by 2evil 65 Replies latest jw friends
I there,
Not an elder, but I believe that the first think you need to do to get yourself copies of Ray Franz's books
The first is CRISIS OF CONSCIENCE and the second is IN SEARCH OF CHRISTIAN FREEDOM.
These books will give you a good look at the organization from the inside. They are excellent and just present the facts for what they are. Then you can rivisit your doubts and see if every single one of them will not be resolved for you.
take care and welcome to the board.
wannaexit
Howdy 2evil. And no, I don't think you are. Welcome.
What about COs or DOs? Have any of them left recently? Why or why not? You would think that they "see" more and would leave regularly. What about members of the writing commitee. Any of those left lately?
Yes there have been. In fact one DO used to post here. He went by the name of Maximus. Here is his profile:
| Alias | Maximus | |
| Location | ||
| Membership | 3 y 3 m 20 d Since 28-May-01 14:23 May 28, 2001 | |
| Posts | 746
Average 0.62 Posts per day See Post History of this member See Topic History of this member | |
| Biography |
Maximus also was involved in some writing projects and other assignments from the Society. Read some of his old threads. The man was brilliant, and he made excellent points in his time here. There was recently one person who used to write for the Awake magazine who was disfellowshipped because they were asking too many questions.
So you see, it's not just you.
"You've taken your first step into a larger world." -- Alec Guiness, Star Wars
"It's a simple fact, though, if I believed everything hook line and sinker she could have what she thinks she wants."
From my experience, you're wrong. All she'll get is an unhappy (probably stoned) husband, and all you'll get is a stomach full of fishing equipment.
If you want to be her spiritual sugar-daddy then do it. Get off this board and don't look back. Being happy is much more important than being right, informed, cutting edge, or anything else, and that's all I think that most people here are trying to say.
I'm living a lie right now to keep my family. But eventually I have to be real!
One person I knew just D'ad himself and a girl from my congregation who has not come
to my meetings in a year just got Df'd. I guess the society says about 40k per year
and they claim most are for immorality (don't believe everything they say, including the "names have been changed due....." footnote on articles)
Divorce rates are getting higher (7% last I heard) and would be higher if you include the separations.
If you look at these figures, add false prophecies, add changing light what do you get?
Also remember we are condemning the world every day when we preach.... how could we do this and not think
that our Witness forefathers (1800's to mid 1900's) were believing what is now considered false! How could those
be annointed, when "worldly" people today will be destroyes in the big "A" for believing those things!
YOU have only talked about the generation thing, but add blood + cross + christmas/holidays + smoking + countless other things
how many false things would GOD have to accept from these earlier witnesses and still turn the other cheech and kill from other religions?
THIS RELIGION IS ABSURD!
2evil:
Thank you for having the courage to post here. You are very perceptive and honest about your situation with your beliefs and your wife. I too am an active JW with strong ties to family. I choose to remain a JW with full knowledge of what is going on.
I want you to consider for a moment that everything you have been taught about your existance and your purpose is the product of mind control. It took me years to understand this. You have had no choice but to accept this, because it was all you were exposed to.
Please read the Awake! 22 June 2000 on propaganda again, only this time read it carefully and ask yourself if the brothers do not use these same techniques among JWs.
Next please review my post about JWs and mind control: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/12/78149/1.ashx I use questions from Steve Hassan's book (he is an exit-counselor for cult members) and answer all the questions from JW publications. This is what proved to me that JWs could not be "the truth." Jehovah would not need to use these tactics to gather faithful ones.
I sincerely hope you find your way through this situation. But before you can consider your wife and children, you must know yourself.
But before you can consider your wife and children, you must know yourself.
I agree.
Thinking too far ahead of the family consequences may paralyze your mind and action. The worst can happen indeed, but it is not necessarily the most likely to happen. Each relationship is different, and changes every day even though we may not notice. You are changing and this will affect your family, but the only way of knowing how is walking the way. Step by step.
Your beliefs are collapsing. Perhaps something like faith is secretly rising among the ruins.
Take care,
Narkissos
Welcome to the board!
One day my wife stormed in and said....."your to afraid to tell other people in the congergation what you think!! ha ha" and I looked at her and said.....
"sure I am....what does that tell you about the spiritual paradise we are in!
She never has brought the subject up again and that was 18 years ago. She is still very loyal (to a fault).
Please remember that a religion that has all the answers........allows no questions!
I think it all depends on two things. One, are you a convinced theist? Two, do you like being a Witness? If the answer to both is yes, you will want to stay a Witness. If the answer to one or both is no, you will not be able to stay a Witness. Not for family, not for money, not for anything.
Please remember that a religion that has all the answers........allows no questions!
Wow. I'm putting that bullet in the chamber.
Welcome 2evil!
I think many of us stood where you stand. Convinced the society is right about so many things, but you've found one or two things that you think are wrong. You may or may not even be so sure that they are wrong. But, with so many things that you think are right, you wonder whether you can overlook a few things and go on.
As you've no doubt discovered, the reason for the generation thing is because 1914 is completely wrong. They ran out of time and had to do something. I don't know how much of the Ray Franz stuff you read, but he wrote about this in the early 80's. Even back then, they were making proposals to the governing body to make changes. The actual change that took place in '95 was on that list. 15 or so years before it happened, this proposal (among others) made it to the governing body for review and they rejected it. Ask yourself how, if the Holy Spirit is acting through them, that they missed that? How exactly does God direct them? We can ponder how God would instruct the governing body: dreams, intense study, moments of inspiration. The fact is, here it was on paper in front of their faces and they missed it. This should lead to one of two conclusions. First, the governing body has no divine guidance and you can ponder the consequences of that. Or, second, God did not want his millions of followers to know the truth at that time. That's being deceitful. God is a God of TRUTH, not lies. So, the second cannot be true, leaving the first as the only logical conclusion. If the governing body is just a group of men with no divine guidance, then their whole religion should be taken at face value and you should not fear it.
The Witnesses taught me many things that I held to be true. Your list looks very similar to what mine was. But I'll add one more. With the preaching work, we spread one message that we all believed in: "If your religion is wrong, you have to leave it and go to the correct one".
I do not believe the correct one is found within any particular religion. And I honestly believe God doesn't care. People of all faiths can tell you stories of how God worked in their lives. And their stories have as much credibility as those you hear from the podium. Either all of these stories are unbelievable (JW and others alike) or God is non-denominational. You also look at churches who go out and do good, like feeding and clothing the hungry. Whereas the Witness idea of charity is door-to-door work - or only helping fellow believers. I think other churches have a lot of good in them that you could also claim is fulfilling Biblical commands.
I no longer believe that God cares about the details of your knowledge and where you stand, for or against different doctrines. I believe it is a love for God and a trying to please him that is what God looks for. Works and deeds were the Old Testament. Jesus's sacrifice and our believing in that is what saves us in the New Testament. The book of Romans has a good deal about this.
I also believe that other churches, though they believe in doctrines I still believe are wrong, I think they still have it over the JWs because in many of them, you have a freedom to disagree. I've seen Catholic priests on one side say Satan is a being and another say he is a metaphor for evil in the world. Yet they are both Catholic priests. This may appear to be a problem. But I think it fits in with my new outlook. That God doesn't care about the specifics of what you believe in, as long as you believe in Him and try to follow Bible principals. Don't get too rigid about what is right and wrong. But the Witnesses on the other hand are a different deal. Could you still love God, find your own concepts of what beliefs are right and wrong, and still be a Witness? Sure, but you would have to live a double life with it, trying to repeat the party line around JWs, while secretly believing otherwise. It's a large burden to bear.
I don't know how I would handle the issue with your wife and kids. Fortunately, I never had to deal with that as I was never married when I left. I do know that sooner or later, you will see this as a "false religion" and it will start to annoy you every time you hear something wrong being spoken. I don't know how old your kids are, but if it were my kids, knowing what I know now, I wouldn't want them raised JW. The sooner I could get out, to get them out, the better. The longer you wait, the harder it will be.
As for some of your other points: Things getting worse is debatable. Carl Olaf Jonsson has a great pair of books. One is "Gentile Times Reconsidered" that deals with the research on 1914 and the other is something like "Sign of the Last Days, When?". The later book goes through each "sign of the times", checking the Witness claims against historical and scientific data. One thing to note is that throughout history, people have been saying that the time they live in is the worst. When I hear things like decreasing crime rates, you have to ask whether things just got a little better. A true student of history would look honestly at the past and see how people lived back then. What they had to endure and what their risks were. I would not trade the world we live in for any past century. Does that mean things are worse or better?
As for this being "God's Organization" with love among us, read, read, read this board. You'll find so many stories that show there is such a lack of love among many.
As for your wife wanting to live the JW ideal, but struggling, rest assured, many of us thought that other families had it together. Read this board and find out that it was an illusion. Many families are struggling to be good JWs just like everyone. Each family has it's problems, no matter what picture they present at the Kingdom Hall. Striving to be the family that they put on for show isn't going to make you any happier, because that is not real and is probably unattainable. In my experience, many of the strongest JWs had the worst kids.
As for the 1914/generational thing. Maybe you've read it in Franz's literature, but it's interesting to know what Charles Russell started with in the 1800s. Check out a link, I think it's nsbiblestudents.org and they have some of his books online, if you don't trust an "apostate". Russell said Babylon fell in 536 BC. He backed up 70 years from that event (not Jews returning to Jerusalem) and got 606 BC. Because he didn't know about there being no year 0, he added 2520 to -606 and got 1914. We (and the society) now know Babylon fell in 539 BC, not 536 and that there is no year 0. With the move from 536 to 539, 1914 should have ended up in 1911. Then, when you factor in no year 0, you go forward a year and get 1912. But which was more important? Keeping 1914 or having to rewrite doctrine supposedly proved by WW1 breaking out? Well, we know the results. They now say 70 years ended 2 years after Babylon fell, when the Jews got back to Jerusalem in 537 BC. So, there was all this shifting going around and you still come up with 1914???? Not to mention that Jer 25:10 says that 70 years would end, THEN the king of Babylon would be punished. How could 70 years end 2 years after Babylon was overthrown and the king killed that same night? That scripture alone proves the JW version of chronology wrong. The main argument the JWs have is to try to cast doubt on evidence against their dates, not to show evidence in favor. They leave it up to biblical interpretation, but Jer 25:10 shows that their biblical interpretation is wrong too.
Once you can accept with certainty that the JWs are wrong on one point, the rest will follow.
If you choose not to be a JW any longer, the way I suggest is what we around here call "the fade". Just becoming irregular without declaring that you don't believe in them anymore and dissassociating yourself. It may preserve your relationship with your parents and family (as has been the case with me). I can't speak for how it will work with your wife and kids though.
Good luck on your journey and please stop back in and tell us how things are going.
