Surprise- LDS pictured in the photo above helping rebuild homes.
"Only in Jehovah's Organization" is something you often hear people say within the congregations. They are typically referring to the love of the brotherhood being shown and how they are the only one true religion and God is with them. It is also something I recently heard in regards to the Philippines typhoon disaster relief.
But what do we find? Are they really special?
Let's compare them to the LDS during that typhoon. They both knew the typhoon was coming. JW's may even go further than the LDS by saying they were preparing and evacuating before the storm ever hit. At this point both religions should have known to get to higher ground and be in a structurally sound building, it is questionable that the JWs kingdom hall was at higher ground and/or structurally sound enough.
JW's decided to hold meetings that night, and some took shelter in them during the storm.
33 died and 10+ presumed missing or dead.
Crazy stuff: A family stuff their refrigerator with doctrinal literature removing the food. Literature or spiritual food is often represented as more important than actual food. A guess here is that they were scared out of their wits and thought maybe praying and doing this would have God save their lives, which of course they now probably believe as they lived through it. The other parts of the video imply that God was watching over them.
LDS had some sheltered in their temples, but it is not clear if that was during the storm or after it.
39 members lost their lives in the storm.
Crazy stuff: bishop says that he prayed for their safety during the storm and from that he learned God really exists and he answers our prayers.
NO, it's not only in Jehovah's Organization. It's just like any other man made organization like the LDS. There is just as much love, ugliness, and crazy to be found. They like others give God credit for intervention and miracles but fail to stick God's fingers in the crap too. Sticking to a God that has a non-intervention policy seems wiser to me. Then one day you may even see no reason for any superstition at all.
even if it happened in a kingdom hall ;). One of the next happiest days is the day she walked out, of the kingdom hall that is!
Well recently my wife has decided that the JW's are not directly speaking for God. Although she is not disfellowshipped she would no longer be consider a JW and is in the monumental process of figuring things out. It took about 8 years. One of the things I truly regret is that I was so passive and didn't speak out more so that this day could have come sooner. There is of course a road ahead for her in finding peace and happiness while creating her world view point.
So a long time ago when I was trying to figure out if I could trust the bible as the inerrant word of God, I had to decided if errors would be a problem. If I recall this was the tip of the iceberg for me. You see JW's often use the article "a" as reason that Jesus is "a god" instead of Jesus "is god". See John 1:1 in their bible. While there are a lot more and bigger problems in the bible than missing articles(or call it a translation error), the tiniest article illustrates what a huge difference in religions doctrine it can make.
After doing more research and seeing many many other errors you might just then decided to admit the bible is errant and now never ever really be certain that your doctrines are correct or that you could know things absolutely. You could then continue to bend over backwards making excuses and logical loop holes and try convince yourself it's still inspired somehow.... eventually you'll get to the point where you can just admit it's absurd.
If the smallest things can make a huge difference it's surprising that god couldn't at the very least do the proofread. Typically I wouldn't care but in this case people should even give a fuck about an oxford comma. Ambiguity is not a good thing when something is supposedly coming down as the word of god.
People dealing with children should be given a background check.
You would think this would be a no-brainer, but the JW organization chooses not to do so.
While not a magical or holy spirit bullet to prevent all wrongs it would help keep members safer.
If JW's are forced to do background checks then they would be liable if the person had a record and they did not take measures to protect their members. If enacted I wonder how many elders and ministerial servants will have to step down to keep them out of positions of trust and authority.