United Nations vs WATCHTOWER

[Γιαννης Διαμαντιδης]

According to Robert King and his book "Jehovah Himself Has Become King" from page 142 till page 160 we have a detailed list of watchtower publications that promote UN. I will give you an example: Awake! July 22 1999 the Governing Body tells us that 1999 is the international year of older Persons. 1994 also just so happened to be the UN’s “International Year of 
the Family” (Watchtower Magazine 9-15-95). 1995 was to be the UN “Year of Tolerance”. (Watchtower Magazine 10-1-95). The year 1998 was the UN-declared “International Year of the Ocean,” (June 8, 1998, Awake!). The year 2001 was designated by the United Nations as the “International Year of Volunteers.”(January 1, 2001, Watchtower). My question is: who should the organization be advertising, the UN or the Kingdom of God? If they were advertising the UN isn't that spiritual fornication? and what is the punishment for that!

 

[Evacuated]

This is a ridiculous allegation.

There is no promoting of the UN in these articles any more than the apostle Paul promoted the Stoic poet Aratus in his speech on the Areopagus at Acts 17:28.

These WT articles merely reference the attempts of the UN to promote beneficial strategies for the human family, and highlight  it's failure to accomplish what can only be achieved through the administration of Jehovah's kingdom, the only viable government for this earth.

These assertions, and others like them, are filling up the measure of the activities of Haman (Esther 3:8). 

[Colin Thorpe]

This question is from either an brother or someone who is still on milk and not solid food. Hopefully it is one who is still learning the truth and he/she should take Eoin Joyce answer and do some research.

[Colin Thorpe]

I will repeat my message in a different way.

Γιαννης Διαμαντιδης

His question is from either a brother who has been dis-fellowshipped or is anti the truth or is 

 someone who is still on milk and not solid food. Hopefully it is one who is still learning the truth and he/she should take Eoin Joyce answer and do some research.

[The Librarian]

See here for my comments on this: http://www.jw-archive.org/post/130454441558/watchtower-and-the-united-nations-back-in-2004-and

[Γιαννης Διαμαντιδης]

Hopefully I can still write to this question. thank you Admins.

1.Dear brother Colin Thorpe, I would prefer if you yourself could make some research and not let it to the others. If you don't still drink milk ... prove it !

2.Dear Eoin Joyce, before you talk about Haman, Please read "The Guardian" of October 8 of 2001 page 13.
also please read the pages 142 to 160 from the book "Jehovah Himself Has Become King". (but read it !)
there you will read that Jehovah’s Witnesses in France independently published a brochure entitled “A Mission to Africa.” In it they explained in detail the activities of the Aidafrique NGO. On pages 9-10 we read: "The best form of travel, if not the only one, is the airplane. Often we used the H.C.R.’s (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) planes".
Also please read the public statement the watchtower made.
Also read the public statement UN made. (http://ask.un.org/loader.php?fid=714&type=1&key=98fd5be823c972e94733f7fd50f6088d)
Dear Eoin Joyce, Paul did not use the name of Stoic poet Aratus to make advertisement for him, neither he was member of his philosophy group as the watchtower was a member of UN-NGO for almost a decade until the Guardian told us what was happening. This is what the statement of UN says:

• that the NGO share the ideals of the UN Charter;
• have a demonstrated interest in United Nations issues and a proven ability to reach target or specialized audiences, such as educators, media representatives, policy makers and the business community;
• have the commitment and means to conduct effective information programs about UN activities by publishing newsletters, bulletins and pamphlets, organizing conferences, seminars and round tables; and enlisting cooperation of the media.

3.Dearest Librarian I read your link and everything you say is beautiful ... about a brother who made a mistake and all that... but can you prove anything of what you say?


 

[Evacuated]

Γιαννης Διαμαντιδης

I have noted your references and the arguments made by the various critics you recommend. The observations are interesting and informative where factual. The conclusions and assertions made remain the perception of those critics however, and I do not find them in the least convincing. For me, they remain simply, allegations.

I can see in the scriptural record similarities to the many ways in which God's servants in the past were assisted by secular authorities in the carrying out of Jehovah's purposes. Ezra and Nehemiah's relationship to the authorities in their day being classic examples. (I would submit both books in their entirety as references here).

This record(for me) serves simply to demonstrate the inability of Satan to thwart Jehovah in that the very organisations representing his (Satan's) rulership are used, when required, to accomplish Jehovah's purposes. 

The passage of scripture in Matthew 12:22-30 fits well for me in response to these allegations.

 

 

[Ann O'Maly]

(Giannis, Robert King is disfellowshipped so it's unlikely that loyal JWs will read anything he says.)

I remember the controversy when it broke and researched the matter for myself at the time.

The issue wasn't so much that Watchtower became a NGO, but that it also became associated with the UN's Department of Public Information which required assenting to the UN Charter (read it to see what that involved) and promoting the UN's work, aims and values. Every year, as the rules stood, the Organization had to provide evidence to the DPI that it was doing that in order to continue association. This is why the articles in the Awakes during the 1990s softened their anti-UN stance and put the UN's accomplishments in a more positive light.

It's easy to minimize the Watchtower's involvement as the actions of one Bethelite, but he and the other named representative were high-up Bethelites. At least one GB member was aware because he was also listed as one of the representatives on the accreditation forms (W. [Lloyd] Barry). Not only that but, 

"Each article in both The Watchtower and Awake! and every page, including the artwork, is scrutinized by selected members of the Governing Body before it is printed." - w87 3/1 p. 15 par. 18.

So any 'spiritual food' that promoted the UN's work (in contrast to the usual contempt about it) was checked and signed off by members of the GB. It would be those kinds of articles that were provided to the DPI so the Org. could continue its association.

Given that the UN has long been viewed as the 'disgusting thing' of Daniel and the 'scarlet wild beast' of Revelation, it's understandable why many would be stumbled by the Org's actions.

[JW Insider]

Γιαννης Διαμαντιδης,

I believe that Ann O'maly has stated the truth about the U.N. involvement about as well as anyone can. I know the brother who got the Society involved with the UN DPI/NGO, and have spoken to him several times since I left Bethel in the 1980's. I know that the paperwork was approved by others including a member of the GB (mentioned by Ann).

It was definitely a mistake. And it has definitely stumbled people. I'm not here to defend it, and I'm not here as one of those Witnesses who will claim that Jehovah has allowed certain mistakes just to filter out those who are disloyal, or those who are looking for an excuse to leave the Organization. People still say this about some of the mistakes of the past, and will likely say such things about mistakes made in the future.

I just searched through the jw-archive site, because I know that we have discussed this before, and I didn't want to just keep re-writing things "from scratch" over and over again -- which is something I have a tendency to always do. In fact, this is the very first time I will be quoting myself from a previous post: I'm no expert on this, and perhaps I don't have all the facts either, but the information is from people I trust.

 

A portion of the discussion from https://disqus.com/home/discussion/jwarchive/jw_archiveorg_by_the_jw_comic_strip_52/#comment-2009424381

(I made the UN joke because the timing was close to "Sternstorm." The WTS applied for the NGO status through their DPI (Dept of Public Info.) in 1991 and received it in 1992. I believe we requested disassociation in 2001, just after an investigative journalist exposed the NGO/DPI connection.)

If you are asking about the UN, then unfortunately, the answer is Yes. The Watchtower joined the UN as an NGO. I know the brother who spearheaded the effort, still in Writing (last I spoke to him), and also knew others who approved it at the time (now deceased). They meant no harm, but it proved to be an embarrassment. They didn't really need the NGO status, for the original purpose -- access to informational materials, but the status seems to have given them quicker information about conferences and events that could have even helped the Watchtower Society learn more about the behind-the-scenes political circumstances of our brothers in various countries. The most embarrassing part, of course, was getting "disfellowshipped" by the UN. (That really happened, but it happened just after the WTS requested it.) Also, for a while, the Watchtower Society was supposed to write one informational article per year that informed our audience of some of the work the UN was doing. (That's one of the ways the DPI works.) So while the Watchtower magazine bashed them negatively, a small piece here and there in the Awake! magazine was doing articles on UNICEF etc that were between neutral and positive.

...

I should also say that I don't think this started out as anything very big. But those who got involved should have realized that almost everything goes public and becomes searchable. For a while you could even search the U.N.'s site and see which Awake! articles had been submitted for NGO/DPI compliance.

My motto: If you think you'll have trouble defending it, just don't! (Don't start something you might have to defend later.)

But I have to say that even in 1976, I was doing some follow-up research on Mr. Banda, the president of Malawi who had allowed widespread persecution of the Witnesses for several years just prior. And it turns out that he made some anti-JW statements that blamed the Witnesses for their own troubles -- saying that the problem was not just the 25 cent political party card. I only found this info in some heavy encyclopedic U.N. publications that no one in Writing had seen or heard of -- although these publications were at a large university library. It's quite possible that, 15 years later, a couple brothers were convinced that this type of information, although available without the NGO/DPI connection, would become more accessible. (I don't know if that would really be true.) Or, even more likely, that if we could gain a respectable status with THEIR researchers, we could merely request things to be xeroxed and mailed to the WTS, rather than traveling over to DPI repositories, and hardly knowing where to start.

 

----- and in another place on jw-archive, it came up again ------

 

There is additional evidence or information that I'm sure you can find from others, but what I write below is based mostly on what I know personally and have seen with my own eyes. It is mixed with a few things I have learned from other trusted and current Witnesses.

A very interesting man in Bethel's Writing Department is best known for some of his non-outline talks that he has given in hundreds of congregations. You can find many of his recorded talks on the Internet. He is a good speaker with a "dramatic" personality. I know the man well, and still count him as a friend although we rarely speak. I have seen him outside Bethel, in NY, NJ, even PA, oddly enough, buying books for his own library and for the Bethel libraries. (I have been a book collector for 30 years, and still take on research work for authors, so we have often frequented the same places.)

From the time I first knew him, 1976, this brother was in the Service Department and finally moved to the Writing Department. He was quickly given a lot of autonomy under the supervision of Lloyd Barry because he did more research and book purchasing than pure Writing compared with most others in Writing.

The brother I am speaking about was very highly embarrassed over the fact that it was mostly his own idea that got this thing started. I have not talked about it with him. He began using the UN library regularly in 1990, then weekly in 1991, and initially signed up with the UN's "Department of Public Information" (DPI) in 1991 (and officially accepted 1992) for easier access to library materials, but in the process of accessing those materials he learned a lot about different types of access to conferences and areas of interest that aligned with the Society's interests outside of just the library resources. (It was thought that association might have made it easier to publicize JW human rights violations, learn more about what other religions were doing when they had similar issues with religious persecution in many countries. It made it easier to get information about international religious taxation issues, and Holocaust publicity, etc.)

Brother Barry agreed with him that these other areas of access were also valuable, and they continued the association as an "NGO" (non-governmental organization). The names of both of these brothers, including the GB member, and another direct report to a GB member from the Service Dept are still on some forms at the UN.

They also had to agree to produce articles that helped to promote the work of United Nations' initiatives. The first one was the September 8, 1991 Awake! One initiative that the WTS could most easily agree with was UNICEF. The December 8, 2000 Awake! for example prints out the entire UN Declaration of the Rights of a Child in a single issue that mentions UNICEF 10 times (in a positive context). I'll quote it below.

But first notice by using the 2014 Watchtower Library CD for example that in the 10 years that the WTS was associated with the UN it mentioned UNICEF about 75 times (from 1991-2001). After a leak by the Guardian, the WTS was disassociated from the UN in 2001 when it was exposed to the UN that the Watchtower was simultaneously speaking out AGAINST the UN at the same time the Awake! was speaking positively about it.

(UNICEF has been mentioned just 11 times in the much longer time period since 2001, and always just to quote negative statistics.)

I have seen a list that included articles that were presented to the UN/DPI as proof that the WTS was keeping it's agreement by publishing at least one positive article per year. I don't have a copy of it, and don't know if anyone else does. I forget whether it included the issue below from 2000. I wish I had kept a copy. As I recall, it had references to about 10 different issues of the Awake! over a period of several years.

*** g00 12/8 p. 5 An Ongoing Search for Solutions ***
The UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child:
● The right to a name and nationality.
● The right to affection, love, and understanding and to material security.
● The right to adequate nutrition, housing, and medical services.
● The right to special care if disabled, be it physically, mentally, or socially.
● The right to be among the first to receive protection and relief in all circumstances.
● The right to be protected against all forms of neglect, cruelty, and exploitation.
● The right to full opportunity for play and recreation and equal opportunity to free and compulsory education, to enable the child to develop his individual abilities and to become a useful member of society.
● The right to develop his full potential in conditions of freedom and dignity.
● The right to be brought up in a spirit of understanding, tolerance, friendship among peoples, peace, and universal brotherhood.
● The right to enjoy these rights regardless of race, color, sex, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, and property, birth, or other status.

 

 

--------------

Back to your current post. What I'm trying to say is that I don't think we need to cover up anything. A mistake was made, and we ultimately resolved it. I don't see what it proves to keep bringing it up. It does not show that we supported the U.N.  It shows that we found areas of agreement. We used the relationship to our advantage and the "cost" to us was the need to write about ways in which another organization was also trying to resolve world problems. For all we know, we would have been writing about such things anyway. Personally, I think we ended up looking more reasonable by discussing what the world was trying to do, and how it was at times making progress. Even their limited progress still highlighted the need for a more comprehensive solution.

So it's not like any JWs really needed to take their focus off the Scriptural reasoning for resolving the world's problems. Perhaps it made us more sympathetic and knowledgeable about the viewpoint of others. In the more distant past, we often did nothing but show derision for such efforts. Surely we are better off now for such research. I don't see this whole thing as a one-sided proof of hypocrisy with no up-side. I believe the posts also show that (through the mistake) we discovered avenues and venues for involvement in human rights awareness that we were not aware of previously.

 

[Ann O'Maly]

1 hour ago, JW Insider said:

I have seen a list that included articles that were presented to the UN/DPI as proof that the WTS was keeping it's agreement by publishing at least one positive article per year.

Me too. I was going to mention it in my post but, like you, I didn't keep a copy, my memory was too vague on it, and the list has gone into cyber-oblivion.

Yes, signing up was a mistake in view of the Org's true opinion of the UN. Despite writing more positively about the UN's work, which was refreshing to see on the one hand, it also meant that the Org. was being two-faced. In addition, it made it appear like the 'disgusting thing' was having a say in what kind of 'spiritual food' was to be produced. I don't know why nobody at the top picked up on the inconsistency.

 

[Γιαννης Διαμαντιδης]

Wow I was born in 1975, It was a great privilege to have you spoken to me even from the Internet. It was my dream one day to go to other lands as a missionary (Gilead). I remember I was sneaking to my grandpa's library just to read past articles from the ""purposing my purpose in life". Thank you for your honesty brother and sister. Yes things like this ( NGO  involvement ) shook my faith to the watchtower... because I hate double standards... while we forgive and forget the mistakes of the Society but we cannot forgive our brothers who come and ask for forgiveness. Watchtower made us impose rules that Jehovah never asked. We have our repented brothers in the back of the room for many months even for years to prove what? that they are not proud? can the Society prove that is not proud? I am coming here and make this questions because I feel that the wrath of Jehovah against the Society becomes bigger and bigger. The Watchtower Society became a stumble many times now for the little sheep of Christ. It is time for this impunity to come to an end!

Do you love my little sheep ?
I ask you again: do you love my little sheep ?
I will ask you again and again till you will not send back to the mouth of Satan my little sheep !

[Melinda Mills]

I think the problem is due largely to ignorance of the function of governments and international organizations.  In another comment, I will highlight some of the benefits we enjoy worldwide because of the work of the United Nations.  Jehovah has allowed governments to keep order and to help us in our preaching work.  ((1 Tim 2:1,2; Romans 13:1). Nothing can be achieved without relative peace.  Only Jehovah's Kingdom will bring peace and we must not worship the peace beast as the only hope for mankind as has Christendom. We can still cooperate with governments to achieve certain goals.  There is no requirement to hate them.  It is Satan who is using them to harm and persecute us.  Satan has fostered all worldly governments but they are made up of people who we are supposed to love and set a good example to.  They are thousands of examples where Jehovah's Witnesses have been commended by the governments for good work and conduct.  The United Nations is made up of  individual governments.  That is why it is called the image of the wild beast. If we respect the government we individually live under, we must also respect the United Nations.

Granted something unintentional was done to achieve greater access to information to maybe prove fulfillment of prophecy and obtain statistics of every sort. However, I think the complaint has been pushed out of proportion.

I endorse the comment of Eoin Joyce and also recommend studying how Jehovah and his representatives who appreciated the role of government cooperated to get things done. We have just studied Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, and we see how Esther and Mordecai along with Jehovah's intervention used good judgement to protect His people. Romans chapter 13 is essential reading also.  See below: (Taken from w95 10/1 "A World without War - When?")

THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF THE UNITED NATIONS

  In Bible prophecy, human governments are often symbolized by wild beasts. (Daniel 7:6, 12, 23; 8:20-22) Hence, for many decades the Watchtower magazine has identified the wild beasts of Revelation chapters 13 and 17 with today’s worldly governments. This includes the United Nations, which is depicted in Revelation chapter 17 as a scarlet-colored beast with seven heads and ten horns.

  However, this Scriptural position does not condone any form of disrespect toward governments or their officials. The Bible clearly states: “Let every soul be in subjection to the superior authorities, for there is no authority except by God; the existing authorities stand placed in their relative positions by God. Therefore he who opposes the authority has taken a stand against the arrangement of God; those who have taken a stand against it will receive judgment to themselves.”—Romans 13:1, 2.