The official relationship between Jehovahs Witnessses and the Watchtower? I'm confused.

by Joliette 24 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  Giordano

  Here is a site that discusses the history of TWBTS how and who and what it was. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Jehovah%27s_Witnesses

  In 1881, Zion's Watch Tower Tract Society was formed as an unincorporated administrative agency for the purpose of disseminating tracts, papers, doctrinal treatises and Bibles, with "Pastor" Russell, as he was by then called, as secretary and W.H. Conley as president.[28] Three years later, on December 15, 1884, Russell became the president of the society when it was legally incorporated in Pennsylvania.[29] He said the corporation was "not a 'religious society' in the ordinary meaning of this term,"[30] explaining: "This is a business association merely ... a business convenience in disseminating the truth."

  Russell warned: "Beware of organization. It is wholly unnecessary. The Bible rules will be the only rules you will need. Do not seek to bind others' consciences, and do not permit others to bind yours."[36]

  Elders and deacons were elected by congregations and Russell tolerated a great latitude of belief among members. He discouraged formal disciplinary procedures by congregation elders, claiming this was beyond their authority,[37] instead recommending that an individual who continued in a wrong course be judged by the entire ecclesia, or congregation, which could ultimately "withdraw from him its fellowship".[38] Disfellowshipping did not mean the wrongdoer was shunned in all social circumstances or by all Bible Students.

  In 1931, the name Jehovah's witnesses was adopted,[4] further cutting ties with Russell's earlier followers.[5] Substantial organizational changes continued as congregations and teaching programs worldwide came under centralized control. Further refinements of its doctrines led to the prohibition of blood transfusions by members, abandonment of the cross in worship, rejection of Christmas and birthday celebrations and the view of the biblical Armageddon as a global war by God that will destroy the wicked and restore peace on earth.[6] In 1945 the Watch Tower Society, which Russell had founded as a publishing house, amended its charter to state that its purposes included preaching about God's Kingdom, acting as a servant and governing agency of Jehovah's Witnesses and sending out missionaries and teachers for the public worship of God and Jesus Christ.

  It is the Society that makes up the rules and the JW's who follow them without question. You can definitely feel the WT corporate authority, the obsession with obedience and the desire that all JW's march in rank no independent thinking is tolerated.

  The fear of shunning and loss of family members is the way they keep their members in check. They will say that it is the way they can keep the organization clean and protect their name.

  Unfortunately the recent revelations about chronic pedophile problems is casting a long shadow on just how clean this organization and this religion is.

  
  
• 

  Finkelstein

  Being faithfully devoted to the Watchtower Corporation is in kind being faithfully devoted to god by the WTS's own established description.
  

  To disagree with the expressed doctrines by this publishing house and your disagreeing to God, subjectively putting your life in jeopardy.

  So there's a lot of imposing fear that's involved in being a JWS , you are watched and evaluated to just how obedient you are to the directives handed out by the WTS's heads.
  

  But as I mentioned previously the doctrines that WTS. came up with were devised to be appealing and advantageous toward the proliferation of the WTS's own publications.
  
• 

  jwfacts

  Refer to yourself as a former JW.
• 

  JRK

  Same shit, different name.

  JK
• 

  Terry

  Let us begin by setting up some fundamental axioms.

  Let's assume there is a genuine distinction between reality and perception. If so, the Watchtower corporation operates in the real world by recruiting real people to do X. Those people are willing to do X because they've been convinced that X-work is ordained by an entity who calls Himself Jehovah. From this premise, we can extract some corollaries.

  1. Watchtower Corporation relies on the X-work of its members whom they solely guide while self-referencing as a conduit for the invisible entity Jehovah.

  2. Whether or not there exists this Jehovah, the members are real and the corporation whom they obey is real.

  3. Regardless of the Jehovah-connection, members (Jehovah's Witnesses) perform X-work directly as agents of the Governing Body of the Corporation.

  4. If the Corporation (Watchtower) is directing its members to do X-work under false pretenses and that work is harmful to others, Jehovah's Witnesses are morally culpable for their complicity, though less wittingly so than the GB wielding authority under false pretenses.

  5. Nazis who were tried for war crimes at Nuremberg offered as a defense of their atrocities that they were under compulsion of Authority.

  This defense was not permitted because each member of the Nazi party made the decision to follow those orders without resistance. By not using their rational mind and conscience to resist, they were found guilty and hanged.
  Nazi rank and file believed in the Thousand Year Rule. Jehovah's Witnesses believe in something similar. Nazis murdered six million. The Watchtower enslaves seven million, draining them of self-empowerment, education, charitable acts, societal solidarity, and circumstantially twisting their natural affection for their own flesh and blood kin into a dispassionate indifference sometimes causing death.

  Using the above as my premise, I would offer you the following opinion.

  Jehovah's Witnesses may not originate the harm they accept as the highest calling, but the harm is done anyway.

  The Watchtower is run by either delusional despots or psychopathic control freaks who will stop at nothing to spread the contagion of a movement dedicated its own enslavement as well as that of the world in total.

  The threat of death (ultimately) and marking and shunning in the immediate, are weaponized religious beliefs used as coercion and undue influence.

  You may distinguish the hit-man from the mob boss who orders the hit, but the distinction is illusory when the body hits the floor.
• 

  oppostate

  You're going to have trouble creating a distinction between the cult and their god in the mind of any JW, no matter what you say.

  That distinction right there is the sure way of awakening any active JW to the TTATT.

  
  

  
  
• 

  Finkelstein

  Here's a group of words that correlates to being involved in some manner in the JW religion.

  ........ coercion, deception, lying, manipulation, exploitation, guilt, shame, pretentiousness. irrationality, delusion, fear, anxiety, ignorance, corruption, money, self-empowerment, cruelty, apathy, evasive, dismissive, judgemental, arrogance self righteousness. ........ I'm sure there's more

  Just the kind of environment you would want to bring your children up in .
  
• 

  closed

  Keep this attitude. Very human. Well done.
• 

  OutsiderLookingIn

  Finklestein: JWS are the designated and indoctrinated sales representatives for the WTS.

  
  Not to mention unpaid. They just don't know it.

  I told some JWs that they work for the Watchtower and they adamantly denied it. If that's true, why is the primary identifying mark of a JW a Watchtower publication? Just saying
• 

  Finkelstein

  Jehovah's Witnesses bare the mark of a false prophet/profit .
  

  The WTS leaders were capable to mentally entrap and coerce people into their own subservient slaves for their own means and purpose, not God's or Jesus's since this organization went beyond what is written and were disobedient to his word.
  

  This organization posed itself as a true version of worship and pointed out other Christian based faiths as being false but in reality the WTS also inspired itself to be false.