Rockability said:

I agree with this. I believe that in 50 - 100 years JWs will be a mainstream religion, kind of like the Mormons are today. JWs needed controversial and non-main stream doctrines to attract "early adopters." Now they will have to change their teachings to be more mainstream to attract more mainstream followers and grow the religion since most of the "early adopters" have been harvested.

The JW religion is slowly, but surely, abandoning their more controversial doctrines. I saw this happen with my own eyes during the 10 years or so I was associated with JWs (5 years as a baptized publisher).

For example, JWs had a famous tag line, "millions now living will never die" related to their 1914 doctrine. If you asked any JW 15 years ago if Armageddon would come and destroy everyone except JWs by the year 2050 the answer would've been YES. Ask the JWs now, and their answer will be they don't know.

There's a movement from within the JW religion to abandon their no blood (transfusion) doctrine. I predict in 20 years blood transfusions, a serious sin now, will become a "conscience matter." If you doubt this take a look at http://www.ajwrb.org/index.shtml for an enlightening history of the JW no blood doctrine, how it's changed over the years, and what their current teaching is today. It's actually both ridiculous, and tragic, how its changed and how they split hairs to effectively almost allow a transfusion without allowing it 100% so they don't look like fools (look at how they break down blood components).

There've been less dramatic changes, such as the Society's viewpoint on higher education.

David

DavidSF said:

this would be a good thing. but in the meantime, for now, people are still dying for lack of appropriate medical treatment.

"I agree with this. I believe that in 50 - 100 years JWs will be a mainstream religion, kind of like the Mormons are today."


Definately true, and with Prince maybe even sooner. JWs have rules that might be considered cruel and unholy, but compared to the early days of the Roman Catholic Churc lol, and you might understand that they aren't relatively speaking.

And call JWs a cult, true. But, compared to ANY SECT in the early days and JWs don't come close..... You don't see them trying to kill off everyone who doesn't believe.

So there are the positives.


The only real issue I have with JWs is the insistence to break down the Jesus thing. The man was born. Mary wasn't impregnated.

JWs don't buy into anything Catholic, so this idea doesn't sink in. If you are spiritual, yet aren't religious, the concept of Jesus being born to a mother who didn't have sex, it just seems more than a prophet. Combined with all the miricles he supposedly did?

And my JW friends would say that God did it through Christ, yet I say check out the one where JC says something like :I will only perform the healing if you don't tell anyone it was "I" who did it." That, to me, speaks volumes.

Since this has gotten way off-topic (i.e., we've gone from the issue of Jehovah's Witnesses' pamphlets at concerts--the topic of this forum--to the religion in general), I'm going to close this one out. I invite everyone to continue the discussion in our Politics & Religion forum, where there's always plenty of discussion about the Jehovah's Witnesses.