FYI: Beware Infection by the Gaslighting Spirit of Satan the Devil, the Father of the Lie

Jehovah’s Witnesses have published material that has exposed the fanaticism of the kind of fascism that informed Hitler’s Nazism, and has exposed the way that the Roman Catholic Church and other religions became bloodguilty both by their silence in the face of the Holocaust, and by their not censuring their members who actively participated the persecutions that resulted in the deaths of millions in WWII. For examples:

“[We should not forget] the illicit religio-political relationship that catapulted Hitler into power in Nazi Germany . . . Did the Catholic Church condemn Mussolini’s barbarity? While the pope issued ambiguous statements, his bishops were quite vocal in blessing the armed forces of their Italian “fatherland.” ….

“The Civil War of 1936-39 in [Spain] was sparked, in part, by the democratic government’s taking steps to reduce the huge power of the Roman Catholic Church. As the war got under way, the Catholic Fascist leader of the revolutionary forces, Franco, described himself as “the Christian Generalissimo of the Holy Crusade,” a title that he later dropped. Several hundred thousand Spaniards died in the fighting. Apart from this, according to a conservative estimate, Franco’s Nationalists had murdered 40,000 Popular Front members, while the latter had murdered 8,000 clerics —monks, priests, nuns, and novices. Such is the horror and tragedy of civil war, illustrating the wisdom of heeding Jesus’ words: “Return your sword to its place, for all those who take the sword will perish by the sword.” ([Matthew 26:52]) How disgusting that Christendom gets involved in such massive bloodshed! Her clergy have indeed failed utterly to “beat their swords into plowshares”! — [Isaiah 2:4]”….

“ . . . since Catholic intrigue helped to bring Hitler to power in Germany, the Vatican shares in a terrible bloodguilt with regard to the six million Jews that died in Nazi pogroms.”

(All quoted material was taken from Revelation — Its Grand Climax At Hand, [Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, New York: 1988] pp. 262-263.

In the same publication, we read this, too: “From Jehovah’s viewpoint, the world’s religions are bloodguilty because they have not convincingly taught their followers the truth of Jehovah’s requirements for his servants. They have not convincingly taught people that God’s true worshippers must imitate Jesus Christ and show love toward others regardless of their national origin. (Micah 4:3, 5; John 13:34, 35; Acts 10:34, 35; 1 John 3:10-12) Because the religions making up Babylon the Great [ = all false religion in all the world] have not taught these things, their adherents have been drawn into the vortex of international warfare. How evident this was in the two world wars of the first half of the 20th-century, both of which started in Christendom and resulted in fellow religionists’ slaughtering one another! If all who claimed to be Christians had adhered to Bible principles, those wars could never have taken place” (ibid. p. 271).

The autocratic governments in Hitler’s Nazi empire, Lenin-Stalin’s USSR, Mussolini’s Italy, Franco’s Spain, and Castro’s Cuba operated, at different times in the 20th-century, contrary to principles that are called “human rights,” namely, freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly — freedoms traditionally informing the heretofore more stable (democratic) governments, more or less so, because even their record is anything but righteous. Witness their murderous racism, white supremacist doctrine, nationalism, exploitative treatment of labor, pollution of the environment, etc.

So, is there once again becoming an ascendancy of fascism for an “illicit religio-political relationship” that threatens “human rights”? Yes, there is right now much of that in evidence; for example, we see it in Vladimir Putin’s Russian Federation’s liaison with the Russian Orthodox Church. They use gaslighting techniques to make people believe that they need to fear certain ones they label as extremists when, in fact, if the people were not gaslighted/brainwashed, then they could plainly see who are the real extremists and persecutors, that they (the latter, i.e., the extremists and persecutors) are the ones who play the role of a victim when in fact they have the role of a villain, all this in imitation of their father, the Devil. And time will again tell if the rising tide of fascism will embolden certain clergymen, e.g., evangelicals, to intrigue with politicians in gaslighting their “flocks” in traditionally democratic countries by psychologically manipulating them (the masses) into support of state-sponsored suppression of freedoms of speech, worship, assembly, proselytization, and press — with the likely result of imprisonments and tortures that Satan the Devil wants to see visited upon Jehovah’s Witnesses. We Jehovah’s Witnesses know that our real fight is not against gaslighting politicians — no, not against flesh and blood — but is rather against the original Gas-lighter, the father of the lie, as Jesus called him. The Bible at 2 Corinthians 11:4 warns us against him in these words: “And no wonder, for Satan himself keeps disguising himself as an angel of light.”

My friends and I have a tremendous wealth of resources at hand in http://JW.ORG/ -- resources that encourage us by setting forth the reminders in God’s Word the Bible so that we do not fall victim to Satan’s wily efforts to manipulate our minds and conduct in ways that are opposed to God’s will for us in these last days. Anyone reading this can go online to http://JW.ORG/ for such encouragement. And you may also contact any of Jehovah’s Witnesses for Bible-based conversation, for building a firm hope for a happy future when the God of the Bible has brought an end to the rule of Satan and his minions, the ones who cause so much chaos in manmade governments today.

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Ecclesiastes 4:1: "Again I turned my attention to all the acts of oppression that go on under the sun. I saw the tears of the oppressed, and there was no one to comfort them. And their oppressors had the power, and there was no one to comfort them."

Some political rulers today want you to think of them as "the Leader," "the Savior," "the Anointed One." They have no commission from the God of the Bible. Those men dominate their fellow men to their harm, just as we read at Ecclesiastes 8:9: ". . . and I applied my heart to every work that has been done under the sun, during the time that man has dominated man to his harm." But their apologists -- very many clergymen -- want you to excuse a politician's immorality on the basis that God used King David even after he had committed adultery and had successfully schemed the violent death of the adulteress' (Bathsheba's) husband. Apparently those clergymen overlook a key difference between King David and those politicians whom the clergy extol. King David repented, but certain politicians guilty of lying and sexual immorality have not repented their sins against Jehovah. They do not know how to do so, and they have no disposition to want to learn how to do so. But the greater sin here belongs to the clergy who continue to tell God-condemned lies that directly assail the loving and holy character of our God, Jehovah.

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"Why Gaslighters Accuse You of Gaslighting

"Some gaslighters unconsciously project out of guilt or shame. In the case of narcissistic personality disorder, narcissists feel they are totally okay, and think that everyone else has a problem. This is called ego-syntonic behavior. It is very difficult to get a narcissistic gaslighter to get help through counseling, because they think you have the problem, not them. Projecting behavior can get to the point where a gaslighter delusionally believes that they are being persecuted by the victim, when in fact the opposite is true."

PSYCHOLOGYTODAY.COM

Why Gaslighters Accuse You of Gaslighting

Accusing you of their own behavior is a classic gaslighter's tactic.

 

Though Their Boasting Threats May Fly, Jehovah Keeps Us As the Apple of His Eye

This is a plaque in the Jewish Holocaust memorial in Sheepshead, Brooklyn. It is one of several plaques that acknowledge that non-Jewish peoples were persecuted and killed in the Nazis' concentration camps.  

A “world famous German Protestant and leader of the World Council of Churches,” Martin Niemöller, excoriated himself immediately after WWII for his own cowardice — a cowardice he had earlier disguised as merely being his good politic (namely, his endorsement of Hitler’s National Socialist party’s ascendancy to power in 1933). In a July 3, 1946 speech in Stuttgart, published under the title "The Path to Freedom," Martin Niemöller spoke the following words: 

“One day I drove by near Dachau in my car. My wife was with me and said, "Couldn't I see your cell, where you were imprisoned for the past four years?" I said, "I'll see what can be done." And drove there and was allowed to enter the cell block and show my wife the cell. Then something happened. When we came out the American officer accompanying us led us along a wall. I had often walked along it. There was a large gate in it. I had never seen it open. This time it was open. I knew what was behind it, but entered anyway. I stood with my wife in front of the crematorium in Dachau, and on a tree in front of this building there was a a white-painted board with black lettering. [...] There one could read: "Here in the years 1933-1945 238,756 people [see footnote 13 below] were cremated." While I read it, not aloud, I noticed that my wife fainted and sank trembling into my arms. I had to support her and noticed how at that moment a cold shudder ran down my spine. I think my wife fainted when she read the quarter-million number. That hadn't moved me. Because it didn't tell me anything new. What ran through me hot and cold at that moment was something else. That was the other two numbers: "1933-1945." I groped for my alibi and knew that the two numbers were the wanted poster of the living God for Pastor Niemöller. My alibi reached from July 1, 1937 to mid-1945. There stood: "1933-1945." Adam, where are you? Mensch, where were you? Yes, I know, from mid-1937 until the end you have an alibi. Here you're being asked: "Where were you from 1933 until July 1, 1937?" And I couldn't avoid this question any longer. In 1933 I was a free man.” 

[Footnote 13: “ . . . this number from 1945 has long since proven to be incorrect. About 200,000 inmates were registered in Dachau; ca. 42,000 of them died during their imprisonment. The number cremated in the camp is probably around 15,000-20,000. See Harold Marcuse, "Dachau," in: John Merriman & Jay Winter (eds.), Encyclopedia of the Age of War and Reconstruction, vol. 2 (New York: Scribners, 2006), 763-766.”] 

So, why had he not suffered martyrdom, which is what had befallen his fellow Churchman, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was ardently anti-Nazi? Niemöller was a coward, but Bonhoeffer was not. Niemöller, in a print out of one of his speeches he made in 1946, confessed the following out of pangs of his post-WWII conscience, a conscience that had not bothered him from 1933-1937; he stated this: 

“God didn't ask me where I was from 1937 to 1945, he asked me where I was from 1933 to 1937. From 1933 to 1937 I didn't have an answer. Should I perhaps have said: I was a brave pastor of the Confessing Church in those years, I risked speaking out [ein Wort riskiert] and thus risked freedom and my life? But God didn't ask me about all that. God asked: Where were you from 1933 to 1937, when human beings were being burned here? Those weren't my Christian brothers, who were burned there, those were Communists, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc. [ernste Bibelforscher usw.]. That's why I didn't care [mich nicht gekümmert].” — Martin Niemöller, Die Erneuerung unserer Kirche (Munich, 1946); reprinted in: Reden 1945-1954, p. 19. 

But Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany did courageously speak out against the Hitler government’s persecution of them, in a letter sent by every congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany to officials of the government, on October 7, 1934. The letter warned the Nazis in these words: “If your government or officers do violence to us because we are obeying God, then our blood will be upon you and you will answer to Almighty God.” And in an open letter that was given wide distribution, the very names of those Gestapo officers who had fiendishly abused Jehovah's Witnesses were published in that very letter! Also, Jehovah's Witnesses throughout the world on October 7, 1934 joined their German brothers by sending cablegrams that warned the Hitler government in these words: “Your ill-treatment of Jehovah’s witnesses shocks all good people on earth and dishonors God’s name. Refrain from further persecuting Jehovah’s witnesses; otherwise, God will destroy you and your national party.” 

Calling attention of the Hitler government's crimes against Jehovah's Witnesses, and giving it fair warning, and calling for the attention of all German citizens to the Hitler government's crimes against Jehovah's Witnesses -- which crimes had outraged good people throughout the world -- was courageous, even though it more deeply infuriated Hitler against Jehovah's Witnesses. 

Yes, there are dedicated Holocaust deniers, and neo-Nazis and other right-wing extremists in Germany . . . enough of them having positioned themselves in the military and in the state's intelligence service so that an armed coup against the German government is not as preposterous an idea as it would have been a few decades ago. And here there is no surprise to us Jehovah's Witnesses that the world's powerful governments in recent years have become unusually plagued with chaos in their institutions so that results bode even worse evils for populaces that have heretofore put their faith in manmade government for assurance of rather high ideals (e.g., freedom of assembly, freedom of religion/worship, freedom of speech and solicitation, etc. constitutionally enshrined and supposedly protected by those governments). The Russian Federation under Putin is just one example of how dangerous a country's government can become for Jehovah's Witnesses and other groups, this because fascism is once again becoming quite the phenomenon as evidenced by the popularity that autocrats ("strong men") have among a sizable electorate in their respective countries, an electorate willing to engage in armed atacks for its cause. That is the very sort of thing that played a significant role in Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s when he had the backing of a paramilitary organization, De Sturmabteilung ("The Storm Detachment," aka Braunhemden, that is to say, in English translation, "Brownshirts"). Hitler finally received the adulation and hero worship he wanted; it was given him by what had become, in the 1930s, a majority of Germans in support of him. 

 https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/07/15/inte-j15.html

Do Jehovah's Witnesses Practice/Espouse a Works-Righteousness Scheme for Salvation?

Sometimes we Jehovah’s Witnesses (JWs) are accused of teaching a works-righteousness scheme for attainment of salvation, as though we might do enough in God’s sight to earn salvation on our own merit. No, that is not true. We JWs do not teach any such thing. It is, however, quite a different matter should we downplay the requirement that we Christians must do the fine works informing God’s will for us as taught us by Jesus Christ, because even though such fine works do not earn salvation — are not in and of themselves sufficient for salvation —, they are nonetheless necessary for salvation. It is a matter of “everyone who comes to [Jesus] and hears [his] words and does them” who gets everlasting life. It is a matter that we be “the ones, after hearing the word with a fine and good heart, retain it and bear fruit with endurance,” this so that we may hold on a valid hope of everlasting life, yes, that we thereby appropriate God’s undeserved kindness He extends to us on the merits of Jesus’ shed blood for forgiveness of our sins, another necessary thing if we will lay hold on the gift of everlasting life. When Jesus answered the rich young ruler’s question, “Good teacher, what do I need to do to inherit everlasting life?”, did Jesus in any way intimate that our salvation does not involve us in what we may or may not do as respects showing our love for all who are our neighbors? Did Jesus say that salvation involves only our giving intellectual assent/approval to the proposition that Jesus came to Earth to become our ransomer from Kings Sin and Death? No! Jesus’ answer was that we must ‘keep on doing’ something if we will get everlasting life. What work was that? We must keep on showing our love for God with all our soul (life), with all our strength, and with all our mind (sound reasoning). Yes, we must keep on showing love — doing spiritually beneficial works — even for neighbors who presently may remain unbelievers, and who may even persecute us and make themselves enemies of our hope. Why else did Jesus make it a point to remind us that our love for God should involve our whole strength unless work is involved — is required? We must keep on reaching out in a show of love for our neighbors in need of mercy. And we teach them the need for their being and remaining a disciple of Jesus by their living by all the teachings of Jesus Christ, which certainly includes our show of faith in Jesus’ teaching that he was sent to the Earth to become a ransom sacrifice for us (cf. John 6:27 — “Work not for the food that perishes, but for the food that remains for everlasting life, which the Son of man will give you; for on this one the Father, God himself, has put his seal of approval”). Yes, Jesus has become the one “responsible for everlasting salvation to all those obeying him” (Hebrews 5:9). So, even though salvation is not per a legalistic works-righteousness barter / scheme for salvation, it is certainly a matter of a Lordship-salvation — a matter that we recognize that Jesus has purchased us by his blood, that we “have been called to belong to Jesus Christ” (Romans 1:6) —and “to follow his steps closely” (1 Peter 2:21).