God's word-the publications?

notalone

Okay, so I have a friend that still interacts with my family. She is going through some difficult times, so I suggested she just read some of Psalms. She became a little agitated and said she would just listen to the mags. I couldn't understand the aversion to the Bible.Then she told me that at the recent CO's visit he explained that in the Bible when God's word is referred to in small letters that this refers to all of his words as expressed through 'god's organization'. They are now claiming that 2000+ years ago man was instructed to listen to 'words' from God that would not even exist for 2000 years, and if that's the case- What 'words' in the interim would also count as God's 'word'. Would the Catholic church or the Eastern Orthodox church be able to claim that their teachings were on par with the Bible? Could Mohammad qualify as uttering God's 'word'? I know they are under mind control, but come on. Has anyone else heard about this?

scratchme1010

How about your friend goes to some actually functional group that actually provides support for her problems instead of the magic cure of the bible and related nonsense. Makes more sense to me that if she decides that some piece of information causes more harm than good, then seek alternatives. What is the obsession of using the bible as a cure for all problems!

carla

It has been my very limited experience that jw's will not read the Bible by themselves. In my opinion they probably have tried it and found it does not match up with jw teachings therefore they are frightened by what they read and that they must be getting it wrong somehow without Mother to interpret for them. Might as well just rely on the rags. If a CO has some explanation for this all the better, relieves them of any personal responsibility.

iwasblind

No I have not heard this, but I know when I have quoted scripture and asked for an explanation, that I may as well be quoting from a fashion magazine.

They also seem to quote "scripture" that is not there now. My mum confuses watchtower terminology with scripture all the time. Also they are using scriptures less now in the articles and resorted to quoting just a few words from a scripture.

David_Jay

Things like this were common when I was a JW back in the 1980s. The problem was twofold:

First, COs were notorious in my day for advancing personal views, but were limited to doing this through what ever nook and cranny was left open to them due to the tight grip of material they were made to spread our way. Apparently COs had ego problems because squeeze in their personal views they would. Friends would compare "insights" offered by COs, usually made to look like Bethel was disseminating secret info on how close we were to the end--as if they knew the date already--and the COs were the only ones privy to this information...and anyone they shared this with from the platform. What one circuit heard often never got "announced" in another and vice versa. (And we got the silliest statements, some declaring that God has given "the brothers at Bethel" insight that we are about 7 years away from the end or that "the Governing Body discovered and removed spies from the Catholic Churcn" who were sent in by the Vatican to research the reason for our incredible growth--which was the holy spirit of course! Silly stuff that never turned out to be true.)

But the more common problem was that some JWs heard what they wanted to from the CO. Some that were so anxious for the end or perhaps some "new insight" (some people wanted nothing more than "new light" all the time, otherwise they got bored), the same projected their expectations onto some obscure statement made during a talk and BANG, New Stupid JW Gossip Fodder would be born, all ready for the gossip dissemination train.

They second problem was horrible. These types imagined all sorts of things that never happened. The biggest (and oddest) was that a series of Watchtower issues carried cover articles on the demonic dangers hidden in a popular 1980s kids' cartoon show, "The Smurfs." I met several people who swore "as Jehovah is my witness" that they saw and read these Watchtower mags that featured the Smurfs on their covers. Sometimes as many as a quarter to a half of congregation members had this problem of projecting expectations and personal conscience matters onto official venues from "the Society," as we called it then. This gave their personal views some validity. They often would spread their stories by feigning disbelief in what they saw to test others out to see how welcoming they were to such invented information.

I can't say for sure if either of these things are the problem here, but it would not surprise me if little has changed.

tiki

Makes no sense whatsoever. Either the co was out to lunch or she got his rhetoric completely discombobulated.

blondie

In theory the WTS encourages jws to read the bible through. But many start with Genesis and get stuck with the boring stuff and give up rather than start with Matthew.

I ran into so many questions about reading them in context that I had to keep the Insight book and index by me.

Many jws had their eyes opened just reading the bible.

tepidpoultry

The last Witness nonsense heard was among other things (spread by

local elders): Jeopardy question had New World Translation at World's

Most Accurate Bible (never happened I checked)

From past times,

One CO said that a popular hamburger chain had blood in their hamburger,

Another CO said that "direction from Society" was that at every door we

start with: Hello, we're Jehovah's Witnesses" THIS GUY ACTUALLY LIED

TO THE CONGREGATION

Definitely a lot of abuse of authority,

What I found amusing was a long time elder relating that on a recent CO

visit the CO said how he was sick of elders asking for him to verify

his instructions in writing from the Society,

I'm hearin' a bit of a credibility gap lol

God's word-the publications?

Share this