This is the link to the previously posted article to which I referred. Also, I should clarify, I used the PROVE ME WRONG part to get your attentions! The rest, however, was what was said to me proudly by a JW.
truthsearcher
JoinedPosts by truthsearcher
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PROVE ME WRONG! JW's were the only religion to oppose Hitler
by truthsearcher inthis statement was made to me and i want to refute it with verifiable information on other denominations.
anyone with ideas?.
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PROVE ME WRONG! JW's were the only religion to oppose Hitler
by truthsearcher inthis statement was made to me and i want to refute it with verifiable information on other denominations.
anyone with ideas?.
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truthsearcher
I found this online at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum
"Founded in the United States in the 1870s, the Jehovah's Witnesses organization sent missionaries to Germany to seek converts in the 1890s. By the early 1930s, only 20,000 (of a total population of 65 million) Germans were Jehovah's Witnesses, usually known at the time as "International Bible Students."
Even before 1933, despite their small numbers, door-to-door preaching and the identification of Jehovah's Witnesses as heretics by the mainstream Protestant and Catholic churches made them few friends. Individual German states and local authorities periodically sought to limit the group's proselytizing activities with charges of illegal peddling. There were also outright bans on Jehovah's Witnesses' religious literature, which included the booklets The Watch Tower and The Golden Age. The courts, by contrast, often ruled in favor of the religious minority. Meanwhile, in the early 1930s, Nazi brownshirted storm troopers, acting outside the law, broke up Bible study meetings and beat up, individual Witnesses.
After the Nazis came to power, persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses intensified . Small as the movement was, it offered, in scholar Christine King's words, a "rival ideology" and "rival center of loyalty" to the Nazi movement. Although honest and as law–abiding as their religious beliefs allowed, Jehovah's Witnesses saw themselves as citizens of Jehovah's Kingdom; they refused to swear allegiance to any worldly government. They were not pacifists, but as soldiers in Jehovah's army, they would not bear arms for any nation.
Jehovah's Witnesses, in Germany as in the United States, had refused to fight in World War I. This stance contributed to hostility against them in a Germany still wounded by defeat in that war and fervently nationalistic, attempting to reclaim its previous world stature. In Nazi Germany, Jehovah's Witnesses refused to raise their arms in the "Heil, Hitler!" salute; they did not vote in elections; they would not join the army or the German Labor Front (a Nazi affiliate, which all salaried employees were required to join after 1934).
Jehovah's Witnesses were denounced for their international and American ties, the apparent revolutionary tone of their millennialism (belief in the peaceful 1,000 year heavenly rule over the earth by Christ, preceded by the battle of Armageddon), and their supposed connections to Judaism, including a reliance on parts of the Bible embodying Jewish scripture (the Christian "Old Testament"). Many of these charges were brought against more than 40 other banned religious groups, but none of these were persecuted to the same degree. The crucial difference was, the intensity Witnesses demonstrated in refusing to give ultimate loyalty or obedience to the state.
In April 1933, four months after Hitler became chancellor, Jehovah's Witnesses were banned in Bavaria and by the summer in most of Germany. Twice during 1933, police occupied the Witnesses' offices and their printing site in Magdeburg and confiscated religious literature. Witnesses defied Nazi prohibitions by continuing to meet and distribute their literature, often covertly. Copies were made from booklets smuggled in mainly from Switzerland.
Initially, Jehovah's Witnesses attempted to fend off Nazi attacks by issuing a letter to the government in October 1934, explaining their religious beliefs and political neutrality. This declaration failed to convince the Nazi regime of the group's harmlessness. For defying the ban on their activities, many Witnesses were arrested and sent to prisons and concentration camps. They lost their jobs as civil servants or employees in private industry and their unemployment, social welfare, and pension benefits.
From 1935 onward, Jehovah's Witnesses faced a Nazi campaign of nearly total persecution. On April 1, 1935, the group was banned nationally by law. The same year, Germany reintroduced compulsory military service. For refusing to be drafted or perform war–related work, and for continuing to meet, Jehovah's Witnesses were arrested and incarcerated in prisons and concentration camps. In 1936 some 400 Jehovah's Witnesses were imprisoned at Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
In 1936 a special unit of the Gestapo (Secret State Police) began compiling a registry of all persons believed to be Jehovah's Witnesses, and agents infiltrated Bible study meetings. By 1939, an estimated 6,000 Witnesses (including those from incorporated Austria and Czechoslovakia) were detained in prisons or camps. Some Witnesses were tortured by police in attempts to make them sign a declaration renouncing their faith, but few capitulated.
In response to Nazi efforts to destroy them, the worldwide Jehovah's Witness organization became a center of spiritual resistance against the Nazis. An international convention of Witnesses, held in Lucerne, Switzerland, in September 1936, issued a resolution condemning the entire Nazi regime. In this text and other literature brought into Germany, writers broadly indicted the Third Reich. Articles strongly denounced the persecution of German Jews, Nazi "savagery" toward Communists, the remilitarization of Germany, the Nazification of schools and universities, Nazi propaganda, and the regime's assault on mainstream churches.
The children of Jehovah's Witnesses also suffered. In classrooms, teachers ridiculed children who refused to give the "Heil, Hitler!" salute or sing patriotic songs. Classmates shunned and beat up young Witnesses. Principals expelled them from schools. Families were broken up as authorities took children away from their parents and sent them to reform schools, orphanages, or private homes, to be brought up as Nazis.
After 1939 most active Jehovah's Witnesses were incarcerated in prisons or concentration camps. Some had fled Germany. In the camps, all prisoners wore markings of various shapes and colors so that guards and camp officers could identify them by category. Witnesses were marked by purple triangular patches. Even in the camps, they continued to meet, pray, and make converts. In Buchenwald concentration camp, they set up an underground printing press and distributed religious tracts.
Conditions in Nazi camps were generally harsh for all inmates, many of whom died from hunger, disease, exhaustion, exposure to the cold, and brutal treatment. But, as psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim and others have noted, Witnesses were uniquely sustained in the camps by the support they gave each other and by their belief that their suffering was part of their work for God. Individual Witnesses astounded their guards with their refusal to conform to military-type routines like roll call or to roll bandages for soldiers at the front. At the same time, Witnesses were considered unusually trustworthy because they refused to escape from camps or physically resist their guards. For this reason, Witnesses were often used as domestic servants by Nazi camp officers and guards.
According to Rudolf Höss, Commandant of Auschwitz, SS Chief Heinrich Himmler often used the "fanatical faith" of Jehovah's Witnesses as an example to his own SS troops. In his view, SS men had to have the same "unshakable faith" in the National Socialist ideal and in Adolf Hitler that the Witnesses had in Jehovah. Only when all SS men believed as fanatically in their own philosophy would Adolf Hitler's state be permanently secure.
In the Nazi years, about 10,000 Witnesses, most of them of German nationality, were imprisoned in concentration camps. After 1939, small numbers of Witnesses from Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, Norway, and Poland (some of them refugees from Germany) were arrested and deported to Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, Ravensbrück, Auschwitz, Mauthausen, and other concentration camps. An estimated 2,500 to 5,000 Witnesses died in the camps or prisons. More than 200 men were tried by the German War Court and executed for refusing military service.
During the liberation of the camps, Jehovah's Witnesses continued their work, moving among the survivors, making converts."Do you think this article was written by a JW for the museum? There is no mention of the use of the national anthem's tune in Kingdom Halls or the previous '33 letter.
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PROVE ME WRONG! JW's were the only religion to oppose Hitler
by truthsearcher inthis statement was made to me and i want to refute it with verifiable information on other denominations.
anyone with ideas?.
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truthsearcher
This statement was made to me and I want to refute it with verifiable information on other denominations. Anyone with ideas?
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recruitment policy
by truthsearcher inwhat is the wt tactic if they are in a home where one spouse seems interested but the other spouse is hostile?
do they try and visit when angry spouse isn't around?
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truthsearcher
Interestingly enough, although meeting with them since the fall, they have not given a warning that family members would try to discourage because they were being used by the devil. This is because we already study the Bible together as a family! But maybe they would start to tell me that my husband was working against God...but we're not going to let them go down that road. They have to take all of us or none!
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God's Organization Has Needed Adjusting
by The wanderer in<!-- .style1 { font-size: 18px; font-family: georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; } .style3 { font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; } .style5 { font-size: 16px; font-family: georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-weight: bold; } --> gods organization has needed adjusting defending the watchtower, many jehovahs witnesses.
point-out the changes that have taken place are nothing more than .
adjustments in understanding.
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truthsearcher
Wanderer, I am confused. I don't want to hijack the thread but the JWs that I have been talking too repeatedly tell me that Jehovah has cast off the nation of Israel, that's why the 144,000 in Revelation can't be earthly Jews but "spiritual Israel" (ie them). Can you enlarge on your original post in light of this?
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UPDATE!: THEY ALL ADMITTED EGGING US -Elders now know, heads are rolling!!
by Lady Liberty inoh.... how the saga goes on!!
i swear we could write a novel about our life exiting the watchtower!!
ok..many of you read what happened..our house was egged and so was my sisters car that was parked here, and "frosty" was attacked!!
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truthsearcher
I think that I have finally figured out a way to get more people to answer my posts...
Mouthy and Legolas, don't you know us Canucks are supposed to be peacekeepers, therefore you should be supporting the Turn the Other Cheek option, tsk, tsk
LL, I know you don't want to post any more details, but after reading through the 8 pages, I feel like Frosty and I are personal buddies, and I do hope that you will be able to post a picture of him soon.
Looking forward to hearing how this all turns out!
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How often should the Lord's Supper be celebrated per year
by avidbiblereader ini have always had a problem with this from the scriptures, i understand the old law and replacing the passover but those laws did not apply to the new covenant and my question centers around pauls words to the 1 cor 11.
1 cor 11:17-20 .
17but, while giving these instructions, i do not commend you because it is, not for the better, but for the worse that you meet together.18for first of all, when you come together in a congregation, i hear divisions exist among you; and in some measure i believe it.19for there must also be sects among you, that the persons approved may also become manifest among you.
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truthsearcher
I just remembered that when I was attending a Catholic university, I liked to hang out with the seminary boys (thinking that those about to be priests would make good platonic friends...) Anyway, they did tell me some stories about getting drunk on the leftover communion wine...every day... Those were probably just high-spirited young 'uns but it didn't seem quite right to me!
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How often should the Lord's Supper be celebrated per year
by avidbiblereader ini have always had a problem with this from the scriptures, i understand the old law and replacing the passover but those laws did not apply to the new covenant and my question centers around pauls words to the 1 cor 11.
1 cor 11:17-20 .
17but, while giving these instructions, i do not commend you because it is, not for the better, but for the worse that you meet together.18for first of all, when you come together in a congregation, i hear divisions exist among you; and in some measure i believe it.19for there must also be sects among you, that the persons approved may also become manifest among you.
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truthsearcher
Another interesting thread that I will re-read to absorb the thoughts presented.
FYI, we have previously been involved in a Protestant denomination which celebrated the "breaking of the bread" on a weekly basis--they are the Plymouth Brethren. It was always a special time to remember the reason for our faith--the sacrifice of Christ for our personal sins. As a worship leader, I looked for ways to make it meaningful and not ritualistic.
We have also been involved with churches that celebrated monthly, but never yearly, as we understand it to be totally separate from the Passover.
I think that in Catholic theology, the idea of an on-going need to sacrifice, and sacramental theology whereby the recipient receives or earns a bit of salvation everytime they participate led to the daily practice of Mass.
I agree that the WT has succeeded in stripping its members of the opportunity to obey the Scriptures in this regard.
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recruitment policy
by truthsearcher inwhat is the wt tactic if they are in a home where one spouse seems interested but the other spouse is hostile?
do they try and visit when angry spouse isn't around?
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truthsearcher
Is this a policy or tactic that they learn in their training school? Or just something they come up with on their own? I think I have just experienced the tactic and it shakes me up!
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recruitment policy
by truthsearcher inwhat is the wt tactic if they are in a home where one spouse seems interested but the other spouse is hostile?
do they try and visit when angry spouse isn't around?
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truthsearcher
What is the WT tactic if they are in a home where one spouse seems interested but the other spouse is hostile? Do they try and visit when angry spouse isn't around?