A discussion about Jehovah's Witnesses

[Ross]

I recently explained in a thread, that I once belonged to this movement, and from that point on I was abruptly ignored by the Witness I was debating; so the remainder of the members of their faith may not participate with me personally due to their shunning policy. However I welcome others to talk to me and ask anything at all about the religion, as I can introduce some interesting first hand information. I am now 65 years old, and was there for nine very intensive years through the massive growth period of 1974 and 1975, the later internal power struggles of the leadership, and the awakening and dropping of membership in the early 1980's. I did not leave for any scriptural or doctrinal reasons, nor was I 'booted out'. I simply walked away.

My introductory question is: Why do you think that members of this order are so ultimately convinced of the validity of their beliefs, and will defend to the bitter end the slightest doctrinal adjustment to their conception of the scriptures?

[Purple Knight]

Also I share your love of cats. My wife and I love occasionally going to cat shows here in England and Scotland. Our cat is half Norwegian Forest cat, which the Vikings used to carry with them on their boats during their travels and pillages. Did you attempt to find the cat and buy it back? What breed do you show?

I'll have more time to write at the weekend.

The cat was a Japanese Bobtail and now I have Oriental Shorthairs. There was no way I could have bought the cat back because it was worth so much. But ultimately I prefer the breed I have now.

The Norweigan is a huge breed. Mine run about half the weight of yours.

While I attempt to follow Christian principles, there are lines that I would never cross. For example, if someone attempted to hurt my family or damage my home, I would defend these with my life rather than turning the other cheek or being weak.

That's kind of why I respect the JW's attempt to shoehorn basic self-defence into Christianity too. And they defend it decently well. Your way is more honest but it would be more ideal, I think, to have a set of principles that continue to work and provide realistic solutions when there are thieves, murderers, rapists, and the violent. It doesn't take much to generate a set of principles that is so ideal no one reaches it. Compassionist (who posts here) has a good example of this and thinks we should all be autotrophs and survive on sunlight, so we wouldn't have to kill to live. And I agree that it makes a great ideal, but since we (at present) can't achieve that, it's not very useful.

It continues to make me happy that there are people who don't think it's wrong [in practice] to defend your life and your things. If someone comes and takes all that I have, I think I can deal with it, as long as there are people who will say the thief is in the wrong, not that I'm in the wrong for not offering him my shirt along with the coat he took. Growing up, all I ever heard was, "No of course he's not wrong, he doesn't know any better," and "don't you dare judge him, that makes you a horrible person," and "it doesn't matter what he did; all that matters is what you do," and I never met anyone who thought otherwise. This is including Alcoholics Anonymous which is kind-of-sort-of Christian and teaches that an alcoholic is never at fault for what they do.

Very much still interested to hear what those five people found in their research.

[Ross]

The Norweigan is a huge breed. Mine run about half the weight of yours.

When I first got my cat home several years ago, he swiped me in the face with his claws while playing, and just missed my eyeball and cut my eyelid. I showed him the bleeding damage he had done, and this actually registered on his tiny innocent face. I said "gentle, gentle," and stroked him very softly on his face with my fingertips. He was only a few weeks old but he understood; and has never aggressively extruded his claws to me since.

We lived in a neighbourhood where there were lots of cats. He would approach them timidly and without any aggression; but he was bullied, scratched, bitten, and chased by all of these local felines, and he became scared of them. Until he was three or four years old when he realized that he was longer, heavier and more athletic than his peers. Pity help from this moment on any cat that came near him.

But it's the same with us humans. If we allow people to dominate us, hurt us, and take away our dignity, what are we? Jesus upturned the tables in the temple, verbally ripped apart the Scribes and Pharisees. I think the 'turning of the other cheek' is not to be weak and give in to abuse, but to be humble and kind, honest and decent, to bring out the better nature of others if it is at all possible.

[Ross]

Setting aside the rejection of the Trinity, involving their claim that Jesus Christ is the created Michael the Archangel; there are two other declarations of doctrine that fundamentally separate Jehovah's Witnesses from mainstream Christianity.

The first, which their founder Charles Taze Russell introduced is the date of 1914, said to be the time when Christ received kingship power in heaven, calculated from a time prophesy in Daniel chapter four as the End of the Gentile Times.

The second, installed by Russell's successor Joseph Franklin Rutherford, is the taking of the 144000 mentioned in the book of Revelation as a literal number, which it is claimed reached its peak and was filled in 1935. Thus the doors to heaven were subsequently closed.

It can thus be observed that as the converts to Jehovah's Witnesses grew in the early part of the 20th century and outnumbered 144000, Rutherford had begun to interpret scripture as to pertaining to their own movement and history. Entire segments of the book of Revelation were explained in Watchtower books to be referencing the growth and revival of the Jehovah's Witness religion from the year 1914.

And so when the calculations to this date were found not to line up, the entire foundation of the movement crumbles and falls. There is no God ordained revival of true Christianity in 1914 and 1919. The interpretation of huge swathes of scripture founded on these dates is thus false. This is not the 'time of the end' or 'last days'. And the leadership of Jehovah's Witnesses is invalid and without divine approval.

The problem surfaced once again when a Swedish Jehovah’s Witness forwarded in 1977 to the Governing Body a meticulously detailed and lengthy batch of papers which were the results of his many years of private pre Christian chronological research, drawing attention to the accepted Jehovah's Witness dates relating to the Daniel time prophesy as absolutely historically incorrect.

Up to the point in time when the research into the Bible Dictionary was carried out, it had been completely accepted by all Jehovah's Witnesses, including the Governing Body, that the 1914 calculation had been the unique work of Russell, who had claimed to be "God's mouthpiece" and the 'faithful and discreet slave' of Matthew chapter twenty four.

But the work of this Swedish elder named Carl Olof Jonsson drew attention to the following startling facts:
In 1823, nearly 30 years before Russell was even born, an Englishman by the name of John Aquila Brown studied Daniel chapter four and using the equation of a 'day for a year', calculated the prophecy as running as 2520 years, and from 604 B.C. to 1917 A.D.

The Second Adventists later adopted this calculation, and with some slight adjustment formulated the year 1914. They also worked out that the end of 6000 years of human existence would terminate in 1874 expecting this to be the year of Christ’s second coming. When nothing happened in 1874 they were left wondering what was wrong and then it was observed that one translation read 'presence' rather than 'coming' from the Greek word parousia in Matthew chapter twenty four. And so they concluded that Christ was invisibly present, they were living in the time of the end, but that the actual conclusion or end of the age would be 1914.Their 1914 time calculation was published in the Adventist magazine four years before the first Watchtower magazine.

When Russell in the year 1876 read this in the Adventist magazine 'Herald of the Morning' he paid the author N.H. Barbour his travelling expenses to visit Russell in Philadelphia to explain in detail this theory. Russell accepted it all, and from henceforth most of Russell’s writings were based on time prophecies, and he became a co editor of this Adventist magazine. Russell soon parted company with the Adventists, began the Watchtower magazine and society, established The International Bible Students and brought this teaching with him.

The Governing Body were embarrassed with this information which revealed that their knowledge of their own religion’s beginnings were limited. They reluctantly exchanged some letters with Jonsson over a three year period, after which they eventually forwarded some manner of a refutation toward some of his material, stating that they were not inclined to change their current position of understanding on the issues involved.

Jonsson was disfellowshipped in July 1982 by a Swedish judicial committee for disagreeing with the organizations chronology and promoting his own. In the following year he published his book The Gentile Times Reconsidered, and the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society did not disclose to its rank and file the information about Brown and the Adventists for another ten years, fourteen years after the news was made available to the members of the Governing Body.

[Ross]

What did they find?

That the 1914 date is incorrect.

[historia]

So I read the whole Bible very critically because I was looking for some bloody evidence I could use to prove I was right to want my things to, you know, continue to be my things.

You mean like, "Thou shall not steal"?

[Purple Knight]

So I read the whole Bible very critically because I was looking for some bloody evidence I could use to prove I was right to want my things to, you know, continue to be my things.

You mean like, "Thou shall not steal"?

Thou means the reader. If anyone else steals your coat, give him your shirt with it.

You, JW, Osteng, Timothy, Eloi, Compassionist, William, Ross, and Wootah... You've all given me an idea that not all religious people will actually tell people to submit to thieves and give them anything they didn't take along with what they did. I appreciate it greatly even if I've been told the holy book does say to submit to thieves.

But it's the same with us humans. If we allow people to dominate us, hurt us, and take away our dignity, what are we?

Meek.

Jesus upturned the tables in the temple, verbally ripped apart the Scribes and Pharisees. I think the 'turning of the other cheek' is not to be weak and give in to abuse, but to be humble and kind, honest and decent, to bring out the better nature of others if it is at all possible.

I hope you're right. It doesn't really matter to me if Jesus was real or if he had magic powers or not. Even if a fairy tale, the figure is one people are inspired by, to the degree that I don't think I have a right to disagree with anything he said. So I dearly hope he didn't mean lie down and let people punch you.

[JehovahsWitness]

.. not all religious people will actually tell people to submit to thieves and give them anything they didn't take along with what they did.

Jesus said what use us it if we gain the whole world but lose our lives. The Christian position is not to risk ones life to protect material possessions.

[Ross]

.. not all religious people will actually tell people to submit to thieves and give them anything they didn't take along with what they did.

Jesus said what use us it if we gain the whole world but lose our lives. The Christian position is not to risk ones life to protect material possessions.

Welcome to my discussion, JehovahsWitness. I had concluded that the shunning of me on this forum would include not participating in my thread. But it is interesting to know that you are paying attention to my words. I know that you particularly are fond of posting links; so here are links to free online copies of Crisis of Conscience by Raymond Victor Franz, and The Gentile Times Reconsidered by Carl Olof Jonsson.


https://friendsofraymondfranz.com/wp-co ... 04-Eng.pdf

https://ad1914.files.wordpress.com/2014 ... idered.pdf

[Purple Knight]

.. not all religious people will actually tell people to submit to thieves and give them anything they didn't take along with what they did.

Jesus said what use us it if we gain the whole world but lose our lives. The Christian position is not to risk ones life to protect material possessions.

That's a logical position. It remains logical until the thieves are taking so much, so often, that the greater risk is not to do anything about it. There may be a reason it's a coat and a tunic and not your sheep and your cow.

In modern day, outside of the third world, you don't really get in a situation where your life in in danger because of thieves taking your stuff. When you're constantly paying off liens against your house, it can definitely feel like it, however. I left when I was 19 and I assume she lost that house. Nobody in my family knows where I live and I assume that's the only reason nobody is hounding me about my responsibility to make sure my mother is safe and has a place to live.

The only solution to people like that, is to not live among them. If they're one person and you're one person, you have to move away. If you've got a garden of good people, carefully pruned and maintained, the function of which would be destroyed by allowing goats to graze there, you just have to pull the weeds and kick out the goats. It's your garden; I don't understand the opposition to the idea that you have a right to do this. People who have never seen a goat might not understand.

[MissKate13]

[Replying to Ross in post #38]
A very interesting thread! Thanks for sharing, Ross. I am curious if you have been able to affiliate with any Christian group after your experience with the Jehovah’sWitnesses?