Cult News

Jehovah’s Witnesses successfully shut down a Canadian Web site that featured often-embarrassing quotes from their previously published materials, but now a new English Web site has popped up with even more.The Witnesses claimed that Toronto resident Peter Mosier, a long-standing, but unhappy member had unlawfully misappropriated and disclosed confidential information and damaged their copyright.

Interestingly, similar claims have been made by groups called “cults” such as Scientology and NXIVM that have seemingly used copyright and trade secret claims in an apparent effort to control information and stifle criticism.

Regarding Mosier the Witnesses claimed that the Canadian “defendant’s main purpose [was] not fair use but rather to try to embarrass [them]¦[and is] likely to cause confusion.”

Mosier responded that his “Web site [had] clear quotes that enable people to study.” And that the “Watchtower wants people to learn¦only on their own terms.”

But the Canadian eventually surrendered the legal battle rather than endure the onerous expense of probable protracted litigation.

Now comes a new Web site “Watchtower Quotes” recently launched from the United Kingdom, which features a collection of quotes from literature published by the “Watchtower Bible and Tract Society,” otherwise known as “Jehovah’s Witnesses.”

The site’s main page announces that it is a resource “for people who wish to study the changing doctrines of the Watchtower Society.”

For example, Charles Taze Russell the founder of Jehovah’s Witnesses beleived that the Great Pyramid of Egypt contained “…an outline of the plan of God, past, present and future…”

Another portion of the Web site archive contains quotes regarding the teachings in Witness literature about aluminum published during the 1930s, which warned that “salts of aluminum¦[were] killing the whole country.”

Later there would be so-called “new light” supposedly from Jehovah channeled by the Watchtower leadership, which would allow Witnesses to wrap up leftovers with some handy aluminum foil.

“As there are so many doctrinal flip flops and silly quackery, all I can say is, they must have a very bad line with the Almighty,” the man who runs the new British Web site told CultNews.

During the 1960s many Witnesses died rather than accept organ transplants.

“Jehovah God did not grant permission for humans to try to perpetuate their lives by cannibalistically taking into their bodies human flesh, whether chewed or in the form of whole organs or body parts taken from others¦” concluded the Witness publication Awake in 1968.

This is another quote that can be found on the new English Web site, which has been carefully, organized through various topical categories.

“Richard Lloyd-Henderson,” the pen name used by the man that launched this new repository of historical Witness wisdom, says, “Jehovah’s Witnesses have paid the ultimate price with their lives after adhering to previously banned practices, such as vaccinations and blood fractions that are now perfectly acceptable.”

He concludes, “The Watchtower is blood guilty and their members need to know¦many Witnesses, who would probably still be alive today if the new light’ had arrived just a little bit sooner.”

“Lloyd-Henderson” is known to many on Internet discussion boards as “xjwRichard” and he is thankful for the pioneering efforts of Mosier.

“My thanks go to Peter Mosier for all his hard work in collating the quotes for the original site,” xjwRichard told CultNews.

So it seems that Jehovah’s Witnesses may have won one legal battle, but lost the war and actually only achieved focusing more attention upon their failed teachings.