If you could go back in time and tell yourself one thing about JWs would you do it? And what would you choose to say to yourself? Do you think you could have convinced yourself not to get baptised if you chose the right thing to say?
I find it actually a more difficult question to answer the more I think about it. Not so easy at all.
Factual statements turn out not to be the best idea:
1. There is no historical basis for the 1914 date, check out the fall of Jerusalem in any history book.
2. Many of the arguments in WT literature rely on misquotes from other sources, for examples the Trinity brochure, Reasoning book and the Creation book.
3. JWs taught that organ transplantation was cannibalism until 1980.
I don't know, I somehow doubt any of those arguments would have worked.
Maybe something more along the lines of:
1. Once you get baptised you can't question or disbelieve anything the governing body says publicly any more without being shunned.
2 There's no rush getting baptised, you can still go to meetings as long as you want without getting baptised. Why not wait a few years and see if it's what you want?
3. Why not work out what you want to accomplish in life first. And work out later if getting baptised fits in with your goals.
I think I might have had better luck with that sort of argument. Even so I would have had a hard time I reckon.
What would you say to youself? Do you think anything would have changed your mind about getting baptised?