The Last Days (May 29 - June 4, 2023)
Issue No. 7
Welcome to the seventh edition of The Last Days newsletter.
The Last Days delivers a collection of curated JW-related news articles from around the world, and other entertaining information, straight into your inbox every weekend. You choose what you want to read, believe, download, listen to, watch, or subscribe to.
You can find the last edition of TLD covering May 22-28, 2023, here if you missed it. If you prefer to read The Last Days on our webpage click here.
This edition of The Last Days, covering the week of May 29 - June 4, 2023, contains our leading Feature of the Week: New Zealand Jehovah’s Witnesses seek judicial review on the role of children within the institution; JW News from New Zealand and Ukraine; an observative JW News Fact Check; a JW Book Review; your regular JW Celebrity News ‘gossip’ section with this week’s celebrity in focus… the incredibly talented Danny Glover aka ‘Childish Gambino’; and a new video from YouTube content creator, ExJW Panda Tower.
To lighten the news and keep you awake!, this week we feature a JW Quote of the Week about licking an ice cream cone during conventions, and a mysterious JW Box being opened.
We hope you continue to like our new format and colour scheme, which is based on our JW News Facebook page colour scheme, that has been in constant use since 2012.
Enjoy the Last Days!
“The events unfolding around us, are making clearer than ever, that we’re living in the final part of the Last Days, undoubtedly the final part of the final part of the Last Days, shortly before the Last Day of the Last Days.” - Stephen Lett, member of the governing body of Jehovah’s Witnesses
Please support The Last Days for as little as the cost of a coffee.
Spotlight: New Zealand Jehovah’s Witnesses seek judicial review on the role of children within the institution
The Jehovah’s Witnesses are seeking a judicial review and High Court declaration in New Zealand that the religion has never taken children into its care nor has it ever assumed responsibility for children.
The following official public statement response from the New Zealand Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquiry, on the court application by Jehovah’s Witnesses, has been published on its website:
“Judicial review – Christian Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses
Release date: 2 June 2023
The Royal Commission confirms that the Christian Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses (Australasia) Limited has filed an application for judicial review, arguing that it is outside the scope of the Royal Commission’s terms of reference. The church seeks declarations from the High Court that the Jehovah’s Witnesses do not assume responsibility for the care of children, young people or vulnerable people in New Zealand and there are no instances of abuse by the Jehovah Witnesses’ faith within scope of the Inquiry based on the evidence before the Royal Commission, together with several other declarations about the Royal Commission’s process.
As the matter is now before the Court it is not appropriate for us to comment further at this time. The work of the Royal Commission will continue while the High Court considers the application for judicial review by the Jehovah’s Witnesses.”
READ THE FULL SAY SORRY ARTICLE ON THIS DEVELOPMENT
New Zealand - published on June 2, 2023
Ukraine - published on June 2, 2023
Do not trust a news item unless you can check the original source. - JW.ORG
Earlier this week, the official Jehovah’s Witnesses website JW.ORG, published briefly on its landing page an article headed: “KEEP ON THE WATCH! World Military Spending Surpasses $2 Trillion - What does the Bible Say?”
What does the Bible really say?
Does the Bible really make a comment on “world military spending”?
JW News Fact Check decided to research - albeit limited to the authorised Jehovah’s Witnesses website - what the Bible really says about world military spending.
Our research found absolutely nothing on ‘world military spending’ in the Bible.
Evidently the Bible says nothing. On a side note, the word ‘evidently’ also does not appear in the Bible but does appear some 4661 times on the official JW.ORG website, mostly to prop up the absence of evidence, or the word ‘evidently’, appearing in the Bible.
It could be for this reason that the JW.ORG ‘Keep on the Watch!’ article relied almost exclusively on a military expenditure database report published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
Not surprisingly, the SIPRI report also contained no answer to any question remotely related to ‘What does the Bible say?’ about “military spending” - for which the JW.ORG implies the SIPRI report may contain comments on.
Verdict
The JW.ORG featured article ‘Keep on the Watch!’ is click-bait, containing both misinformation and misleading news.
Protect Yourself From Misinformation and Misleading news
To stay safe and healthy, JW News Fact Check searched on JW.ORG for any warnings about protecting oneself from ‘misinformation’ or from accessing ‘misleading news’.
Our in depth research found the following ironic warning from the governing body of Jehovah’s Witnesses:
Protect Yourself From Misinformation
- Do not believe everything you see or hear
What the Bible says: “The naive person believes every word, but the shrewd one ponders each step.”—Proverbs 14:15.
At least the above actually cited a relevant Bible scripture.
Again we remind our readers:
Do not trust a news item unless you can check the original source. - JW.ORG
What next from JW.ORG? Movie spending?
“Give them time to discord.” - Maverick
In this June’s issue of ‘Announcements and Reminders’ for congregation elders, the governing body of Jehovah’s Witnesses have informed all congregation overseers that:
Beginning this month, congregations may begin to receive boxes that contain confidential material and that are marked “Do not open until November 6, 2023.” These boxes should not be opened by anyone, including literature servants and elders, before November 6. Please ensure that any who assist with literature are aware of this direction. These boxes should be kept out of sight in a secure location. We trust that no one will reveal “confidential talk” about the boxes or the upcoming date and that these boxes will remain unopened and secure until the appropriate time.
What’s in the box?
licking at an ice cream cone during our spiritual feasts - The Watchtower magazine, June 1, 1953
Really!
Have you ever heard of ‘a self-licking ice cream cone’?
A self-licking ice cream cone is a self-perpetuating system that has no purpose other than to sustain itself.
In a paper published by the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA), a self-licking ice cream cone is described as “something that exists only for its own enjoyment and no one else’s.”
The website A Way with Words describes a self-licking ice cream cone as “a process, department, institution, or other thing that offers few benefits and exists primarily to justify or perpetuate its own existence.”
The Urban Dictionary further adds that a self-licking ice cream cone is “an organization or entity whose sole purpose is promoting its own existence and splendor.”
Sort of reminds one of the Watch Tower Society, who thoughtfully reminded us of their primary purpose of existence, when they embedded themselves into Lesson 19: Be Generous.
Let’s face it, there are a lot of actors, singers, musicians, artists, sports stars, and celebrities that are former or even current Jehovah’s Witnesses, or that were raised as children within the religion.
In focus: Danny Glover aka ‘Childish Gambino’
Danny Glover explains what it was like being raised as a Jehovah’s Witness in an archived interview with Marlow Stern from The Daily Beast:
MS - I read that you were raised as a Jehovah’s Witness. What was that experience like?
DG - Being a Jehovah’s Witness was interesting. I think it amplified my own alienness. I was always the odd one out, and Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t celebrate Christmas, you don’t say the Pledge of Allegiance, and when you have Jewish kids in the class who don’t celebrate Christmas everyone understands, but when you say you’re a Jehovah’s Witness they say, “So… You come to my door at 9 a.m. and wake my family up? I don’t understand any of your rules.” As a kid growing up in the South, people didn’t know what it was. It gave me a very different perception of what religion is because in the South, everyone is Southern Baptist. Jehovah’s Witnesses are Christian, but it felt small and almost cult-like in Atlanta.
MS - Did the constraints of being a Jehovah’s Witness push you to be more creative and artistic? Sometimes constraints can make you find fascinating workarounds—like movies in the ’40s and ’50s under the Hays Code.
DG - I believe it made me see the world differently. Part of the religion is teaching you that the world is an evil place, so trying to reconcile really liking stuff in the world but also being told it’s bad makes you want to figure out, “What is this?” and “Why am I being drawn to this?” My creative outlet was definitely shaped by being a Jehovah’s Witness. [1]
It’s summer in the northern hemisphere and winter everywhere else
A favourite chillin’ song at JW News where everyday ‘Feels Like Summer’.
[1] The Daily Beast
Rutherford’s Coup by Rud Persson
Joseph F. Rutherford, the second president of the Watch Tower Society, and the only known member of the “faithful and discreet slave” to have existed between 1919 and 1942, is the subject of Rud Persson’s exhaustive exposé of Rutherford’s rise to power.
Raised a Baptist, in 1906, Joseph Franklin Rutherford, a provincial Missouri attorney with a shrewd and scheming legal mind, became a baptized “Bible Student.” In 1907, Rutherford became the legal counselor for the group's legally chartered corporation, the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania. Ten years later, he became the corporation's president, serving as such for twenty-five years. From the beginning of his presidency to his death, Rutherford turned a small relatively unknown sect into a major religious empire which, in 1931, he named Jehovah's Witnesses. As a former staff researcher for the Watch Tower Corporation, I guarantee that no one is more knowledgeable about Joseph Rutherford’s presidency than Rud Persson.
This unique, eye-opening book is the result of decades of meticulous research. With an engaging style, and drawing on evidence from countless documents, he details how Rutherford and his cronies accomplished an illegal coup d’etat. This book represents the first methodical attempt to examine Rutherford’s rise to executive power amidst forceful opposition to his harsh authoritarianism, and it deserves a place on your bookshelf. - [book blurb]
In this YouTube video ExJW Panda Tower discusses two deleted videos that Jehovah’s Witnesses would rather you never knew the Watch Tower Society produced.
On Wednesday, February 22, 2023, it was announced at the World Headquarters of Jehovah’s Witnesses that
“Brother Anthony Morris III is no longer serving as a member of the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses.”
Still no news on the reasons for the removal of Anthony Morris III from the governing body of Jehovah’s Witnesses, or his whereabouts, although online speculation continues to abound.
