Ravi and the Witnesses

Greetings all,

I was reading my Spring 2006 issue of Just Thinking from RZIM and there was a section that I thought resembled BWW greatly. This account starts on page 14, or about 2/3 of the way down the page if you are reading the online article.

Ravi had his first exposure to western religion with Jehovah’s Witnesses when he was a child. He said, “So the Smiths came to our home once a week, and for the next year and a half they sat in our living room and taught us for an hour or two at a time.” They would eventually bring Ravi and his siblings to assemblies and show movies. “One of these movies featured tens of thousands of people attending a Jehovah’s Witnesses rally at Yankee Stadium in New York City.” He says that they were awed by the size of the group.

Ravi continues on, “Yet, in retrospect, it shows how easily the human mind and heart can be manipulated…seeing that movie, with all those highly successful-looking people gathered in a magnificent stadium, my siblings’ hearts must have raced as my heart did.”

Ravi was highly impressed, motivated, and excited. Until, “we continued to study with the Smiths until the day Mr. Smith came to the chapter on heaven in the book of Revlation. He stopped there and told us that, according to Jehovah’s Witness’ teaching, only 144,000 people were going to make it to paradise.”

Ravi, being concerned that there were probably more than 144,000 people at Yankee Stadium, asked Mr. Smith about this: “Sir, how many people are there in your organization…Do you have more than 144,000?” “Oh, Yes” replied Mr. Smith.

Ravi’s next statement is great, “I thought of the Smiths’ constant praying, of all their efforts to reach more and more people—and yet even they had no way of knowing where they were going after death.” Ravi makes an interesting statement next, “Mr. Smith, before you came, I didn’t know where I was going after I died…but now, after all this study, I still don’t know where I’m going after I die.”

After this, the Smith’s stepped out of the picture and their superior came in, but this only led to frustration and Ravi deciding that this whole “Christianity” stuff was useless.

The amazing thing is how similar this is to a close encounter of the Quixtar / BWW kind. In fact, it is spooky how similar it is once you are in the realm of hindsight! Permit me to break it down:

The Smiths came faithfully to serve. If you are in (were in, or are considering) Quixtar, you will be ‘served’ by an upline. They will come over to teach you, help you, etc. This is required by Quixtar. But be warned if they start promoting tapes, seminars, etc. You do not have to attend these and if you do not, the upline is still supposed to come help you. If they don’t, call Quixtar! More to the point, just because someone “serves”, it does not mean they are serving in a Godly, or even ethical way. Examine the situation. Not everyone is going to be serving in a bad way, and not everyone is going to be serving in a good way. Just be cautious, particularly if people are edifying all this “serving” since true and pure servitude comes from the heart.

Be cautious of large gatherings. If they are saying to attend such and such conference because it will help your business succeed, find out the full details. If there are going to be vendors, product demonstrations, a few presentations or even tailored agenda, it should be fine, but if it is a big rally where people gather for long speeches of motivation, they are trying to get you excited. There is something magical about these settings that cause someone to be drawn in based on emotion, not thought process. If they are relying on your emotion to get you in, beware.

Only a few will make it, it rarely depends on you. I know this flies in the face of the BWW teaching, but it is reality. I worked the 9 core steps as much as many other people did, but there is a bazaar combination of unknown things that will elevate certain people up fast. I know people who were very high in the business and did the core steps faithfully. All it awarded them was a few dollars and a 40+ hour work week with no benefits. Just like the JW’s who have to work all their life by a rigid set of man-made rules, the IBO’s trot along paying homage to the Diamonds, doing as they are told, and only a very small number make it. That number in 2004 was 0.0176%. There were a total of 65 people that made the mark out of 370,000 in those statistics.

If you give your sponsor a run for his money, you better believe that they will be back with their sponsor. This was best exemplified as a Reliv distributor was trying to recruit me. Since I know a little bit about MLM, I was asking all the serious questions. I was first referred to his upline, and eventually to his up-upline. The final answers to my questions were deception. [If you would like to see a copy of that report, email me and I will get it out to you.]

If you finally go through all this and realize that these crazy Bible-thumping religious radical BWW Diamonds have turned you off from Christianity, I want you to know that they are FLAT OUT WRONG in many of their points. If Christianity is a turnoff to you because you were involved in Quixtar, please give me an audience to point out their errors to you in private. For a start, read the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for considering.

Xanadustc