This is a multi-part series. See Preface,  2nd Preface,  Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Each part links to the next.

How to help your teenager? is the theme of a recent series of talks. Several pointers are offered, all valid and good. But the elephant in the room is ignored because revelation says nothing about it. Maybe that teen who needs help is over there on the anti-JW Internet forum where he is drinking up bile by the vatful directed against his faith. Yet discovering that he is will do nothing to help those trained in ‘knowledge through revelation.’ They don’t know what is there, and ‘revelation’ tells them not to find out. “This means war!” one brother says about the contest with apostates, and doesn’t touch on how the very first thing you do in war is seek detailed reconnaissance on the enemy—know what they are doing and saying—if only to effectively pop them one in the jaw.

It just makes for odd situations, the counsel to avoid at all costs apostate speech. It makes for illustrations such as, ‘would you drink even a little bit of poison?’ although you do exactly that when you take one of the old-style vaccines (not the new-style RNA ones), the kind that gives you just a little bit of the disease to stimulate your body to mount a defense against it. It creates an almost superstitious fear of apostates for the power they supposedly wield. It creates a convention part in which a decades-long record of faith goes up in smoke when the person begins reading material ‘critical of Jehovah’s organization.’ That can happen?

It can, but ‘knowledge via revelation’ of how disastrous is apostate speech can lead one to think it is the mere words that sink a person. An empirical approach would be to heed what psychologists say: You do well to avoid ‘toxic people,’ because over time they corrode your well-being. There is something about aggressive apostasy—directing massive energy against former friends—that all but screams ‘toxic people,’ like the psycho ex-divorce-mate who just cannot let go.

“If errors were what you watch, O Jah, Then who, O Jehovah, could stand?” says Psalm 130:3. It is ‘knowledge by revelation.’ In this case it dovetails perfectly with ‘knowledge by experience.’ When it comes to the enemies of anyone today, errors are all people watch. They also magnify, enhance, and sometime concoct—see it play out on the internet with any public figure. Nobody ‘can stand’ in the face of the constant onslaught.

The very first thing you do to attack the faith is ‘strike the shepherd,’ so that the ‘sheep will scatter.’ One need not even drop the pretense of loving God that way, but can pose as a ‘freedom fighter’ or some such role. It was arguably even true with Judas. He and God were tight—there were no problems there! But that fraudster claiming to be the messiah was not at all what Judas was expecting, and so he turned upon him.

Interestingly, the final straw with Judas appears to be Jesus’ words, “For you always have the poor with you, and you can do them good whenever you want to, but you will not always have me.” (Mark 14:7) ‘He’s selfish, he just thinks of himself!’ says Judas to himself, and off he goes to blow him in (vs 10). So it is today when the earthly organization heeds revelation at Galatians 6:10 to do good “especially toward those related to us in the faith,” rather than try to fix the world in general. Apostates spin that as selfish.

Recent statements that God and his son trusts the faithful and discreet slave prompts malcontents to pull their hair out trying to assert that he doesn’t. The statement comes from ‘knowledge through revelation.’ Not only does the Word say it of current responsible ones, called the faithful and discreet slave—it says it of ones in the first century. Peter was trusted—and then went weak-kneed at a critical moment. Furthermore, it was just as challenging looking into the future then as it is today. “The saying went out among the brothers that [John] would not die,” we’re told. (John 21:23) How wrong was that one? Maybe John thought it himself. Often the trick is not to sanitize the present. It is to desanitize the past. First century persons taking the lead betrayed abundant human foibles. God and Christ trusted them nonetheless.

Even the general revulsion over apostasy comes from ‘knowledge through revelation.’ “Taste and see that Jehovah is good,” says Psalm 34:8. They have tasted and seen he is bad—not a promising start for bridge building, even though I tried—a little. After several persons were put off by the imagery of ‘Vomidog’ in Tom Irregardless and Me, I softened the house apostate’s name to Vic Vomodog, even though the original is a play on scripture: “What the true proverb says has happened to them: “The dog has returned to its own vomit . . .” I’m glad for it. Vomodog suggests the original but doesn’t rub your nose in it. It is a quirky and quizzical name in it’s own right.

Alas, it is human nature that the best way to get someone to do something is to tell them they shouldn’t. It is especially true with young people. There’s danger in this, and danger in that, they’re told. There may be, but the spirt of young people is bold. They don’t want to hear it—not about things that others face routinely. The Lord’s chariot may be lighting quick, but so is that of the world. Overnight it moves persons to despise discipline. It’s particularly strong with the youth who—I mean, this goes back to the very origin of young people—delight in getting a rise out of their parents.

‘Obedience’ is fine. I like that stuff. But it might be more effective if coupled with empirical evidence of just what apostates are up to. Appeal to empirical ‘social scientists,’ David Bromley, for example, who “explained how individuals who elect to leave a chosen faith must then become critical of their religion in order to justify their departure…Others may ask, if the group is as transparently evil as he now contends, why did he espouse its cause in the first place? In the process of trying to explain his own seduction and to confirm the worst fears about the group, the apostate is likely to paint a caricature of the group that is shaped more by his current role as apostate than by his actual experience in the group.”

Point out what’s wrong with what they say. Not a lot, necessarily, because you do want to avoid hanging out with toxic people—the empirical psychologists will tell you that. But a little—so that it is not such a great forbidden mystery all but demanding the curious cat to investigate. Or read a book like (‘Oh, c’mon, Tommy. you are not going to be so crass as to plug your book here, say it ain’t so….it is!—‘TrueTom vs the Apostates.’) Notice the one star review. Read it and discern it is from one of ‘those people.’ The promo material alone makes clear it will be a good read. It needs other reviews to balance it out. But even unfavorable reviews put it on the radar screen, so they are not as bad as initially appears.

Read this book only if you have been stumbled at what apostates say. I don’t allow anyone else. Look, don’t try to bluff me on this. I’ll know.

To be continued…

******  The bookstore

Some of the brothers were helping another move, loading and unloading a rented truck. Talk turned to Update 7, which has now itself been updated with #8. One bro was confused. ‘Get behind the Governing Body, he repeated the expression, but get behind them in what?’

I think they want you to get vaccinated, I said, and it was as though someone had finally mentioned the elephant in the room. Subsequently, everyone seemed to agree that had indeed been the thrust of it.

They’re going to have to say it if that’s what they want. The trouble with hoping people will read between the lines (if that is what is being done) is that to some “reading between the lines” is near synonymous with “going beyond what it written.” One bro said he would get vaccinated if they said he should, but only if they said it. Meanwhile, he was inclined to “trust his immune system.” They won’t be saying it, I don’t think. It consistently will remain a personal decision—and then are presented some Bible principles so you can make your personal decision, and the Bible principles cited lean pretty heavily toward taking the shot.

To be sure, what follows is an oversimplification, but a prime “religious objection” that some religious people have cited essentially boils down to “God don’t make no junk.” Isn’t the flip side of that argument to say that he does? Back in my day, if you got a vaccine, that meant you didn’t get the disease. That’s why we’ve long heard about how such-and-such a scourge has been eradicated by vaccines. Now they don’t eradicate them. Apparently, nobody any longer expects them to. They just tamp them down some and hopefully keep you out of the hospital. So many goalposts are being moved that one barely knows how to adapt. 

Medical definitions have adapted to accommodate these new realities. Mercola gives several examples of this in his heavily endnoted book, The Truth About Covid-19. Now, Mercola found himself kicked off social media platforms and harassed to such a degree that he removed much of his own content from his own website. Nonetheless, he has been a trusted name in our family for decades. He takes anything to the nth degree and you sometimes you say, “Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” but you usually say it for reasons of practicality, not because he is wrong. He does weigh in on matters in which the jury is still out, and sometimes you wonder whether that jury is being hogtied in the back room.

He points out that as late as June 2020, the WHO’s definition of ‘herd immunity’ was “the indirect protection from an infectious disease that happens when a population is immune either through vaccination or immunity developed through previous infection.” In mid-November “they updated their website, erasing any notion that humans have immune systems that protect them against disease naturally.” (bolding mine) The revised understanding of herd immunity is “a concept used for vaccination, in which a population can be protected from a certain virus if a threshold of vaccination is reached.” No mention of previous infection here, as in the original definition.

Further, he quotes WHO that: “Herd immunity is achieved by protecting people from a virus, not by exposing them to it.” This is followed by a commentary from the American Institute for Economic Research that “this change at WHO ignores and even wipes out 100 years of medical advances in virology, immunology, and epidemiology. It is throughly unscientific….What’s even stronger is the claim that a vaccine protects people from a virus rather than exposing them to it. What’s amazing about this claim is that a vaccine works precisely by firing up the immune system through exposure. There is simply no way for medical science completely to replace the human immune system.” (my bolds again)

I wouldn’t be surprised if [my opinion, not Mercola’s—though he probably says it somewhere] if the intent is revealed in that last statement: “replace the human immune system.” The natural one is not financially profitable. The replacement one will be. For this reason it becomes very important to discredit existing means of treating Covid-10 and advance the illusion that there is no treatment. Only if there is no treatment can emergency funding at taxpayer expense be allocated to the development and subsequent mandating of vaccines. Let the cat out of the bag that you can treat Covid effectively with existing and mostly cheap drugs and that impetus is gone.

So effective substances like ivermectin are relentlessly discredited. As a result, they are denied by pharmacies who won’t fill a prescription in many states even if you have one from your doctor. This, despite doctors testifying before Congress (which I have seen) as to how when they employed the drug in treatment, people got better. When they used it themselves as a preventative, they didn’t get sick in the course of treating thousands of patients. It being so hard to get now, people buy the animal variety, prompting the FDA to talk down (as agencies so frequently do) to people with “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously y’all, stop it.” It’s a little like mocking people for drinking polluted water because fresh water is not available.

The new vaccines are not like the old ones, which exposed you to the pathogen, sometimes deadened and sometime not. The new ones seek to train the body (through modification in the messenger RNA) to manufacture a defense against a virus it has never seen. It is an entirely new technology.

How is it working? Not all that well, it appears, at least not when compared to the shots that people have taken for the last 100 years. Israel is near 90% vaccinated and yet is still experiencing an epidemic of outbreaks. The old-tech shots, when you took them, meant that you didn’t get the disease. In this new model, people may still get the disease, they still pass it on, just hopefully not as severely. It takes awhile to adjust to this new normal.

Profits are an obvious reason that the pharmaceutical industry should seek to supplement (if not replace) the immune system. Doesn’t hubris also come into play? Those who “praise [God] because in an awe-inspiring way I am wonderfully made” are not so inclined to think human science can improve on his design. One the other hand, if you don’t believe in God at all, but put all your trust in human science—well, how hard can it be to improve on what is a haphazard evolutionary process to begin with? Beliefs have practical consequences.

The new vaccines even mess with an observation I’ve made about the “little bit of poison” analogy that we are so fond of with regard to apostates. Though the brothers reason this way, they actually do accept just a little bit of poison each time they take a vaccine—the idea is that it protects them should they later encounter the scourge full-grown in the wild. Avoiding such apostate exposure altogether is difficult in these times, and without a “vaccine” to it in the form of just a tiny bit of investigatory exposure for those so inclined, some of our people are shellacked when they unexpectedly encounter it.

Now it turns out that the above observation is invalid. The new vaccines are analogous to avoiding “even a little bit of the poison.” They do indeed seek to “protect people from the virus rather than exposing them to it.” That’s why medical dictionaries and WHO guidelines are being rewritten.

It’s also worth noting that they don’t work very well. And, as evidenced by the number of people we lose to apostasy, our present counsel to protect doesn’t work very well either. In theory it works great. In practice not so much.

Be that as it may, Jehovah’s earthly organization has a job to do, and they’re chomping at the bit to resume doing it. “The coronavirus is not the worst trial to strike out at all mankind and it wont be the last. We can expect things to deteriorate even further as these last days march on till their end,” says Bro Lett.

See: To Jab or Not to Jab: Part 2

“Anyone reading the Bible would see that the people whom God led w/an organization tacked this way and that. …I don't see that there ever has been universal agreement among members of the groups of God's people. Not in Bible times and not today either.”

Of course. “You can’t always get what you want,” as someone recently drummed to. Nobody gets everything his way. There are things about the earthly organization that are not as I would prefer. 

But the choice is not now, nor has ever been, between the people who are tacking this way and that and the people who are sailing straight and true without deviation. The choice is between the people who are tacking this way and that and the people who have sailed off the edge of the earth. The key tenets: no immortal soul, no trinity, use God’s name, kingdom a real government, everlasting life on earth, why God permits evil, exactly how the ransom works, what happens to the dead, preserved nowhere except in the realm where the GB presides—that has to make an impression with anyone in whom love of truth resides. 

I’m struck with how when people leave Jehovah’s organized worship, they never ever mention these tenets again. Answers to the very burning questions that drew them into the faith are now dismissed as though of no importance. It certainly is true of outside detractors who would draw people away. The blemishes of humans taking the lead are drawn out, exaggerated, or even make up, as though they did not all find their counterparts among the first century apostles and presbyrs. Press the detractors for where they would have you go instead and they clam up. They have nothing to offer.

In the case of those who still believe in God, it is back to the land of churches, where in time, the bland junk food will reassert itself: All roads lead to heaven, God works in mysterious ways, Death of a child is because God needs another flower in heaven. How is that not like the dog returning to his own vomit?

in the case of those who have gone the atheist route, it is like a market crash where millions are transformed into hundreds. “Ah, well, they were only paper gains anyway,” says the spiritual dullard, giving up on everlasting life to go celebrate the hundreds he still has left. 

It is no good harping on the blemishes of others, real, imagined, or enhanced. The enemy in the West wants exactly what the enemy in the East wants—to separate Witnesses from their support organization, with the confidence that they can be more easily assimilated that way. The only difference between them is the difference between the good cop who would coo sympathy at you and the bad cop who would pummel you. They want the same. Even should you decide to hone in on the blemishes of fellow believers it does not change the overall picture. It fits right in with how things were in the first century, where they also had blemishes. It’s how imperfect people are.

Pray to God that he fix your personal woes and beefs and he will respond that he has underlings who can handle the job—it is enough that he will listen to you and provide nourishment night and day. Complain to him that the underlings are imperfect and he will observe that you are no great shakes yourself—you will just have to learn to make do. In the final analysis, does not this verse carry the day? “If anyone makes the statement: ‘I love God,’ and yet is hating his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot be loving God, whom he has not seen.” (1 John 4:20) 

******

I wrote the book TrueTom vs the Apostates to assist anyone who has been stumbled at charges apostates make and thereafter no one is able to help them because they don’t know what is there themselves. It’s for them. Nobody else is allowed to read it. Look, don’t try to bluff me on this. I’ll know.

Also available in Amazon print.

Vic Vomodog’s face got redder and redder. His blood pressure shot to the sky—they had to call NASA.

I began to worry for him—just like I should have worried for the small-town judge Victor V Blackwell stood up to. Victor had been representing draft-age Witnesses in the volatile WWII years and the petty tyrant would barely allow him to open his mouth. “Another word out of you and I will jail you for contempt!” he roared.

“I looked around and saw lawyers, reporters, and professionals—I knew I wasn’t going to jail,” Brother Blackwell related years later at a Niagara Falls assembly. He told the judge: “Your Honor, if we have reached the place in this country where a lawyer can’t speak for his client, or present his defenses, I may as well be in jail with him.”

From his book, O’er the Ramparts They Watched: “Hot anger blazed from the “judge’s” face. His countenance flushed redder than a beet. The veins in his neck protruded like the swelling in the throat of a chameleon. Everyone in the courtroom waited for him to burst asunder....After some little time, gaining a small measure of composure, he told me and my client to stand up in front of him. We did. Then came the sentence:

“I sentence you to serve five years in a federal prison to be approved by the Attorney General. My only regret, you yellow coward, is that I cannot give your twenty-five years.”

Don’t think neutrality is an easy sell when nationalistic fever runs hot.

The judge died several days later. Townspeople said he had never cooled off from his fit of anger. When Victor next visited that town, the locals told him, “You killed our judge.” “I’m sorry,” he responded, but he later allowed at the Niagara Falls assembly that the bullying fellow had brought it on himself.

Every once in a while Vic Vomodog gets worked up like that. He fires out accusations as with a Gatling gun and I begin to worry that if I answer them it will be detrimental to his health.

Ah, well—if he dies, he dies.

“You Jehovah Witnesses are a cult!”

It used to be that if you fell under the spell of a charismatic leader, withdrew from society, dressed oddly, did strange things—you just might be a member of a cult. Nowadays just thinking outside the box is enough to trigger the C-word.

“Um, did the early Christians falsely declare the Great Day of Almighty God?”

Yes. “While they were listening to these things, he told another illustration, because he was near Jerusalem and they thought that the Kingdom of God was going to appear instantly.” (Luke 19:11)

“Did they pretend to be the ‘faithful and discreet slave’?”

Yes. “As they traveled on through the cities, they would deliver to them for observance the decrees that had been decided on by the apostles and the elders who were in Jerusalem.” (Acts 16:4)

“Ban Jehovah's Witnesses they prefer seeing people dying than receiving a blood transfusion and this is enough to ban them.”

It is controversial to be sure, but since they do not smoke, do not do illicit drugs, do not drink to excess, do not war, they on balance save far more lives than they cost. Even their stand on blood has sparked development of bloodless techniques and these have probably saved more lives than transfusion refusal has cost.

“They’ll use their ban in Russia to feed their persecution complex!”

Probably. This is because of the many verses such as Matthew 5:11‬: “Happy are you when people reproach you and persecute you and lyingly say every sort of wicked thing against you for my sake.  Rejoice and be overjoyed...for in that way they persecuted the prophets prior to you.”‬

“As an organisation they have keep silence about abuse amongst their members and the wall of silence regarding child abuse is unforgivable.”

Alas, there is no sizable group on earth, religious or not, that has successfully purged all child abuse from its midst. Still, with JWs, it is almost always members’ abuse that leaders are accused of ‘covering up.’ Not good, but better than the pattern elsewhere where leaders are the ones committing the abuse and there is not even a mechanism for discovering abuse among members.

“You didn’t sign on to the Australian redress plan. What’s wrong with you?”

When a child abuser is nabbed, unless he is a person in authority, is his religious affiliation ever even mentioned? With Jehovah’s Witnesses, abuse committed by leaders is rare. With the other signees, be they religious or not, it is the pattern. Witness cases that have come to attention are nearly always among rank and file members, something the other signees haven’t even a mechanism to track. 

Other signees have structure in which children are systemically separated from parents, such as Sunday School or youth groups. If you sponsor such a program, it stands to reason that you ought be held accountable to provide for their safety. JWs do not have such programs.

The differences are significant enough that JWs have not signe on to a “one size fits all” program, but instead handle cases that arise on an individual basis. Next thing you know, Hyundai will be supposed responsible for abuse situations that arise among its customers.

No one has apostates as dedicated to their crusade as do Jehovah's Witnesses. One could say they validate us. Since they were a huge concern in the first century—no NT writer not dealing with them—if they were not a huge concern today, would one not have to wonder why?‬

“If only the were banned here, like Russia. The only way to make sure they won't come back here is to open the door naked.”

This does not work. A friend of mine, a registered nurse, said to one such person: “You don’t have anything that I haven’t seen before.”

When the elders met with me after the meeting, I had no thought at all of putting the experience online. That occurred to me later. 

I just came to think I’d let it stand as a real time example of responding to counsel even if I don’t agree with every aspect of it. The only examples of meeting with the elders that ever appear online are those written by unruly persons already on the edge, like Dathan and those rebellious louts, who rail at the attempt at “mind control” and cry ad nauseum over their right to free speech, missing every spiritual point in the process of making their dominant fleshy one: “No one’s telling me what to do!”

I don’t resent the counsel at all. I take it for just what it is—loving oversight.  I both accept and appreciate that Jehovah leads his people via a human agency, and I am grateful that there is something that corresponds to verses such as Hebrews 13:17, to “be obedient to those who are taking the lead among you and be submissive, for they are keeping watch over you as those who will render an account, so that they may do this with joy and not with sighing, for this would be damaging to you.”

As such, I accept they have the responsibility to counsel in line with scripture, and I don’t carry on as though my toes are being stepped on or my rights infringed upon. They represent the human link in the divine/human interface, and they do not demand lockstep walking even as they give pointed counsel. I don’t consider myself above them. They are above me as regards authority.

I appreciate their efforts to check me, and as stated, I would be far worse in the absence of godly counsel to not engage with those who show by word or deed that acquiescence to Jehovah’s standards and all that is entailed is repugnant to them. It does me good to be checked by them, for I do believe that we become who we hang out with. We may not become it instantly, but we do so eventually—if not in point of argument then in forfeiting the Christlike manner—and often even in point of argument, as they are almost always based on following the trends of the day.

I would like it if there was a little more organizational pushback on some of the charges leveled against us—you know, take these guys on. I’ve said it many times before. But you can’t always get what you want. You can’t always get what you want. You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need. 

And I have. I can’t go charging around like an enraged bull. But that kind of conduct can get a guy skewered anyway. It does me well to do what I do under the discipline of conforming to theocratic counsel. Even if in one aspect I am not a stellar example of it. I am in most other aspects.

It must really confound those who accuse the JW organization of being a cult that few people are behaving better these days, or more reasonably, with more of an eye toward the public good. That #CultExpert tweets about how Jehovah’s Witnesses manipulate people, and I reply that their followers put his to shame for vanquishing COVID. Jehovah’s Witnesses immediately transferred all gatherings to Zoom and issued strong counsel to observe government-recommended social distancing—which our people will observe because they strive to be obedient. But his followers? Some will observe social distancing, no doubt—probably even most, but is his mission statement ‘Freedom of Mind’ really compatible with obedience to secular authority? You don’t think some will use their ‘freedom of mind’ to tell the government to buzz off—‘We’ll party on the beach if we feel like it!?’—thus spreading COVID far and wide?

Doubtless they expected ‘scare-mongering’—‘using’ the present crisis to scare new ones into the fold—and in fact, there have been accusations of that. But you really really have to stretch the point if you go there. The lead post on jw.org is the most socially responsible contribution imaginable, replete with suggestions on how to cope with isolation and resulting loneliness. With people beside themselves with anxiety, unable to cope in many cases, you don’t think that is a valuable contribution, perhaps THE most valuable? After all, if your psyche breaks down, all the physical relief in the world does you no good.

It reminds me of the verse on muzzling the talk of the ignorant ones by doing good. To be sure, hostile ones are still criticizing—but in doing so,  they are also plainly revealing their ignorance, and in some cases, their hate.

In fact, I don’t quite go there with the CultExpert, for some of the groups he monitors really DO seem pretty strange—so I don’t go there, though I do think about it—I almost want to say: “LET them join a cult if it helps them get through this and save their sanity! What are you offering in lieu—that we should put our hope in the next crop of politicians? Haven’t we been down that road countless times before?”

Affirming some cult idiot’s charge that I am ‘using’ the pandemic to ‘recruit,’ (to anyone concerned about that, I reply that on the 200th contact I will ask if they want to convert and then they can say ‘no’—in the meantime, it’s just conversation—don’t worry about it) I have many times tweeted that lead post to persons, sometimes in response to a specific plea like with Mr. Fiend, and sometimes I just throw it out there—with good results in both cases. Sometimes the tweets are retweeted. Unless you are a snarling ‘ain’t-cultist,’ people do not misunderstand—they know that you are trying to help.

As always, you tailor your tweet to the person. To persons who appear secular, you say (this one was lamenting a suicide she had read about): “It is a terrible thing. Healthy people struggle when their routine is uprooted, let alone persons unwell to begin with. I sent this to someone who tweeted that he was frankly losing it. There is a spiritual component to it, but it is mostly on combatting isolation and loneliness”—and I attach the link.

To someone decidedly irreligious, you might say: “As a suggestion—nothing more—here is a series of posts on how to cope with isolation and loneliness. Upended routines are driving everyone up a tree. My turn is probably next. Like Bob Dylan: ‘The riot squad is restless, they need somewhere to go.’” I like to play the Dylan card—it doesn’t mean that you have to. You also don’t exempt yourself—hence the ‘my turn is probably next,’

My new pinned tweet is: “With #mentalhealth under assault and even balanced people buckling under the stress, I can’t imagine a better read than this one on coping with isolation and loneliness from #JehovahsWitnesses,” as I include a link to the post.

Note the hashtags. Ages ago my daughter said to me: “They’re hashtags, Dad, not crosstags.” Hashtags are fair game on social media, whereas tagging individuals directly is generally considered rude, unless you know full well that they will welcome it. Hashtags will draw in anyone else who monitors the subject—as an experiment, enter a hashtag anything on social media to see what comes up. You can even use it as your own filing system if you choose a hashtag unique enough.

It can, however backfire. If the hashtag is of any controversial topic, it can bring in people who want to argue, even insult. In the case of Jehovah’s Witnesses, there are disgruntled former members—‘apostates’—that can be attracted—in fact, they almost surely will be. “Oh, yeah,” you can mutter. “They’ll come alright. As surely as flies to dung, they will come!” But you should not say this because, while you are comparing apostates to flies, you are also comparing yourself to dung—so you should seek another metaphor.

My #mentalhealth hashtag drew in some mental health people, some of whom expressed great appreciation. But true to warning, my #jehovahswitnesses hashtag drew in some ‘apostates.’

“The rather large elephant in the paragraph [about the comfort JWs offer] is the Jehovah’s Witness shunning policy.”

But I replied (in three tweets):

“There is hardly an issue here. Those who would trigger a ‘shunning policy’ are those for whom, at the present time, the last thing in the world they would want is to abide by the principles of those who wrote the article. Even so, they are welcome to take from it what they will.”

“The thoughts expressed in the article are non-denominational, offered freely to all, even those on the outs at present with JWs. It’s meant as a public service. One need not take it. One can always put trust in the politicians, medical staff, and economists to fix matters.”

I looked at the detractor’s profile and discovered that she was one who was trying to torpedo the JW organization’s status as a charitable religious organization, something that they plainly are:

“In fact, it is an excellent post for consideration of the @CharityComms, though not written for that reason. Look, nobody is everything to everyone. But they will recognize that we are well past the time for nursing grudges—not with C19 threatening the mental health of the planet.”

It shut her up! I couldn’t believe it! It is unheard of! ‘Apostates’ never ever EVER give up—I’ve had to block some—and yet she gave up. There is no finer proof of 1 Peter 2:15 than that: “For it is the will of God that by doing good you may silence the ignorant talk of unreasonable men.”

There are faithful sisters (and brothers, too) who must cope with opposed, sometimes even apostate, mates. One of those mates posted:

“I told my wife that maybe there will never again be meetings as before. I hope the JWs will wake up and start to examine the scriptures seriously and search what all this could lead to.”

In fact, it looks like meetings are pretty much going on with barely a hiccup. They have simply switched to conference-call software, with telephone tie-in for any not up to speed on this. Rather than take his self-predicted five years—he has styled himself as sort of a prophet, unusual for today’s ‘apostates, who mostly go atheist—to make himself even more insightful and pure than he already is, maybe he should repent if possible and try to get into that new format with his wife rather than being a drag that she must contend with.

Our congregation will start with the conference calls at this mid-week meeting, Zoom in our case. (We will meet in Zoom Rooms—who would have thunk it?) Over the weekend we streamed it from apparently one of the Bethels. I could not help but think how the contents would have been disappointing to any ‘anti-cultist’ because there was not a bit of alarmism and everyone treated the virus threat as just one more run-of-the-mill challenge to adapt to. Referred to several times in comments, it wasn’t even called the ‘Chinese virus.’ They didn’t get into any squabbles as to whether they should be able to describe it that way or not—since it gets some all incensed, they avoided the term, and just said virus or Covid 19 or Corona or whatever. It is so much like this world to ‘taunt’ the other side, deliberately getting them going usually for the sake of put down, if not ridicule, but they didn’t stoop to that for a moment. It almost made me ashamed that I do stoop to it (but probably not ashamed enough to stop), though I am trying to restrain myself, not always easily.

They didn’t sensationalize this virus even a little bit, much less use it to ‘scare’ people. It easily could be used that way. They didn’t. Not even a hint of it. So I will—just in a speculative bent, you understand, no more.

For the longest time we have said our preaching will end someday. What if this turns out to be it? It’s not impossible, though no one suggests it. I expect this to blow over and normal preaching and activities will resume, but there is no reason to accept that as a foregone conclusion. What if the world leaders who just assume you can shut down the entire world economy and start it up again are wrong, and instead another worldwide Great Depression ensues? Then deaths then will dwarf anything that the virus itself brings on, including many a suicide. Will people endure it as resolutely as they did 90 years ago? I wouldn’t hold my breath, not with the belligerence and non-cooperation that defines the overall culture today. And wouldn’t that be a decisive verdict to the facades men have erected? The worldwide financial bedrock system, that everyone depends upon and have taken for granted will endure no matter what—dissolving so easily in the face of what might well be an overreaction to a virus only two or three times more nasty than the regular flu—bad, to be sure, but not nearly as bad as the devastation triggered in the all-out war to contain it, a war that leaders can only hope will be won but do not know. As that mighty structure crumbles, who knows what efforts nations may resort to in their desire to shore it up?

Then all these ones on the outside lambasting the Witness organization every time one of them so much as farts may begin to feel less comfortable. For the Witness brotherhood appears to be holding up pretty well, and it is holding up well independent of material assets. If worse comes to worse, you can run the whole program from a server in Brother Lett’s dorm room. It might even be that conditions could devolve to Acts 2 mode, in which Christians are physically caring for the needs of others. If you have kept yourself plugged into the brotherhood that, with all its flaws, is one run on love, you will be able to weather whatever shaking of the world is going on. Those who were there but have deliberately put themselves outside it and are united in nothing other than finding fault—of them I am not so sure.

A speaker quoted from Numbers 12 recently. “Face to face I speak with [Moses], and not in riddles. Why then, did you not fear to speak against him?” Yes, I know, I know—those taking the lead today are not Moses, but I am not so unfearful to declare they are not filling exactly the modern role that he did the ancient. Yes, they are not Moses, but then Moses was not Moses in the eyes of his critics. What were they murmuring about? His Hittite wives. He really did have Hittite wives. It was not an invalid complaint. God accepted him anyway and struck down those who would rise up against him.

I can easily extrapolate, based on the snarling hate expressed by some for the theocratic organization, and current events showing that opposition shifting into high gear, most notably in Russia—I can envision that attack on the city ‘existing without bars’ and ‘the city that seems open to plunder’—I can easily envision it—not as a slam-dunk gonna-happen-now, but certainly as a possibility. Will religions in general hold onto their own as JWs hold on to theirs? Time will time, but I’m dubious. How many will so easily switch to new methods of keeping in touch? How many are so organized into not just congregations, but groups within congregations, so that no one other than those who willfully keep their distance is overlooked?

Revelation presents scenarios of people ‘warring against God’ and one can’t help but wonder: ‘Who would be stupid enough to do that?’ Now some scenarios emerge. ‘Do not meddle with these men so that you may not be found actually fighters against God,’ Gamaliel said. It was enough to dissuade the Sanhedrin. ‘Forget that!’ enemies say today as they go in for what they imagine is the kill.

The view of the humanists is that human solutions must prevail, and they are livid that any would look to another source. They are livid that any would put their trust in anything else. They attack and put the most ridiculous interpretation on Letts’ words about what doesn’t bother him at all, because they can’t stand what he looks to for salvation. To one of these characters ranting about how Lett uses calamity to ‘exploit’ members with fear so as to keep them in line, I said that ‘the entire premise of the faith is that we are living in the last days of this system of things in which difficult times will prevail. To point to evidence of that does not frighten them; it strengthens them—it validates their faith.’

The New York Times today reports the torture of a member of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Russian campaign to eliminate the faith. It is the second such instance of torture coming to light. [edit—several more came within a few days] Arrests are commonplace. More commonplace are raids with the confiscation of personal property. 200 Jehovah’s Witnesses were recently place of the federal list of extremists, which means that bank accounts are frozen and they can no longer transact routine financial business.

With an active and prolific critical, at times hate, campaign being waged against Jehovah’s Witnesses online, it is reasonable to think that it indirectly instigates persecution of them in Russia. It is reasonable to think that it indirectly instigates the torching of two Kingdom Halls in the United States during 2019, both of which burned to the ground.