As a JW how do/did you feel about 6 billion people being destroyed?

jwfacts

How else can a person justify that Jehovah will destroy 6 billion people, innocent children included? I could never accept that I deserved salvation whereas almost no one else did. It put me on permanent spiritual edge because i thought the Slave is right so the doctrine of destruction must be, but my heart always knew it was wrong.

It is only by keeping my heart alive that I think I could waken my mind from the mental fog it had been subjected to my entire life.

Matthew 15:8 says ‘This people honors me with their lips, yet their heart is far removed from me.' I can't help but think the WTS forces shutting down the heart in order to follow such evil doctrines as shunning family and thinking everyone deserves to die.

Did many others have trouble accepting this concept as a JW?

atypical

I never felt right about it. I figured I would die with them because I didn't do enough personal study and didn't pray enough. I grew up dreading any sign that Armageddon was here.

Frog

I took huge issue with this teaching all my years growing up in the troof. I just couldn't digest and internalise it. You can teach a doctrine till you're blue in the face, and even possibly back it up with seemingly relevant scriptures, but if it goes againt all essences of humanity it's never going to gel with a person of sensible heart & mind. It was this sort of absolute lack of humanity, charity and real love in the org that screamed out warning signs to me. x

Frog

I figured I would die with them

touche' atypical...I too always felt and knew that I was on the outside of this one, and likewise lived in fear & dread of my disgustingness in the eyes of JH. Nowadays I realise what a credit to us it is that we were always naturally repelled by such teachings that 6b innocents could die for the sake of proving JH's point to the right to rule despite his apparent absence for millenia.

Agree JW facts that it is the shunning principle that keeps the WT so powerful and conservative. Without it, the WT would be just as weak as any other faith that's liberalised and rapidly losing numbers.

You know it's moments of relfection such as these that make me proud to know that all through our years of growing up and being indoctrinated that no matter how powerful their control was over us that ultimately they weren't able to reach deep within our hearts and minds with their teachings, which is where it really counts. frog x

Highlander

This subject always gets my blood boiling.

When I was about 10 years old I had a return visit I would bring magazines to every 2 weeks. My mom would always go with me to this RV.

After a few months with this 'return visit' we decided to offer her a bible study. The lady was a very nice person, however she politely declined our bible study offer.

Mom and I returned to the car, where I asked her... "what will happen to her if she doesn't study with us and go to the kingdumb hall?" To which my mother replied,

"well, she will die in armagedden" I then replied that "she is a such a nice lady and she will still die?" Well we all know my mom's answer,,, yep, she will still die.

Not too long ago I reminded my mom about this memory of mine. I told her it was one of the sickest things I've ever experienced. Mom ofcourse dismissed my whole

point and what I remembered.

The whole point I'm trying to make is, that the concept of 6 billion deaths,, people dying for not going to the kingdumb hall was totall outrageous even to a 10 year old.

So needless to say, this really gets my blood boiling at my ripe old age of 31. Honestly I have zero respect for those that have such an elitist attitude such as my

mom has. I'll probably never truly respect her because of that horrible lesson she taught me.

Frog

people dying for not going to the kingdumb hall was totall outrageous even to a 10 year old

it's really quite remarkable isn't it that a child can be so switched on having taken in only limited amounts of information up to that point in their life. And an adult with a plethora of knowledge at their dispossal can arrive at such a ludicrous proposition. The mind surely does boggle!

Likewise babe, I totally know how you feel re losing the respect you had for people who continue to hold such an elitest attitude. People I thought I once respected, my elder sister being one, I no longer can for this sort of belief speaks to much about a persons sense of reason and kindness of heart. And to think that JW's consider their preaching work the greatest charity possible to members of the community. It's so frickin bizarre when I think on it now.

rwagoner

I grew up in the dubs too and as a kid I remember the exact same feelings. Now after many years of freedom and as a parent myself now...I look back at my childhood and have very mixed feelings.

I have very loving parents but I could NEVER subject my kids to the mind control and constant feeling of having to meet some totally unreachable goal of perfection to avoid being killed. I mean it may sound extreme but now that I look back on it...I spent my entire childhood being afraid that God was going to kill me.

I could never be the perfect little JW...even if I acted it on the outside...I KNEW that I wasn't good enough or was having "wrong thoughts" or doing something that would ultimately result in being killed in a horrible way like the pictures in the books and magazines.

I wasn't physically or sexually abused like many others but the great JW Mind-F**K as my wife calls it, will ALWAYS be with me.

Farkel

: As a JW how do/did you feel about 6 billion people being destroyed?

: Did many others have trouble accepting this concept as a JW?

Only the rabidly insane ones.

Man truly made God in man's image. What normal human parent would do this to his/her own children? Yet, God can do this and have people excuse Him from doing this and even WORSHIP him for doing this?

Nonsense.

Farkel

Scully

I had a hard time understanding why a Loving God™ would want to destroy good, decent Worldly People™ that I knew, when our congregation was full of spiteful, rotten, dickhead JWs.

Leolaia

This was one idea I could never really accept. I always thought to myself that God will judge the hearts, not religious affiliation, so that many self-righteous JWs who think they are saved but are not humble or have good hearts will be "humbled" by God, while many good people in the "world" who have good hearts will be saved. That's what I thought in my teen years, and I kept thinking of all the kind-hearted people in the world, or those who are disabled or mentally handicapped, or the Amish, or people in countries that have no contact at all with Witnesses. I realized then in the mid-80s that either the end was not close or one's salvation does not depend on being a JW. There was no way the end could be close AND salvation is only through being a JW, because there were many millions, if not billions, of ppl in the world who "had not yet been given a witness". At least one of those doctrines must be wrong, if not both. When the Society tried to spring a guilt trip on inactive JWs by saying that they are "bloodguilty" for not providing a witness to ppl who could be saved from destruction at Armageddon, I thought the "end" must be decades away at the minimum by that logic....for there were just not enough Witnesses around the world to give a witness to everyone....

As a JW how do/did you feel about 6 billion people being destroyed?

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