When Did You First Get Exposed To "Apostate" Info? How Did It Affect You?

by minimus 31 Replies latest jw friends

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  oompa

  i googled WT SCANS over a year ago and found this place.......i was already out mentally due to my own research using only non-apostate info and wt lit........i was proud of myself for never looking at apostate stuff and that i could tell elders and family that all my material was WT and that i had never looked at any apostate info........now i tell them i have to freedom to go and see and read ANY FRIKKIN THING I WANT!!!........oompa

  and ya.....it felt real good to know i was not really a freak!........and then to make actual friends here.....we are not alone
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  yknot

  Official WTS deemed apostate stuff: Accidently mis-clicked onto JWD on Aug 23, 2007.

  Apostate thinking (by today's standards)..... Elders in charge of kiddie TMS during my 'formative years'.
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  villabolo

  It was at the tender age of 14 that I first got exposed to some sign wavers. A group of JWs were leaving the district convention in a large bus when we first sighted them. For some reason the bus driver decides to pull over and engage them in a conversation. As he was doing that I saw them waving what seemed to be watchtowers. So I opened my window and let out my arm to grab one and I had at least three of them jossle into position desperate to hand me one of those mags. As soon as I sat down I noticed that the magazine was a badly mimeographed magazine called Not the Watchtower.

  By now the bus driver is leaving the scene and everyone in the bus is yelling at me for having accepted that piece of literature. I remember glancing at it very briefly and seeing a lot of quotes about dates. It was set up with the most garrish typesetting and did not look worth reading regardless of the information.

  A couple years later I purchased 30 Years a Watchtower Slave. I was so afraid of the book that I stripped it of its front and back covers and hid it. That wasn't so much to keep me out of trouble as I lived with my mother who was not a JW but I had this superstitious feeling that if I defaced the book it would keep any evil power it had from harming me.
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  alpha_1

  I first read "apostate" material when I began studying the bible. I looked up their beliefs on the internet through a Christian site that gave me information on the orthodox teachings of Christianity. I found it amazing that Witnesses were trying to refute the material on the internet and they did not see that their organization was wrong even though they were reading it. I had my first encounter at the door since learning how to address them just last week.

  It was a great experience. I wish I could do it every day. I usually encounter Mormons. I do not see any angle in which to refute them because they don't really except the bible.
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  kitten whiskers

  I saw protesters back when I was younger at District conventions, but never paid them any attention.

  But when I typed ex-jw into google and landed on freeminds and jwd. I shook with fear at my step outside the Borg. I was terrified of being struck down.
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  BonaFide

  I was offered a tract called "30 years a slave of the Watchtower," I think that's what it was called. Maybe it was a book also? I was a kid, so I took it, didn't read it, and gave it to my mom.

  After that, about 5 years ago, I saw the book "Visions of Glory" in the library. I read a few pages out of curiosity. The author said she was a bethelite and it was crowded in the hallways, and she felt like she was missing out on life. She said she started to smoke on purpose to get disfellowshipped. That confirmed my "all ex-witnesses are bad" indoctrination.

  Actually, it was the January 1, 1989 Watchtower that got me thinking. I kept a copy in my bookbag for a long time, in fact that was the issue I had on the airplane as I went to my missionary assignment. It said about the preaching work, "a work that will be completed in the twentieth century." I believed it. I lost the magazine one day. But then years later, when I went to read it in the WT CD library, I couldnt find that expression. I searched and searched. Finally I went page by page, and I found IT HAD BEEN CHANGED. It now read that the preaching work "would be completed in our time." That really bothered me, I mean really bothered me.

  Then, when I was in a ton of elders meetings with the CO and DO deciding whether or not to remove me, and I could tell by their crazy reasoning that THIS WAS OF MEN, NOT OF GOD, that I googled "Jehovah's Witnesses" and came on here. I was offended at first by the expressions "Kingdumb Hell" and "Asleep" by our resident lexicographer, WTWizard. But I couldn't stop reading.

  Well, you know the rest.

  BF
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  jamiebowers

  I was out for 13 or 14 years when I saw Bill Bowen on Dateline. Sometime later I searched for other news reports and found his site. Then I found JWD/N a few years after that. I read on and off for a few years before I started posting. Even after being out all that time, I felt a little nervous. But I've never run across a collection of people ho are so funny and smart that I couldn't resist.
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  WTWizard

  Right from the congregation itself. Every time they contradict themselves, it damaged my faith in the whole system. They would tell us from the platform that the a$$emblies were a foretaste of the New Dark Ages, and then tell me that they could not be used as a foretaste (directly contradicting themselves). They told me to just meet men, after repeatedly telling us from the platform to widen out (impossible for me, with the directive to only meet men).

  It was this directive to just meet men that blew it. I knew that it was unreasonable to spend all of one's time in field circus, to not do things I used to enjoy, and to be so limited in music and entertainment. But, just meeting men was what made them go past being a bad spot in a relatively good situation and being wholly unacceptable. After that, I slithered out and eventually wound up going to apostate web sites on purpose. Then the other problems with the cancer just added the icing to the cake.
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  JerkhovahsWitless

  I think I was around 17. I used to use AOL and would go into a JW chatroom, I think it was called JWsandFriends. Apostates would be in there and being the zealous jackass I was, I would brainlessly argue with them ignoring what they were saying and repeat my programmed cult BS back at them.

  I was having my first forced-on-me bible study at the time, thanks to my mom, with someone at the hall. When my best friend and neighbor, who wasn't a JW became interested, that got me motivated and I became an unbaptized publisher and started studying with him. I had to study a lot to answer his questions and it helped "prove" the "truth" to be real to me.

  If it wasn't for the bible study and the interested friend happening within the same year, perhaps I wouldn't have so easily dismissed what the apostates in that chat room were saying and discussing with me in email. What an arrogant idiot I was. I could have avoided the big mistake of dedicating myself to the WT Corp.

  Anyway, years later I didn't really believe in the bible or JWs anymore, but still had those "what if" thoughts. I ended up doing research for a friend about the Epic of Gilgamesh, I'm sorry, I mean Noah's Ark, I get my comparative mythology mixed up sometimes, and came across apostate information that I hadn't seen in years. That pretty much sealed the deal with realizing the Watchtower wasn't Jehovah's mouth-piece. The Watchtower is more like Jehovah's a--hole, all that comes out of them is holy sh--. (Is the #3 rule really enforced here? I feel silly editing my grown up words). After the Noah research, I started researching comparative religion and that ended biblical belief or belief towards any kind of holy book for that matter.
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  darthfader

  My wife an I started fading almost 10 years ago. We saw the lack of love between ones in the congregation and the "new light" about the 1914 Generation teaching as "dings in the armor" of the Organization. We sat in "limbo" half heartedly believing the what the Witnesses had was the "Truth". A few years back I began to get a little bolder in my research and came across this Forum. As you can tell by my profile - I lurked here for a long time. What really was the trigger for me was reading Franz's books Crisis Of Conscience and In Search Of Christian Freedom. I felt really betrayed by the organization. I was stunned and confused and a touch angry - when realization that the "You’ll Never Die" promise was bogus settled into my brain...

  After that I recycled all our literature (I was a book hound so we had a lot) except for a few books/bibles that have sentimental value. I shared my research with my Wife who went through a similar cycle of confusion and disappointment and anger (as a teenager her, abuse by the "Brothers" was simply horrible - but that's another post). She as been rebuilding her spirituality looking at a wide variety of paths and concepts -- she has settled on paganism - believing that is the most basic and raw foundation to build upon. I am still "agnostic" not yet convinced that there is a god who cares.

  Darth Fader