Things that the WTS could never get away with putting in print but have free reign to say verbally
Here’s my summary of the DC after recently having the veil lifted from my eyes RE the WTS
Part 1/6
Blessed Are Those Who Give Glory to GodAfter opening comments the speaker went into:
*** Rbi8 Revelation 7:15 *** 15 That is why they are before the throne of God; and they are rendering him sacred service day and night in his temple; and the One seated on the throne will spread his tent over them.to show how the Great Crowd is happy to render sacred service and be busy preaching in 234 lands in line with this scripture. Too bad the scripture mentions that the GC is busy doing this in his temple, and not on the earth. I guess God’s temple is now on earth?
The speaker then mentioned how giving brings blessings. The logical unspoken conclusion was that we should be preaching, for without us preaching, God will not bless us. And here we see how we have already been given our first guilt trip for not preaching enough, because we now have the "privilege" of hearing the experience of missionaries who have been preaching full time for 35 years. Yes, 10 hour publishers are not blessed by Jehovah I guess.
Creation Declares the Glory of GodRather uneventful, just a talk about the creation declaring God’s glory. They kept referring to Ps 148: 1- 14 throughout the 3 days. The WTS kept saying how this scripture highlights how creation shows there is a creator. It was never explained then how in this line of thought what verse 11 meant.
Walk in the Way of IntegrityAhhh, this talk set the tone for the 3 day convention. It covered all the major points, such as; following the WTS without question, avoiding the Internet and apostates, and how God will destroy the world and it’s sinners at Armageddon. It certainly had everything and was an unexpected gem in a morning that I figured to be boring after reviewing the program.
The speaker defined integrity in our instance as unbreakable loyalty to Jehovah and his standards. The underlying idea of course is that God’s standards are found today via the F&DS.
We then examined verse by verse Ps chapter 26. Verses of interest:
*** Rbi8 Psalm 26:1 *** 26 Judge me, O Jehovah, for I myself have walked in my own integrity, And in Jehovah I have trusted, that I may not wobble.vs.1: David had wobbled in the past, but he had a good heart condition and accepted discipline. Of course that means accepting discipline from the WTS, because the speaker then turned our attention to vs. 2:
*** Rbi8 Psalm 26:2 *** 2 Examine me, O Jehovah, and put me to the test; Refine my kidneys and my heart.The speaker said we can refine ourselves like David by praying, studying the bible, and studying the food from the F&DS. Funny, my copy of the bible didn’t mention anything about refining myself via the F&DS. Mine says that God does the refining.
*** Rbi8 Psalm 26:4-5 *** 4 I have not sat with men of untruth; And with those who hide what they are I do not come in.
5 I have hated the congregation of evildoers, And with the wicked ones I do not sit.
It was only too obvious where this was going. We are to examine our use of the TV and the Internet. We were warned that apostates are on the Internet and will try to befriend us to break our integrity. Well, it’s only the first morning and the WTS is already laying this idea into us. There really must be a problem with the WTS losing people to the "Truth" found on the Internet. The WTS spent a lot of time all three days vilifying apostates of the WTS to make them appear to the R&F to be absolutely evil.
*** Rbi8 Psalm 26:8 *** 8 Jehovah, I have loved the dwelling of your house And the place of the residing of your glory.
Attendance at ALL meetings, conventions, and assemblies is needed to brainwash us build our faith. Some great phrases: "Regular meeting attendance is fundamental". "Continuous meeting attendance will cause us to love Jehovah’s reminders."
I can only say that I used to feel guilty for not being at meetings. This must be what the WTS means by saying "love". Great example of WTS "Newspeak" & "Doublethink".
*** Rbi8 Psalm 26:9 *** 9 Do not take away my soul along with sinners, Nor my life along with bloodguilty men,Ohh, the WTS loved this scripture. This scripture mentions DEATH. Time to crank up the scare tactics. Hey, the WTS doesn’t have Hellfire, but it has something even better to scare the Hell right out of us; Armageddon.
This scripture was applied by the WTS by saying that on the internet are found GROSS WRONGDOERS. The WTS was mainly referring to porn here, but they rolled this quite nicely into our "Two-minutes of Hate", by saying that we must "hate what is bad" and then the talk went into three demonstrations of young ones keeping integrity. The young ones had to show how they hated what is bad, or rather, the people at school & work.
The first young one was in HS. His name was Trevor. Upon first look and listen we readily discern that our protagonist Trevor lacks even the most basic of social skills. He told us of how he was invited to a post prom party after graduation. He said it was easy to refuse because the guy that invited him was a known alcohol abuser and drug user. Somehow I had a feeling that the story may have turned out differently if the guy that invited Trevor was instead the High School’s Britney Spears, navel bearing, boob popping look-a-like that was intent on breaking in a virgin.
Our next example was of Ben and the evil Internet. Ben was using the Internet up to four hours a day. Well, while some people think nothing of seeing two movies that may amount to four hours, our young Ben quickly realized that this was time better spent studying the bible. As an avid Internet user, he gave assurance to the uninitiated in the audience that the Internet is filled with people that do not love God and he finally broke free. The best line was next from the speaker, "so Ben, how did you end up developing a HATRED for those that you could be associating with on the INTERNET?" I think that I zoned out after that Q thinking just how crazy it sounded to be asking such an obviously leading question. And to think that I have sat through demonstrations like this in the past and haven’t thought it weird to be having the WTS INSTRUCTING us to HATE everyone not a JW. Real nice.
Our last experience was from Joel, fresh out of HS. Nice looking, tall fellow, obviously has a good grasp of basic social skills, and is therefore a good reason for the WTS to trot him out on stage. He was talking to an elder about a problem that he had. Joel’s problem was that he was invited to a party by a girl at work. He said that she was a real nice girl even by JW’s standards. Well the elder had to fix this thinking right away. The elder stated that even though we have the FREEDOM to choose, the wrong choice can ruin our integrity to Jehovah.
So for those of you uninitiated to the WTS’s Orwellian "Newspeak", this means that we have freedoms as human beings, but we surrender all of our freedom to the WTS because we may make the wrong choice with our freedom. This was wrapped up with the elder turning the audiences’ attention again to
*** Rbi8 Psalm 26:9 *** 9 Do not take away my soul along with sinners, Nor my life along with bloodguilty men,and then the elder asked young Joel what he thought of this scripture in regards to his situation. The response was appalling, "oh, I don’t want to lose my soul like the rest of the sinners will by Jehovah. I guess I’ll refuse the invite."
And with that we are onto the keynote address:
Glorious Prophetic Vision Spurs us on.I was expecting some great quotes from this talk. And like clockwork the WTS did not disappoint.
Apparently this talk was written because the WTS must sense that the R&F are losing, not only their urgency, but their hope that the end is soon. So this talk was trying to get people back into thinking that the "end is very soon."
The speaker had this wonderful quote at the beginning, "How happy we are that the John Class has survived and ENDURED down to this time from the prophetic visions that were fulfilled in 1914."
Oh yes, this will be a good talk. The rewriting of history & happenings during 1914. More "Newspeak" by the WTS.
This went into the transfiguration witnessed by some of the Apostles. The WTS mentioned that Peter and John were spurred on because of this vision. Well the John class is spurred on by this same transfiguration account because many of the John class witnessed the fulfillment of this vision at 1914.
"In fact", he said, "the John class in the late 19 th century ACCURATELY knew that Jesus’ presence would be invisible and that the Gentile Times ended in the Autumn of 1914."I was feeling slightly hysterical by this point.
"Many early Christians adopted pagan holidays. But that John class group has been PROGRESSIVELY cleansed when they were released from Babylon the Great in 1919".Oh, and the next five minutes were just precious!
The speaker voiced concern how some today are losing their vision. They may be having a hard time using the WTS’ "Doublethink" "GRASPING" things in the Watchtower. He admonished us that we need to focus.
Hey WTS, how about this idea? How about you start focusing on one idea and stick with it. Geez, give me break. Blaming things on us again, just like the 1975 mess. Hey, we didn’t drop the ball on that GENERATION idea, ok?
Oh, but here was the icing on the cake.
The speaker has us read this account in Rev:
*** Rbi8 Revelation 19:11 ***
11 And I saw the heaven opened, and, look! a white horse. And the one seated upon it is called Faithful and True, and he judges and carries on war in righteousness.And now the three Q’s that made me smile from ear to ear.
The speaker asked a series of three Q’s. For those that have been to DC’s, you know when you are supposed to clap during a talk. The speaker has this dramatic inflection in his voice, he speaks faster, and raises his volume. He then pauses. That is our cue to clap in agreement. The pause usually startles most in the audience out of their slumber and we start clapping because everyone else is.
"Four legs good, two legs bad, four legs good, two legs bad"; the sheep bleated. ~ Animal Farm
So here are his three Q’s and the audiences’ response:
1Q: "Are you focusing on this prophetic vision?"
He gets an immediate resounding clapping from the audience because, of course, we picked up the voice change, the pause in his speech, and everyone else clapping.
2Q: "Do you see it happening soon?"
And here is where I almost pissed my pants. No one claps for about two seconds. And I mean no one. Not one soul. Then there is a hesitant build up into LIGHT clapping.
3Q: "Will you wait on it?"
And the speaker left ZERO time for clapping, he just rolled into his concluding sentence and off to lunch we go. No I could give the speaker the benefit of the doubt and say that the outline didn’t call for him to wait on that last Q for clapping. Or maybe he was out of time and someone was telling him to get off the stage. Maybe he was just hungry.
My biased opinion and maybe even wishful thinking was that the speaker didn’t want to hear if we wanted to wait for the WTS’ crazy ideas because the audience didn’t respond too well to his second Q.
The WTS will have to get us scared into allegiance focused some other way I guess.
And off to lunch we go...