How did you find the truth about the truth (TTATT) (page 2)

DuvanMuvan

was doubting for a while because a lot of the things i was taught didnt make sense to me and one day when i was about to click onto jw.org i went onto jwfacts instead.

snowbird

Freeminds and this site.

Had a suspicion all along that something was amiss, but ugly treatment from the wives of certain elders confirmed it.

Ucantnome

a watchtower article was the reason i left

Accidental exposure to apostates on the John Ankerberg Show on YouTube. We had no idea what we were hearing... my husband and I were Bible students. We showed the video to our BS conductor. He almost had a seizure, telling us they were APOSTATES!! Fornicators!!

We had been hoping for a simple answer to our question, but he threw a little fit instead. After we asked him some history questions, and he denied 1975 predictions (a 77-year old born-in), we did a little more research and found out they were liars from top to bottom. We quit attending meetings after that.

About 4 months later, my sister forwarded me a copy of a study article that warned JW's about the dangers of reading any outside information. We became completely convinced that it was a cult after that, but it was already too late for my parents and sister.

Giordano

I was dragged In in the late 1950's got out with my wife in plenty of time for the first Woodstock!

When I was 16 a friend gave me a copy of Eric Hoffer's The True Believer. JW's were never mentioned but he nailed how believers were manipulated. It fit WT Society to a T. Later I read The Source by Michner about a single knoll in Israel over 2500 years. Gave me a different perspective about religion and what a bunch of whiners the JW's were. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich made me focus on human suffering. It took a few years piecing it together but we made it out in our mid twenties what took me three or four years I could have done in one long weekend curled up with C of C and or jwfacts.com OK maybe two weeks tops.

twice shy

@matt---very similar situation

Ill treatment of other human beings.

The new light wasn't quite lit up for me.

Each time we listen for the reinstatement announcementof a disfellowshipped one and when we hear nothing, we ask ourselves... did the bible lie? Is Christ not forgiving sins today? Where does it say your sins will be forgiven in days, weeks, months, or years? Just kept saying to myself Where is the compassion, mercy, forgiveness and love that is supposed to cover a multitude that we first being Jehovah's name sake are supposed to show to all people. We don't have it as witnesses. We were taught to ony show it to the people they say we can. Not to love everybody.

Then Cedars to here and reading all the stories that seem to be united with similar misery while attending the halls.

Syme

I started by reading about Evolution. I cross-checked the quotations and statements made in the Watchtower books, such as Creation (1985) and Creator (1998), and found out that they were full of quote-mining and various other fallacies. A moment of revelation was when I cross-checked a certain Hitching (not Hitchens) who WTS presented as a prominent ''evolutionist'' who discredited evolution (!!), and found out that he actually was a charlatan with spiritist practices! That undermined my faith in the sincerity of Watchtower authors.

I then viewed the movie "To Verdener" (Danish), which is about a malfunctioning JW family. It presented a familiar scenery, though seen from a different viewpoint, more realistic, more cynical.

Then came this forum :)

Band on the Run

My father and uncle served at Bethel so I heard some stories growing up. Both my parents made a distinction between the religion and top Bethel leaders. I felt no one at the KH could touch me b/c I had enough family support. WE knew the key Witnesses in for generations. The more I advanced in school, the less I liked meetings and the WT. I wanted a respectable religion. My neighborhood was very Roman Catholic so I mingled beliefs. I stopped going when my father died while I was in high school.

For some reason, I decided to study NT at college. We had to read the primary source. I found the Witnesses were frauds. Also, I was active in politics in the 1960s. All I wanted to do is go to rock'n'roll concerts. It is hard to see Jimi Hendrix or Eric Clapton and sit in the KH. I had to leave.

Finkelstein

The commercial calculating fraud of 1975, back in the early 1980's.

jam

When I got DF.....

How did you find the truth about the truth (TTATT)