by kneehighmiah 6 Replies latest jw friends
https://www.yahoo.com/news/3-decades-later-remains-jonestown-bodies-found-203438454.html
Remains of people's temple cult members still unclaimed. Very sad tragedy. Long before I was born. Those deluded people. It can happen to anyone. At least we woke up!
Look at the new poll in the September Kingdom Ministry: WHAT FLAVOR OF KOOLAID DO YOU LIKE?
Scary!
Doc
I remember Jonestown all too well. At that time, I also was a relatively new Witness, having been baptized in January 1976. While I thought the Jim Jones cult to be horrible, I never would have equated Jehovah's Witnesses with it. Now I would, the only difference being the size of the two groups. Today's Governing Body has the same meglomania that Jones did in the sense that they teach that they are in charge through divine right. Their pronouncements are all about obeying and following them and their edicts. Sadly, few among their rank-and-file followers see this, choosing to blind themselves to reality. Like the Jones cult, I fear the words of Jesus apply equally to the WTS: "If, then, a blind man guides a blind man, both will fall into a pit."
Quendi
As gross as it is, the WT has claimed so many more lives. Of course a JW will try and argue this point, I think it's a good parallel to draw with them. The Jonestown massacre was people killing themselves for their faith in their leader. A JW who refuses medical treatment is just the same.
The most chilling are photos that show dead children at Jonestown. Almost as disturbing as this Awake cover.
How did Jones keep those poor people trapped in a Cult ?
"When your own thoughts are forbidden, when your questions are not allowed and our doubts are punished, when contacts with friendships outside of the organization are censored, we are being abused, for the ends never justify the means. When our heart aches knowing we have made friendships and secret attachments that will be forever forbidden if we leave, we are in danger. When we consider staying in a group because we cannot bear the loss, disappointment and sorrow our leaving will cause for ourselves and those we have come to love, we are in a cult... If there is any lesson to be learned it is that an ideal can never be brought about by fear, abuse, and the threat of retribution. When family and friends are used as a weapon in order to force us to stay in an organization, something has gone terribly wrong." - Deborah Layton
Sound familiar ????????
When I first left the JW cult I left that quote laying around, Mrs Phizzy picked it up ,read it, and said: " I don't think you should leave that quote about Jehovah's Witnesses lieing around".
I then told her that Ms Layton was a Jonestown survivor. Mrs Phizzy never argued after that against my calling the JW org a cult.
Those of us who have loved ones still in the JW.Org cult can take some comfort from the fact that the JW Org is primarily a business, run by shadowy figures in the background, who will keep the GB in check so that the Milch-cow keeps delivering the $$$, no "Jonestown" for them.
Thanks, Phizzy, for sharing that message from a Jonestown survivor. Those words accurately describe Jehovah's Witnesses and while the Governing Body has not orchestrated a physical mass suicide, it certainly has a death grip on most of its followers. Those of us who got out alive are indeed fortunate.
Quendi
I have to agree with CO that the blood ban in place, and especially the children effected by this, is mass suicide and mass murder through organizational pressure. it;'s the same thing only over a long period of years and years. Kind of like the slowly boiling frog, it is not noticed in the same way because it isn't all at once, all in one day, it is not a shock noticed all at once. However once a person recognises it for what it is, then reading the accounts, reading the numbers of people, numbers of children, then it is a sickening shock.
I was in my senior year of high school when Jonestown happened. I remember it very well.
Phizzy I too had this quote printed out and it is lying around our house as well. No comments by the husband.
