For a while I’ve been trying to find the Jehovah’s Witness book I remember from my grandma’s house that had the scariest illustrations to like 3-year-old me.
I finally found it! Thanks Internet Archive!
The book is called From Paradise Lost to Paradise Regained and it was published in 1958. It wasn’t one that was used for indoctrination sessions when I was a kid, but it was in grandma’s library and I was always drawn to it because the binding was pinkish.
Anyway here are the two illustrations.
This image was the scariest to me—the people falling into the chasm that has opened up from an earthquake. I remember asking grandma what would happen next after they fell in and she kinda shrugged and said then the earth closes back up. Horrifying!
Here’s the facing page with another frightening illustration but also the text that leads up to what is written on this page, which reveals a lot about what Jehovah’s Witnesses actually believe. This is not the stuff they tell you when they try to engage you at the carts or love bomb you at the meetings.
Here’s another frightening image from the same book.
On a lighter note, a DIFFERENT propaganda book (remember this “religion” is actually a publishing company [though now maybe they’re a real estate company]) was this picture which even as a kid I loved to stare at. This one was from a book used for indoctrinating people when I was a kid. It was called You Can Live Forever In Paradise on Earth and now it’s considered apostate material because so many predictions they made have failed to come true.
Anyway, I was fascinated by this image, especially the tarot cards! I just wanted to stare at the pictures on them, and I was intrigued by the existence not only of playing cards with such cool images, but also that they were forbidden to me. I wanted to see the whole deck and all of the images. The irony of them using The Tower as one of the cards on this page is probably lost on most people who would have encountered this image, but it’s not lost on me now.
My take on this image now is don’t make all this stuff look so fucking cool if you don’t want to awaken the witches in your midst!
