Jehovah's Witnesses "Good News"

Norman Hovland

Jehovah's Witnesses do regularly turn up at your door. They often ask you if you have thought about why there are so many problems in the world, and then they tell you that they have Good News about how all the problems that mankind is struggling with will be solved in the near future. Most of us do not think much about what these Good News really are. And I doubt that most Jehovah's Witnesses have ever contemplated what the consequences it will have for mankind when the realities of their Good News are implemented. Let us look closer at some of the details in this message which the Witnesses call Good News and the consequences it will have for mankind the day it becomes reality. In short I want to find out how "Good" Jehovah's Witnesses "Good News" in reality are.

What else would be more natural than investigating the Watchtower literature itself and find out what has been written about the subject. The basic idea seems to be that God through his son Jesus is going to take the power over the earth and create a paradise for mankind. So far it looks all right. It is when one realizes how this paradise is to be implemented that one starts to wonder how this "message" could even remotely be described as "Good".

It quickly becomes clear that bloodshed and mass slaughter on a hitherto unknown scale are considered necessary to make this paradise a reality. Jehovah's Witness's "Paradise" will be literally built on heaps of corpses. Well, you can read it yourself:

"Never before in all human history will so many human creatures have been slaughtered. Blood, as representing human lives poured out, will run deep and over a vast distance. Revelation 14:20 paints the appalling picture, saying: "And the wine press was trodden outside the city [God's organization], and blood came out of the wine press as high up as the bridles of the horses, for a distance of a thousand six hundred furlongs [or, 200 miles]." To a completion Jehovah's judicial decision will be executed. The nations and their grapes of wickedness will be trampled out of existence, to leave the earth a cleansed place for the righteous to occupy and enjoy. Not all flesh will be in that symbolic wine press. Not all flesh will have its lifeblood trampled out of it. There are those who make Jehovah their refuge and their fortress. These will be kept safe and be preserved, while Jehovah by his King Jesus Christ crushes their enemies and His enemies in the wine press or "low plain of the decision." ... With breathless awe they will have looked down from their safe heights into the valley of decision and witnessed how Jehovah gains his magnificent victory by Christ over all the combined nations of Satan's visible organization." (The Watchtower, December 1, 1961, pp. 725, 726)

The events described here with such obvious glee are the consequences from the message which is brought to your door by Jehovah's Witnesses, and which they have labeled Good News. They have even told us how many percent of mankind will be slaughtered:

"On Satan's side will be all the rest of mankind, more than 99.9 percent, even as we read: "The whole world is lying in the power of the wicked one." That includes all the governments of the world together with their supporters, the commercial, religious and social institutions. Even the professedly Christian organizations? Yes, because all such that are friends of the world are making themselves enemies of God." (The Watchtower, October 15, 1958, pp. 614, 615)

"Soon, at Armageddon, those who do not submit to God's rule will be cut off. Those who do submit will survive into a righteous new world"

The Watchtower literature contains many striking illustrations who show us how incredibly happy Jehovah's Witnesses feel when God is destroying 99,9% of mankind around them. Take a look at the following illustration [on the right] and read the text under it.

When this mother of all holocausts is taking place and billions of people are being slaughtered Jehovah's Witnesses will "sing his praises exultantly and will acknowledge him as our God for all time and eternity." This should give us a pretty good example of what kind of reality these people live in, and what it does to them as human beings. Mankind, 99.9% is exterminated and they are so happy about it that they sing songs of praise to the exterminator. They even go around knocking on the victims' doors and tell them that this is "Good News". It seems quite unbelievable but the Watchtower Society even admits that this mass slaughter is indeed a holocaust:

"The Only Way of Survival

Among all the religious groups that claim to be Christian, which one freely uses God's name, Jehovah, puts full trust in him and his promises and boldly encourages its members to be witnesses of him? (Isaiah 43:10) Without a doubt, these are the ones 'seeking Jehovah.' They urge others to join with them in learning the only sure way to survive the coming global holocaust." (Awake! August 22, 1984, p. 9)

But there's more about this subject in the Watchtower literature. Just to kill all those people isn't quite enough for Jehovah's Witnesses, they feel that these people got to suffer a bit first. The Witnesses don't have the obvious advantage of believing in hell so they have to make sure this pain and anguish are inflicted upon these poor people when they are still alive:

"For mere selfish reasons those political "shepherds" and "majestic ones" will "howl," yes, roll about on the ground. As the Sovereign Lord Jehovah calls them to account during the "great tribulation," they will grimly realize that the day has come for them to be slaughtered and scattered!" (The Watchtower, September 15, 1979, p. 28)

As we can see the Watchtower was much more straightforward about the effects their "Good News" would have in the fifties and the sixties. Like here where they really let it rip. Notice the pompous language and how the writer obviously enjoys it:

"Men can spray a field with chemicals that kill weeds but spare crops; too bad they cannot spray cities with bombs that blow the bad to bits but leave the innocent intact." (The Watchtower, July 15, 1955, p. 436)

"Men have a saying about "dying with your boots on." At Armageddon Jehovah God will grant their wish and let them "die with their boots on." He will allow them to build up to peak strength and go down fighting." (The Watchtower, July 15, 1955, p. 438)

"And what about Jehovah God? Does he prepare for Armageddon? Well, would you prepare to kill a fly? Would you prepare to squash a bug? Would you do calisthenics every morning for weeks to get in condition to swat a fly? Would you train with barbells for months to make your muscles bulge and give you strength to step on a bug? Would that be necessary?" (The Watchtower, July 15, 1955, p. 438)

"So let this old world die with its military boots on if it wishes, but let us live with our theocratic boots on, preaching the good news of peace and singing the praises of Jehovah God!" (The Watchtower, July 15, 1955, p. 438)

But then it suddenly dawned on the Witnesses that they would be the only survivors and that they would be up to their necks in dead bodies. So worried letters started to come in expressing concern over this gargantuan clean up job, a logistic nightmare. Nazi Germany had experienced much of the same problem (although on a much smaller scale) of how to get rid of masses of dead bodies in a efficient and hygienic way. A lot of Witnesses didn't want to have their first years in "Paradise" spoiled by such a grisly task. There isn't much joy in sitting on the terrace in a lovely home you have "taken over" from some dead actor in Beverly Hills, and have the view spoiled by dead bodies strewn all over the lawn, and floating around in the pool. But Brooklyn had some words of comfort to all the faithful:

"The unburied dead, "those slain by Jehovah," will be so enormously many that even the carrion birds and scavenging wild beasts could never take care of their consumption. The burial of even what remains after these lower creatures have their fill would be stupendous. Doubtless the Almighty God will use some highly scientific means, whether including antimatter or not, to dispose of the surplus of decaying bodies in a speedy and sanitary way. This remains for the survivors of the "war of the great day" to see and witness. We remember that Noah and his seven fellow survivors of the global Deluge were not burdened with burying the human victims of that world catastrophe after they came out of the ark and renewed Jehovah's worship on earth." ("The Nations Shall Know That I am Jehovah" -- How?, 1971, p. 377, §22)

Jehovah would no doubt use highly scientific methods to save his faithful people from this inconvenience. This was written just before 1975, when Armageddon was due, so it was nice for the Witnesses to have their worries removed. In 1975 the Witnesses were again reassured that God himself would do the cleaning:

"Quite evidently there will be many more bodies strewn over the earth as a result of the war at Har-Magedon than there will be scavenger birds enough to dispose of them all in a reasonable time for human health reasons. So it is reasonable to expect that God will dispose of excess bodies by other means." (Man's Salvation Out of World Distress at Hand!, 1975, p. 276, §6)

But shouldn't the Witnesses feel a little sad about the fact that God is going to wipe out 99.9% of mankind? No, nada:

"'How horrible all this!' Should that be our reaction of mind toward this prophecy of the disastrous defeat of Gog's dastardly attack upon the only remaining peaceful worshiper of Jehovah on earth at the end of this violent system of things? Not rightly so!" ("The Nations Shall Know That I am Jehovah" -- How?, 1971, pp. 377-378, §23)

In later years Brooklyn has played down the more gory sides and realities about the gigantic blood bath their so-called "Good News" is about, and which they look forward to with such joy. Today they are selling this mother of all holocausts in a more subtle way. They focus on all the problems that face mankind, and then hint about how their "Good News" have the solution to all these problems.

I will show you some recent examples of how this is done. Great care is taken not to dwell on how all these problems are going to be solved, but still the macabre "solution" is in reality the same for all of these problems:

Problem: Diseases Solution: Kill 99,9% of Mankind	Problem: Pollution Solution: Kill 99,9% of Mankind	Problem: Violence Solution: Kill 99,9% of Mankind	Problem: Unemployment Solution: Kill 99,9% of Mankind

It is indeed strange that this ingenious "solution" hasn't occurred to our politicians. Imagine President Clinton smiling and radiating satisfaction telling the American people on national television the Good News about how he has come up with a solution that will solve diseases, pollution, violence and unemployment -- simple, just kill 99,9% of the US population. Only the president and his family and staff is to survive. Isn't it wonderful news? What a loving and considerate president! Strange that only leaders like Hitler, Stalin and the more recent Pol Pot, and of course Jehovah's Witnesses have grasped the true potential in this "wonderful" possibility.

I have struggled to understand how anyone considering themselves thinking human beings can call something like this "Good News", and dedicate their lives to spread this madness. The best we can hope for is that they never really have thought about what they are doing.

Sometimes you can find the ad on the left in the Watchtower magazine.

This ad shows how subtle you can make something which in reality is grotesquely evil as something good, even desirable. As you can see the ad claims that you can "gain happiness" by learning about God and "his wonderful purpose for mankind". As we now know this "wonderful purpose" boils down to the fact that God intends to kill 99,9% of said mankind. How sick and perverted do you have to be to consider this a "wonderful purpose"? Is it possible to present something that would be the greatest mass slaughter in human history in a more distorted and dishonest way? Well, you have now gained more accurate knowledge about Jehovah's Witnesses "Good News" than they will ever tell you. Don't you feel happy?