The Malady of Apocalypsism

by AK - Jeff 7 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  AK - Jeff

  Yesterday I was 'taken back'. The same 'apocalyptic' nonsense is very live and well far outside the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses.

  I was sitting in my normal Monday morning haunt. My coffee buddies had all dispersed but one. The news was telling about the flooding of a small island near Portugal. Out of the blue Bob popped in with 'Wow, this is just making it clear how close we must be getting'. His inference was to 'the end' though he did not spell out his particular version of that end. The barista, also a friend of mine, chimed in agreement. They began citing the plane that crashed into the IRS offices this past week, the earthquaked in Haiti, and snow in 49 of 50 states this winter as 'evidence'.

  I never said a word. My lip is still bleeding from biting it. LOL

  Same olé song, different choir. The more I look, the more they all look just as fanatical as Jw's. The differences are imperceptible as I get further away from religion.

  Jeff
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  Robdar

  I've noticed the same myself. I wish Christians would stop living for the world to come and get busy in the here and now.
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  cameo-d

  AK, Your thread reminds me of one I started a few days ago because a JW I know basically had that same knee-jerk reaction to tragedies. It bothered me that there was seemingly no compassion or even to stop and ask "why"? I have thought about it a few days and I realize it is just a programmed response. It's what they have been trained to say and ingrained training to react in a jaded manner like "So what?" "It's nothing new?" "It's just going to get worse." " Jehovahs cleaning things up."

  I have mentioned here several times that other denominations have been promoting the same sort of "get ready here comes the big one" excited attitude about seeing events that cause misery and sorrow. The emotional reaction is so far from what should be normal. It's either blase or gleeful.

  Something interesting I ran across recently was an interpretation from Nostrademus prophecies that said christians and muslims would unite to go against the heathen. If that's the case, maybe you can snap your friends back to reality with that and tell them there may be a longer wait than what they think.
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  FatFreek 2005

  Several days ago my weekly issue of TIME arrived. Inside, it cited the continually falling crime rates of the U.S. since the early 1990s. So much so that certain crime rates are roughly half what they were some 20 years ago.

  Knowing that, at the dinner table, we had just heard a TV news report of some violent crime. I set my wife and her sister up (I know, that's bad) with the question, "Where do you girls think our country is with respect to crime years ago -- worse, the same, or better?"

  Though neither are JW's, both replied exactly as if they were -- "Oh, it's much worse".

  Forgive me but I had to share the info I had read in TIME -- info which the JW's will never read in AWAKE.

  Len
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  Terry

  My view of END TIMES preoccupations is this.

  Religious people, bible-thumpers, fundamentalists and Spiritual mavens live outside of time and space inside their heads.

  True, they take up space in the real world--but, they live INSIDE their own head most of the time disconnected from reality.

  This is alot like going underwater and holding your breath. Eventually you have to bob back up or drown in your folly.

  END TIMES represents a threshold between REALITY and UNREALITY.

  It is as close as the ding-bat can come to a meeting of two worlds as a kind of willy-nilly TEST.

  If they can identify ACTUAL happenings as impinging on the make-believe world they are always dwelling on---it breathes life (logical life) into the dreamworld and makes them feel "sane."

  Sometimes they cross the line.

  Pastor Russell crossed the line.

  Judge Rutherford crossed the line.

  Fred Franz crossed the line.

  They got stung badly! THEY TRIED TO MAKE IT HAPPEN by predicting it WOULD. In their own lifetime! Specifically!

  oops! Oops! OOPS!

  The only refuge (when stung) is to be driven ever deeper back into the delusion worse than before!

  Old William Miller (the grandfather of the Adventist GREAT DISAPPOINTMENT) admitted he had been wrong, but, went right on believing it would happen any day.

  JW's live on that slippery edge between sanity and insanity daily like a jumper on a ledge threatening doom.

  The problem is that they cannot jump! They can only threaten.

  Once you make that leap of faith you end up SPLAT! on the real sidewalk in a pool of your own very real blood.
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  PSacramento

  It was the island of Madeira by the way.

  Since the beginning of time, shit has happened.

  People die when nature decides to remind us of her power.

  The world may indeed end, maybe even tomorrow, maybe even 3 billion years from now, even Jesus said he didn't know ( that should be a huge hint for christians to STOP trying to predicte it).

  Every generation thinks theirs has it worse, its just human nature to want to be special, even in a bad way.
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  AK - Jeff

  It was the island of Madeira by the way.

  Thanx Psac. It would not pop into my mind as I tapped the keyboard.

  Jeff
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  Pistoff

  I have a feeling Robdar understands apocalyptic more than most christians.

  Apocalyptic is an old phenomenon; it was usually the product of oppressed or stressed cultures, who envisioned a new order, new government, new social structure different than their oppressive one, where people were treated equally, poverty was done away with, fill in the blank.

  Fundamental christians misunderstand the apocalyptic nature of pre and post Jesus groups; they have taken it literally rather than see it as a failure, or as a device, a way of living outside an oppressive reality.

  So rather than see that those who expected Jesus' return in the first century were wrong, they think that Jesus must have meant something else; he would return later, much later. As early as the 70's CE they were doing it, putting words into Jesus' mouth to make it appear he knew he would die and that he would return.

  That is the way it always works; when the expectd inbreak by god does not happen, they rethink their interpretation, reinvent the prophecy rather than see that the whole idea is wrongheaded. Jesus died; it was heartbreaking. But that does not mean he will be back, or that he was supposed to die.

  What he taught was unique enough to appreciate; to expect him back to destroy the unbelievers insults the fact that he did die because he was a revolutionary.

  P