When I was a JW I prayed regularly and often and I thanked Jehovah in prayer again when events turned out favourably. However, sometimes things worked out unfavourably for me or a member of my family – but we never blamed Jehovah. Having now been out of Watchtower clutches for over seven months I began to realise that Jehovah couldn’t lose! We praised him when things were good, but we never once blamed him when things went pear shaped.
For example, in 1998 my wife and I were desperate to return to Manchester with our four children so we prayed to Jehovah and put our house up for sale. We received an offer and accepted it and thanked Jehovah – only for the buyer to pull out just before the contacts were signed.
We felt so down but prayed incessantly just like before and another buyer came along and made an offer – so again we thanked Jehovah. We found a house in Manchester and made an offer which was accepted – only just before contracts were exchanged on the house we were trying to sell once again the buyer pulled out!
So, we now had an accepted offer on a house in Manchester – but we still hadn’t sold our then present house! So, we prayed to Jehovah, our guts were in knots for weeks but, hey presto, another buyer came in and we sold our old house and moved into our new one. We gave Jehovah all the credit for moving us – but what about the two failures? Oh, we were just being tested by Jehovah so that he could see we really meant to move. What a loving God, let’s give him all the credit!!
Yes, what an idiot I’d been for 19 years, worshipping a God who never even exists! It’s a fact! Jehovah as God is erroneous and so, too, is Yah-weh! A search of ancient bible history will reveal that there have been two monotheistic Gods before Yahweh: firstly the Egyptian son of Amenhotep III, the Pharaoh Akhenaton, worshipped the Aten alone, as a monotheistic divinity. This God, whose name means "disk" in Egyptian, was symbolised as the solar disk with rays ending in hands holding the gift of life (the Ankh). Secondly, the Persians also adopted a monotheistic religion worshipping their God Ahura Mazda (= Wise Lord) from their prophet Zarathushtra. This God was like Yahweh, a fusion of the spirit of God (Ahura, Sanscrit Asura) with wisdom (Aramaic HWH, Iranian Mazda). There is much that began in Zoroastrianism, eg. the presence of a devil, the worship of angels, the idea of a "last judgement", the concept of a Saviour, the portrayal as angels with wings and haloes; that was adopted by later 2nd Temple Judaism from the Persian (Iranian) source.
So, having researched that Judaism has its roots in the "false" worship of Egypt and Persia, with immense ramifications for Christianity, I kicked it all in to touch and my family and I haven’t prayed since.
The important thing to realise is that we haven’t been struck by lightening and that once one rids oneself of the fear of God one can begin to live – and I mean REALLY live!
I don’t smoke and I don’t drink (can’t stand beer). What I mean by REALLY living is that I am free to thoroughly enjoy life without being shackled to a book of fables and a cult organisation.
For the first time in 19 years my two sons and my wife and I are enjoying the extra time to do things together. Weekends are now looked forward to, instead of hating the thought of knocking on people’s doors every Saturday and Sunday or going to a meeting and being bored out of our skulls! We read a lot more, also, and have wonderful hobbies. We also don’t fear death, because we have learnt that spirituality comes from within and is not dependent on our serving some divine being. Being free of fear is a wonderful thing.
Dansk