Since 1874, the missiles have been launching, the warheads have been striking, and the targets have been reeling from the blasts. Satan’s modern-day weapon has grown in size and strength and has been battering the bride of Christ for over a century. The church, its doctrines, its traditions and its clergy have been locked onto the cross-hairs of the devil’s hatred; and these sacred elements of our Christian faith, passed down to us from the apostles and Jesus Christ Himself, have become bombarded bulls eyes ever since.
What exactly are these missiles, and what exactly is this weapon? The weapon is the Watchtower society, and the missiles are its publications. Two of their most popular magazines, The Watchtower, and Awake! are designed especially for targets outside the Watchtower organization—that means Christians!
The Watchtower has waged psychological warfare on Christians of every denomination. A typical salvo of hatred includes clergy-bashing, faith-bashing and religion-bashing. Through their publications, the organization uses several strategies of attack. One strategy, which might accurately be called the “Corrupted Clergy” offense, is used to convince Christians that its clergy is corrupt. The goal of this offense is to create, within the Christian mind, a feeling of distrust and disrespect towards priests, monks, nuns, bishops, archbishops, etc. The result of this offense leaves the Christian with the following thought: “Priests are corrupt, so why should I listen to what these hypocrites have to say?”
A second strategy is the “Declining Faith” offense. This strategy is used to convince Christians that, in general, Christian faith in the Church and in its beliefs is on the decline. Also, that Christian participation in church services is declining too. The goal of this offense is to create, within the Christian mind, a feeling that there must be something wrong with his religion, and with Christianity in general. When the Christian begins to doubt his faith, he is left open to Watchtower suggestions and teachings.
Examples of the “Corrupted Clergy” strategy can be found in the Awake! magazine, usually in a section in the back called “Watching the World”. A typical Watchtower technique is to mix “Corrupted Clergy” articles among other unrelated articles containing interesting facts and figures. This gives the reader the impression that the “Corrupted Clergy” articles are also facts. The following is one such article entitled, “The Clergy and Sexual Abuse”:
Australian National Television recently broadcast a documentary entitled, “The Ultimate Betrayal.” The program claimed that 15 percent of clergymen in Australia had committed sexual offenses, ranging from the molestation of children to the rape of women parishioners. Within hours of the television program, various centers set up to handle complaints of sexual assault were inundated with telephone calls from alleged victims. Many callers said they had kept their experiences secret for many years! One women said that she was speaking about her ordeal as a child for the first time in 40 years! Another said that after her clergyman had sexually abused her as a child, he threatened her with hellfire punishment if she dared to tell anyone. Spokesmen for various church groups disagreed with the 15-percent figure but did admit that the sexual misconduct of clergymen was a serious problem. (Awake!, 8/9/92, pg. 28)
Another article entitled, “The Price of Celibacy” blames this type of priestly misconduct on sexual frustration:
Forcing priests to remain single “leads to paternity suits, to mistresses, to increased levels of homosexual activity among clergy and seminaries, to loneliness and in some cases to pedophilia.” That, according to the National Catholic Reporter, is the substance of a warning that Joe Sternak, a former Catholic priest of the Chicago archdiocese in the United States, issued on the subject of celibacy at a recent annual conference. Sternak, who is currently writing a book on pedophilia, charges that dioceses in over 20 states use church donations to pay for lawsuits and out-of-court settlements in cases of priestly sexual abuse of children. (Awake!, 8/22/91, pg. 28)
With this kind of religious propaganda, is it any wonder that so many people believe that priests are selfish, sexually-deviant, woman-beating, child-molesting monsters?
A September 22, 1991 article in Awake! entitled “Pocket-Size Electronic Bibles”, speaks of an article found in Newsweek which describes the electronic gadget made by a New Jersey, U.S.A. firm. “The firm ‘may have struck the absent-minded-clergy market’, says the article.” This is also a part of the “Corrupted Clergy” strategy. It makes Christian priests look like stupid, inept, bungling idiots. Not a very respectful image.
In the December 8, 1992 issue of Awake!, the article “Corruption in the Vestry” tells of a high-ranking priest in Turin, Italy, Rodolfo Reviglio, who recently denounced widespread “corruption in the Vestry”. The article speaks of “cases of priests who have accepted gifts and favors from politicians and candidates in exchange for open or hidden campaigning in their [the politicians’] behalf.” And that “such corruption is not limited to election periods…that it is common to ‘hear of illicit dealings between priests and public officials in handling paperwork, applying for permits,’ and other practices, all of which Reviglio likens to ‘Mafia methods.’”
The Faith-Bashing strategy is identical to the Clergy-Bashing strategy, but with a different intended target. The December 8, 1992 article in Awake! titled “Church Decline in Ireland” says “the number of people in the Republic of Ireland who are now taking up a religious vocation is declining rapidly.” This, and the following articles are examples of the “Declining-Faith” offense.
Awake! of July 22, 1992, contains the article “New Factors of Instability”, which poses the question, “Has the newfound freedom of religion in Eastern Europe brought a measure of peace and harmony to the political turmoil in that area?” It then goes on to imply an answer. “The Roman Catholic and Orthodox clergy in Romania, Ukraine, and along Poland’s eastern border are fighting over ownership of churches…. These hints of a war of religion floating again over Europe…are creating new factors of instability and forebode nothing good.” The obvious implication is that Christianity cannot bring peace on earth, but only the Watchtower can. Some things need not be said to be understood.
Finally, an article entitled, “Germany a Pagan Country”, in the May 22, 1993 issue of Awake! states: “The Federal Republic [of Germany] has become a pagan country with a Christian residue. Six million have lost their faith in God. The number of people who do not belong to any religion is greater than those who go to church. Just 10 percent attend church each Sunday.” Those were the findings of a survey commissioned by the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel. Answers were compared with those given in a similar survey in 1967.
The Watchtower conveniently failed to mention that in 1967, Germany was still divided into East and West, therefore the “Federal Republic of Germany” did not yet exist. Also, being under communist rule since 1949, East Germany has had little freedom of religion. What the Watchtower has done, in effect, is compared the 1967 church-going population of the more religiously-free West, to the current 1993 population of the unified Germany with its added non-religious population from the East. So, the percentage of people attending church, from the newly increased total population seems dramatically reduced. Yet the Watchtower would rather have us believe that this decline is due to the failure of Christianity.
Finally, Religion-Bashing is the third and most widely used of the three warheads of the Watchtower salvo. The strategy here might be called the “Correct Doctrine” offense. This strategy questions most, if not all of the doctrines taught by Christianity throughout the centuries. It accuses the Christian religion of being defiled by satanic influences, and paints it as a twisted wreckage of the intended Truth. The Watchtower then purports to be the only true religion left on earth—backing up its claims with doctrines formed by contextually misquoted Scripture.
The Divinity of Jesus Christ, the nature of the Holy Spirit, the existence of the Holy Trinity, the existence and immortality of the soul, the Holy Cross of Christ, the God-inspired Christ-like saints, the miraculous icons—all these elements of the Christian faith, as well as a myriad of others, have been and continue to be attacked by written missiles, fired with the gunpowder of hatred from the weapon of Satan called the Watchtower organization.
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