Van Gogh

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Posts by Van Gogh

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  128

  Is there any hope of you coming back to Jehovah?

  by LeftBehind in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  my brother is a self proclaimed apostate.

  i see now that there is a wide variety of posters here.

  so to those that have left the witnesses what would it take to get you back?

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  Van Gogh

  LeftBehind,
  
  You started this thread on 1 December 2005.
  You initiated what became a classic thread. Many cared a lot to answer extensively.
  You finally answered a recent and belated posting by "tea" after five months:
  
  
  :tea, I am out of that cult now. My brother and I are closer than ever.
  
  
  So tell us please if you can: what happened?
  
  VG
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  25

  My Secret to a Joy-Filled Life

  by jgnat in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  here is a question i received from an anonymous poster.

  getting this pm made my day.

  he asks a universal question, so i decided to answer the best i can in public.

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  Van Gogh

  jgnat,

  Thanks for sharing. Just ordered Flow on Amazon.

  VG
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  41

  Question about the Anointed

  by Zico in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i have just joined this site after having been visiting as a guest for a few months.

  i am searching for answers so please be patient with me.

  a friend of mine in the congregation has directed me to this site as he has been having doubts about the organization, though he said he never posts on it.

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  Van Gogh

  Dear Lilian, Thanks for taking the time to share your personal insights in trying to answer my question. I sincerely hope your hope and conviction will turn out to be true for all of us; I, for one, would not mind there being some meaning and purpose to this life after all - for a God to make everything right. For all the evil that pervades JWism, I've seen too many sincere people within the org as well. I wish for their dreams to come true and for all of humanity and its religions to profit from them. But trust ultimately erodes and many questions remain unanswered; the bible is a bloody book as well, from the beginning to the end of Revelation. VG
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  41

  Question about the Anointed

  by Zico in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i have just joined this site after having been visiting as a guest for a few months.

  i am searching for answers so please be patient with me.

  a friend of mine in the congregation has directed me to this site as he has been having doubts about the organization, though he said he never posts on it.

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  Van Gogh

  Welcome to JWD Zico!

  Your reasoning is nearly identical to the one I used to have not so long ago. In the end it was the sole argument that kept me in JW... until for me the evidence (607BCE/1914/1919) against JW became overwhelming enough to discount any possibility of the WTS - through (the ultimately shallow concept of FD&S/144.000 - ever having been God's Org, I was forced to discount the anointing phenomenon of inconsequential for any marking of a "God's Org".

  Once you find out how hollow almost any JW concept is, you will also be able to consider the many other explanations of the FD&S phenomenon, such as the one given by lovelylil. Cognitive dissonance is rife and many other religions claim to have "enlightening" experiences or goals such as in Buddhism or the Pentecostals that purportedly speak in tongues. Is it an indication of their being Chosen? The Bahai religion, the Mormons, and Islam all claim to have the last and true inspired and enlightened/anointed prophet and each have their extensive "inspired" scripture to show for it. How could they therefore possibly be wrong?

  Interesting thread on the subject of anointing:

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/12/104370/1805677/post.ashx#1805677

  lovelylil,

  What will happen to the rest of us that aren't anointed, let alone get a crown. What is our destination, if any?

  VG
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  24

  How long did it take you to get over it?

  by AK - Jeff in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  one of the posters here - before i knew she was a poster here - in fact before i knew of this site at all, sent me an email early on in my exit.

  she likened the whole leaving thing with grieving over a dead loved one - said it took most about two years to work thru all the phases of that loss - denial, anger, etc.. i think she had it about right - that's about how long it took me.

  but without jwd it would have been longer.

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  Van Gogh

  When I faded the first time in 1988/89 my experience was positive and liberating; a bit like that of looking_glass. Job and gf pushed the cong/JW out of my life and filled up the “void”. All relief and no grief. I forgot about it completely and dropped out of sight of family and JW.
  However, the guilt that was “hardwired” into my brain caused me to go back in around 1995. At that time, I made some disastrous financial decisions, lost my wife, avoided a career, led an exemplary “clean” moral life in solitude, basically spent the prime of my life “Waiting for Godot” until the same rut that made me fade the first time finally forced me to find out the truth about the truth in the fall of 2005.
  For a short while it felt liberating and exciting. Soon afterwards though the utter senselessness of the sacrifices has dawned on me. This time, “grieving” over loss is indeed what is happening right now; the grief is hitting me in the gut hard and my subsequent collapse has forced me to finally seek professional help. So I’m not sure how long it will take me to come over it this time… my/our time is slowly running out. That’s the whole problem. That’s the truth I found out.
  VG
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  54

  HAPPY 18TH BIRTHDAY RICHIE RICH

  by DevonMcBride in

  1. jw
  2. friends

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  my thoughts are with you on your first birthday as a free person.

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  Van Gogh

  My thoughts are with you as well Richie... Happy 18th birthday! Celebrating my 45th will be my first one. Hope you'll manage to have some sort of a good time despite the pressures you're under. Savour this moment in your life. Pay your parents back with kindness and wisdom if possible.
  VG
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  17

  I can't believe I missed it (puke alert)...

  by Hecklerboy in

  1. jw
  2. friends

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  check out this article in our local newspaper..

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  Van Gogh

  "I sorta thought that having a baptism talk with no one getting baptised was a waste of time.---Ya think? I'm sitting here laughing! They still gave a talk about it though nobody was getting baptized?! If it was anybody but the jw's..."
  --------------------------------------------------------
  
  About two years ago at my circuit assembly there was no-one to perform the bapdunking ritual on either...
  As the CO/DO must have seen the merits of the above-quoted logic, guess what...? They just brought in a volunteer from outside the circuit. They were honest enought to admit it from the platform though... Just a prime example of thinking outside the box (or circuit).
  VG
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  61

  Where were you when the realization hit, that the WTS was not in the truth?

  by whyizit in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i was listening to a testimonial by valerie acuff and she said that she was sitting in an assembly, looking around at the crowd and thinking to herself, "this is your family, these are your people.".

  she said at that moment she heard a voice inside say, "these are not your people, this is not your family, get up and leave now, and don't ever go back.

  " so she took her two children at that very moment and left, and she never went back.

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  Van Gogh

  I always was a true blue believer; firmly embedded. There was NO possibility this was not God’s organization. But I was always a sideliner, even out for a couple of years. I simply sat in the hall and did my duty (served my time). I was never an MS but had pioneered (including pioneer school) for a year in 1980 after which I went into deep black hole of depression for many years. My personal JW history can be summed up as a long and drawn out struggle wrought with tragedy. But Jesus chose this organization in 1919; there were anointed – this could not be wrong, they could not be wrong about this. In my large JW family I grew up with much criticism against the organization – I was used to this. In the end I could see ONLY wrong within the organization… but like King Saul they were anointed and like in ancient Israel the many wrongs were no proof against special status. Besides, we were not involved in politics and war. Especially coming from Europe with my JW family in during WWII: JWs were in the concentration camps! A pioneer who was hidden by my granddad died in a German concentration camp. My mother was arrested during the war while on field service. That ought to be enough. There was no arguing with that. But in the end my last/past five years of Kingdom Hall attendance and field service signified my own silent peaceful protest. I would only take the bible with me on field service – no mags. The thought of taking this further into conducting a bible study with someone and introducing them into the Hall seemed impossible to me… but preaching was an identifying mark of a true Christian to me. All my friends were equally extremely critical of the org. I could see no other way. I enjoyed Robert King’s (E-watchman) ramblings against Brooklyn until it dawned on me that he was more of the same: a religious lunatic. That is until…
  
  LIGHT
  A very close JW friend gave me Penton’s Apocalypse delayed. I read it around August 2005. That is when a light was switched on in my head.
  
  EPIPHANY
  Then this same friend mailed me a link to Don Cameron’s Captives of a Concept. I remember reading this in front of my computer screen at my workplace one evening around October 2005. There and then I had my epiphany that this was indeed possibly not the truth and that this could not be God’s organization. A couple of days later at the cinema with this friend for the first time I uttered these words to him: It is NOT the truth. He had known this for a while, but had never admitted this to me. We just sat there in the audience in the darkness. It was an emotional and momentous occasion for me.
  
  THUNDERBOLT
  Immediately afterwards I ordered CoC and Jonssons books on Amazon. I remember reading CoC late at night in bed halfway through Dec 2005. I had arrived at page 27. There and then I said to myself: remember this moment for the rest of your life and know this. There and then you were reading page 27 of CoC and this is when you decided to NEVER set one foot in a Kingdom Hall ever again.
  VG
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  34

  A New Voice

  by apfergus in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  i haven't been involved with the jws in nearly five years now.

  i was raised as a witness from the time i was seven until i was 17 and a junior in high school.

  i don't have any particularly sad stories to tell, really, except that the process of leaving the organization--even though i was never baptised--was the hardest thing i've ever gone through.

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  Van Gogh

  Welcome Fergus! I envy you guys that had/have the backbone and intelligence to get out at your age; this way your JW-experience can be one of the most valuable and insightful lessons of life. VG
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  38

  Karl's Story

  by KW13 in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i don't remember sharing my story...if i did, don't reply.

  it will only encourage me .

  its been a strange 17 years (18 in october whoo!).

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  Van Gogh

  I salute you for your courage and being true to yourself mate!
  VG