"HAVE you given up on organized religion? If so, you are far from alone. In many countries the number of people who describe themselves as ‘not religious’ is growing—a trend that suggests an uncertain future for institutional religion. Some of those lands are shown here." -AWAKE! NOVEMBER 2015Oh the irony... Yes, yes I have. Needless to say more.
Have you?
Anyway, I quickly glimpsed most parts and here are things I want to point out:
In the article they include money, material prosperity, sex scandals, history of religions, and all the others that is actually going on right now and being exposed in their own organization. Looks like to me that they are trying to make regular members to look at other religions so that they can get their attention away from the Watchtower organization and buys some more time to fix things so that it doesn't look so bad PR wise.
At the middle comes the f-bomb of donations reassuring the current witnesses who might have heard about any *ahem* money problems within the organization, that everything is voluntary:
"In harmony with those principles, Jehovah’s Witnesses do not charge for their literature or for Bible instruction. Nor do they tithe or take up collections at their meetings. Instead, needed funds are supplied through private voluntary donations."Aaand at the end comes the regular get out of Babylon the Great yada-yada. I would bet that somewhere in the magazine it shows an example of a person or couple joining Jehovah's Witnesses with their perfect white teeth and they could be never better.
"Join now as our legal and free slave, donate your tax-free money to our deposit boxes and we will promise you a perfect ever-lasting-life-somewhere-in-the-not-so-distant-but-still pretty-far-away-future and as an extra Jehovah will like you on Facebook!"
Link for full article:
http://www.jw.org/en/publications/magazines/g201511/organized-religion-dying/
