The range of political beliefs among Jehovah's Witnesses

[Patiently waiting for Truth]

Quote @Anna  " It's evident though that the reason they were discussing politics was not because they somehow wanted to be a part of the world as @4Jah2me insinuates, "

Quote @JW Insider " Russell wrote a letter to the U.S. President to tell him that Filipinos are lazy and the Japanese are hardworking. "

Um, no part of the world ? 

Quote @TrueTomHarley  Paul commented how “this witness is true” and he was referring to the prophet among them who wrote that Cretans were “always liars, injurious wild beasts, idle gluttons.”

Can you please quote the scripture where Paul said that and more information about the 'prophet and his quote. Sounds interesting but without quotes it could be untrue. 

[Melinda Mills]

We should consider the below advice before we go further on this.

*** w89 5/15 p. 31 Questions From Readers ***

...

We should find in this a caution for all of us. Ethnic or national prejudice may abound around us. (Compare John 7:47-52.) We likely hear neighbors, schoolmates, or fellow workers make categorical remarks about another people, such as, ‘Oh, those northerners are all cold and unfeeling’; ‘Well, you know how proud those southerners are’; or, ‘It’s risky to trust those people from across the border.’

We must strive to avoid giving in to broad characterizations that are probably unfounded or greatly exaggerated. Some may be more outgoing and expressive, others more reserved or slow to warm up to strangers. Yet, we should remember that some of our Christian brothers are no doubt to be found among the people of that ethnic group or nationality, as well as many others who have not yet become true Christians but who have admirable traits and who hunger for righteousness.

The apostle Peter stressed the fact that “God is not partial, but in every nation the man that fears him and works righteousness is acceptable to him.” (Acts 10:34, 35) We can be absolutely sure that Paul agreed with that, reflecting the same outlook in his writings and speech. So should we.

 

 

[TrueTomHarley]

7 minutes ago, Melinda Mills said:

Oh, those northerners are all cold and unfeeling’;

When I, a New Yorker, visited Florida and heard someone say that, I was furious! I called them out! “Call yourself thorough? You forgot, ‘inhospitable and rude!’”

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

I was raised in Richmond, Virginia, the former Capitol of the Confederacy, and was taught that Yankees had pointed teeth, and ate babies.

I knew this was not true ... but suspected it MIGHT be.

[TrueTomHarley]

1 hour ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

was taught that Yankees had pointed teeth, and ate babies. I knew this was not true ... but suspected it MIGHT be.

When we drove from Florida to Rochester years ago, whenever we crossed the state line, there appeared a huge “Welcome to such-and -such State!” soon followed by a hospitality stand. When we crossed into New York it was “Welcome to New York!” followed by “Stop! Pay toll!” [exclamation marks mine, probably]

People have been leaving the state lately and the (extremely liberal) governor has said it is due to the weather. I agreed with him, tweeting that New York has very high income weather, property weather, and sales weather.

Within the year, legislation was enacted to make New York the most green place, not only in the country, but maybe in the world. Since it is but the tiniest sliver of the overall world, can it not be positioning for a 2024 Presidential bid/

Within the month, legislation has created a “catch and release” program for non-violent offenders—issue them a court date and let them go. A woman’s group says: “What? Domestic abuse that falls short of broken bones will be catch and release? They fear women will not report it at all—what’s the point? Especially since a reported and released abusive spouse may just return to the scene of the crime to ‘teach the woman a lesson.’ It brings some real fear into the unsavory joke: “What do all abused women have in common? They just won’t listen.”

The gov has conceded that the law can use some tweaking. Cops hate it as is. Why report a burglary? Might not reporting one result in retribution? But the gov has run the stats, has discovered that jail detentions do not balance out racially, and figures his duty is to stop that. When I live in the hood I recall (white) neighbors blasting their boom box full volume on their front lawn. All prior complaints had fallen on deaf ears. It was a low enough priority for police that if you called it in, you ought not hold your breath. I remember I wanted with every once of my being to cross my small yard and smash the thing once with a baseball bat—one hit would do it. I didn’t do it, though. I knew that I could not stay home day and night and guard my house.

Low priority then. No priority at all now, most likely. But the gov lives in a fine area.

[JW Insider]

CONSPIRACIES

There is some truth to many conspiracies. Also some conspiracies have been proven to be completely true. A few conspiracies are completely false, sometimes made up specifically to dismiss the truth of a real conspiracy.

In the Babylon thread mentioned above, there is a very long video which seems primarily derived from the scripts that Alex Jones of InfoWars promoted. In fact, much of the video is the voice of Alex Jones. Under that topic, the subject of conspiracies had already come up with reference to beliefs about the UN, and Alex Jones fits right in on this topic.

I never paid attention to Alex Jones of InfoWars, but I figured from things I heard that he would also have included a lot of truth in his conspiracy theories. The only time I had listened for any length of time to Alex Jones was when I listened to a documentary about him, which I thought was a really good expose of his dishonesty on many issues, It used his own words and contradictions, lies and backtracking, and interviews with persons who knew him personally at various stages of his life.

FAKE CRISIS ACTORS

That documentary just mentioned was followed up with another documentary on Alex Jones and the gun issue, through which he deeply hurt parents of children who lost their lives in school shootings. With reference to some of the worst of these shootings, Alex Jones has claimed that they are staged, and that these are "crisis actors" acting as dead children, frantic teachers, grieving parents, police, etc. One parent (who lost a child at Sandy Hook, CT) had the resolve to challenge what Jones was doing, so Jones verbally attacked him viciously and even instigated members of his audience to continue harassing him, so that the man was not able to move from one part of the country to another without his new address being published. He had to move about 7 times. He finally won a suit against Alex Jones, who had to apologize, but then Jones went right back to attacking him after the apology.

There was another school shooting more recently where I saw that people were quickly talking about how the timeline was faked, the crisis actors were faking, interviews with children gave conflicting reports about where it was, how many shots, when the police showed up, etc. This one I decided to follow more closely and watched all the available videos that the conspiracy promoters were using as evidence. If these people were serious, it meant that people can see things in videos that aren't really there and not see things that were there. They could completely misread news reporting and timelines as if illiterate, yet manage the most amazing mental gymnastics in extrapolating about a minor mistake or typo. Many seemed to be outright lying, and proud that they were spreading this "truth" in the service of showing that people like Alex Jones had been right all along. The term "cult" came to mind.

REAL CRISIS ACTORS

This little bit of research made me wonder about another set of controversial videos I heard about. These were the videos being staged by the "White Helmets" who really turn out to be a group of Islamo-Fascist, Al-Qaeda styled terrorists in Syria, who have staged videos with actual dead bodies, and who were caught faking many videos with live persons (even children) pretending to be dead, to help promote support for their side against Assad's forces. Finally they even staged supposed "chemical" attacks that had the necessary effect to bring support to Al-Qaeda and against Assad. The United States even got away with supporting Al-Qaeda in this war, something that would not have been tolerated by Americans in general just a couple years earlier. Of course, America had to rename them "moderate rebels." In a couple of cases, not only were the child "actors" recycled from video to video, but other videos showed up with these same "White Helmet" heroes chopping heads off prisoners. The difficulties in researching these videos was due to the fact that the videos that showed the "White Helmet" mistakes and fakery were quickly disappearing as fast as they were being exposed, and only the better made fakes were being publicized. Some were sloppy enough that you could see, inconsistent use of gas masks, and in others, "dead" people being given directions for the video.

Western sources rarely admitted that more than one or two of the White Helmets videos were faked. [CNN: Syria's White Helmets apologize for Mannequin Challenge video] (https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/24/middleeast/mannequin-challenge-white-helmets-syria/index.html)  But those who followed the videos closely found serious and obvious problems with several.

Ultimately, although very little publicized, the United States began to drop the claim that they had physical evidence of Assad's chemical/gas attacks. The primary source of the OPCW report against Assad had turned out to be a private blog (bellingcat) which had been treated as if it were an intelligence resource. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had initially dismissed dissenting members of OPCW teams that disagreed with their official results. However a series of email leaks and leaked versions of reports showed that OPCW had faked results.  OPCW was massively exposed, even in front of the UN.

https://consortiumnews.com/2020/01/24/opcw-investigator-testified-at-un-that-no-chemical-attack-took-place-in-douma-syria/

[TrueTomHarley]

5 hours ago, JW Insider said:

began to drop the claim that they had physical evidence of Assad's chemical/gas attacks.

I got sick and tired of hearing the hysterical cry that Assad had “gassed his own people”—mostly because it seemed to imply that gassing anyone else would be okay.

[Kosonen]

Tv reporter explains that President Donald Trump does not understand what love is. Or what to love enemies means.

End time king?

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

There is a reason why NBC is known as the "Nothing But Clinton" network.

The stupidity of this commentator is embarrassing to even watch.

[Kosonen]

This NBC commentator makes valid points about President Donald Trump. And unintentionally this would fit to the Anti-Christ King some American preachers have warned would come.

Those preachers in USA have explained that the "man of sin" or "man of lawlessness" in 2 Thessalonians 2 is a coming world ruler, the Anti-Christ.

I just wounder how Donald Trump will take the criticism he just got. He could turn against Christianity as a revenge. 

[TrueTomHarley]

3 hours ago, Kosonen said:

I just wounder how Donald Trump will take the criticism he just got. He could turn against Christianity as a revenge. 

Please don’t look for end-time prophesies here, Kos. And please don’t present network TV as the channel of love. Please don’t tell us that love emanates from Harvard. Nor tell us that Congress starts each day with consideration of the daily text: “Can’t we all just get along?”  Just don’t—on any of those counts.

Go back to your meetings, won’t you? Join your wife and kids. Tell the brothers that you’ll try to refrain from running ahead. Work on your people skills. You don’t have to parrot every little thing. It is enough not to grab the wheel.

Why is everything so American with you? NYC is Babylon the Great? Trump is the Man of Lawlessness? How are those in India or Romania going to get their heads around that?

If JTR got back in due to cherishing the core teachings, anybody can. Don’t present yourself as a true prophet arising in our midst and you’ll do fine. It’s okay to present yourself as a person having doubts about this, that, or the other thing. Congregation elders have mercy toward such ones. (Jude 22) But the mercy will wear thin if you present yourself as instructor to the worldwide organization.

 

[Kosonen]

4 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

And please don’t present network TV as the channel of love.

We can learn something from what apostle Paul said in Philippians 1:15:

"True, some are preaching the Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill. 16  The latter are proclaiming the Christ out of love, for they know that I have been appointed to defend the good news; 17  but the former do it out of contentiousness, not with a pure motive, for they are intending to create trouble for me in my prison bonds. 18  With what result? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is being proclaimed, and I rejoice over this. In fact, I will also keep on rejoicing,"

4 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Tell the brothers that you’ll try to refrain from running ahead.

The Governing Body should not limit spiritual progress on earth. Jesus told that he gives talents to each of his slaves and sends them to increase his assets here on earth. So one slave should not put limits on other coslaves of their Master Jesus Christ. We are free to examine scriptures and believe them and preach about them. 

 

4 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Why is everything so American with you?

Do not ordinary JWs agree that USA plays an important role in Bible prophecies?

4 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

But the mercy will wear thin if you present yourself as instructor to the worldwide organization.

I should not compromise with what I believe is true. 

Jesus said that we should not bother if we gain people's approval or not in a such case:

John 5:44 "How can you believe, when you are accepting glory from one another and you are not seeking the glory that is from the only God?

John 12:42 "All the same, many even of the rulers actually put faith in him, but they would not acknowledge him because of the Pharisees, so that they would not be expelled from the synagogue; 43  for they loved the glory of men even more than the glory of God."

And Jesus' apostle Paul said a similar thing:

Galatians 1:10 "Is it, in fact, men I am now trying to persuade or God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still pleasing men, I would not be Christ’s slave."