Please send me any helpful information for my site, whatever your religious or non-religious preferences.
My focus is:
- the 12 or so Jehovah's Witnesses leaders allege that they're part of a literal
144,000 (Rev.7:1-8; 14:1-5) most righteous Christians, all JWs, the only ones who will go to heaven--all others of the afterlife
are JWs who will live on Earth.
- the JWs leaders allege that they're the only ones of the 144,000 qualified
to make the rules for and lead Jehovah's Witnesses, God's sole God-guided religious organization on Earth--all others religions
are condemned as Babylon.
So:
- the JWs leaders have a batch
of distinctive rules meant to establish their exclusiveness (a ban of the medical use of blood and major blood fractions,
that Jesus invisibly turned his attention toward the Earth in 1914, a ban of most holidays as having worldly pagan or idolatrous
connotations, a ban of most government involvement as being too worldly, that Jesus is archangel Michael and not to be worshipped
and the holy spirit is impersonal, etc.), all of which must be agreed to for membership in the JWs and salvation.
- the JWs leaders allege that their distinctive rules are guaranteed by the Bible and best related evidence and reasoning.
Catch 22:
- But the distinctive rules are too distinctive to allow that honestly or they wouldn't
be so distinctive.
So my focus is the methods they use to try to make them seem guaranteed
(quotes used misrepresentatively from research books, creating a false impression of the most reasonable alternatives, forced
points, etc.),
especially if anyone is regarded or treated unfairly (persistent disagreement
with any of those rules can cause a JW to be disfellowshipped by friends and family),
hurt
or killed (in a hospital or when the JWs leaders' inflexible rules about neutrality and worldliness run up against an intolerant
political leader and put followers in harms' way unnecessarily, for no better reason thanthe leaders' elitism, as in Germany
and Malawi).
