The Jehovah's Witnesses are organised by the Watchtower Tract and Bible Society, which they are bound by their faith to obey. This organisation produces, amongst other things, the New World Translation of the Bible, and the magazine the Watch Tower. The basic creed of the Witnesses is Arian in form. They deny the true divinity of Jesus, and also have some somewhat contradictory beliefs about the afterlife. It may be plausibly argued that the New World Bible is not a translation at all, but a subtly modified version.

For example, most bibles render John 1:1 as 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.' (emphasis mine). The NWT offers '...and the Word was with God and the word was a god.' (emphasis again mine). This is a trifle at odds with the meaning of the original Greek, in which the same expression for 'God' is used in each place.

The WtT&BS has several times failed to predict the apocalypse accurately, a fact of which most Witnesses are not aware.

I get a little tired of all the Jehovah's Witness bashing I hear. I am not a Witness, but my mother was. While I personally don't believe in their religion, I don't think that they are stupid or weak minded because they do. To say such a thing about any religion is plainly bigoted.

I do not agree with many of the teachings and practices of the Witnesses. But you have to respect them for certain things: They don't just preach peace and then go out and support the death penalty and war. They are pacifists. The fastest way to get kicked out of the church is to join the armed forces. Their allegiance is to God, not to any government of Man, and I respect that quite a lot, too. The Witnesses never killed anyone, which is more than I can say for most religions.

Despite their reputation, the ones that I have known only want to talk to you about God, and if you tell them that you have your own religous beliefs they won't try to convert you. Their job is to witness, to show people what God's love has done for them, not to get you to buy magazines or show up at a service.

The next time they show up at your door, show a little compassion. These people sacrifice a lot of time and energy to go out into the world and preach. You don't have to listen, but you don't have to be rude. I always tell them I don't want to talk about religion, but I offer them a glass of water before they go.

I've had a strange experience with a certain Jehovah's Witness that I work with. It seems that I gravely offended her. I'm not sure if this would offend every Jehovah's Witness, but it did offend this woman who happens to be of that faith.

What did I do? Something horrible, I gave her a card in December.
I was trying to be nice, I thought I'd give cards out to all the people I work with to spread a little holiday cheer. Thinking myself to be quite culturally enlightened, I bought cards that read: "Season's Greetings to you and yours." No mention of any specific holiday, just a token of friendship. Inside the card of said offended coworker, I wrote: It's been a pleasure working with you. Happy New Year!"

When I handed her the card, she said "What's this?" and I said "It's a card."

Duh

She then opened the card, and I could tell by the look on her face that she was not happy about it. She read what I had written, and then said, "You know, you really shouldn't give these out. I don't celebrate holidays." Confused me mumbled out something about how the card doesn't mention any holidays. She then asked me why I had chosen to give the card to her then, instead of say, in August. I replied that this is the season when people do that sort of thing. She went on to explain to me that this season is no more or no less special than all the other seasons of the year and that giving her a card was quite rude. She said something similar to everyone who gave her a card or brought in a plate of cookies.

For weeks after that, she was really formal with me and made it known that she was pissed. So much for trying to be nice.

01/11/02 Note:
I originally wrote this w/u under How to offend any Jehovah's Witness. Most of the "How To Offend..." nodes are/were being purged, so kind gentle Quizro gave me the chance to move it here. I've worked a lot more with the forementioned coworker and have come to realize that she's just an insecure nutso who feels the need to constantly draw attention to her "faith" by making scenes like the one I described. Just another example that every group in the world has it's bad seeds.

We get Jehovah's Witnesses at our front door all the time, handing out various brochures and newsletters. Now, I believe in live and let live, but it irks me that they should push their religious beliefs at me. My father likes it even less, as he has made it clear several times that we do not appreciate random people showing up at our house at 8:00 on a Saturday morning.

One Saturday, I was awake and witnessed this exchange:

Man: I am going door to door handing out these...

My father (interrupting): I know, I know. You guys show up at least three times a month. You're like vacuum cleaner salesmen. Look, please stop knocking on our door. We aren't interested.

Man (deeply offended): What do you have against religion?

My father: Nothing. I have nothing against religion. I have nothing against vacuum cleaners either. We have one of each.

(Man, realizing he is clearly outclassed, leaves)

The "How to Offend" nodes were being purged, so it was suggested I move this here. Also, it was pointed out that this wasn't entirely "offensive" anyway, which is true, so here it is =)

Among many of the restrictions placed on a Jehovah's Witnesses life, there is one that i think many people either look over, or simply do not know about (its not something you'll hear them preaching). That something is masturbation.

According to one of the scriptures of the New World Translation of the holy bible, a man called Onan (or something to that effect) was smote down after "spilling his seed upon the ground" instead of following Jehovahs request to marry his dead brothers wife to produce more offspring". Many take this as a sign that masturbation is against Jehovah's will*.

Please excuse me if that quote inst 100% accurate, my bible accidentally got burnt during the recent "Book Burning for Satan" family event.

As you can imagine, this 1 restriction itself makes it very hard for many young men and women to stay "pure" when they are young JW's. At least 1 female i knew during my time with the religion (which has since ceased, although my dad is still a church nut) said that the "no masturbation" restriction didn't apply to females, as they technically don't spill any seed. Interesting food for thought. (This also incidentally occurred before we both committed blasphemy (by using the lords name in vain) as well as breaking the "sex before marriage is wrong" restriction.)

Also an addition to the previous WU (as KMQ hasn't been seen for 2 months) is an explanation on why JW's are so 'fanatical' in distributing their magazines.

One of their beliefs is that the world will not be restored to a paradise until every man, woman and child has been called on or "heard the word of god". As you can probably understand, getting to the tribes of the Amazon rainforest or treckin' through outback Australia where there's a house once every 200 miles, just to get told to fuck off, its much easier to use a bottle or plane. At least that way they cant be abused (or beheaded if your in the vicinity of India).

Having been forced into this religion as a very young child, as well as having a father who still pressures me to 'rejoin', i may have a slightly biased view against this religion. So smite me ;)

*Thanks sfc for pointing out the correct story. Also noted that this story cant really be used against masturbation, as Onan was killed for not following directions, NOT for having a bit of a stroke, however, i included it instead of another for 2 reasons. 1) I can remember that one, (5 years out of the religion makes you forget things), and 2) My father always emphasised the spilling his seed part of that story to discourage me from masturbation (he failed)

For those who think they know the JWs or dubbers as we former cult members call them, You know nothing. I was a dubber for 35 years, from the time I can first remember I was indoctrinated with reading the cult material, being told that we were the only people that god loved. That we would be the only ones saved when shortly god destroyed the world. I was not to look to going to higher education, that was for stupid people, the world was passing away and so was "this system of things" Wordily people were under Satan's control and were not to be associated with. I had a cousin loose his wife during child birth because she was bleeding and would not take blood.

 

I have seen many family ripped apart because of the use of shunning or as they use the term,"disfellow shipping. " You can be DFd for as little as saying I do not believe in this organization as god's sole mouth peace on earth, smoking,having unapproved types of sex with your own wife or husband.

 

If you have a family member DFd, and you are caught talking to them you are most likely to be DFed. You can not have a meal with your son, daughter,or mother if they or you are DFed.

 

They also have a strange one of many practice of telling a cult member that they can not go to the authority's if they see a fellow member doing anything illegal. One big problem comes in with children, if a child gets molested the parents must not go to the authority's, they must instead go to the elders of their congregation. Now here is the big rub, you can only get in trouble if some one reports you to the elders if you have two witnesses or confess, so if the child molester does not confess and there were not two witnesses to the molestation, then the guy goes free. And if the parents complain or report the incident to the authorities then they can and will be DFed. Nice aint it.

 

As a Dubber you have to attend 5 meetings a week and knock on doors for a min of 2 hr. a week to convert the worldly people. each meeting is 1 hour. usually Tuesday night 1 hour book study, where you read a paragraph in one of the cults propaganda books, and answer hand fed from each paragraph. then Thursday night you have two meetings in a row, this is where every person does a talk from the platform, yep every one preaches from the stage or pulpit, not every week but you rotate until everyone has taken a turn. then you get a council from the stage on what to work on. Sunday is another 2 hour meeting, 1 hour public talk, usually given by an elder, the talk is an outline from Brooklyn head quarters of the society No one is to make up their own talk. Every thing is very tightly controlled. Then a one hour read and answer on the watchtower articles.

 

The list of how silly this religion is and how it came into existence is long. Things like they used to teach in the 30s that Aluminum was the devils metal, the vaccines were horse puss, that god lived in the pladies a star cluster in the constellation of Taurus, that the end of the world was going to come in 1874, then 1914,then 1916,1925,1945,1951,1975, the last was that the world could not go past 2000, since then they quit using dates and started saying "then end is very near"

 

This cult is very dangerous, do not let them study with your loved ones, they will come in very friendly and slowly teach them that they need to stop celebrating holidays with you, birthdays, and then stop associating with "nonbelievers" Depending on how strong your loved ones mind, this could be very dangerous. They practice lyftons mind control techniques.

 

Most of the people here who post "they are not that bad" have their head in the ass and no idea of what they are playing with.