What REALLY Convinced You To Leave/Lose Faith in JWs? (page 10)

designs

You lose both your parents to a crazy religion and have what you thought were your friends turn against you what's left.

cofty

Lots of doctrinal issues starting with parousia which I researched following the 1995 generation change.

The key moment for me concerned the Great Crowd. If you read Revelation objectively it seems clear they are in heaven in the temple - naos in Greek.

It turns out there are 2 Greek words for temple - naos refers to the sacred part where only priests had acccess and heiron refers to the wider temple complex including the courtyard of the Gentiles.

I was a bit shocked but I looked up the Index and found a study article on the subject. It reassured us that naos could also be used to refer to the whole temple and mentioned an occasion in the gospels when Jesus had a debate with opposers in the temple. The Watchtower said that "the Greek word used there is naos" and since Jesus was not a priest he could not have been in the sacred parts of the temple.

This was early on in my period of doubt and I desperately wanted to believe it was still the "truth" even if had some things wrong so I was relieved to read this article. Anyway I thought I would just quickly look it up in the Interlinear to see it for myself.

I was stunned to find they had told a blatant lie. The Greek word was heiron not naos. Under the circumstances it was impossible to believe this was a simple mistake.

I could live with mistakes but not with dishonesty. After that the depth of their deceit quickly became apparent. All my research was done using the bible and WT publications alone, it was many years before I read anything by "opposers".

Reading lots of old publications by Russell and Rutherford was also very enlightening. Rutherford was a complete dolt.

jwfacts

When I found out that brothers practicing what the Watchtower refers to as gross sin were being appointed as elders, I realised the organisation is not directed by holy spirit.

Next step I started to experience the wrong doctrine that constantly changes, which also proves holy spirit does not direct the organisation.

That made me realise it is just like any other religion. It was only then that I started to research outside sources, and find the Watchtower is worse than many other religions, because it goes out of its way to misquote and lie in publications in order to mislead people into believing its teachings.

LouBelle

I literally woke up one morning and thought "there has to more to this life than I know, and to this religion".

I was at times a naughty Jw - drinking, partying, having fun. Then there were times I was an extremely good Jdub, going out pioneering, persoanl study etc. The above question came to me after a bout of doing some serious personal study. I had a whole list of questions I wanted to answer, but using the bible and not the publications. I thought that I would be able to enhance my knowlege by getting the Interliner Greek Scriptures and a greek dictionary and forge ahead answering those questions.

My study though forced me to realise that the Jdubs don't rely on the bible for their answers, they rely on the publications and you cannot prove anything Jdubs believe with just the bible alone.

It took me 6 months. I was disfellowship for apostacy and have never looked back.

Xanthippe

Oh and in the eighties there was an AGM in the UK, Leicester I think.

As a pioneer sister I was asked to go, to serve food of course! It was for a weekend I think and one day we had finished clearing away the food and we stood in a corridor listening to a loud speaker because we wanted to get a taste of what the older brothers and sisters were listening to.

Imagine my surprise when I realised that what we were listening to was the shareholders meeting and they had forgotten to turn the loud speaker off!

My reaction was shareholders, they have shareholders in the organisation? What!! No one else seemed to think that was strange!

Just part of my gradual waking up to the fact that I was working for a company.

Knowsnothing

The plurality of belief in God/Gods. If God is just, righteous, the defender of all that is good, why allow such a massive "operation of error" go unchecked? Why not intervene? Why the suffering?

Prayer doesn't work, for anyone. All one has to do is believe, then prayer becomes "real".

I lost faith in the Bible. Adam and Eve, the Flood, Jesus referring to these are real events. It all crumbles down. There is no such thing as salvation, sin, Satan, God, etc. Life makes a lot more sense without trying to justify it with the miraculous intervention of invisible deities that are unprovable.

Ding

For me, it was doctrinal tapes by Walter Martin and the Cetnars.

I saw how much of WT teaching depended on isolated texts, supposition, and their own definitions that had changed many times.

A further comment:

One poster said he/she didn't find CoC encouraging.

I don't think Ray wrote it to be encouraging.

He was explaining what he saw behind the GB curtain, and that wouldn't be encouraging to any JW who wanted to continue believing the WTS embodies the Christian faith.

flipper

Injustices committed by the WT society against me personally and against others was what caused me to exit 9 years ago. And ever since I've left my decision to leave was confirmed by my disagreement with these main problems I have with the WT society :

1. Unacceptable and criminally negligent child abuse policies

2. No accountability for the changing blood transfusion policies which cost thousands of JW lives

3. The putting down and dissing of college and higher education- yet WT leaders hypocritically allow their own children to attend college.

4. The ever changing over lapping generation doctrine which makes the alleged " last days " or " time of the end " go on forever.

5. The disfellowshipping and shunning policy- it's barbaric and breaks up familys, including mine.

So those are some of the main issues that caused me to leave and causes me to not go back to the organization. Plus, it's corrupt through and through, nothing but criminals running it. Peace out, mr. Flipper

metaspy

Id like to know what personally convinced you JWs are wrong about a particular doctrine/practice, that they are not Gods true.people and/or what made you leave emotionally/physically.

As listed in my "life and times of Metaspy" I was put in the distrust mood by the actions of the elders.

However, I was convinced by FACTS that the JWs were wrong. (587/607, Child molestations, Jehovah being inserted into the NWT).

EndofMysteries

Whatever happened to Recovery? I think he was banned but I wonder since it's been almost a year if he made new account, finally woke up or if he just drank the coolaid and is gone?

What REALLY Convinced You To Leave/Lose Faith in JWs?

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