(June 13, 2015 at 8:16 pm)Tonus Wrote:(June 13, 2015 at 5:50 pm)nicanica123 Wrote: Its funny you say this because I have a really close friend that has been researching this stuff and telling me about 1925 and so on. He said that he is sick of people in the younger generation saying that they didn't blow up 75 because he lived through it too and knows they did. He was even telling me how Rutherford or one of the older guys said that they knew what constellation Jehovah lived in because of a scripture but then never brought it up again. But in the end he came to the conclusion that its not a magic orb around the GB. They still are a group of men that rather than have an angel meet them and tell them what to do, pray and consider what to do. If JW's are by chance the true religion, it won't matter what they got wrong because in the long run their efforts have been preaching and purely worshiping Jehovah. So I am in a similar position. I don't care that they screwed up in a lot of areas. I don't even care if the 144k is not even a literal number.
It does bum me out that they can be a little bit disingenuous in fessing up to those past mistakes but at the same time, I think that humans are so fickle that you have to sometimes play everything off like its all according to plan. I heard this podcast story about a girl that was working in Alaska as a dogsledder for cruise ship tourist. And one day everything went wrong but the manager just kept telling the employees to play it off like it was according to plan and really a good thing. It sucks, but sometimes you do have to be a little disingenuous to keep humans spirits up
But it's an issue for the organization, since its leadership teaches that it is god's "faithful and discreet slave" and the only possible conduit for god to reveal his plan via the holy spirit. They have often criticized other religions for false teachings and for unChristian behavior. If they are practicing the same, it removes their moral authority and exposes it as not being the true faith. This may not matter to you, and it no longer matters to me. But there's a reason that they try to keep this stuff from the rank-and-file.
Russell believed that the pyramids of Egypt were used by god as tools of prophesying, and he wrote extensively about how the measurements of the pyramid of Giza could be used to foretell the future. As one might expect, this is not mentioned to the members today! In 1928 Rutherford wrote, in his book Reconciliation, that the Pleiades might be the location of heaven. It's not just that they're being disingenuous today; it's that they taught so many bizarre and downright insane things in the past. And this past is completely rewritten to make them seem as if they were inspired leaders chosen and guided by god in order to prepare his people for the next world, with nary a misstep. What really happened is quite different, and should cast doubt (to put it mildly) on anything they claim as "truth" today.
I guess thats true if you believe that if they're not 100% right about everything then they have to be 100% wrong. I just don't believe that is worth it to view anything that way. Clearly Russell had some crazy ideas. Can god have a single conduit and they still be wrong or imperfect? Isn't it more of an outrageous claim to be infallible like the Pope? And I think that the criticism towards other religions is based off gratuitousness. Its not that JW's are saying that Catholics are horrible because they're probably wrong in some of their beliefs but rather because they so obviously have adopted pagan and self serving beliefs into their ethos.
