Hi all,
I have been eyeing this site for some time (years) and finally joined. I was born in the organization, and grew up not too far were C.T. Russell started it all. I remember as a child attending at the congregation in Oakland, many visits by Schroeder, meeting his family and watching his slide presentations of trips to the holy land. This was a grand hall, before they started cloning them. It had two floors, three schools, a baptismal pool, and a great library. I remember during the meetings, I would sneak into the library and look through all of Russell’s old books and Zion’s publications, they had quite a collection.
My Father died when I was young, and that just solidified our convictions (at the time). My mother carried on, and this was during the time period when smoking just became a DF offence. She tried to hide it, and finally was confronted, and DF. I studied and continued on through my time at high school, did the recommended route and not attended college. Although, I must admit, this was not my mother’s wish and at her insistence, I went 2 years at a tech school, and received a (worthless) associate’s degree. I commenced my career, and was a bit naïve and started sowing some oats, so to speak, all the while harboring terrible guilt. I met my wife to be at a bar, obviously not a witness, and was married. I moved away and could not stand the guilt (fear), started studying and brought my wife in. For whatever reason, I won’t bore you the details, we faded away after the years. After a long DF, my mother finally quit smoking and was reinstated, I have two sisters, one in the truth (although a hypocrite sorry to admit), and one not. During the early years, my mother brought in most of her siblings. My first cousins aunts and uncles are still in the truth.
My fading started out with terrible guilt and fear, and moved to resolving some long standing spiritual issues. In that quest, I tried to prove what I learned was the truth, and the more I dug, the more the fabric of my faith in the WTBTS started to disintegrate. It was scary balancing not wanting to oppose Jehovah and trying to reconcile my spirituality. Although I could not whole heartily agree with the WTBTS, and most organized religions in general, I am still very spiritual and have never stopped learning about my Father.
The apocalyptic nightmares finally subsided, and my latest quest is determining the authenticity of the bible cannons. I am having issue with its canonization during the Niceno–Constantinopolitan Creed and Emperor Constantine’s involvement. Seems like a bit of an oxymoron that we hold firm the bible as holy, but is was in the hands of the early Catholic church and Roman political system at inception. Add to that, the issue of reconciling texts of The Sumerians, Mesopotamians, Babylonian’s, Egyptians, and Greeks, that all predate any Old Testament writings, and I think there is a good bit to be sorted out…in another thread.