Then too, to put it undiplomatically, we subject ourselves to a sort of ‘carrot and stick’ approach through theocratic counsel. It’s a turnoff for some. It assumes people require a carrot and stick approach. Do they? In case they do, is it the shepherd’s job to provide it? Few would deny the ‘universal truth’ that humans are inclined to take the ‘path of least resistance.’ ‘Exert yourselves vigorously to enter the narrow gate,’ says the Lord. It goes against our inclination. Most of us prefer to kick back with a beer and watch the game.

Ah, well. Life itself is carrot and stick, isn’t it? It’s just beefers wanting something to beef about who beef over it. Strive toward rewards, veer away from unpleasant downers. We do it everywhere else—why not in spiritual matters too? It’s a matter of headship style. It’s handled well enough, a good enough balance between expressing heartfelt appreciation for what the friends do in light of the pressures they face and encouraging them to keep up the fine fight and, whenever possible, keep on doing it ‘in fuller measure.’ At any rate, it’s probably best to adapt oneself to the way things are rather than fret they should be different since you don’t have the power to make them that way. Praise the Lord and pass the toolbox ‘ammunition.’

(photo: commons.Wikimedia.org)

Even of the circuits that are completed before the Son of man arrives, a person can wonder: ‘completed to what degree?’ How much exposure is enough for people to take a stand upon? Perhaps most Witnesses have a makeshift informal list of workmates, acquaintances, family members and so forth, people thought to be ‘good at heart’ that Jehovah will go all soft in the knees for at the last moment—and if them, why not include those on the list of other publishers?—like He did with Jonah (prompting that one to pout in the 4th chapter of the Book of Jonah). But it’s never going to be written. Anyone writing anything is bound by the ‘baptism clause.’ “Baptism, which corresponds to [the Ark], is also now saving you . . .” (1 Peter 3:21)

So the hotheads are going to be able to charge till the cows come home that Witnesses look forward to the day when everyone but the tiniest handful of persons (themselves) will be brought to ruin. It is the Bible that says it. Many Witnesses punch the list with qualifications that may or may not pan out.

******  The bookstore

The talk title was, “Is it later than you think?” I’ve heard it for decades. I suppose if it was later than you think 40 years ago, it still is. Alas, the people of God are destined to be chumps, eternally expecting the end which does not come until it does.

Notable in this talk rendering was the torching of some straw man arguments. The speaker one by one considered, then discarded, objections to his main points.

Not everyone will know what a strawman argument is. The speaker did not use the term. But I, who am on top of every nuance of critical lingo, except for the ones too crazy to get one’s head around, am in the know. There is even Bernard Strawman, from Tom Irregardless and Me, whom everyone but me knows it is absolutely pointless to call on because all he does is spout off his learning. Bernard Strawman—who is working on his memoirs, with the running title ‘Portrait of a Man.’ Bernard Strawman—whom my firebrand Bible student, Ted Putsch, a college political science major, took an instant dislike to, even tearing a page out of that manuscript and hurling it into the fire to illustrate that ‘everlasting fire’ destroys what is thrown into it, rather than torturing it forever as that windbag maintained Revelation teaches, even as he is far above such an interpretation himself.

A straw man argument is an argument your adversary does not make. Therefore, shooting it down is not the big deal you think it is. Usually the straw man argument is employed dishonestly. The trick is to persuade the uninitiated that your opponent does rely upon it, so that your pulling the rug out from under him causes great injury—hoping no one will notice that he was never on the rug. Since he’s not standing on it, it causes no real trouble at all, expect for diminished reputation in the eyes of those who fell for the ruse.

‘Is it Later than You Think?’ zeroed in on five items of those ‘last days’ parallel passages from Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21. For each item, the speaker defused objections to it.

The 5 ‘last days’ items considered were 1) nation rising against nation, 2) earthquakes, 3) food shortages, 4) pestilences, and 5) increase of lawlessness.

The objection to each is that, ‘Duh—of course we hear about this more! There is better communication today’ and/or ‘There are more people today. Of course more will be affected!’ But—and here is where discarding the straw man comes into play—you can acknowledge the above and still the 5 points are meaningful.

Take earthquakes, for example. Are there more of them that ever before? In 2002, the Awake magazine (March 22) let stand without molestation the U.S. National Earthquake Information Center report that “earthquakes of 7.0 magnitude and greater have remained ‘fairly constant’ throughout the 20th century.” It didn’t try to correct that august body with, ‘Oh no!—They’ve been on the increase—the Bible says so!’

Instead, discarding the straw man, they say, ‘Who cares? Is it the Richter number that makes for ‘great earthquakes’ or the people affected? Does anyone pull out their hair about the Sahara desert earthquake that affects nobody?’ The prophesy stands.

Same thing with food shortages, pestilences, the increase in lawlessness. A key ingredient for these things to be notable is that there be more people to notice and be affected by them. That still doesn’t mean the signs are not valid.

You can spin a lot of corollaries, some of which the speaker did. Yes, of course you can say pestilence affects far people because there are far more people. But you can also say—‘Sheesh, you’d think science (unheard of back then) would have made more of a dent. Instead, human mismanagement, even with science, compounds the problem—witness the current debacle over Covid-19. You can even go conspiratorial (which the speaker did not, though I do) and picture Pharma contemplating, ‘Do you have any idea how many drugs we could sell if we could break down the human immune system under the guise of helping it?!’

You can even go for the added terror of ‘nation shall rise against nation’ by pointing out how science makes it worse—with lethal weapons that affect you though you be far removed from the battlefield.

It made me think of a certain atheist cheerleader at the door who leaned into me, with “Why do you Jehovah’s Witnesses always think that things are getting worse? What is it about that view that does it for you?” I answered that It helped me to explain why the Doomsday Clock is set at 100 seconds to midnight and not 10:30 AM.

Things are getting worse because 1) people are getting worse, or 2) they’re no more odious than they ever were but, whereas you could once put elbow room between you and they, now with a shrinking world and greater communication reach, you cannot.

In the end it makes no difference. Under either scenario, things get worse. Torch that strawman. The only ones who don’t see it are the exJWs on the internet who think, now that they have broken free from the cult, the world is their oyster. Everyone else knows it’s going to hell in a handbasket.

******  The bookstore

“Well, here we are at the New System dinner table. We’ve regaled each other with stories of how we all learned to get along and not take offense at each other’s stupid foibles before the world went more nuts than usual and how it all came in handy later on. And now—knock me over with a feather!—here with us is one of the faithful ones of old. Bob, we know you were a guard but you can uncuff him. He’s okay. (Sorry, he’s still learning to be trusting.) We all have so many questions to ask.”

Mephibosheth: Yes I can see you all have many questions. And I’m ready to answer them. Fire away. Do you want more details on how I said about that liar Ziba who tried to flimflam me, ‘Let him take it all!’ because I was so overjoyed that King David (who foreshadows Jesus) had been restored to his throne? Pretty slick move, huh? Want to know more about that?

Tablemates: Not just yet.

Mephibosheth: Well, what then?

Tablemates: What we want it know is, what in the world were your parents thinking when they gave you the absurdly unpronouncible name Meshibofeth? And why didn’t you change it when you came of age? Did you notice how even Brother Malenfont flubbed your name at the Regional? Brother Malenfont! who doesn’t flub anything! He flubbed your name! Seriously, how did you get named that?

Mephibosheth: Well, I’ll tell you. It was just one of those things. Does that answer your question, Tom?

Tom: Perfectly.

Mephibosheth: Good. And now I have a question for you.

Tom: Um—little ol me?—Sure, you can ask but I don’t see what . . .

Mephibosheth: Did you really bust out laughing when you gave that Bible reading with my name four times in as many lines so that Charlie quipped he thought the earth was going to open and swallow the whole congregation because he had never heard someone guffaw during a Bible reading?

Tom: Uh—well—I didn’t really guffaw. I just chuckled a little. I mean, I’d worked so hard on getting your name straight—it was there seven times in the talk, and I did get it straight at first but then in that final passage I messed it up, and—uh—it was sort of involuntary. I didn’t mean it. Sorry.

Mephibosheth: That’s okay brother Tom. Here’s a verse for you that was in today’s WatchtowerStudy. It’s from Luke 12: 47-48:

“Then that slave who understood the will of his master but did not get ready or do what he asked will be beaten with many strokes.But the one who did not understand and yet did things deserving of strokes will be beaten with few.”

We know you’re a clueless dope and you don’t mess up on purpose. Of course you are the one who doesn’t ‘understand’ because you don’t understand anything. So we’ll just beat you with few.

Tom: Thank you, Brother Mephiberrpeth

Mephibosheth: You can call me Phib.

To be continued: here

******  The bookstore

When it comes to who will be saved, the Christian organization is not authorized to go beyond what the scripture plainly says: 

“Baptism, which corresponds to this, is also now saving you…” (1 Peter 3:21)

If those of the Governing Body have any private thoughts on this, those they must keep to themselves. Of course, baptism assumes doing it the biblical way, not the sprinkled baptism of infants, not the baptism to the hellfire/trinity God. 

The governing brothers choose not to speculate on this matter. They choose to be bounded by 1 Peter 3:21. Others, who do not have a worldwide association of brothers to coach, are freer to speculate. When a loved one of mine was asked specifically whether this one or that one will be saved, she replied that she was not Jesus and didn’t know.

The organization does the best it can. Not all scriptures dovetail. It remains to be seen how certain things will work out. “You will by no means complete the circuit of the cities of Israel until the Son of man arrives.” (Matt 10:23) throws a monkey wrench into worldwide coverage. This verse has been cited to show not every person will be adequately reached, maybe not at all, so the question arises just what is God going to do about that come Armageddon? From what I can recall, they only gingerly touch that one. (They have said in the past that the mentally incompetent should get a free pass, so maybe everyone reading this along with myself are okay.)

At any rate, the Watchtower statement to carry the day is easily found on the website. To the question, “Do Jehovah’s Witnesses feel they are the only ones who will be saved?” included in the answer is: “In any case, it’s not our job to judge who will or won’t be saved. That assignment rests squarely in Jesus’ hands.” If they have seemed to judge in the past, it’s because they don’t feel free to blow away1 Peter 3:21 as though it were nothing.

https://www.jw.org/en/jehovahs-witnesses/faq/who-saved/

Then, too, from the Insight book (under the topic Destruction) comes this beaut, that indicates we don’t even know ones destroyed by Jehovah suffer eternal destruction: 

The Bible indicates that not all destruction is eternal. This is demonstrated by the fact that the Hebrew word ʼavad·dohnʹ(destruction) is used twice to parallel “Sheol.” (Job 26:6; Pr 15:11) ….When speaking of the destruction of the rebels Dathan and Abiram, Moses wrote that they went down “alive into Sheol.” (Nu 16:31, 33) Since Sheol in the Bible denotes the common grave of mankind from which there will be a resurrection, it is evident that not all destruction—not even all destruction at the hand of God—is necessarily eternal.

So even Patiently Sitting on his Hands, that piece of work, who thinks he will not survive Armageddon and assumes that gives him the stature to advise others….well, maybe he is right and he won’t survive and still I’ll see that dodo on the other side someday, in which case I’ll take back the bad things I’ve said about him and maybe he’ll do the same with me.

******  The bookstore