Society's Video: "To The Ends Of The Earth...

by IslandWoman 6 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  IslandWoman

  "To The Ends Of The Earth" is the title of a 1995 video made by the Watchtower. This video highlighting the Gilead Missionaries, their schooling and daily life at their assignment, is IMO, the most beautiful video the Society has ever made.

  It is also their most dangerous! What is presented to us is real brothers and sisters, sincere brothers and sisters, loving brothers and sisters. These young people who, for the love of God and their fellow man, are not only willing to give up everything but also put their lives in the hands of men they trust and go wherever they are sent, anywhere in the world. In the video these young people in effect shore up the Governing Body; their sincerity gives life to the lie.

  In 1996 I had major surgery, during my recovery time at home this video provided such comfort to me. I played it over and over.

  Today, I played it again. It truly is a beautiful video (excepting the part where GB members try to give a few words of their personal wisdom to the students), but now it is painful to watch. Painful because I know these young people are being led by a group of men who are not living in the present. Men whose every fiber of spiritual existence is rooted in perpetuating a system of beliefs that validates their position, authority and organizational history. Men who are willing to sacrifice the future on the altar of the past.

  The young missionaries are being betrayed by the Governing Body as surely as Jesus was betrayed by Judas Iscariot!

  Linda

  Edited by - IslandWoman on 12 June 2002 16:21:17
• 

  LDH

  Amen, and Amen!
• 

  SYN

  Couldn't agree more...I've also seen that...
• 

  Dutchie

  I agree wholeheartedly. What a waste of young lives .
• 

  IslandWoman

  Hi Cellomould,

  Do you think that this video encourages people or gets them by their guilt?

  Speaking for myself, when I was still under the "spell" of the Watchtower this video spoke out to my heart. I was not young in years as these young missionaries were, but I was young at heart, young spiritually.

  I played it over and over because I felt about the Org. as they did, and I felt about service to God through the Org. as they did.

  Now, I like to play the battle scene at the beginning of the movie "Gladiator".

  Linda
• 

  hillary_step

  IW,

  A powerful post thank you.

  I think that you have touched upon a major reason as to why the GB, especially those who are aware of the WTS deep failings, are happy to move at the pace of growing grass.

  They have surrounded themselves with a buffer of sincerity and an unyielding addiction to ideals through which it is very hard to reach them. There are many, many thousands of decent and well motivated JW's. Unfortunately many feel because they are fine and well motivated, those who send them out into the world are this way also. Like the naieve young man who fells that because his mother loves him all women should love him, and finds feminine rejection untenable.

  Ron Hubbard, the originator of Scientology won many prizes and great accolades for the work he did in rehabilitating drug and alcohol abusers, and the many gifts that The Church Of Scientology made to the poor. Sincere people did the work, but I am quite sure the master of ceremonies had his eye firmly focused on the good public relations that flowed from this work.

  This makes the GB to my mind, regardless of their individual grasp of reality, no better than those they frequently condemn to eternal destruction for lying and hypocrisy.

  Thanks again IW - HS
• 

  Liberated

  Linda: "perpetuating a system of beliefs that validates their position, authority and organizational history."

  You said a mouthful there!!!

  Libby