Josh here, new to the board. Hello everyone. Glad to know this site is here.
I would not be writing this if it were not 2014. I was a ministerial servant and regular pioneer who left the Jehovah’s Witnesses back in 1995/96, around that time. I left suddenly, didn’t fade away, just left when something clicked one day in my head during the morning shower and made me realize this religion wasn’t true. I gave my last public talk and wrote a letter of disassociation and never looked back.
I was the only one in my family who was a JW, so I gather it was somewhat easier for me to do that than some. I did lose a lot of close friends, but nobody that couldn’t and wouldn’t be replaced or surpassed as the future years came. I’ve been living a successful and very happy life ever since.
Just the other day it dawned on me that it was 2014. And I don’t mean that I just realized it was 2014, but that when I was a young Jehovah’s Witness of the 1980s-1990s generation I remembered a conversation I had with several other Witnesses about how long the world would last. I mentioned I could see myself growing up into my forties and seeing the year 2014 and even perhaps beyond. I was laughed at and even given some threatening looks for suggesting such hogwash and heresy!
“You’d better watch out brother,” came the warnings. “Independent thinking like that can get you kicked out into the darkness with the apostates!”
Filing that away out of shame and hating myself for this, I continued on being a loyal JW, drinking the “KoolAid” flavored nonsense but really buying into it. I mean I believed everything. Doesn’t matter what the flavor or what “poison” was mixed within. If what we then called the “Organization” or “Society” said drink this, then I drank it…until…
The Awake! magazine’s inside cover intro changed. They suddenly dropped the part about 'God’s promise of a new world before the 1914 generation passes away' and I knew something was up. So to make a long story short, I weighed this with a review of the past of the Witnesses own errors and what was really, honestly happening in the world and left.
The other day, right in the middle of summer, it dawned on me: “This is the year that those Witnesses laughed at me and warned me I would never see! I wonder what they’re doing or if they are even around any longer.”
I haven’t had any Witnesses come by over the years (someone's not doing their job), didn’t really care about them or think much about anyone from the past (a couple friends also left, but we didn’t keep in close contact after looking one another up) until this past summer’s thoughts.
So I looked things up, with a little help from this site.
WHAT IN THE NAME OF FREDDY FRANZ HAPPENED?
Overlapping generations?
A new translation that doesn’t use Sheol, Hades, and adopted “Christendom’s evil and devil inspired” rendition of John 17:3?
1935 not the cutoff date for the heavenly hope?
More than 5000 new memorial partakers (and claims that the number is no longer a proof of anything)?
What the heck are "simplified" Watchtower’s for? I mean, if JWs need this then how can anyone believe they know "lick-one" about the Bible?
Gone the Faithful and Discreet Slave “Class”? What the---? The GB is now the "faithful and discreet slave"? SHUT THE FRONT DOOR!
And nobody stood up and pointed fingers at the “heretics” as they promoted this load of crap? No heroes for the faith stood up to fight these changes that would have been considered an outright attack by Satan to change the “pure” truth? I was practically burned at the stake once for suggesting there could be people truly anointed after 1935, but all this happened without as much as someone raising a pitchfork or lighting a torch to burn the witches who suggested this crock of $#^*?
I don’t even know what this "JW.org" religion is. Where is the one I left behind so long ago? It’s gone!
I can’t stop laughing. It really went away, didn’t it?
I still can’t get over John 17:3 in their new Bible! We used to proudly preach how this rendering was totally unacceptable and would mislead a person away from the “truth that leads to everlasting life!” And now they adopted it as a freakin’ revision?!
This is hilarious!
I feel like I’m Charlton Heston come out of a time warp and standing at the foot of what used to be Brooklyn Bethel looking up at the new JW.org sign: “They finally did it. YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP! OH, DAMN YOU! DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!”
…uh, I mean Sheol, no Hades. Wait…the grave. Or is it now "the Grave." (Must look up in glossary of new heretical but perfect NWT revision.)
I can’t stop laughing. I really can't.