by minimus 53 Replies latest jw friends
Of course I believed, hell I haven't been able to completely remove that virus of 'keeping watch' yet either!
Damnit now I am pissed, I mean all that intense indoctrination for nothing.... I could have been out playing with my dolls or watching cartoons like normal kids!
I wanna live forever, I want my pet lion......!!!!!!!!!!!
(note to self on starting account for future vanity maintenance)
I grew up believing that I would not see high school since the "end of this system of things" was right around the corner. I'm almost 40 years old now. All the "old timers" I grew up with are dead. Almost all the young ones I grew up with in the congregation are not JWs anymore.
I was fortunate in that my JW parents encouraged me to go to college - getting a degree has helped me land good jobs after finishing college. My parents saw the sad situation of Bethalites. They did not want that for me. The Bethalites would go to work for the WTBS at 19 years of age - dedicate most of their adult life there - and when they wanted to get married - they hoped to be accepted to Bethal as a couple. When that did not happen they would have to leave. It was sad that they had no marketable skills after leaving Bethal. Bethal would claim that they teach marketable skills, but without any Certification what kind of job could they really obtain? My parents saw those ex-bethal couples struggle to earn a living, and in the end be unhappy and frustrated. A good number of them have ended in divorce.
I believed it would come before the year 2000. I trusted the January 1, 1989 WT when it said the preaching work would be completed "before the end of this century." I kept that WT in my bookbag for a long time. Then they changed the wording.
BF
I did when I was little.
I used to cry and have panic attacks when I was waiting for the school bus. I would pray to Jehovah and beg him not to make Armegeddon come that day while I was at school and away from my Mommy.
What a way to start the day...
Pity the poor ones who refrained from marriage or children simply because the End was right around the corner.
I bought into it as a child. I didn't expect to see puberty in this old system of things! Then I grew up. The expectations of 1975 were real in spite of what the apologists would have one believe, and I was very interested in the WT excuses for it as I came into adolescence. At a pivotal time, they wrote the 1975 apologetic and an elder gave us some 'insight' onto HIS (elder-learned) expectations. I never took anything said by the WTS for granted after that and really began to look at it suspiciously. I thank God for that particular false expectation/prophecy cause it opened me up to the real truth about the org. and made me willing to look at it objectively.
One of the last programs I was at likely 15 years ago ,a Bethel speaker actually said...
We have heard "it's just around the corner" 'Well it's been a pretty long corner !"
You could have heard a pin dropped in the audience ;he went on with more thoughts
but this one idea remained burnt in my brain from the talk !
I remember that, caliber. It told me something, too!
Sure. As a "born-in," I believed my parents when they told me that the generation that saw 1914 would not pass away until The End comes. So, until the generation change of 1995, I believed that The End would come in my lifetime.
After that, I wasn't quite so sure.
Now I know that I have one thing in common with all of the men and women who have lived before me--I'm going to die. The sooner we accept this fact, the better. I'll take facts, history, and statistics over the failed prophecies of nine self-appointed clergy in New York.
Look up a guy named Steve Keen on you tube
