{"id":3029,"date":"2010-06-01T04:09:34","date_gmt":"2010-06-01T04:09:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.smmcroberts.net\/blog\/?p=3029"},"modified":"2010-06-01T04:09:34","modified_gmt":"2010-06-01T04:09:34","slug":"the-malawi-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.watchtowerhelp.club\/blog\/2010\/06\/01\/the-malawi-scandal\/","title":{"rendered":"The Malawi Scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.watchtowerhelp.club\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/MalawiCoverGA1975Dec8.png?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-3122\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.watchtowerhelp.club\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/MalawiCoverGA1975Dec8.png?resize=229%2C300&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"229\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a>During the 1970&#8217;s and 1980&#8217;s the government of Malawi required its citizens to purchase an identity card. The wording on the card was such that the citizen was recognized as a member of the single government party.<\/p>\n<p>The Watchtower ruled that Witnesses in Malawi could not purchase these cards because it would make them &#8220;part of the world.&#8221; This resulted in untold suffering for these people: murder, rape, burning down their homes, etc. I well remember when I was a Witness back in the mid 70&#8217;s praying for the &#8220;persecuted brothers in Malawi.&#8221; The persecution was one of the reasons we thought that it was God&#8217;s organization. Little did we know that it all could&#8217;ve (and should&#8217;ve) been easily avoided.<\/p>\n<p>What makes this a scandal rather than just a tragedy is the fact that at the same time that the Watchtower&#8217;s stance was causing this in Malawi, the Watchtower was permitting more egregious mingling with &#8220;worldly government&#8221; in other areas, and was even engaging in equally intimate relations themselves!<\/p>\n<p>During the Malawi scandal the Watchtower approved of Witnesses in Mexico purchasing [via bribery] government identity cards which recognized them as members of the first reserve of the Mexican army (while excusing them from immediate military service)!<\/p>\n<p>Even prior to this, members of the Watchtower&#8217;s governing body held signed identity cards (namely U.S. passports) on which they pledged an oath to defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies, and swore:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;true faith and allegiance to the same&#8230; without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion. So help me God.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Now, if the presidents of the Watchtower society could sign such a document and carry it on their person, they had no call to restrict their members in Malawi from signing a party-card.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.watchtowerhelp.club\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/OkaySinDocs.png?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3121\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.watchtowerhelp.club\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/OkaySinDocs.png?resize=600%2C219&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"219\" \/><\/a>Then, in the 1990&#8217;s the Watchtower applied for, and was granted, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/uk\/2001\/oct\/08\/religion.world\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NGO membership<\/a> in the baddest governmental agency of them all: the seven-headed image of the wild beast itself: the United Nations!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.watchtowerhelp.club\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/UN-Logo-660x330-1.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-3124\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.watchtowerhelp.club\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/UN-Logo-660x330-1.jpg?resize=300%2C150&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>Clearly, if the party-card of Malawi was an infraction of the rule to stay separate from the world, then U.N. membership of any kind should&#8217;ve been out of the question. But Watchtower defenders claim ignorance on the part of the Watchtower: stupidly not knowing that as members they were expected to &#8220;support&#8221; the U.N. (in principle, at least.) Evidently they didn&#8217;t bother to investigate what they were doing: they just wanted to use the library (something the U.N. says does not even require NGO membership) and due to their &#8220;human imperfection&#8221; [and obvious lack of divine guidance] they went too far.<\/p>\n<p>Based on historic facts I can only surmise that if the governing body had been located in Malawi rather than the U.S., they wouldn&#8217;t have had any qualms about signing the party-card. Just like their passports, they wouldn&#8217;t have given it a second thought, and just like their U.N. membership they wouldn&#8217;t have bothered investigating all that such membership entailed.<\/p>\n<p>Now, remember: the Governing Body claim to be the men whom Jesus hand-picked to rule over their god&#8217;s organization on earth today, and as members of the 144,000 &#8220;joint-heirs,&#8221; are destined to rule over the future &#8220;New Earth&#8221; right beside him! Yet, if this is how they inconsistently apply the rules today, I&#8217;m pretty sure I don&#8217;t want them ruling over me &#8212; <em>ever<\/em>, and certainly not for a thousand year period where my life hangs in the balance of their judgment! How about you?<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/watchtowerhelp.club\/logpage.php?l='Blog:Malawi'\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>During the 1970&#8217;s and 1980&#8217;s the government of Malawi required its citizens to purchase an identity card. The wording on the card was such that the citizen was recognized as a member of the single government party. The Watchtower ruled that Witnesses in Malawi could not purchase these cards because it would make them &#8220;part&hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.watchtowerhelp.club\/blog\/2010\/06\/01\/the-malawi-scandal\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Malawi Scandal<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.watchtowerhelp.club\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.watchtowerhelp.club\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.watchtowerhelp.club\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchtowerhelp.club\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchtowerhelp.club\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchtowerhelp.club\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3029\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.watchtowerhelp.club\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchtowerhelp.club\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watchtowerhelp.club\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}