reniaa, you said
I thought long and hard about posting this but the mis-information on this site finally persuaded me, I already accept many may not accept what I say on face value and get their appologist pens ready for making sure no pro-witness propaganda slips through the net on this site but here goes......
To be perfectly clear, I personally have never nor would ever base my decision to join/leave a religion based upon information found on one internet forum. There is lots of great information here, there is lots of bad. I personally feel there was a lot better information and discussion here 1-2 years ago, but people have to move on and there is nothing you can do about it. JWD is absolutely not the be all end all.
Result! she came back this week and said "all I had to do was goto meetings again" and an offer of a study was there for me if i wanted it to explore the open doubts that I had expressed i now had.
Again my guess is that many here have stated that you would be in big trouble if you went back. As can be found on most internet boards, people tend to spout off about the 'facts' when in actuality certain things are actually unknown. I know why many here would say such things, and to a point they are justified in their viewpoint. At the end of the day though what really may come about in a particular situation is never an exact science. I know Elder bodies that would have treated a person like you very poorly, but then turned around and treated the next person that came through the door very nice. The past may follow you, it may not. Speculation about what could happen is just that, speculation.
I think the bigger picture here is that the treatment you receive when/if you do return doesn't really prove anything about the Jehovah's Witness religion.
I've known nice Jehovah's Witnesses and I have known ones that are not so nice. To me they are like most people I have met, no better no worse. Just folks.
I left the Jehovah's WItnesses because after a close and detailed study of there religions history I came to the conclusion that the divine power of God was not exclusively guiding these people. I realized that the stories their magazines spout off as truth, such as an invisible Jesus Christ choosing them in the year 1919, were just stories. Tales that were constructed that give weight to the movement and help solidify it as a major religion. WIthout these stories they would be just another group of fringe protestants, with these stories they are able to put themselves at the center of the divine plan. Many things they teach about themselves never really tells us anything about God at all. They are legends, used to establish the JW faith. Nothing more, nothing less.
Of course to understand Jehovah's Witnesses history as nothing divine in origin, but instead in purely rational terms puts you on the outside of their faith. The Watchtower is only interested in members who believe wholesale the information they give, including all of the teachings they have that point to themselves as the only true restored religion on earth.
Long ago I realized that while JWs always say they use 'nothing but the Bible' it became very clear to me that the certainly do. It is simply not possible to prove using the Bible alone that Jesus Christ visited the Watchtower headquarters in 1919 and subsequently chose the leaders he found as the foundation for his restored church. I challenge any JW to prove this using the Bible alone. The truth of the matter is that you can only come to such teachings by using the BIble alone as well as interpreting that Bible through the lens of a Jehovah's Witness who supplements the Bible with Watchtower history.
To me it is very obvious that such things are fabrications which show a reality the Watchtower wishes to be true, rather than a desire to actually find what really is true.