My first time at a KH - especially to hear the New Light!!!

by The Song Remains The Same 24 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  The Song Remains The Same

  I am not JW, and never intend to be one either. However, having read a lot about the July 15 WT, I decided to go to the KH today and check out how the New Light was going to be delivered. I thought I would share my observations;

  - Lots of very polite people, well dressed. Happy to come and talk to you (although I was with wife and kids and wife is a want-to-be-JW so goes there regularly).

  - When one lady said it was nice for me to be there, I couldn't help but tell her I was only there to hear how the New Light is explained, as to me it seemed a major change in teaching. She shrugged and said 'to them' this doesn't matter, the core and fundamentals are still the same and 'we don't see it as a change'. I asked her if she knew much about her organisation, and she said she did. The conversation was starting to get a little interesting, but the service started and we had to break it up.

  Part 1 -

  - all about 'poisonous odourless gas' and that gas being Satan really. The other side was clearly the 100% of God. This stuck me very much as the black/white stance that I've read about.

  - to be honest, I thought we were going to hear about Syria when the gas comment started...

  - I was a bit shocked to hear the comment that non-believers were 'dark mentally' - I think there was a verse read in this part that I missed in my notes. We had a story about a Muslim who said he wouldn't ever convert, as if he was an idiot. I guess Muslims think the same about JWs?

  - A part about Satan backing Big Business. Made it seem like all marketing is done by Satan to trick everyone.

  - Rom 1 26-27 (I think) was read out. This was a huge leap into sexual immorality from the Big Business comment. No idea where that came from, but to suddenly go on about deviant sexual practices (with kids there too) was a big shocker for me.

  - There were 5 points made. Each one made sense on how to live a good life. However, the inference was that it's impossible UNLESS you are in the WT and obeying Jehovah. I found this a bit of a leap too.

  Part 2 - this is what I had showed up for, the Main Event…

  - Opened with Song 128 'Scene of the World is Changing' or something. I thought that was funny.

  - It was all about clarification, nothing really changing, new timing that was all… That was stressed over and over.

  - Then we got into reading. It was painful. A guy would read it, then the guy leading the service would ask people to answer the questions. It was very like a 4th grade lesson I thought - read the text, answer the questions based on the text only. The guy up front would give a 'well done' to the person reading pretty much parrot fashion from the mag. I'm sure they were really happy to get the answer 'right'. It was all verbatim form the mag, questions too.

  - The person leading kept mentioning that this was all very simple. Even so simple that you should read the Simplified WT on the web. He did. Before he even tried the complicated Study version. I found this hilarious. But it did come across as 'look, this is easy, so simple, that you can't possibly question it, no need to do that, go read the dummy version'… oh and forget everything we said before it doesn't matter now.

  - Also, there were lots of shrugs and 'well that was what we used to believe, we don't now…' and a bit of reference to the longer-time JWs as to why all the old stuff was explained in the mag.

  - (It seemed) A lot of time was spent on the United Nations being explicitly the thing to look out for. It will attack all the other religions. This sounded like a prediction to me…

  - More emphasis on 'fine adjustments' and nothing major…

  - The guy ultimately blew everything away, all the complexity of the past, by just saying it was all clear and now everything is in the future, so forget what you used to believe, 1918, 1919 no worries!

  - I didn't get the bit about in the (not started) GT Jesus would separate the Sheep and Goats, i.e. in the future. Was he doing that already in the false-start GT? Confused.

  When it was over I had a sense of, wow all these people really believe this stuff, without question. That is scary.

  Anyway, here are my questions;

  1. Is there any other example of a prophecy with 'dual fulfilment'? This whole episode is based on paragraph 4 of page 4 in Jul WT - "a part of Jesus' prophecy about the last days has two fulfillments". Nobody seemed phased by this aspect, yet is is the cornerstone of the whole New Light. I argued with the wife to find me one, either happened, in progress, or to happen. Maybe you guys know of one?

  2. By being explicit about the UN attacking everyone else, is that a prediction or prophecy, or neither? I don't think the UN is mentioned in the bible as such, so this is a bold statement. It sounded like a prediction to me... like saying the USA will win the soccer world cup...

  3. They make a lot of Jesus judging the sheep and goats. However, is it correct that if a JC (3 men) judge you a naughty person and DF you, then they are preceding the Jesus judgement, or they don't count and only Jesus can judge? I thought that if you're not a JW at the Big A, then you are toast (I know they don't say it that way but we all know the implications made) - hence the fuss of being DF'd, along with the shunning of course.

  Now I need to decide if I go back for round two next week. To be honest it was a drag. The songs were terrible. It was warm and stuffy. Everyone was so eager to please the guy up front with the text-book answer. Not one of the almost 100 people seemed to have any worry what they were being told, or any question on the fundamental premise (see question 1).

  The Song
• 

  Calebs Airplane

  Awesome summary...

  I especially liked the part about the verbatum parrot-like commenting during the rag study.

  Thanks for sharing!
• 

  Calebs Airplane

  By the way... no such thing as dual fulfilment of any Bible prophecy... all that nonsense started with John Aquila Brown in 1823 when he wrote "The Even Tide"...
• 

  designs

  Nice you went with the family and yes the Wt. study is 4th grade level.
• 

  Apognophos

  You seem shocked that the JWs would not show any doubt about the teachings in their comments. For sure, at least a few will be doubting internally. But the meeting is not the time to express those doubts unless you want to immediately flag yourself as a potential apostate. You seem to have the WT study confused with a dialogue or open study group, rather than the call-and-answer session that it is.

  1. The dual-fulfillment teaching is a longstanding part of Witness belief; almost all prophecies were supposed to have two fulfillments, though this is not dwelt on as often as it was in the old days when they did a lot of complex class-naming (Jonadab class, Jehu class, etc.) in order to explain how the ancient accounts had modern-day applications.

  2. The prediction about the UN attacking false religion, and then the Witnesses, is decades old. I'm somewhat surprised they are still holding to it, but there you have it.

  3. You're entirely correct that a DFed one is more or less expected to be destroyed at Armageddon (unless they are actively trying to be reinstated at the time of the Big A), and that this is in conflict with the notion of leaving the judgment to Jesus. Formerly the teaching about the sheep-and-goat separation work was that our very ministry was the means by which people were divided into the two groups, based on their reaction to our message. By the '90s, the teaching was that the separation work is yet to come.
• 

  Witness My Fury

  Let's review: It's a cult!
• 

  The Quiet One

  Matthew 24:32-34 says “Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, YOU know that summer is near.33 Even so, when YOU see all these things, YOU know that it is near, right at the door.34 Truly I tell YOU, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened." .... Jw's read this and think Jesus was talking about a generation of people nearly 2000 years later.. So don't waste energy trying to understand the dual-fulfillment stuff they teach, it's a proven way to lose brain cells ;)
• 

  The Quiet One

  Here's another example with a Leoleia post.. (gtr stands for gentile times reconsidered) http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/beliefs/89109/1/Nebochad-and-the-Gentle-times
• 

  The Song Remains The Same

  Thanks for the comments. As I said, this is the first time I've been up-close and personal with a KH and so many JWs... so I for sure am no expert in the ways of the meetings, etc.

  @Calebs - thanks for the encouragement. At some points I couldn't stop smiling at the audacity of the guy speaking and how he lightly threw out old light. It felt like I could have been at a comedy club.

  @Apog - you are right. It certainly did not feel like the time when anyone was going to show up and say 'hang on a minute...' . Also, you are saying that the dual-fulfillment is nothing new, so what else have they got on that list (still) where we are riding a parallel universe to olden-days? Really curious to know these if you can list a couple up for me? My point on the UN would be is that a prophecy or just a refinement of one with a name attached - either way it seemed quite 'prophetic'?

  The Song
• 

  Apognophos

  First of all, I shouldn't really have mentioned the classes in the same breath as dual fulfillments, as they're somewhat different subjects, but just to explain the classes a bit more, take a look at this thread: http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/172094/1/WHATEVER-HAPPEND-TO-THE-JONADAB-CLASS

  The most prominent prophecy that the JWs give a dual fulfillment to must be the warning by Jesus about the digusting thing in the holy place. This was initially fulfilled in 66-70CE, and is to be fulfilled again in the future when the UN moves against false religion. Here's another one:

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/beliefs/89109/1/Nebochad-and-the-Gentle-times

  Here's what the Society wrote on the general subject, with some examples:

  *** it-2 p. 693 Prophecy ***
  Multiple fulfillment. The use made of prophecy by Jesus and his disciples shows that a predictive prophecy may have more than one fulfillment, as when Paul referred to Habakkuk’s prophecy, originally fulfilled in Babylon’s desolation of Judah, and applied it in his day. (Hab 1:5, 6; Ac 13:40, 41) Jesus showed that Daniel’s prophecy concerning “the disgusting thing that is causing desolation” was due for fulfillment in the generation then living; yet Daniel’s prophecy also connects “the disgusting thing” causing desolation with the “time of the end.” (Da 9:27; 11:31-35; Mt 24:15, 16) Biblical evidence shows that when Michael ‘stands up,’ this signifies that Jesus Christ takes action as king on behalf of Jehovah’s servants. (Da 12:1; see MICHAEL No. 1.) Jesus’ own prophecy regarding the conclusion of the system of things likewise includes mention of his coming in Kingdom power, which did not take place in the first century C.E. (Mt 24:29, 30; Lu 21:25-32) This indicates a dual fulfillment. Hence, in discussing the matter of double fulfillment of prophecy, M’Clintock and Strong’s Cyclopaedia (1894, Vol. VIII, p. 635) comments: “This view of the fulfilment of prophecy seems necessary for the explanation of our Lord’s prediction on the Mount, relating at once to the fall of Jerusalem and to the end of the Christian dispensation.”

  --------------

  These prophecies are sometimes said by the Society to have a "minor" and "major" fulfillment to indicate a difference in scale, e.g. the destruction of Jerusalem in 70CE vs. the destruction of all false religion in the Great Tribulation. There are also prophetic characters and prefigurements, like Jonah spending three days in the whale prefiguring Jesus' three days in the grave. And so on and so forth. We're basically looking at a situation where people with too much time on their hands are trying to wring as much meaning out of ancient writings as possible. This isn't unique to the Witnesses; they inherited the tendency from earlier spiritual writers in the 1800s.