President Donald Trump is the first American President to host a meeting on religious freedom

[TheWorldNewsOrg]

President @realDonaldTrump is the first American President to host a meeting on religious freedom at the United Nations. https://t.co/0aROvYmivD

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) September 24, 2019

via .ORG

World News

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

It is my considered understanding that about such things Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are the only ones in "Government" that think like adults, and I expect , as I have mentioned here several  times before in the last year, that before the end of 2020 that Putin will restore religious freedom to Jehovah's Witnesses in the Russian Federation.

Putin for purely pragmatic reasons, including his desire to want to get along with Trump.

Of course, if I am wrong .... which I doubt ... it's no biggie.

Jehovah's Witnesses have never been right about ANY prophesy in the past hundred  and more years, so I will have the PERFECT excuse, and be in good company.

 

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

I know .. I am just free associating, extrapolating on that basic subject.

I see a pattern developing.

[JW Insider]

Whoops, I deleted that comment prior to your response, and can't put it back. But in order for yours to make sense, it was this:

JTR: When TheWorldNewsOrg guy (or gal) makes a post it's rarely about JWs or in a category about JWs.

[Melinda Mills]

Trump did not mention anything about the Witnesses, although he most likely knows about Russia's persecution and is allegedly close to Russia's president. He mentioned other religions in Asia which are being persecuted. What is the merit in mentioning that?

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

Neither care about Jehovah's Witnesses, specifically, but they both care about political optics, and pragmatically, about fairness.

[TrueTomHarley]

Two recent developments have occasioned specific rebukes from the U.S. State Department. 

1) the sentencing of 6 Witnesses to jail terms of 2-3 years.

2) the torture of at least 7 in Surgut, which Russian authorities at first denied but ultimately said proved necessary because the Witnesses resisted with martial arts techniques.

Of course, every other faith is kept track of as well—it is not just Jehovah’s Witnesses. Still, a State Department release of last year specifically mentioned just two groups. 1) Muslims, and  2) Jehovah’s Witnesses. All others were lumped into a single third category: 3) Others.

Of course, Trump might always consult with his son-in-law who can recall to him his dealings with the Witnesses from whom he purchased Bethel buildings—that they were people with whom “a handshake deal meant something.” He lavished praise on them in that video that JW.org took down as the Presidential campaign got underway, presumably so that agent Jack would not attempt to portray Witnesses as part of Trump’s election machine.

JTR, who does not hesitate to speak abusively of those whose counterparts the apostle Paul dared not, might well be right on this one, but I am not holding my breath. The two Presidents did want to get along, but I am not sure that the occasion hasn’t passed. Any overtures between them have been soundly scuttled by the American media. It is even as though when the kings of the north and south indicate that they would like to agree, outside forces intervene to make sure that they can’t, as though to to enforce the current understanding of Daniel’s prophesy that the two will hate each other’s guts right down to the end.

It is also possible that Trump senses in his meeting on religious freedom an opportunity to defuse accusations that he is anti-Muslim. It is Muslims who are under attack today, probably more so than Christian groups, and probably spurred on by the perception of how readily a certain strain of it goes on to embrace violence. Who can say what Trump is up to? To say he is a bull in a china shop, one must accept the premise that the status quo among world and national leaders is a “china shop.” But he might well be likened to a junkyard dog in a junkyard. Who can say where he goes next?

At any rate, he sidesteps an agenda of climate change policy and hosts his own religious freedom meeting instead. Religious freedom is embedded in the U.S. Constitution, primarily the Bill of Rights. Climate change is not, and Trump plainly doesn’t trust it, viewing it as a mostly concocted wedge to drive socialism more firmly into the world fabric. Instead, he goes to country after country, as though the personification of capitalism, to cut deals. He reverses decades of policy that holds that “giving away the fort” trade-wise will trigger political change, as newly monied populaces rise to overthrow the tyrannical governments that rule them, like a worldwide “Arab spring.” There is not much evidence that it works that way. It certainly didn’t with the Arab spring, and China is doubling down on its willingness to oppress, even in the face of material prosperity.

So will JTR’s prophesy come true, that Putin will reverse JW persecution by year’s end?

5 hours ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

Neither care about Jehovah's Witnesses, specifically, but they both care about political optics, and pragmatically, about fairness.

I agree that they are both pragmatic. But Trump is firmly resisted. And Putin may be as well. The New York Times speculated that he may not be so firmly in control as is assumed, partly because after he says: Why are we persecuting  Jehovah’s Witnesses? This must be looked into. the persecution does nothing but intensify. Even as the JW ban was under consideration, one pundit asked: why would they do it? There was no question that they could, but why would they? They do nothing but make themselves look ludicrous and thugs on the world stage. But it has been “pedal to the medal” since. The succeeding act was to rule the New World Translation as extremist—not a Bible at all—and thus paint themselves before all as breathtakingly ignorant, since anyone with even a modicum of scholarship knows that it is.

The anti-religion campaign has only intensified. Deprived of the New World Translation, Jehovah’s Witnesses there resort to any translation. So courts have found that some verses even there are actually “extremist.”

In doing so they have bought into the nonsense of the BITE model promoted by “anti-cultists” in the West. Such has become the wisdom that carries the day in Russia, however stretched the idea might be. It’s founder, Stephen Hassan, has just written a book about Trump: “The Cult of Trump—a Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control.”

https://freedomofmind.com/announcing-my-new-book-with-simon-and-schuster-entitled-the-cult-of-trump/

When you think that half the country has fallen under cult influence, it is evidence in my view that you have drunk too much of your own Kool-Aid. It is also evidence that the entire BITE anti-cult movement is little more than a political movement. It is little more than a tool of the left. It is a new culture of victimization elevated to sainthood. And it has been allowed to define Russia’s response to any religion not on the “approved list”—which in the Christian category, there is only one: the Russian Orthodox Church.