PART 1 - WAR
WT quotes are taken from their own website so as not to be “out of context” as the JDub apologists will cry out.
http://www.watchtower.org/e/20060915/article_02.htm
The Watchtower writes:
“A Beginning of Pangs of Distress”
“Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom,” said Jesus, “and there will be food shortages and earthquakes in one place after another.” He added: “All these things are a beginning of pangs of distress.” ( Matthew 24:7, 8 ) Let us examine “these things” individually.
Vast numbers of people were slain in wars and ethnic disputes during the past century. “Three times as many people fell victim to war in [the 20th] century as in all the wars from the first century AD to 1899,” states a scholarly report from the Worldwatch Institute. In his book Humanity—A Moral History of the Twentieth Century, Jonathan Glover writes: “An estimate for the period from 1900 until 1989 is that war killed 86 million people. . . . Death in twentieth-century war has been on a scale which is hard to grasp. Any averaging out of the numbers of deaths is artificial, since about two-thirds (58 million) were killed in the two world wars. But, if these deaths had been spread evenly over the period, war would have killed around 2,500 people every day, that is over 100 people an hour, round the clock, for ninety years.” Can you imagine the grief and pain this must have caused the millions of relatives and friends of those who lost their lives?
FEAR MONGERING –
YES, war is terrible! However, the God of the Israelites and the God of the JW’s sanctioned a “Get off my lawn genocide” at the hand of Joshua when the Israelites invaded “their land” starting with Jericho.
Now without checking the exact numbers above to see if they are exaggerated or not (it matters not to my argument here), let’s look at some real numbers for the beginning of the 21 st Century
Since 2001, coalition forces in Afghanistan have lost a total of 2753 lives. In Iraq since 2003, they have lost a total of 4795. This has been the first 11 years of the 21 st Century. http://icasualties.org/ Now adding in estimates of all loss of life we get about a million http://www.unknownnews.org/casualties.html or 100,000 per year.
Let’s compare that to some historic battles where in one day, more died.
Not to mention the atomic bomb like crushing of Jericho, shortly afterward in Ai, the Bible says that 12,000 lost their lives in one day (Joshua 8:25) Compare that to the 7548 coalition forces in the Middle East over the last decade. And Joshua and his soldiers were just getting started. How many men did Gideon and his 300 men take out in one day?
Let’s look at Samson: Day 1 with a jawbone 1000 men killed (Judges 15); Day 2 he killed 3000+ when he brought down the house (Judges 16 only counts the 3000 who were on the roof not those inside so I do not want to exaggerate here). 2 days in the life of the hairy one and 4000+ killed.
How about the angel of Jehovah? (2Kings 19:35) 35 And it came about on that night that the angel of Jehovah proceeded to go out and strike down a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians. When people rose up early in the morning, why, there all of them were dead carcasses
Now some non-Biblical war:
The battle of Marathon? 490 BC between the Greeks and Persian Empire. On that one day, an estimated 6600 died on both sides.
Gettysburg - Approximately 7,500 to 8,000 'official' deaths were recorded at Gettysburg, but some historians have raised that figure substantially after reviewing casualty lists by name. Many of the missing were almost certainly killed. The actual death tolls may be 4,000 to 5,000 for the Union and 6,000 to 7,000 for the Confederacy.
World War 1 saw over 8.5 MILLION soldiers die between 1914-1918. With a period in 1918 known as The 100 Days Offensive between August 8 to November 11, 1918 that claimed 1,855,369 total casualties
And then WW2 1939-1945 - Civilians killed totalled from 40 to 52 million, including 13 to 20 million from war-related disease and famine. Total military dead: from 22 to 25 million, including deaths in captivity of about 5 million prisoners of war.
But since then??? The numbers have been going down - NOT UP - as the Watchtower would like you to believe.
Korean Conflict 1950-54 - most sources estimate some 2,000,000 killed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War#Casualties
Vietnam – while the US suffered 52,000 lives, the actual number of North and South Vietnamese is not known for sure, but going with high estimates, let’s say 5 Million (over 20+ years). Now compare that to WW2’s est 75 million over 6 years and you get 12.5 million deaths per year in WW2 and only ¼ million deaths per year of conflict. So the numbers are going down (while the population keeps increasing, thus further reducing the ratio of deaths contributed to war in the last 60 years+.
WAR DEATHS PER YEARS RATIO AND % of WORLD POPULATION
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0762181.html
1945 – WW2 – 12.5 miilion/yr 0.489% (1950 population)
1954 – Korea – 500,000/yr 0.019% (1950 pop)
1975 – Vietnam 250,000/yr 0.006% (1970 pop)
2011 – Middle East 100,000/yr 0.00146% (2010)
So in actuality, not only are the number of deaths and casualties from war steadily DECREASING, put compared to the world’s increasing population, they are almost non-existent.
You see, the Watchtower wants you to think that things are worse than what they actually are. Why? So that they can control you by you putting your full trust into them. It’s called fear mongering
The publishers of the Watchtower seem to forget another important text in the Holy Scriptures: 'For everything there is a season....... a time for war, and a time for peace. (Ecclesiastes 3.1-8.)
This is only the beginning of an expose on JW fear mongering and twisting of facts to suit their needs.