My thoughts and observations re: the Memorial

by 144001 21 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  144001

  While sitting through my annual visit to a kingdom hall tonight, I had the following thoughts/observations:

  1. The speaker appealed to the kids: "How many here are 15 years of age or younger?" He then went on to tell us how exciting it would be to "lie down" with lions that eat straw instead of flesh, and further discussed JW kids napping with leopards, bears, and cattle. He added, "this is what the ransom sacrifice made possible for your future!"

  Weird.

  2. The majority of the talk was focused on explaining why the vast majority of the witnesses do not get to partake of the crackers and wine at the Memorial "celebration." Then the crackers and wine were passed around, and no one in the hall ate or drank. Nice celebration, guys. You get teased with food after you're told why you can't eat it.

  3. The fixed, empty facial expressions of the mentally enslaved who attended were kind of disturbing to me. I felt like I was in a room filled with robots.

  4. I received the usual attention from the single moms there. You know, the divorced ones with 3 kids, more baggage than a 747 jetliner, and a delusional belief that I might actually be interested in them . . .

  They deprive their members of the basic joys in life, christmas, birthdays, kid's sports, etc., and replace ithem with a "celebration" that consists of more of the same bogus preaching with no food or refreshments for the "great crowd" of pigeons who support this publishing empire. They do allow them to look at food and drink, but not to eat or drink it.

  Some celebration . . . not.
• 

  cptkirk

  why were you there? do you regularly attend meetings? you have nothing better to do? lol
• 

  ssn587

  Why go and waste your time. Who would even be interested in the drones er rather single moms with x amont of kids looking for someone to take care of them, so that they can donate more money and themselves in an dying effort to uphold WTBS?
• 

  144001

  I take my elderly parents every year.

  At the hall, I openly tell people that I was raised as a JW but had no interest in getting baptized and never believed in their teachings. It's always interesting to see how they respond.

  But really, the experience is torture for me, and I do it solely for my parents because I love them.
• 

  barry

  It is strange to me the witnesses have been very busy giving out invitations to the memorial in my area but what if I went and decided to partake after all at my church we partake every month. They say anyone is able to celebrate the eucharist as they see fit because some of the 144000 will fall away and at the same time discourageing and allmost threatening them not to partake. Very strange.
• 

  Finkelstein

  "How many here are 15 years of age or younger?"

  They are probably thinking how ridicules and improbable that would be knowing animal biology.

  Stay with the Watchtower Corporation kids you'll get to pet and play with lions one day.

  And play with Pirates that will eventually be resurrected that you most likely read about in children books.
• 

  cptkirk

  that is respectable.....something that i could not do myself. maybe if my father wasn't an elder with abusive tendencies , may have been different. my father is very good at making his war everyone else's war, kind of sad when you think about it, considering he went to war for this country,and yet doesn't understand independence, and fighting your own wars one on one. that is the WTs loss though, as they will find in the end, they have been used as a tool for people's personal warfare. but alas, those people were directly selected by god, so they would never do anything like that, right?

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxGfp4Mc8eY
• 

  Julia Orwell

  " The majority of the talk was focused on explaining why the vast majority of the witnesses do not get to partake of the crackers and wine at the Memorial "celebration." Then the crackers and wine were passed around, and no one in the hall ate or drank. Nice celebration, guys. You get teased with food after you're told why you can't eat it."

  I found this particularly disturbing. I ran out in tears because as a Christian I believe all Jesus's followers should do this, and I found the to-ing and fro-ing offensive, after we're told Jesus died for us but didn't really...
• 

  tec

  I did not notice #3, and #4 definitely did not happen to me ;). But the first two points I noticed as well. Especially the second. How much emphasis was placed upon not partaking... and that even if someone did partake... that does not mean that everyone else should.

  Also, that only those who know for sure that they are of the 'heavenly calling' ARE of that calling. As sure as you know 'your own name'. So if you are not that sure, then it is obviously not for you, according to this teaching. How can anyone be that sure of something that the wts teaches them is NOT for them, and with so much emphasis? I mean, the very design of their emphasis on the one over the other instills doubt, even if just a tiny amount. Then that in turn disqualifies someone... according to the wts teaching.

  It felt like a 'damage control' talk, to me. Very sad though.

  Peace,

  tammy
• 

  tec

  I ran out in tears because as a Christian I believe all Jesus's followers should do this, and I found the to-ing and fro-ing offensive, after we're told Jesus died for us but didn't really...

  I'm sorry, Julia, that it was so hard on you. And you are right... all of those who want to belong to Christ should partake. He says so Himself.

  "I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die . I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever . This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

  I went to partake, and I know some others who did so as well. To help show those trapped within that we should listen to Christ... and not to men.

  Peace to you,

  tammy