Russia's mysterious campaign against Jehovah's Witnesses

[EJAY]

 

https://news.yahoo.com/russia-mysterious-campaign-against-jehovah-122135564.html

It is truly sad what our Brothers and Sisters are going through. They definitely need our prayers every day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 16, 2021 by Lance

[Dages]

I like it when people can't understand things and reasons. 

The GT may be the same. Unexpected things for them.

[Thomas Walker]

Quote

...a crackdown that nobody can fully explain.

(Raises hand) Let us turn to the lesson about 'The King of the North'.

 

Prophecies that we see come true with no other logical explanation? Those are the ones we can use to prove the 'truth'.

[Shannie]

The story has been removed  can’t read it 🤷🏾‍♀️

[Good-O]

25 minutes ago, Shannie said:

The story has been removed  can’t read it 🤷🏾‍♀️

GM, Sr.  I get the story when I click onto the link.  Try again.,  

[7wonders]

I just saw the story seconds ago.  It's still there.  The GT is right around the corner, hang in there my brothers and sisters.  

 

[Dhanyel]

How sad, we urgently need the Kingdom! 😢😢😢

[TrueTomHarley]

It is a shocking report, “Russia’s Campaign Against Jehovah’s Witnesses,” the latest in a long line of shocking reports. Throw it on stack. I did, and then wrote up the following response to it:

 

Sergey Lavrov, one of the six Russian officials whom Jehovah’s Witnesses worldwide were invited to write, later grumbled at a press briefing that “Russia is blamed for everything that goes wrong on this planet.” I wrote in I Don’t Know Why We Persecute Jehovah’s Witnesses: Searching for the Why, “Ought he not look in the mirror for the reason?” When you arrest, jail, persecute, and in some cases even torture, the most peaceable people on the planet, you send a clear signal to the world that sanity does not prevail in your land. 

 

“Why would a nation of some 144,000,000 risk its international reputation to persecute a religious sect numbering no more than 175,000 followers?” Columnist Andrew Sorokowski wrote. Yet Russia has done so—it has gone ahead and trashed its international reputation—and it suggests to the unpracticed eye that all such charges directed their way just might be true, that there is no accusation too fantastic to be dismissed out-of-hand. On Twitter, one Russian outlet sarcastically writes: “Don’t forget to check under your bed before you go to sleep tonight. There may be a Russian under there ready to give bad dreams.” “Thanks for the tip!” says anyone familiar with the plight of Dennis Christensen, jailed for nearly a full year [now much longer] without trial [he lost his sham trial] for merely leading a Bible study, as he peaks under the bed to check. How can people not imagine Russia capable of unlimited villainy? Perhaps whatever they hear is but the tip of the iceberg. 

 

This ABCNews story is painful to watch. In researching what I hoped would be like the modern-day Book of Acts [of Russia] (all particulars of this post are taken from that book, the ebook version of which is free on most venues and a print version also available through Amazon), these were all names I’d run across before and I felt as though I knew them. They are ordinary people like me, manifestly harmless, manifestly decent, manifestly doing no more than worshipping the God of the Bible. Might there even be a little survivor’s guilt? We in the West may be targets of sporadic opposition, but the notion of violent repression is foreign to us (though not to Russians, who have historically known little else.) Along with praying for our brothers, we pray that should our turn come, we will be a courageous as our Russian brothers are showing themselves to be.

 

In one rare Russian court decision that went our way, a Witness escaped imprisonment when a judge ruled a prior judge had shown prejudicial bias. She had rebuked the Witness with: “You are not a prisoner of conscience and you have nothing to do with the first Christians. You should not speculate on this.” He is and he does; the second judge ruled the first out of line to muzzle the thought.

 

The parallels with the “first Christians” are exactly what to focus on. Russia’s outlandish persecution of Christians rivals even that of the first century in all but the ultimate price. The numbers are even comparable. Bart Ehrman, scholar of early Christianity, numbers Christian martyrs of Roman times as no more than a few hundred. Then as now, the unprovoked and irrational cruelty of it all sent disproportional shock waves down through history. The witness given ultimately reached and moved spiritually hungry persons worldwide. 

 

Again and again in this news story comes the observation that nobody knows just why such atrocities are happening. Indeed, the story’s byline is: “Hundreds have been targeted in a crackdown that no one can fully explain.” Tonya Lokshina (quoted within) can’t figure it out. She is a human rights researcher and journalist; she is accustomed to figuring it out, if only to be able to counter it. Here she admits that she just doesn’t know. It “doesn’t add up,” she says as she floats and discards one possibility. Putin himself famously commented that he didn’t understand why Jehovah’s Witnesses are persecuted, since they “are Christians, too.” Whenever things defy human explanation, surely believers can be forgiven if they suppose that something superhuman is also at work. Time and again the Bible narrative assures that “all those desiring to live with godly devotion in association with Christ Jesus will also be persecuted.” (2 Timothy 3:12)

 

Just after the ban on the Jehovah’s Witness religion was imposed, when it was not clear just what would be the practical aftermath, authorities raided a campground. It was feared that Jehovah’s Witnesses were teaching their religion to their children. It didn’t sit well with those who commented on the news article. “Something is too much. Even I, being an inveterate and convinced atheist, against such interference in the personal life of citizens, even if they are any Witnesses (this is still to be proved). People are adults, they went out with their tents to rest, yes, and with their children.” Nearly all of the 54 comments attached were supportive and sympathetic to Witnesses (and the ones that were not were all traceable to a single vitriolic person).

 

The Witness organization gives this unjustified persecution maximum exposure. As Paul told Agrippa, “this thing has not been done in a corner.”  This Witness organization did not permit that, even if they failed to stop what is in essence a sure Bible prediction. Our Russian brothers will forever know that their courageous stand spurs honest, hungry, and humble persons to look into the faith now on display as heretofore uninterested persons check jw.org to see if it is truly extremist. When they see that it is not, how will they respond? The world reels from one calamity to another, and distressed people seek explanation and comfort. Perhaps that is the greatest contribution our Russian brothers make to Jehovah’s service, to point to where it may be found, even if “with persecutions.” (Mark 10:30)

 

 

 

[runner92]

On 7/16/2021 at 4:00 AM, Thomas Walker said:

(Raises hand) Let us turn to the lesson about 'The King of the North'.

 

Prophecies that we see come true with no other logical explanation? Those are the ones we can use to prove the 'truth'.

 

 

Thought the same thing when I saw the title. 

[Dustparticle]

https://abcnews.go.com/International/russias-mysterious-campaign-jehovahs-witnesses/story?id=78629389&cid=clicksource_4380645_14_post_hero_bsq_image

[Sallyforth]

I read it earlier. Favorable article which goes into detail about what our Russian friends are facing. 

[AH173]

Thanks for the info. 

 

I'm hoping aand praying that they and any other land where the work is either banned or restricted can get a flow of spiritual food like the convention and other meetings if possible. 

[Allabord4Jah]

This morning from ABC News/July 19, 2021

 

https://abcnews.go.com/International/russias-mysterious-campaign-jehovahs-witnesses/story?id=78629389

[Pink Butterflies]

Definitely in the land of declaration.  Our Russian family are proving to be an amazing of example of courage and faith.  

Edited July 20, 2021 by Pink Butterflies

[On the huh]

Good, fair and insightful report.  Russia can't hide what they are doing.

But to us it is not a mystery.  Daniel 11 explains it all.

[Raven]

Glad they mentioned the Russian Orthodox Church's involvement, even if briefly. The Russian Orthodox clergy are the real extremists.

[sunshine]

 

Russia's mysterious campaign against Jehovah's Witnesses

Hundreds have been detained in a campaign no one is able to explain.

 

MOSCOW -- In a bright, spotless apartment in a Moscow suburb, a small circle of people sat around a table in December 2019. Bowls of candies and teapots were set out, along with salads. The group opened the meeting with a prayer and a hymn -- most of them shy and just murmuring along, raising their voices a little above some background music played on a television showing a preacher in a suit.

The people present were Jehovah's Witnesses -- a Christian religious sect first founded in the United States in the 19th century but now has an estimated 8 million followers around the world.

 

In many countries, such meetings would be nothing unusual. But in Russia, authorities now treat them as illegal, designating them as gatherings of "extremists."

 

READ FULL ARTICLE

https://abcnews.go.com/International/russias-mysterious-campaign-jehovahs-witnesses/story?id=78629389

[shali]

I'm so glad this horrible situation is getting more exposure in the media here and such a fair and unbiased way.