Opposers Dismythed
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What do you want to see us examine regarding Jehovah's Witnesses? What issues may be hanging you or someone you know up that do not involve anything we have already written (See the list of articles on the left sidebar) or which you believe that what we have already written does not adequately address?
This topic only addresses claims made about Jehovah's Witnesses, their history, their beliefs and their policies. We also consider where science goes off the rails. See the Opposers Dismythed menu on the sidebar for categories of examination we are interested in.
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The organization does not and has never purchased stocks. People donate their stocks, foundational accounts, blue chips, and any other stock portfolios to the organization. The local branch then draws off money from those accounts. They never add to those accounts. Any accounts that draw their money from morally objectionable sources, such as the porn industry, are closed out.
As to their continuing to draw from companies like Boeing who make war planes and missiles, those are weapons of war. The organization does not take a stand on political affairs and do not view war itself as murder. They do not give money to any companies, thus the organization's money does not go to companies that profit from war.
We do not dictate how you should feel about these things. The organization has not broken any of God's laws, and has neither profited from nor given money to sinful endeavors. Nor have they violated their neutrality.
There is no hypocrisy in owning stocks as long as they are not used for gambling or greed. (1 Timothy 6:9)
The Australian Royal Commission has said that we have among the lowest rates of child sexual abuse of any religions they have not even investigated. The only problem the world has with us is our two witness rule and not requiring our members to report.
The world judges criminals and if it demands reporting, then it needs to inact such legislation. We only judge right to membership and do not prevent anyone from reporting.
As for the two witness rule, it is the only thing protecting innocent members from the flood of false accusations that our apostates and opposers are all too happy to lodge, and again, it does not interfere with anyone's ability or right to report. Nor do we discourage such.
Yes there have been congregations that did not properly act on the organization's policies or were more interested in protecting Jehovah's name than upholding justice, but the organization has not directed such and has even addressed the matter in some of the information in the links below.
Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Scripturally Based Position on Child Protection
Love and Justice in the Face of Wickedness
Providing Comfort for Victims of Abuse
To see how much we have written on the subject, go here:
Search: child sexual abuse at JW.org
Some things don't need to be addressed. Time will address it on it on its own. I recommend that you stop looking at uninformed claims of our opposers. There is no way such claims as that cause anyone any problems unless they are looking for any excuse, no matter how week, to be stumbled, in which case, they are already stumbled to begin with.
We only address claims that may spark difficulties in some. Speculation about something still future is pointless.
If I grab you by the hand, I can lead you about. I can point at things and you can infer that I mean for you to understand something about it. But that does not necessitate that you will understand me perfectly. Jesus was led by holy spirit in the wilderness. For what purpose he may not have known at the time. (Matthew 4:1)
But if I say "do this" or "say that" then I can inspire you to do or say those things perfectly. When the Bible writers wrote scriptures, they were inspired by holy spirit. (2Ti 3:16, 17)
Some Bible writers wrote without any awareness of being inspired by holy spirit. Since no one in the modern age has been shown to be "inspired by holy spirit" to speak original messages from God, none of Jehovah's Witnesses have ever claimed to be "inspired by holy spirit".
We firmly believe that Jehovah and Jesus are directing the organization through holy spirit, as revealed through ample evidence, thus we say "Jehovah's spirit-directed organization", but we have never claimed to have any members who receive direct inspiration by the holy spirit. It is possible that some specific past writings of ours could prove later to be inspired of God, but we do not currently claim such.
Being "spirit-directed" does not necessitate that everything we say would be perfect. Nathan was a prophet of God, but he spoke something that God susequently contradicted. (2 Samuel 7:2-13) Was Nathan wrong? Absolutely. Did that make him a false prophet? No. It made him human; fallible.
Thus we do not always perfectly understand the scriptures perfectly, nor perfectly understand what we are being directed to do. Sometimes our own sinful inclinations may mislead us. But to claim that holy spirit does not direct us would be to deny the power of the holy spirit to do exactly that.
The fact that we have the clearest understanding of the Scriptures of any religion proves that Jehovah's holy spirit is directing the organization of Jehovah's Witnesses.
It is comical that our apostates mock our claim to being spirit-directed and purposefully misinterpret what that means in order to mislead people, but they will never point to any other organization or person and claim that it has Jehovah's holy spirit. I think that is pretty telling in and of itself. They are defaming the holy spirit and deserve the consequence.
I also find it comical that someone making claims about our not having holy spirit demonstrates that they know nothing about holy spirit by the very speech they use to make the claim and their course of life. Does the holy spirit cuss? Does it rage and carry on about trifles? If a person cannot demonstrate the fruitage of the spirit, then they ought to remain silent. (Gal 5:19-23)
Maílson:
That is those who know Jehovah’s Witnesses, and faithful Witnesses themselves, do not believe the claims of our opposers, especially not apostates who are all accustomed to lying.
When you have a friend or family member you have known and trusted and have never had any reason to distrust them, and someone you know to be deceptive, untrustworthy and known for making stuff up, especially against the trusted friend or family member in question, then you are going to ignore them, perhaps even feel disgust toward the liar. That is loyalty. Only another untrustworthy person with no sense of loyalty would choose to believe the liar.
Believing a habitual liar would be like drinking urine and calling it pure water.
Thanks for putting this to bed.
Without evidence, there is no need to address this issue. The scripture says:
"When anyone replies to a matter before he hears the facts, it is foolish and humiliating."—Pr 18:13
I have yet to find anyone who ever experienced bad straights as a result of their being "forced out" of Bethel. Really, what do you think they've been doing with their elderly all these years? Putting them on the curb?
For the past decade, our blog posts have been designed to get people to think past what they hear and to judge based on what they know for certain instead of conjecture and half-baked questions.
Without evidence, there is no need to answer anyone. As they say, evidence is king. Get the evidence before you let some villainous snake's meaningless words stumble you. Even then collect all the evidence, not just one side's supposed evidence for their claim. Go to the source if you can.
As a group, our apostates have the easily demonstrable reputation of being liars. Should anyone take them at their word?
Remember this first and foremost: not everyone who claims to be anointed is really anointed, (Mt 7:21) and not everyone who has actually been anointed receives the reward. It is a race, after all. (1Co 9:24)
Now let us consider the reported numbers. The only centuries that matter are the first century, the twentieth century and the 21st century.
In the 20th century, the number of those reporting to be anointed in the organization peeked at around 35,000. With all those that lived and died since 1914, that number may be around 50,000 at most. That leaves 94,000.
From 200 CE to 1800, we only need to count about 10 per century and that is generous. So that is 160. The second century may have begun with a few thousand, but by that time apostasy was already rampant. But let's be generous and give the second century 10,000 anointed.
In the first century, though, we have more considerations than just the straight 83,840 who remain to consider. We have to consider why it did not balloon to 1 million as it did in our first 67 years of history after 1914, especially considering how many thousands followed Jesus. There are several factors.
1. At its peek, Jesus had around 5,000 followers. Most of those who followed Jesus listened only to have their ears tickled (Eze 33:32) or for the benefits they could receive. (Joh 6:23-27) Also, they were not all baptized disciples as not all believed he was the messiah. (John 6:66) By Acts 4, they counted only 5,000 Jewish believers. (Acts 4:4)
2. Not everyone had the fortitude to endure the ministry, just as today.
3. Many left during the severest persecution by Nero. (2Ti 1:15; 4:10)
4. Many apostatized, leading to the great apostasy that resulted in the spread of the false teachings of Christendom. (1Ti 4:1-5)
5. They did not have printing presses, radio, television, or the internet. Neither did they have atomobiles or airplains. They only had word of mouth and procured passage on merchant carts and boats with a penchant for sinking, both of which required substantial investment to secure.
6. In 1914, there was a Bible in every home. But in the first century they did not have the Greek Scriptures to work with for most of the 67 years. Matthew was not even written until 41 CE, Luke was written around 56-58 CE, Mark was written around 60-65 CE, and John was written around 98 CE. The letters were only circulated to congregations back then. The scrolls of any kind were expensive to make and bulky, so they could not exactly carry their Bibles around with them. Thus they had to go into the ministry with just the clothes on their backs and the word in their mouths.
7. In 1914 3/4's of the world professed some form of Christianity and most of the final 1/4 were Muslim. Thus almost everyone had some message about Jesus. But in the first century, only 20 million Jews, a small number of gentiles, and a couple hundred Zoroastrian scholars were expecting the messiah. The rest of the world was either completely ignorant of the teaching or simply dismissive of the Jewish belief. So the message about the messiah was foolishness to most people who were pagans, (1Co 1:23) or they absorbed it as just another Hercules or avatar of Zeus. (Acts 14:12, 13) They had a truly uphill battle in those days.
8. Christians were killed by the thousands under Nero, significantly reducing the number of willing preachers that they had to have their meetings in homes instead of synagogues. (Phm 1, 2) Most of the rest were scattered into other territories outside the empire. Each of those had the same uphill battle as in 37 CE.
(Continued below)
So, you see why the good news did not actually spread near as quickly as it could today, and it suffered significant setbacks that were not easily overcome until the 4th century. But Jesus said that his disciples would do works greater than his. (Joh 14:12) Additionally, the scriptures show that in the last days many would flock to the truth. (Re 7:9, 13, 14) The great crowd comes, not from the first century, but from the last days.
We do not know the exact number of anointed ones in the first century or even in these last days. But we can be confident that the number of those who passed the test until now is less than 144,000.
And remember: Not everyone who actually received an anointing from God wins the race. Thus the number of those who received an anointing was greater than those who received the reward. It could have been 500,000 anointed by God, but less than 144,000 have made the cut. Then there are the billions who have claimed the anointing because of false teachings or delusions of grandeur who were not actually anointed.
Consider also that the Catholic church has the teaching that only a few are saints (holy ones; read: anointed). Where did they get that teaching if they teach that everyone baptized receives a crown of glory? It is no doubt because in the early church they knew the number of anointed ones was dwindling, and after the apostate teaching that everyone baptized goes to heaven was introduced, the teaching about "saints" remained.
We have a post that only provides other links. I believe the one you are looking for is the post by thirdwitness. Here is our post: http://dismythed.blogspot.com/2013/09/was-jerusalem-really-destroyed-in-607.html
https://www.amazon.com/Fanmis-Ceramic-Sapphire-Luminous-Stainless/dp/B01CRDYZ26/ref=asc_df_B01CRDYZ26/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312150055906&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=2529411901625779653&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9026561&hvtargid=pla-571664410998&psc=1
The watch that brother Herd is wearing doesn't even match the Rolex they claim he is wearing.
Is the Governing Body Biblical?
giv trade, Read Acts 6:1-6; 15:1-29 and 16:4. First, the apostles and later the apostles and elders in Jerusalem were clearly the governing body of the day.
The governing body takes court cases seriously. Jehovah’s hand has been seen in them too frequently for them not to. They try to find the lesson in the case if one can be found. This time appears to have helped them come to a kinder arrangement that is less invasive.
As a historical example of where court cases have influenced our handling of shunning matters, the GB made a similar adjustment over a case that an apostate won in the U.S. supreme court that split hairs over the terminology "disfellowship", so we created the term "disassociate" and it held up. This should indicate to us that the slave is not insensitive to matters that stumble some, nor to Jehovah’s will
This time they clarified terms that make us sound less like a court of law and more like a social club and we'll see if it holds up in Norway. The shunning arrangement, of course, has not changed, nor its seriousness, which shows Jehovah's favor on the arrangement. (Though we are more kind in the process now and more ready to forgive sincere repentance, which might also be attributed to recent cases.)