Beyond Recognition




It's been ten years since I left 'the truth' and in that time the religion has changed beyond recognition. When I attended the Kingdom Hall the idea of JW television would have been ridiculous.  The notion of counting field service hours sitting next to a cart tantamount to cheating and the devotion to a blue JW.ORG badge would have been viewed as idolatry.  Recently they have removed online access to the vast majority of literature published by the IBSA prior to 2000.  Presumably this is to make it hard for anyone to discover the beliefs and teachings that the organisation once perpetuated but now don't sit comfortably with 'current thinking'.  The constant changes within the organisation fly in the face of the teaching that Jehovah never changes.  His justice and wisdom are supposed to be a constant, yet his so called religion changes with the wind.
Yesterday I saw two elders from my local congregation sitting next to one of their carts.  They saw me and nodded in recognition but didn't attempt any further communication, which I can understand. However what I could not understand was their reluctance to talk to the dozens of people passing them by.  Do they not remember the illustrations of the life boats that the society used to trot out on a regular basis during my time within the cult?  Would a rescuer in a lifeboat ignore drowning people as they floated by?
It seems that now only people who approach JW's are to receive the 'truth' and even then they are pointed in the direction of JW.ORG
Gone are the days when the Governing Body kept a low profile and most Witnesses could only name one or two of them.  Now they are wheeled out in their expensive suits, quality watches and slick shoes to deliver TV addresses to the congregations and assemblies around the world.  I would never have believed that the GB would buy into the current fad of reality TV celebrity status but then again I would never have believed they would start picking which parts of blood don't qualify as forbidden.
Today their faces are familiar to all congregation members yet only a couple of decades ago the organisation castigated TV evangelists for their self-aggrandising and blatant fund raising.  Right now they are doing the very things that they previously condemned.  In another ten years will we see a JW Love Island program of maybe a cessation of the preaching work?  What seems far fetched now is no more unlikely than the changes the last ten years have unveiled.  Not too long ago the Watchtower described the acceptance in the world of the LGBT community as nothing more than a change in the winds of worldly thinking.  Those winds seem to have blown the Governing Body a long way off course.
How many long-time JW's look back and wonder why what they once believed has been supplanted time and time again?  How many are still swallowing the lie that the 'light is getting brighter'?



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