Books and movies that have influenced you since learning the truth about the Truth

by JimmyPage 21 Replies latest jw friends

  • Fernando
    Fernando

    The more I studied the gospel message or map, the more it led me away from religion and to a personal, vibrant and dynamic relationship with God instead.

    One of the challenges I faced early on in the journey was a reluctance to contemplate the Kingdom until I could unravel where the Watchtower had misled me as to what the Kingdom really is.

    A definition of the Kingdom by Greg Gilbert, in his 2010 book "What is the gospel?" proved to be the key. He defined the Kingdom as "God's victorious, eternal and redemptive rule, reign and authority over those redeemed by Christ" (paraphrased).

    Suddenly all the puzzle pieces fell into place, as the rich spiritual dimensions of the Kingdom came into view.

    Suddenly the last vestiges of the Watchtower's deception in my life fell apart.

    Suddenly I could clearly see and deconstruct their evil fraud and methods.

    They have depleted or truncated God's gospel message by removing the "gospel about Christ", and leaving only the "gospel about the Kingdom". This they further deplete or truncate by reducing it to the "message of restoration". Finally they deplete or truncate this to "the future restoration of physical paradise on this earth alone".

    Hey presto - all the rich spiritual dimensions of the Kingdom are gone.

    Hey presto, the unabridged gospel which has 30 or more ingredients or markers, suddenly has become a truncated gospel with only one ingredient left.

    This is exactly how the Watchtower keeps people spiritually blind and captive to their competing Kingdom where spiritually blind, confused, inebriated and insane humans rule, coerce and dominate other humans to their injury.

    Long live God's eternal Kingdom.

    May the Watchtower's Kingdom perish soonest...

    ...along with its Sanhedrin (Governing Body), its Pharisees (ruling religious clergy class), its vile Judging Committees (Star Chamber hearings), and its socially destructive supremacist ideologies (including family members shunning their own flesh and blood simply because they are no longer captive to the Watchtower).

  • King Solomon
    King Solomon

    Maybe this thread should also serve as possible movies/books to bring into the JW home by faders to try and break a few cracks in the WTBTS attempts at mind-control of their relatives? And if nothing else, maybe this thread will end up as a convenient banned book/movie list, forbidden for active JWs to read/view. :)

    Oh, another interesting flick about a dystopian future where the individual is suppressed by the group is George Lucas' THX-1138.

    Atheist Ricky Gervais movie, "The Invention of Lying", is a dark comedy based on the premise of the origins of religion, although addressed in a subtle way.

    And for you foreign film fans, I HIGHLY recommend "Wings of Desire" by Wim Winders, the story of an angel who gives up his wings to cross-over to the world of humans to know love (it's set in Berlin, before the Wall came down: talk about a fitting metaphor for captivity!). Any ex-JW should appreciate the theme (I saw the film, and only later it dawned on me WHY the story was so compelling to me). I actually snuck that one into a group of fairly-liberal JWs, without any need for revealing the hidden message.

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