onacruse
JoinedTopics Started by onacruse
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43
The disfellowshipping of Walter Salter
by onacruse inon a recent thread farkel provided a transcript of a letter written by walter salter in 1937:.
http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/149105/2710321/post.ashx#2710321.
in all my years i have never seen the wts respond as vigorously and openly as it did to this event...not even ray franz got this much attention.. as an opener, here is the initial response printed in the wt (this is also a transcript, but .pdf's of the original can be provided as needed):.
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The story of my life (part 13- Disfellowshipped)
by onacruse inso here i was, in my late 20s, and in the late 1970s, disfellowshipped.. .
to offer a bit of perspective: being dfd then was not like it had been before, or since.
for a period of several years (1973-1980, as i recall), the wts had "lightened up" on the amount of communication that was "allowed" between dfd people and other jws, especially when it was family.
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22
Death of a generation
by onacruse interry's thread http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/7/127651/1.ashx got me to thinking about this.. one of the characteristics of the wts is to "weather the storm" of a major disappointment, and, as evidenced by the last two major cycles, count on the death (as much in a literal sense as a figurative one) of the generation of jws that went through that debacle...and thence to recommence with the eschatological emphasis as if nothing had happened.. the post-1925 period is perhaps even more exemplative of this than the post-1914 period, because a good many bible students, grasping at every straw to salvage their belief system, swallowed the chronological recalculations and jubilee-cycle antitype interpretations, which extended 1914 to 1925. but 1925 was the last straw for most of them.
it initiated a major revolt among the rank-and-file (and especially the elders...the leaders of "that generation") which haunted the wts for the next 20 years, and a chronological review of the watchtower articles and books during the entire rutherford period shows a preoccupation with vilifying those who dared to remind of that debacle.. with the 50s came a major expansion in the wts, and a consequent dilution of that disillusioned group.
those that were still alive, and who were still jws, had by that time invested so much of their lives into that way of life that...well, how could they find the muster to dump off 40 years of life energy and say, finally, "well, i was wrong, wasn't i?
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24
Angst
by onacruse indo you feel it?.
i feel it, almost every day, and sometimes so intensely that it literally wakes me up in a cold sweat at 2 in the morning, just to toss and turn for the next 3 hours, like a pig on a spit.. that damnably frustrating anguish about so many things: the "what ifs," the "could have beens, "the should i have...??".
on the one hand, as an ex-jw, i can, and do, easily find a certain satisfaction in saying to myself "it was that god-damned religion in which i was raised.".
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66
Your epitaph...what would you like it to be?
by onacruse inimagine that you are staring down from some ethereal plane of post-death...not the funeral, mind you, but perhaps years or decades after your physical decease.. what would you feel pleased to see written on your gravestone?.
me:.
he thought he'd figured it out,.
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50
If there is no life after death
by onacruse inso where does that leave us?
leave me?.
the logical consequence would be that i should get absolutely every little piece of self-gratification i can get before i die.
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Passive-aggressive...Is it to be avoided?
by onacruse inhs, in view of a recent post you made, and also (much more importantly) because i want to continue to learn about myself, i would appreciate your (and, of course, anyone else's) observations about the following (bolds added):.
dear cecil:.
i hear this term used frequently, usually with reference to a coworker, child, parent, etc, who is being a pain in the ass.
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53
How do angels and demons influence mankind?
by onacruse inwts publications, and indeed virtually all religions on this planet, assert that angels and demons have regular influence on mankind, on individual human beings as well as on the general course of human events.. but i've never read anything specific about how they supposedly accomplish this.. do they tweak our neurons?
do they fiddle with our hormones, thereby making us feel good or bad about a certain course of action?
do they inject thoughts into our brains, perhaps in such a subtle way that we think those are our own thoughts?
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12
No magazines for me :(:(:(
by onacruse in*** km 7/04 p. 3 question box ***.
how should personal copies of thewatchtower and awake!
be obtained?.