The best way for a witness to wake up, is to simply read the societies own older publications!

by stuckinarut2 18 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  tor1500

  Hi,

  When I came into the org. I never thought it was God's only mouthpiece. What I was thinking is how do these folks believe that this is God's mouthpiece.

  I'm no scholar & maybe there is a God & maybe not...but when you close your eyes, wouldn't you like to believe you did the right things, you led a good life & treated people well.

  No matter what, they bible is about how we treat our fellow man...and most of us were taught that at home or we should have.

  The TRUTH IS NOT IN AN ORG. BUT IN YOU...

  Don't be angry with God, be angry with MAN...

  Tor
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  Nathan Natas

  BluesBrother said, in part, "My family of "old-school " Witnesses just love the old CTR & Rutherford books. They read them and say ..."Of course the thinking has changed since then and some of it is way off beam , but they really had spirituality "

  I understand what they mean, I think, and to a degree I agree with them. One of the things Russell stressed was "putting on the personality of Christ" and I believe that most Bible Students of that time - and many Bible Students of today sincerely pursue that goal.

  But there are two problems with that, in my opinion. First is that the Christ they emulate is the imaginary weakling so often illustrated. If Jesus did exist, he could not have been such a limp-wristed pansy. I think he would have been more like Clark Kent/Kal-El. Because Russellites were such pathetic weaklings, they allowed Judge Rutherford to have his way with them.

  The second thing is that Judge Rutherford, being a sociopath and bully, had no use for the "personality of Christ" game, and so he threw it away, stressing instead what might be "the personality of Don Draper (US TV show "Mad Men")"
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  Wayward

  My jehovahmom has a whole library of old Watchtowers volumes from the 60s-present. She has never read any of them. I did when I was a teen and that's one of the first things that tipped me off that something wasn't right. On the rare occasions I say anything about changing teachings, I get the 'light keeps getting brighter' speech. But why does the light need to get brighter? If God was inspiring the Witness writers, he should have given them the real story from the start. No need for 'new light' every few years.
  
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  Vidiot

  tor1500 - "I know this is not God's only channel..."

  God needs a "channel"?
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  Vidiot

  Wayward - "...why does the light need to get brighter?"

  I asked that question to my elder Dad when I was a kid.

  He responded that it had to come gradually, because the JWs of previous decades were still heavily mired in many of the "false" ideas of Christendom, and had to be slowly weaned off them... that if the "full light" had been revealed all at once, Russel and Rutherford's followers wouldn't have been able to handle it, and therefore would have rejected it.

  Credit where credit's due; it was an explanation that actually satisfied me at the time.

  I think he actually came up with it himself; I don't recall ever seeing the Org use it.
  
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  mayushii

  Ooh, this reminds me! When I was... I forget how old now, or even if I was in middle school or high school, Mom and I found a battered copy of Millennial Dawn in a used bookstore. We were really excited to take a look at some JW history, only to find such nonsense inside that we sort of looked at each other confusedly and shrugged.

  For me, the publication that helped wake me up was the "Creator" book, the one with the nebula on the front. Does anyone remember that one? They were fixated on Fred Hoyle's crackpot theories in the early chapters and kept trying to science the shit out of the Bible with varying degrees of failure. I was a high schooler earning mostly Bs at the time, so hardly a mensa member, but even I knew I was reading complete and utter bullshit and the "logic" was just not there! When it became a book study book, it was sheer torture for me, ugh!
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  Vidiot

  mayushii - "They were fixated on Fred Hoyle's crackpot theories in the early chapters..."

  Discovering that - even in the later Creation book - the WTS had been cribbing from "worldy" creationist sources was quite the wake-up moment for me too. :smirk:

  Once again, for the newbies, lurkers, and trolls...

  ...if you have to cheat to defend your beliefs, your beliefs don't deserve to be defended.
  

  mayushii - "...and kept trying to science the shit out of the Bible with varying degrees of failure..."

  Nicely put; Matt Damon and Ridley Scott would be proud.

  Ain't it funny how when people try to Bible the shit out of science, that never seems to turn out well, either?
  
  
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  stuckinarut2

  Bumped for a new bunch of lurkers...

  I was asked the other day what made me first have doubts. The reality is, I didn't have doubts until I followed the societies OWN advice they have said many times, which was "we should enjoy reading the rich history of Jehovah's organisation in the older publications" etc... (There have been several articles about this over the years.)

  I did that, and that's where I found so many odd things we were never told about!

  Then the extended research began, and that uncovered so much more!....Then the dam wall burst open....
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  Chook

  No other religious organisation printed so much literature . Just like someone who talks to much eventually shit comes out.