The Last Days (May 8-14, 2023)
Issue No. 4
Welcome to the fourth edition of The Last Days newsletter.
You can find the second edition of TLD covering May 1-7, 2023, here if you missed it last weekend. If you prefer to read The Last Days on our webpage click here.
The Last Days delivers a collection of hand-picked Jehovah’s Witnesses-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.
This edition of The Last Days, covering the week of May 8-14, 2023, features: JW News originating from Australia, Finland, and the United Kingdom; plus our leading Feature of the Week, the article Psychological Conflicts of a Jehovah’s Witness Patient; a JW Film Review from Canada featuring You Can Live Forever including the official trailer; and your regular JW Celebrity News ‘gossip’ section with this week’s celebrity in focus, Janet Jackson.
To lighten the news and keep you awake!, this week we also feature a JW News Fact Check; a JW Book Review of Cult Girls; and the ultimate ‘End Times’ question Are You Ready for the Great Tribulation?, from YouTube content creator, Self-Aware NPC.
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.
Subject series: Jehovah’s Witnesses, blood transfusions, and religious coercion
Australia - published on May 8-11, 2023
3-Part ABC News reporting on this week’s coronial inquest into the death of Heather Winchester, a Jehovah’s Witness woman.
Finland - published on May 9, 2023
Learn about the European Court of Human Rights decision prohibiting the Jehovah’s Witnesses religious community from collecting and processing personal data during door-to-door preaching without the householder’s express consent.
Download ECHR Judgement via JWLEAKS.ORG
United Kingdom - published on May 10, 2023
Do not trust a news item unless you can check the original source. - JW.ORG
On January 11, 2023, the official Jehovah’s Witnesses website issued a news release titled “Norwegian Court Grants Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Request to Suspend Deregistration”.
Did the court really grant the Jehovah’s Witnesses “Request to Suspend Deregistration” as claimed?
No. The news item headline published by JW.ORG is misleading.
The facts: The Oslo District Court accepted and heard an application from Jehovah’s Witnesses seeking a temporary injunction. The court granted no “request to suspend deregistration”. Following the actual full hearing on April 26, the court denied the request.
Download court judgment via JWLEAKS.ORG
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: Janet Jackson
Janet Jackson explains her weekly meetings routine as a child within the Jehovah’s Witnesses in an archived interview with Parade.com:
Jehovah's Witnesses was the religion we were raised under. I'd get up on Sunday mornings, go to the Kingdom Hall, go again on Thursday night and go to book study on Tuesdays, because that was my mother's routine.
I believe in God. I feel that spiritual connection. But, most of the time, I didn't pay attention in the Kingdom Hall. I was asleep. I know that's awful. I was so tired, so busy, so knocked out, I'd fall asleep. My mother would hit me on my thigh to wake me up. ‘Baby, wake up!' she'd say, ‘Wake up and close your legs! You have on a dress!' [1]
[1] Parade.com
The award winning Cult Girls by Natalie Grand, Kunna Aulia, Nikki Powers, Cassandra Bolan, and N. Scott Robinson
Cult Girls based on a true story, tells the story of Talia and her friends as they struggle with growing suspicions that their faith is a patriarchal religious cult. It's a story of tremendous courage and female empowerment as Talia as her friends successfully free themselves told through a feminist lens with cautionary humor. Talia discusses the adversity faced as a young female raised in a cult that values its men over its women, meanwhile trying to find herself in the middle of several peer pressures. Rosa talks about how she was forced into a loveless marriage and struggles to find the means to escape. Sandy and Rochelle hope to fade out of their elder’s attention while still trying to maintain a successful marriage. These four women were born, raised and married in the cult and they each have a different path consisting of their own individual passions, desires and goals.
Cult Girls has an educational backdrop of the harsh treatment that these peculiar individuals knocking on your door don't want you to know. It lightly touches on their shunning policies, lack of acknowledgment of modern medicine, and training its members to be martyrs that sacrifice their families, as well as an aversion to education and political processes. The healing journey is the discovery that there is hope for a better world, by realizing with their feminine energy they can make a change for the better in each a unique way. [2]
[2] Cult Girls book blurb by Natalie Grand
Self-Aware NPC - a former Jehovah’s Witness who feels a responsibility to inform others on how they personally ‘woke up’.
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.
