Featured Posts:

• Jargon and “Theocratic Language”

  Jargon is often used to obfuscate the intended meaning of something to those outside of a particular club or group. This is the stock-in-trade of lawyers, politicians, and orators. They manipulate the words and symbols of speech to persuade and to convince. It is their hammer and their wrench, and they use these tools with aplomb. Likewise, the auto mechanic and the computer repairman has been known to use the jargon of their trade to exert their influence and superior knowledge over the average person.
  And this brings us to the “theocratic language”, a term coined and employed by Jehovah’s Witnesses. The scripture in Zephaniah 3:9 is used as the origin of the term. It contains the expression “pure language” and reads this way in the New World Translation:

  “Then I shall give to peoples the change to a pure language, in order for them all to call upon the name of Jehovah, in order to serve him shoulder to shoulder.” (Zeph. 3:9)
• Johnny the Bethelite

  For the last month or so the very anti-watchtower website “six screens of the watchtower” has had a special caller on their bi-monthly call show, a young man claiming to be from Bethel. He is allegedly calling from inside Bethel, is assigned to the IT department and was tasked with monitoring so-called “apostate websites” and other computer and internet related duties. He claims to have fake Facebook pages to gain information on Witnesses and dig up dirt on them, as well as many other secret ways to hack computers. At first when I heard him I was skeptical, but then began to think that perhaps he is on the level. Many of the things he has brought out shows he know a lot about the organization and the governing body too.