Telling 'householders' they are going to die at Armageddon

by rebel8 27 Replies latest jw friends

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  rebel8

  If I recall correctly, the WTS predicted there would come a time when the job of JWs in FS would shift towards telling people they were about to die rather than trying to convert them, and the WTS would let them know when to start doing that. Something along the lines of there being a point in time when it was too late to convert and the wicked must be told they were going to die. Does anyone else remember this teaching? I don't know if it was in the literature or if it was a local teaching.

  I was just remembering how my congregation began to take this seriously in the mid to late '80s. I think there was a mention of it in the literature or a talk, and a vocal/influential clique in the cong started spreading it around that this was the sign we were awaiting from the WTS to shift our focus. From that point on they started being a lot more confrontational in FS. They would start their presentation with the usual song and dance but if the householder offered **any** resistance or reluctance, they would read aloud scriptures about the wicked being destroyed and would directly tell the poor householder he/she would be executed if he/she did not convert!!! I remember them literally and dramatically shaking the dust off their feet as they left the householder's property, often right after they read aloud the scripture that instructed them to do so, with the householder watching the "shaking off". It was sooo embarassing for me, but I cannot even imagine what it was like for the householder. (These particular people IMO belong to JWs just so they can go around being rude and morally superior.)

  Since I have not heard anyone else say this on the ex-jw forums, I am assuming this was an isolated group of wackos. Did anyone else have an experience like this?
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  blondie

  The WTS hasn't said much about this in recent times. Supposedly this is done after the destruction of Babylon the Great. I'll look for the statement but if others have it stored away already...

  Blondie
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  VM44

  "...would shift towards telling people they were about to die rather than trying to convert them.."

  And I am sure many JWs were gleefully looking forward to that time! Then they could say, "We're going to to live and you're going to DIE, because we were right and you were wrong! NYAH! NYAH! NYAH!

  I am serious that many in the congregations had that wishful thinking about the future.

  What Bible scripitures did the JWs use to say that the preaching of salvation work would turn to a preaching of judgement work?

  --VM44
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  MidwichCuckoo

  I DO recall being told that all the preaching work would stop and not continue until ' the end' ....does anyone else remember?
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  rebel8

  VM44, I tried to look it up in the online version of the NWT but it does not have a search function. The only search function yields literature citations, not scriptures. Very fitting! Who needs the Bible when you have the fine WT literature?
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  mustang

  I recall it being related as "PREACHING THE JUDGEMENT MESSAGE". I don't recall any specific details and it could have been said in the 50's through the early 70's, to my recollection.

  My memories are that it was said only occasionally and then just touched on briefly. Whatever literature that brought it out DID NOT DWELL ON IT. For example, it would be a single sentence in one paragraph of a study article. I never recall anything like a whole article devoted to the "judgement message" or titled so.

  It is like it was really there, but almost everybody "glossed over it".

  Mustang

  
  
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  mustang

  I don't recall it being in the NWT or any specifc scripture(s) that might have been used. I think you would have a better chance of finding a reference searching the WT. Now, it could aslo have been occasionally mentioned in Sunday "Public Talks".

  Mustang

  you've got me wondering, too class
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  NeonMadman

  IIRC, the teaching came from the book, Babylon the Great Has Fallen. There is a text in Revelation that speaks of hailstones the size of a talent. Since hailstones are made of ice, which is frozen (i.e., hard) water, and since water in Scripture is sometimes used as a symbol of truth, they concluded that the hailstones represented the "hard truths" that would someday have to be preached - namely, that the day of salvation had passed and that anyone who had not "entered the ark" was doomed to destruction. I envisioned a special issue of the Watchtower with a cover blurb, "Are You Doomed?" being offered with a companion Awake!, probably with an article on how hailstones are formed. The cutoff point, as I recall, was the destruction of false religion. That marked the beginning of the Great Tribulation, and once that had begun, all opportunity for salvation was lost.

  When the Kingdom News series was revived in 1973, a lot of us expected that the messages in those tracts would get progressively stronger until they would culminate in the "judgment messages" as Armageddon drew close. They did put out some strongly worded ones at first, but as 1975 approached, they, too, descended into the same old mush that was being published in the other publications.
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  mustang

  I don't recall it being in the NWT or any scriptures that were used relating to "THE JUDGEMENT MESSAGE".

  You would likely have better success luck searching the WT. It may also have been mentioned occasionally in a Sunday "Public Talk".

  Mustang

  You've got me wondering, too class
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  BluesBrother

  I believe there were several references in the "Good old days". .................................

  *** w67 1/15 p. 60 As Age-Old Institutions Crumble, Is Survival Possible? ***

  AT

  THE LAST, A DEVASTATING HAILSTORM

  The seventh plague poured out upon the air or spirit of this world accomplishes these things and also much more, because it affects the atmosphere itself. Therefore Revelation continues: "And a great hail with every stone about the weight of a talent descended out of heaven upon the men, and the men blasphemed God due to the plague of hail, because the plague of it was unusually great." So from the atmosphere there crash down hailstones on men, hailstones of tremendous size, weighing ninety-six pounds avoirdupois. They fall with great speed and cause stupendous destruction. Since hailstones are congealed water, this hailstorm pictures that heaven would send down upon worldly mankind a barrage of hard Biblical truths. Jehovah’s witnesses are now preaching a message of deliverance and salvation for those who will take refuge in the Kingdom, which cannot be shaken. But the hailstones picture, not a message of deliverance, but the hard, unyielding proclamation of God’s vengeance against Satan’s visible organization. Jehovah’s witnesses will at the last deliver this stinging message, presaging the destruction of the men upon whom it falls.

  The men who are affected by this hailstorm are those who did not call upon the name of Jehovah for salvation, but who blasphemed him at hearing the judgment messages and the execution of these. They refused in the past to hear the message that would have meant salvation for them and now they especially hate this condemning declaration. (Joel 2:32; Rom. 10:13) The fact that the plague of it was unusually great foreshows that at the last there will be an unusually great proclamation of God’s vengeance by Jehovah’s witnesses.

  That the seventh plague will indeed finish the anger of God upon the world is illustrated in the picture here given in Revelation. It indicates that those who survive the symbolic earthquake will without fail be destroyed by the accurately aimed executional hailstones from the heavens. Not that the truths themselves kill them, but the judgments that God executes in harmony with the truths expressed.—Job 38:22, 23; Ps.