. If other religions can make the same claims as the JWs do when it comes to these conversions then it negates the use of God's spirit as being an influencing factor. It becomes just a coincedental happening.

daystar

JWs don't have a patent on people finding them through soul-searching or prayer.

No one does, but many claim to have anyway. How does that support their belief structure? It doesn't, so it's ignored or discounted or whatever. When people don't, under all the facade, have real confidence that what they believe to be true, is in fact true, they tend to do that sort of thing. I see this outside of the religious context as well.

Finally-Free

And there were the experiences of people who led a life of debauchery until realizing that they weren't happy and they had to change. Enter JWs as a study was started and the former evil-doer was transformed into a zealous servant of God.

Yep, that was me, except it was no angel that led the JWs to me - it was my mom. But as my Catholic sister once said to my mom, I could just as easily have turned my life around without joining a cult. Fast forward 20 years - the cult did a lot more damage than my previous drinking, drug abuse, immorality, and gang activity did. I wonder if they'd say that in one of their fake circuit assembly experiences?

They used my experience at a circuit assembly, but never bothered asking my permission to do so. As it was, most of the experience they gave was a pack of lies. When I heard it, I thought some of the storey resembled my past, but I never knew it was "my" experience until someone told me after the assembly. I was very pissed.

W

heathen

Yah I've even heard televangelists with the same kind of stories . Some poor slob turns on his TV and suddenly Gods spirit was directing him to send money .......... GAG

Lilycurly

My father always bring that one up. If it wasn't from the JWs, he would have still been the drug-doing, hippy guy that he was. I say...people usually outgrow this kind of stuff. Does a mature person really need someone to tell them to stop or they will die at the hands of a god? For all I know, he could have joined Buddhism and he would have turned out an even better person, without the use of bible-thumping and who wouldn't let die, or shun his children.

Honesty

I always enjoyed going on a RV with another JW, especially a pioneer sister.

Wanna know why?

Because when we got to the RV's door and were invited in the person (usually a women or teenager) would always thank us for stopping by and since our last visit someone from the church around the corner had been by and invited them to a worship service. They went and within a week or two accepted Christ as their Lord and Savior and they were so grateful to us for knocking on their door that morning last month because they had found the Lord and were attending church on a regular basis.

Isn't that neat?

Apparently none of the sisters I went out in Field Service with thought so. They would start complainig about how Satan had beaten them back to 'their' RV and now the person would never accept the 'Truth' because they were a part of Babylon the Great now and you know how much hold Satan has over a person.

BluesBrother

Nice post, undercover . it puts neatly into words what we have all known as a sneaking feeling, even some honest dubs of my family have expressed doubts over these stories.

Any evangelical group will claim the same for its members. Of course! that's why they evangelise.

I have known some dodgy experiences too, in my Circuit Assembly days. A fellow elder would be given the assignment to relate "Encouraging experiences" and he has to find them somehow. A friend of mine backed out at last minute. His conscience would not let him relate his fairly minor success in such a way as to distort into something great.

Btw , about angelic direction. There was one lady down in my hometown congo who claimed to be depressed to the point opf contemplating suicide, but she prayed to God for help and....guess what? the doorbell rang and two witnesses were there. After studying a little while she was feted as a local celebrity and used as an experience on the assembly. The witnesses stopped doing that when they became more familiar with her delusional stories , and the study did not last for very long

Jez

Here is a different perspective:

First of all, I don't think it is possible to understand the ways in which God works. Whether or not they are JWs, they were people, in the area, and if their knocking on someone's door stopped suicide or took someone away from their normal routine or made them think.....maybe God did send them. They are people and God may not see labels: "Jehovahs Witness" "Catholic" "Buddha". Maybe he just sees people and what kind of a soul they are housing. It is humans that see the label first.

Secondly:

Does a mature person really need someone to tell them to stop or they will die at the hands of a god?

Well, not ALL people are 'mature', some are still on that journey and always will be, if they are still at a stage where outside influences affect them, they respond better to community responsibility or need an initial goal to achieve that someone else set for them....so be it. I have faith that as a person continues that journey, they will grow from 'needing' someone to tell them to 'inner understanding' and a release of guilt etc. It is how a child develops, they NEED parents to tell them what to do, what not to do, right and wrong, but as they grow and mature....(a continual unending process for humans)...they learn that the motivation comes from within....but psychology teaches us that the 'within' is just your internalization of mother/father. You, in essence, learn to parent yourself. Maybe that is what religion does for some people.

We are all at different stages of 'needs'. Jez

greendawn

They had a picture once in the WT showing an angel guiding the dubs on their street work. Given the evil nature of that org any angels promoting its interests can only be satanic angels cunningly transformed into ministers of light.

The Lone Ranger

If you take the time to hear other religions, they ALL have stories like that. I once heard a young man being intereviewed on TV, he was saying how grateful he was that Jesus lead him to his church and how his life was saved, how he changed for the better etc.. etc.. that church was called " The People's Temple" and their leader was named Jim Jones. Of course that is an exteme example, but ALL religions have stoires like that, listen to the TV evangelist, they have interviews of men and women who's lives were 'lost' until they heard their message and then they changed and they've being happier ever since.

Of course a 'good' JW never listens to other religions because they all come from satan except for the WTS.

Do the angels guide people to the witnesses?

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