"They have NEVER lied" (page 2)

Robert_V_Frazier

Fatfreek, I read your letter this morning. Great timing! It was very well said. Your parents taught you well that there's a crucial difference between an honest mistake and a lie.

I do agree that the Society makes far too many and too serious errors to support its claim to the Faithful and Discreet Slave(TM). But I'm looking for the things that made you leave the Org -- deliberate lies that the writers knew were lies when they wrote them.

Quotes: Unfortunately, the gravity article does not qualify. Whoever wrote that almost certainly thought he was both making sense and telling the truth, if he wasn't too drunk or mentally retarded to have any thoughts about sense or truth. Of course, it was neither sensible nor true. The rest of your examples are right on the mark.

Most of their false prophecies could be claimed to have been made in good faith, that they believed they were true at the time. I'm looking for examples of them saying, "We said X about that subject," when their own books and magazines clearly show that they did not say "X", but rather "Q - 7.3", or "albatross", or "Betelguise". The cases where they changed words from the magazines to the bound volumes and CD-ROM are no good for this purpose either, as the changes were made without saying anything about the change.

Several excellent entries to the list in this thread so far. My thanks to all!

Robert V Frazier

VM44

Here is a BIG one! The Watchtower was DELIBRERATELY trying to mislead the readers with this annoucement!

In the June 1, 1940 Watchtower on page 162 under the heading "False Reports," the society states, "Some unreliable person is responsible for the circulation of a report that Beth-Sarim is being enlarged as a place of security and that this is being built by the Society. There is absolutely not one word of truth in the report."

This denial by the Society is a valid one, but also deceptive. It wasn't Beth-Sarim at all that was being built as a place of security, but Beth-Shan, which means "House of Security" in Hebrew! And it WAS Beth-Shan which had the bomb shelter. Was the Society honest and candid about "correcting" the rumor and telling the truth about Beth-Shan? No. As stated, the society only mentioned Beth-Shan once and that was regarding using the property to bury Da Judge.

From: Beth-Sarim Revisited for Newbies, by Farkel at:

http://www.geocities.com/osarsif/bethsarim.doug.htm

The WATCHTOWER wrote: "There is absolutely not one word of truth in the report." HAHAHAHAHAHA

--VM44

VM44

Here is the complete announcement as it appeared in The Watchtower, June 1, 1940, page 162:

FALSE REPORTS
Some unreliable person is responsible for the circulation of a report that Beth-Sarim is being enlarged as a place of security and that this is being built by the Society. There is absolutely not one word of truth in the report. Those who are interested in the Theocracy would better be circulating the kingdom message rather than false imaginations of others.

Whoever wrote that was a barefaced LIAR!

--VM44

Daunt

sad thing about all this. Plenty of people still say that the org is perfect and can't make mistakes. Leading their members on this line of thinking is dishonest in itself.

Fatfreek

When president Rutherford, after the fact, said that some prior, published prophetic (in black and white) statement is not what was actually said; to my thinking, that is clearly a lie, not just an error. Hey, it was written down by people in his charge, printed into literature that was published under his authority. Did he, if he had only a wee bit of intelligence, not realize that the masses tend to hoard things -- like printed materials several years old, so that future lying statements could actually be verified?

"...1925 shall mark the resurrection of the faithful worthies of old...". Millions, p. 97.

What that president later did was attempt a spin or coverup of that prediction instead of do the right thing and apologize -- and say what was said is an error.

Instead he spun, "...this was merely an expressed opinion; besides it is still shortly after 1925 ..."

A poor reporter must own up to false statements and say they were errors. That's human. But to attempt to cover up false statements and re-spin them is what my Mama called LIES.

When a scandal breaks, the discovery of an attempt to cover up the evidence of wrongdoing is often regarded as even more scandalous than the original deeds.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverup

cover: hide from view or knowledge; "The President covered the fact that he bugged the offices in the White House"
www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn

Len

Honesty

You want more proof the WTBTS is lying, malicious and deceiving? Just open up a WT magazine to the study articles. Every one of them is full of Bull Shit and lies to further their own interests.

Aude_Sapere

Don't they still say that Jerusalem was destroyed in 607 BCE??

Don't they say that all apostates are miserable devil-worshippers?

rebel8

Runningman, GREAT post!!! Where did that quote come from? I'd like to put a link to it on my web site.

This is the first time I've ever heard of the Beth-Sarim house. Very, very interesting!

RunningMan

Rebel: Are you referring to the entire post or to a specific quote? The overall article is a runningman original. I sent it and a few others to Tim Campbell over at Beyond JWs a few years ago. He reformatted and edited it a bit. It now makes up his "In Their Own Words" section.

If you're interested, I have seven or eight original articles and annotated quotes compilations that I would be happy to share with you and the rest of the world.

OldSoul

Robert_V_Frazier: I would like to know what other items anyone here can think of that the Society has ever taught in the past (remember, Corvus said that the Society has NEVER lied!) or is still teaching that must be factually considered lies.

Will we use the Merriam-Webster definition, or did you have something else in mind? Creating a false or misleading impression is a lie. There are hundreds of instances of this, including every individual reply to every request regarding the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society being an NGO Affiliate associated to the UN/DPI for nearly ten years.

If you add up each misleading reply about each topic asked over the years you could easily make the case that this organization is maintained entirely by an illusion of honesty created through intentional misrepresentation and deceit.

Main Entry: 3 lie (For the Web challenged: Choose the third entry from the list)
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): lied; ly·ing / 'lI-i[ng] /
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English lEogan; akin to Old High German liogan to lie, Old Church Slavonic lugati
intransitive senses
1 : to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive
2 : to create a false or misleading impression
transitive senses : to bring about by telling lies <lied his way out of trouble>
synonyms LIE, PREVARICATE, EQUIVOCATE, PALTER, FIB mean to tell an untruth. LIE is the blunt term, imputing dishonesty <lied about where he had been>. PREVARICATE softens the bluntness of LIE by implying quibbling or confusing the issue prevaricate >. EQUIVOCATE implies using words having more than one sense so as to seem to say one thing but intend another <equivocated endlessly in an attempt to mislead her inquisitors>. PALTER implies making unreliable statements of fact or intention or insincere promises paltering with his investors>. FIB applies to a telling of a trivial untruth <fibbed about the price of the new suit>.

I hope this helps.

Respectfully,
OldSoul

"They have NEVER lied"

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