- Topic
I understand the wms and many other organizations use buzz words. On the site I’ve come across “Fragrances” and “bearing fruit”. Can any former member tell me what these words mean and how they are important to wms or the gospel and how they were important to them personally? Do these buzz words change from one wms to another wms? Also, I realize that water is very important to them and I saw a video explaining why, which is funny because in Japanese culture, water also represents a purification or a starting new. I as well as another family member always say that wms has stolen bits of different religions and Korean culture to form this group, which is ironic since they don’t believe and shun man made concepts. Also, because other religions are false and they are the true one… Speaking of water, one time, one of the members describes an argument against the church as “dirty water”, can anyone say they’ve heard this before? Also, just to summarize, can anyone explain the first two buzz phrases and then tell me more, please?
Fragrance: an experience a member had and wants to share with other people. Here is an example:" I met someone at work they other day and we had a conversation about the bible so I then got to preach to them and they want to come to zion! thanks to father and mother" Its usually just public praising of ahn and zahng or boasting. Just sharing a story they had about how they feel father and mother has blessed them
Bear fruit: to recruit a new member. once you lead someone to baptism, you have "bore fruit". This is symbolism that we are all trees taking in the water of life from mother and bearing fruit is evidence of our faith. It is the most singularly important thing to do while in "the truth"
To add more detail, between worships on the sabbath day, every one would get into their group ( determined by age, gender and marital status) and go around in a circle and share fragrances. Just a peer influence form of behaviour and thought control.
as far as "dirty water goes" I would guess that it means knowledge that does not come from the church. Because they regaurd their teachings as "the water of life"( when given on the sabbath day) and food for our spirit.
Brian Taylor wrote:
Fragrance: an experience a member had and wants to share with other people. Here is an example:" I met someone at work they other day and we had a conversation about the bible so I then got to preach to them and they want to come to zion! thanks to father and mother" Its usually just public praising of ahn and zahng or boasting. Just sharing a story they had about how they feel father and mother has blessed them
Bear fruit: to recruit a new member. once you lead someone to baptism, you have "bore fruit". This is symbolism that we are all trees taking in the water of life from mother and bearing fruit is evidence of our faith. It is the most singularly important thing to do while in "the truth"
To add another thing: bearing fruit would often come with other "blessings". During the ten talents movement my zion was told that for every fruit someone bore, Mother would give them a galaxy in heaven. But I'll shut up and let someone else chime in on this one.
Just to add a little here; What Christians would consider "Testimony" the WMS calls "Fragrance". They have a section on their website where members can share their fragrance with other members. Something you might not have heard of yet is the "Life Number". According to the WMSCOG everybody who is baptised gets their name written down in the "Book of Life" (which is their data base) and they receive a life number which gives them access to other parts of the website that is off limits to non-members. As for bearing fruit, you are not really considered a fruit until you start paying tithe (10% or more of your income) and preach to others about the man made created gods of the WMS.
I have not heard the trem "dirty water" but Brian is probably accurate with his definition. One of the ways you can recognize a group with cult like practices is that they will come up with their own terms and languages. There are many words in this group that trigger their members into a submissive or conforntational state. Just think about the word mother. For anyone outside of this group this would represent a persons REAL mother. The one who gave birth and or raised you. In their made up reality mother is their representation of some kind of god. They make members believe that their physical parents mean little or nothing and that their made up gods (father and mother) are what's real.
I hope this helps. I check up on this website weekly so if you care to PM me and share a little more about your situation I'm willing to listen.
In their what? “Made up reality”. Hehehe. After all their doctrine and appearances I’ve heard and seen, you hit the nail on the head.
Hurt, the grapes you talk about remind me of the same kind of incentive charts you can see in preschools and primary grades.
@hurt Like genny said, using Visual praise is a basic psychological trick, so to speak. If we worked as car salesman, and the manager puts a graph in the showroom of car salesmen with the most sales, then on Friday says, “I want to just thank Hurt for his hard work. He sold the most cars this month”, the other car salesmen may feel bad, or, really inspired to do morr and win. It also has negative repercussions. Guilt tripping often causes undue stress. For the person who can’t preach as much, etc, they become stressed. WMS would always say, “Brother, there are other forms of preaching….(i.e.) serving others, tithe & offering, ” but from my experience they STILL treat you poorly when you don’t preach. When I was in WMS, I seldom preached, but I worked the grounds, did construction, etc. I was still treated less than those gospel workers who had no lives, and preached all the time.
I remember when I was in the wms they had something similar however they did it by group. Every "fruit" a group bore they got a sticker put on the chart. At the end of the month the group that bore the most fruit got an award out of the bookstore. Like Untouchable said it does cause undue stress because groups that bore no fruit would always feel guilty for not bearing fruit and start having group preaching meetings outside of the preaching meeting at the location. The leaders of the groups that didn't win would always say we need to be more like the winning group, we have the same father and mother, if they can bear 10 fruit in a month we can bear 20. Then they would give a study about how we have to get rid of our sinfulness in order to bear fruit as if we were the reason that our group didn't bear fruit.
@selena Our old overseer would blame anythinf that happened to a member (Falling away, losing fruit, loss of job etc) on Not preaching. “Oh, he wasnt a gospel worker…he lost his job”. Mind you, there are other commandments. In WMS they should just say;
Keep Sabbath
Keep Passover
Keep Feasts
Preach
Tithe and offer (all your money)
Don’t question or correct your Overseer
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