In 1990, when visiting Bethel, a whole crowd of apostates were in front protesting, holding up signs about Jesus being their mediator too, ect… None of that helped, it frightened me. Then later I saw Mr. Coffee, which cemented into my head what apostates were.
A person in my congregation in the late 90’s who I befriended said things that in retrospect were seeds to try to help me wake up. For instance, he mentioned about early JWs teaching that Jehovah lived around a star. I considered that hogwash.
Later, I discovered he looked at both a video of Ray Franz and gay porn on my computer. Therefore, I with another friend decided to approach him first to report himself to the elders. Poor guy was shaking like a leaf. I don’t think we ever pursued matters to the point of reporting him. Needless to say, the little things he said didn’t help me think, because he didn’t really present documented proof.
Over the years I accidently stumbled upon crazy looking websites with lots of ranting, like Danny Hazzard or Rick Fearon, and they came across exactly like the angry, bitter apostates Watchtower talked about. That didn’t help me.
I remember a forum I accidently stumbled across with post from the “Liberal Elder”, and a post where a woman said she was a pioneer and just discovered 607 BC was wrong. I considered these places traps. I didn’t believe for a moment that the poster was a pioneer, but rather an apostate pretending to be one.
Years later, when I first started to research 607 BC as a litmus test, looking for neutral sources, I did inevitably come across “apostate” sites, like this one or JWfacts. However, I basically assumed that I would have to weed through the lies, half-truths, and misrepresentations, with a kernel of truth here and there. However, over many months, I began to realize that sites like JWfacts were in fact 100% factual, whereas Watchtower were the ones being deceitful.