Wow, Thanks everyone for all the great information. Looks like I have some books to read. ;)
Pardon me if this question comes off as silly but.. If there are current JWs on here, wouldn't that be a bad thing, in the eyes of the congregation? Couldn't a JW be disfellowshiped fr belonging to a web forum of this nature? Wouldn't they call this Apostasy?
I was just curious..
I did attent a meeting with him a few weeks back. He was giving a, "Talk," and wanted me to video tape it so he could show his Dad back in Colorado. I went in and It was exactly as I had expected. Everyone was very nice. They all introduced themselves and were all so nice. However, I did feel a sense of shock seeing all the women in dresses and not a ne wearing a cross necklace. good luck finding a woman at my church without one.
To be honest I was pretty excited for the meeting to start. I had done lots of research on this cult and to actually be inside an official meeting I felt as if I was given some special privilege. I live in Kansas, in the Kansas City, MO Metro. I am sure all of you have heard of this wack job named Fred Phelps. He claims to be a reverend and his so called church.. I call it a cult as well, is in Topeka, KS about an hour away from me. I have been to Topeka countless times and have seen these losers at work. When I was going to school at KU (Rock Chalk Jayhawk) they would protest all the time. Why do I bring this up? Well it is nearly impossible to get in to one of their services. they grill you and grill you to make sure you are not media or a spy. You must attend protest after protest etc.. So when I was granted access to a JW Kingdom Hall to attend a meeting I was excited.
The meeting started and the guy, leader, head elder, I don't now what he is called started. He said, "What would you say if I asked you to go fishing this weekend.." was like cool he is using real world stuff. I thought this is going to get interesting. He went and got a fishing pole and said," You will need a tool to catch the fish.. What if I told you instead of fish, we were going to catch a man.." right there he lost me. Catch a Man? Oh, I get it.. Catch a man in to the cult.. In my opinion the goal of the org is not to praise God or Jesus. It is to recruit people to the cult. It was so obvious to me that was the purpose here. He brought out the NWT and said, "This is the tool we use to catch man."
Then they asked what people thought about the assigned reading. Assigned reading? Some lady got up and said that some passage they read reminded her of a few years back where our local newspaper had an article where a Catholic priest was mad because the JWs came to his area and were as she said it, "Teaching the bible." She thought it was comical that a priest was mad that people were teaching from the bible. What I wanted so bad t jump up and say was, "No, he is mad because you are NOT teaching the true word from the bible. You are teaching what the WTO says not the bible. But I kept my cool and just sat there.
My stepson got up and gave his talk and during his talk the tornado sirens went off. We had a tornado warning.. they let him finish his talk and then we all filled in to a small safe room they have. We did not all get up and slowly make our way back like normal people would. they dismissed us like kindergartners or after a wedding. Some guy stood by the row and motioned for the row to get up and head back.. Row by row. This might work if there were hundreds or thousands of people but I say there were 6o at most.
Once we were in this room everyone got on the cell and called people and checked the storm etc.. Now in my church.... pastor would have come in and said a prayer. Did we? Not on your life. There were people worried that the tornado was going to hit us and they were all worried. Some lady asked me if I was worried and I said(I know I shouldn’t have but o well), No I am a Christian and I have faith in Jesus Christ that he will protect me and my family.
Anyways after sitting in the room for nearly 40 minutes we got the all clear. I thought they were going to call it quits, even one girl stated, "What a way to get out of a talk." We all sat back down and what I thought was going to be closing comments.. They guy announced that lady for her talk. So I thought hmm what’s next. Well this girl gets up and heads to the front and sits down at what looks like a kitchen table. Then this other girl gets up and sits with here.. Basically what I saw was a role play on how to convert someone. Now I did agree with the topic, creation vs evolution.. But I assume they do this for everything to convert people. It was just like the sales training I have been to where one person plays a customer and throws rejections.
This is where I had had enough. the weather was bad and took off and came home.