J-Dubs Wrote Me A Letter

I received a letter in the mail from the Jehovah’s Witnesses because apparently this is happening now. Fortunately, it came with writing fodder which I will get to in my next post. Unfortunately, it’s not The Watchtower, so I won’t be analyzing that. This post is going to focus on the letter, which appears to be a standard JW form letter that members can download, add their name, address, and phone numbers and send out to unsuspecting heathens.

“In view of recent world events…,” I honestly don’t think that many of the events going on in the world today are so completely different than those of the past. Things aren’t worse today than they’ve ever been; they’re just different. I grew up in the late stages of the cold war, two Persian Gulf wars, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Kosovo, 9/11, and the 2016 and 2020 US elections. Yeah, things aren’t all rainbows and unicorn farts, but things also aren’t so bad that I’m ready to look forward to the afterlife because, oh right, I don’t believe in an afterlife.

Call me a Pollyanna, but I believe that the governments that people pay taxes to should be made to jump to action when things aren’t going well. I know that kind of thinking sounds naive, but I did say “should”. It is up to the electorate to hold their representatives’ feet to the fire and hold them accountable. This last sentence makes it clear that we should just give up and turn elsewhere…but where?

Does the Lord’s prayer really say that the Kingdom is government with Jesus as ruler? No, not at all. This prayer is an act of thanksgiving and contrition. And like any good tract, we bounce from the New Testament Gospel of Matthew to the Old Testament book of poetry known as Psalms. They just as easily could have stayed in the same book and cherry-picked Matthew 5:5, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” At least that’s more cohesive and, as I said, stays within the same book of the Bible.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses are what is known as an apocalyptic religion. That is, they foresee and look forward to the end of the world or in their case, the end of the current system of society. One of the members of the governing body said in a video a couple years back, “we’re in the final part of the final part of the last days.” He said this with glee, because as part of a religion like this, that’s all you have to look forward to apparently. If you go to their website, you too could learn why life isn’t worth living and you should just wait until the end of the world comes.

This isn’t the first time that the JW church has predicted the end times. They did it in 1878 (revised to 1881), 1914, 1918, and 1925. Most famously though, they had a saying to Stay Alive ’til ’75, because that was it. that was for real and for true, the end of the current system. It happened. It ended and we’re living in the paradise that is the NEW KINGDOM!

OK, we’re not. That was the turning point for the JW. No longer would they make any specific predictions for the end of the world. They do maintain that the end is nigh, but their time frame is vague and they won’t commit to a definite date. The next predictions for the end of the world don’t come until 2026 and one of those is from Heinz von Forester who published a Doomsday equation in 1960 that predicted population growth. He predicted that humanity would end on November 13, 2026 due to overpopulation. The other prediction made by Messiah Foundation International says that in 2026, the earth will be hit by an asteroid. Look forward to that.

I will not be calling or emailing the JW for more information because I don’t want to be put on a list and don’t want people disturbing me while I’m trying to save the Kingdom of Hyrule. I will probably visit the website and check out The Watchtower from time to time because it’s a tract and I like commenting on them.

The biggest reason why they’re not mailing their publications out is because of an increase in paper costs over the past few years. I will not fault them for this since I work for a company that sells paper as a part of its business and the cost has gone up about 15-20% in the past three years.