A Series of Tubes

So on my way home I noticed a box of books that someone had put on the curb to give or throw away.  I had a free minute and decided to take a gander at these free offerings, and boy am I glad that I did.  I should have just tried to take the whole box, but instead I simply carried about 20 books back with me and almost dropped them going up the stairs because I didn’t have a bag or anything to put them in.  I was extremely excited when I got home and couldn’t decide which one to read first because every single book in the box was literature for Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Now most people would probably know Jehovah’s witnesses as a group that refuses blood transfusions because they have a literal view of Leviticus or perhaps as one of the religious groups that comes to your house and tries to talk to you about god (another major one is the Mormons but I already have a post about them).  I didn’t know a whole lot about Jehovah’s witnesses and the books in the pile had some captivating titles.  There is a ton of stuff to write about here including a book called Life-How did it get here? By evolution or by creation?, but for now I want to talk about one of the greatest books in the treasure trove of books that I found, Reasoning from the Scriptures.

This book is the handbook of life for Jehovah’s witnesses.  The book starts out in it’s introduction with various ways to approach people to talk about God and Religion.  These topics for conversation starters include Family/Children, Employment/Housing, Current envents, Crime/Safety.  Of course this section is alphabetized and the first Conversation starter that I read about was, and I swear I’m not making this up, Armageddon.

So yes, a Jehovah’s witness has been instructed to approach you with the light and fluffy topic of an apocalyptic world wide catastrophe.  The actual text of what to say to someone is better than anything I could write so I will simply quote it:

“ARMAGEDDON

•’Many people are concerned about Armageddon. They have heard world leaders use that term with reference to all-out nuclear war.  What do you believe Armageddon will mean to mankind?’”

With that question at the end it is now your chance to participate in the discussion with thoughts of all-out nuclear war dancing in your head.  The idea here is to get you to first, look over the fact that Jehovah’s witnesses incorrectly predicted that Armageddon and rapture would happen in october of 1914, and instead get worried that your soul is in peril due to the upcoming Armageddon that will occur the next time you go to the grocery store.

After reading the section on conversation starters in Reasoning from the Scriptures I have decided that Jehovah’s witnesses have come across with quite possibly the greatest conversation starter of all time.  Despite your religious beliefs, everyone probably has something to say about Armageddon.  The next time there is a silence in a conversation or I meet someone and I don’t know what to say to, I’ll just use my trusty fallback conversation starter…Armageddon.