Have you seen this? and someone posted the following on Twitter:

Such things are popular today, in the realm of conspiracy theory. Doesn’t mean it’s wrong, necessarily, or right, but it is in the realm on conspiracy theory. The main trouble with conspiracy theories is that, once a few of them have proved true, you tend to swallow anything that comes down the pipe. Yikes! Now that Elon Musk has bought Twitter and given journalists access to previously hidden staff communication, he says, “Frankly, just about every conspiracy theory you have head about Twitter has turned out to be true.”

But the above picture doesn’t have to do with Twitter. I don’t even know if it’s genuine or modified, and don’t care enough to find out. See how the arcing red crosses the three Os, as though making a 666. What could that mean?

On that Twitter thread were submissions from others. This, for example, over these recent years of especial upheaval:

Or this, over pandemic concerns:

As expert on all things JW, I was flooded with inquiries. Or at least you never know when they might start. So let us weigh in.

Our people don’t put much truck in them. They are curiosities. Whether you can concoct similar things over just about anything, I don’t know. I’ve heard you can. Some things are coincidence, such as . . . gasp! . . . this inventory of Solomon’s wealth:

“And the weight of the gold that came to Solʹo·mon in one year amounted to 666 talents of gold.”  (2 Chronicles 9:13)

As for Jehovah’s Witnesses, we have explained it that 7 is a number frequently conveying heavenly perfection, 6 (one short) conveying earthly imperfection, and anything repeated three times conveys emphasis. For example, how you might respond to Vic Vomodog intruding with something outrageous, the way he does?

Therefore, 666, is more or less ‘doing things the human way’ emphasized, as though on steroids, deliberately rejecting godliness. The fact that the number is used in Revelation can be taken that the overall world will be (and/or is) going that way, posing a real test for anyone who doesn’t.

(The photo is from IMDb of Jack Luden, an actor of very old Westerns, with whose generation I overlap. He is nephew to the inventor of Luden’s Cough Drops.)

Frankly, numbers being what they are in the Bible—12s, 40s, and 60s show up a lot—you almost wonder if they don’t assume more significance than the strictly ‘counting mode’ they have today. Almost like the six things Jehovah hates listed in Proverbs 6:16 that bizarrely becomes seven.

******  The bookstore

Yes, it’s trendy and inclusive to say such things, but it does not do justice to the fact that the dominant religions served as cheerleaders for World War I, which cost millions their lives, and showed every sign of doing it again for World War II. Yet, in the interim, they presumed to slide right back into their comfy chair of representing the Prince of Peace. 

Jehovah’s Witnesses, virtually alone, were not going to let them get away with it. Ought they be lambasted for it? No. Applaud them for their courage. Had those dominant religions taught their members Christ’s ways of peace, insisting upon it when the going got rough, those wars might have fizzled quickly—how can you fight a war when the overwhelming majority of the populace won’t fight? Instead, they acquiesced to the will of ‘the nations.’

It all boils down to religion determined to be an integral part of this system so as to be ‘relevant.’ Determined to fix this world, it ignores or dilutes into impotence Jesus’ direction to be ‘no part of this world.’ He gives that direction because he’s already hung a ‘Condemned’ sign on it. Do you rush into a condemned building to fix it up?

It turns out that Pius XII was not pro-Nazi, even though he’s been called ‘Hitler’s Pope.’ He was a schooled and cultured diplomat who imagined himself solving thorny world issues through diplomacy. He loathed Hitler. He personally shielded thousands of Jews in his Italian realm. But he had German bishops under him who were pro-Nazi. In the end, he made agreements with the German regime because he did not want to see Catholics there consigned to the camps (as were Jehovah’s Witnesses).

So I ran all this past Tom Whitepebble, that Pius was not the bloodthirsty guy that some have thought, and he says, ‘Well—it’s hard to stay clean when you’re a harlot.” The spiritual persons see the big picture and do not get pulled into the minutia, the political wrangling of a world that has already been condemned by the Lord. They know instead it is high time they kept themselves clean from it rather than imagine they are there to fix it.

This is why it is the “unlettered and ordinary” who take the lead in the modern Christian work. This is why, when the “educated people” come along and say, “You’ve done very well. We’ll take it from here and smooth out your rough edges,” they do not yield. The educated people think of ways to accommodate sensibilities of this system. They are forever backing off and reevaluating. The unlettered and ordinary get the work done.

In that period between the two world wars, the 1937 book Enemies denounced ‘false’ religion as “a great enemy, always working injury to mankind,” it’s adherents “agents of the Devil, whether they are aware of that fact or not.” How’s that for ‘fiery?’ “You will notice that its cover is tan, and we will tan the old lady’s hide with it,” Judge Rutherford said in releasing it.

It’s not the prime focus today. Why kick the old lady while she is down? Witnesses kicked her while she was up—and arguably brought her down. The goal was only to dent credibility enough to loosen her iron grip on parishioners. These days every wuss of an atheist, who would pee his pants if called upon to confront the dominant religions when they had real power, as Witnesses routinely did, are kicking her now that the role is so much easier.

What to make of those trumpet blasts? Maybe it’s “that Jehovah gave each generation something to be busy with and a few prophecies to help them through their own times.” It was all the rage for a time to go verse by verse sequentially into the prophetic books, ‘unlocking’ each one and applying it to specific events wherever feasible. While not abandoning that approach completely, these days passages are as likely to be bunched up with recognition of their thematic content, and not necessarily taken apart verse by verse. The 2018 Pure Worship Restored commentary on Ezekiel takes this more current approach. 

‘It flies at the time’ is all that really matters. Some thought it a stretch even then for those trumpets and bowls to be associated with specific early conventions and the resolutions then given. But the rest of the Revelation Climax book was (and still is) so spot on that I did what the Monty Python monk does—“Skip a bit, brother.” 

For all the complaining heard about the brothers not being “transparent,” when they are transparent there’s complaining about that too. Hitting the Research Guide in connection with those Revelation 8 verses will still take you back to the Revelation Climax book explanations, but it’s been decades since I’ve heard any talk incorporating those explanations (if I ever have). No problem here in saying that we floated the idea for a time but no longer do. You can still find it though. Nothing is hidden.

It’s better to focus on what has endured, which is the bulk of it, not on what has died a ‘pocket veto’ by never being referred to again.

******  The bookstore

It didn’t take long for word to spread about the new UN statue—doesn’t it look a lot like one of those end-time Bible beasts? "Did they really think that they could put this up without anyone noticing?" said Michael Snyder, who runs a religious blog.

UN Photo: Manuel Elias

The statue reminds me of Geoffrey Jackson’s words that, not only does Jehovah do something, but he does it in style. No, not that Jehovah prods them to erect that statue, or any other. It is a gift from the Mexican government. But it’s like when people do something unknowingly that fits right in to the narrative, almost like one of those hooks in jaws scenarios.

I mean, come on! Here the JW organization has for 80 years identified the UN organization as the wild beast that “was, but is not, and yet is about to ascend out of the abyss,” the wild beast that is the image of the one that “was like a leopard, but its feet were like those of a bear, and its mouth was like a lion’s mouth [which] the dragon gave to the beast its power and its throne and great authority,” the wild beast that draws its power from the seven world powers of Bible history it reflects, the wild beast that through it ALL the (ten) kings of the earth get a temporary crack at world rulership—who can forget that Daniel vision of the beast like a lion with wings of an eagle?—the JW organization puts such identification on the table, and then the UN itself erects a statue as though to say, “Yep—that’s us!” A guy can be forgiven the feeling that someone is manipulating the minions.

Enter Scopes.com, the secular fact-checking site. Snopes.com, who wouldn’t know the significance of a scripture if they choked on one as a chicken bone. Snopes.com, who explains it all away by observing that, yes it is a composite beast, and yes, there are similar beasts in Daniel and Revelation, but this beast says it is good and the beasts of the Bible say they are bad—and besides, the Bible vision is a flying lion, whereas the UN displays a flying jaguar, and don’t those Bible crazies know the science of zoology? With this bit of secular theology, Snopes figures it has fact-checked the case closed.

Don’t get your wild beasts from Snopes, who wouldn’t know a wild beast from a gerbil. Get them from Jehovah’s Witnesses who would and who have written it up here.

It’s not enough that the UN erects that swords-into-plowshares statue from Isaiah and it’s but inspirational sloganeering for them without a prayer of it ever becoming reality and then Jehovah’s Witnesses come along and implement it without fuss?

…

Now, the fly in the ointment of saying that international organization for bringing peace and security to the world, presuming to do what only God’s kingdom can do and thus betraying its ‘blasphemous’ nature—the fly in the ointment of saying that international organization is the mighty eighth king that draws its power from the seven is that it sure doesn’t act mighty. The sky-blue helmeted troops that nobody pays any attention to trying to enforce peace, whereas everybody knows you don’t put troops in sky-blue helmets. I mean, they’re sort of like Boy Scouts—they mean well but are not to be taken seriously.

Maybe what must be done is reappraise the beast giving breath (Revelation 13:15) to the image of the beast, and figure just when does it do that? At its creation, yes, first as its 1919 forerunner League of Nations, then, after it goes into the abyss and re-emerges, as the United Nations, yes, then it “tells those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the wild beast that had the sword-stroke and yet revived.” (Vs 14)

But there’s not a lot more breath breathed into it. You don’t breathe life into it while the harlot is riding high, hailing it as the “political expression of God’s kingdom on earth” at exactly the same time as Jehovah’s Witnesses are galvanized to “advertise, advertise, advertise the [real] king and his kingdom. You breathe life into it once is has grown weary of the harlot and is showing signs of bucking it—once the dominant culture has turned atheistic.

You don’t breathe life into it until the times immediately ahead? That humanistic framework is put in place as of the image’s founding, and then not much is done with it—until what is just ahead of us? Is it with the UN Agenda 2030 that life is breathed into it, and with that human scheme “the wild beast should both speak and cause to be killed all those who refuse to worship the image of the wild beast [as] It puts under compulsion all people—the small and the great, the rich and the poor, the free and the slaves—that these should be marked on their right hand or on their forehead, and that nobody can buy or sell except a person having the mark, the name of the wild beast or the number of its name.”  (Vs 15-18)

The humanistic way of saving the earth—tamp down that population growth. What can be better than pushing sexual conduct that won’t result in babies? Cool down that planet. How better to do it than squeezing out fossil fuels so that sun and wind will pick up the slack and if it doesn’t—well then, adjust. Redistribute that money. How better to do it that destroying the economy and re-emerging it in a great reset? Tamp down those freedoms people fixate on—they can’t handle them. Remake religion so that it’s ‘my way or the highway’—if it comes on board for backing human schemes, it can stay for now.

None of this can be done openly, for people love their own comfort and they love their own nations. They won’t stand by to see them eviscerated. It must be done clandestinely and it must be done by trillionaires—nobody else would have the wherewithal to pull it off. Oh, yeah—plenty of conspiracies can be spun from this. The problem with conspiracy theories is that, once a few of them turn out to be true, you tend to believe anything that comes down the pipe.

Some of the current conspiracy theories involve COVID 19, its origin, its trajectory, and regimens to deal with it. I’ve read the Breggin and the Mercola books and they do make for good reads—both of them heavily endnoted. The trouble is their solution to thwarting a conspiracy always lies in reverting to the status quo—as if all was hunky dory before COVID-19 revealed itself. Breggin keeps referring to those who benefit—and there are those who benefit enormously—as “global predators”fixated on their own “power, wealth, and self-aggrandizement.” If he says it once, he says it a dozen times. Why does he do that? They are humans fixing the planet—the humanistic way.

On the other hand, the nations of this earth always paint themselves with laudable goals. They never paint themselves as beasts. Yet that is how the Bible paints them, for that is how they behave—ripping, tearing, and devouring each other and whoever is caught in the crossfire. Sometimes they even turn on their own citizens in the guise of helping them. So maybe Breggin is on to something after all.

“Hundreds of thousands of kids marching the streets. Terrorized due to climate change OR terrorized at a massive scam. It is nuts either way. It is child abuse from the older generation either way.”

It is a presentation that I have been playing around with lately. Make the observation, and the scripture you offer to read is Revelation 11:18:

“But the nations became wrathful, and your own wrath came, and the appointed time came for the dead to be judged and to reward your slaves the prophets and the holy ones and those fearing your name, the small and the great, and to bring to ruin those ruining the earth.”

It is a tricky verse to read. All you are really looking at is the phrase at the end, that God will “bring to ruin those ruining the earth.” Just paraphrase the lead-in: “It’s of future times. It’s what God plans to do. Some of it takes a bit of explaining, but not that last phrase.

The beauty of the presentation is that you do not have to take a stand on whether is there is global warming or not. People will argue to the end of time about which truth is really truth. That is what people are good at—arguing. You don’t have to go there.

Anytime I read a verse, I explain afterwards in a sentence or two why I read it. It’s rather easy to point to the householders fine home (assuming that it is) and say: “What would you do if you had tenants ruining it? Would you bulldoze the home? Or would you toss the people?”

Ex-Witnesses who really really oppose the preaching work will—I’ve never heard anyone else take this position—assert that what Jehovah’s Witnesses should do is stop just quoting Revelation 11:18 and roll up their sleeves so as to do something now to fix things. Don’t let them get away with it. What are they smoking? Do they think that JWs would weigh in as a united block, tipping the balance in their favor? They would fracture into the two opposing poles, the same as everyone else—climate change advocates versus scam perpetrators—and they would just cancel each other out. Tell the grumbler that since he thinks he is so smart and his ex-brothers are so stupid, that they would probably weigh in mostly on the side opposite his and he would just be shooting himself in the foot. He doesn’t want them to fix anything. He just wants them shedding their unity, joining the fray, and forgetting the ministry.

The climate-change fight illustrates one of the reasons that most who become Witnesses do so in the first place. This world faces any number of paralyzing concerns, and in the face of them it is just that—paralyzed. It is the inevitable upshot of humans trying to rule themselves. Each one has a different idea. No one will yield to another. The children pay the heaviest price of man’s inability to govern. Witnesses have little trouble buying into the premise that God alone, earth and humankind’s Creator, has the wisdom to know just how things ought to be governed.

Someone likened reading the Drudge Report to reading the Book of Revelation. Every new outrageous thing is an endorsement of Ecclesiastes 8:9–“man has dominated man to his injury.” Every new outrageous thing is an endorsement of Jeremiah 10:23–“To earthling man his way does not belong; it doesn’t not belong to man who is walking even to direct his own step). Every new outrageous thing rings out as though a prophesy. Each item is an indictment of what unchecked human wisdom produces.

Will the voice of the children be the ones to decide the future? Or do they simply become the pawns of cynical adults pursuing their own causes? What truly would be the “power of the children” would be if they boycotted school and did not return until there was a resolution—either that climate change was real, necessitating such-an-such policies, or that it was a scam with the goal of promoting political policies, necessitating discarding those policies. Otherwise, it is just a day off school, which many kids will choose for exactly that reason.

A boycott of school would have had even more relevance after the Florida high school shootings in which 17 died and another 17 were injured. There were students saying at the time that they would boycott school. That course does not seem unreasonable to me if adults cannot take action to guarantee that school will not become a shooting gallery with themselves as targets. Instead, “responsible” adults funneled their outrage, fear, and energy into some silly one-day gathering in Washington that provided headlines but was otherwise forgotten the next day.

What if they had boycotted school and not come back until their safety could be assured—is it too much to ask that children should feel safe in school? Two possible courses of action presented themselves at the time. Eliminate guns, at least the rapid fire ones, or arm teachers and/or sentries—there are veterans who would count it a privilege to guard the next generation. That kind of boycott might solve the problem.

Except we all know that it wouldn’t. Even in the most life or death scenario, even in the scenario where backs are to the wall, it will make no difference. Opposing factions will not agree. They never do. Again, it is a large part of why people become Jehovah’s Witnesses in the first place: humans don’t have the wisdom to govern themselves. God does. He created us and the planet. How could he not?

Having razor sharp minds trained at the university or anywhere else is only part of the equation, and it is not the most significant part. If agreement cannot be reached, the razor-sharpness goes to naught. It even becomes a liability, since, in frustration at not being able to persuade the other side, its proponents resort to extreme tactics. Education that does not include the ability to agree is ineffectual education that barely merits the term. It is rather like a team with a formidable offense but absolutely no defense—what good is it? It is another reason that people become Jehovah’s Witnesses. Their formal education may not be as high, but as they take their cue from godly thinking and not that of humans, they can run circles around their “smarter” counterparts because they are able to agree. They are able to cooperate, they know how to yield, and they can coordinate action.