i am now officially 'inactive' so am no longer chased by an elder a for a report.
the congregation i belonged to never had much time for me anyway, i said once i could drop down dead in the k.hall and no one would notice.
so i never expected anyone to be particularly bothered that i wasn't there and they aren't.
Sorry to read of your so-called "friends." Similarly, I was there for my best friend when he was DF'ed, but he was not there for me when I remained inactive.
To be fair, he decided not to maintain contact during his problem, so that he could get reinstated. But the excuses run thin when shunning is not even required.
I would forgive him if he ever wakes up, realizing he is another dangerous mind-control cult victim.
i'm just curious to get people's views on this.. the bible students seem to start of as quite a liberal group under charles taze russell, albeit he had some whacky teachings going on.
obviously things began to change under rutherford.
but what decade did it become abundantly clear that the society was indeed high control religion or even labeled a cult?.
As answered before, I think it was a high control group when it enforced a recruitment work in order to sell literature. So that was pretty early on.
I would say "it was clearly apparent that Watchtower was a high control religion" when the 1975 excuse came out. At that time, they had recovered from Doomsday predictions before, but it would be hard to hide this past from the members. So they went into full mind-control mode and denied what they did and told members what to think about it.
so here is a tidbit you will all just love!.
we all are hearing of the trend right now to ¨downsize¨ the congregations...ie... eliminate by combining, in order to blah blah blah... .
here is what you didnt know: every time a congregation is dissolved, for whatever reason, including merging or dispersing, wt makes money!
Aren't they pretty much at the point where congregations do not keep more than a small amount of operating funds on hand, anyway? Don't they no longer save money in congregation funds for chairs or repairs but give it all to Mother who pays for such things (if ever)?
a growing discourse on this forum has been around what "the end" means.
as jws, many here spent varying proportions of our lives waiting for the end when an unsettling realization was that the end that approaches is more likely to be from old age than the world's end.
through the centuries, group after group, has claimed it has "inside" information on the end of the world, drawing in the desperate-for-comfort like moths to flames.
I have to agree with D.O.C. about the "Chicken Little" effect wearing thin when members declare that the sky is falling for over 100 years.
But somehow, Watchtower has been able to come through that before. Different this time is the 100 years anniversary of the beginning of the short time, and the age of Google for young ones. But a huge factor is the death of print.
The beginning of the end was abandoning of any urgency in the recruiting work. Regardless of what they say, the members see that it is unimportant to get literature into people's hands.
i believe the gb's takeover of the fds was an illegal coup - not illegal relative to the laws of land, but illegal according to jw "laws" or doctrine.. according to jw doctrine, the fds is god's channel of communication between heaven and earth.
before the coup, the fds was defined to be all the anointed on earth, and the gb was part of that group and merely the spokesman for the group - individual gb members having no more authority than non-gb members of the fds.. however, a few years ago, the gb, independently of the other members of the fds, decided that it alone was the fds.
that, to me, was an illegal overthrow of the body (fds); it was a coup.. suppose the u.s. president decided that he has all power, and that he removed the powers of the u.s. congress.
It's a cult.
The "leaders" were stuck with old doctrine that says anybody can be FDS.
Many rank and file, deliberate or not, decided to be FDS. Even though they had no real power, they were told they did have some. So yes, the governing body had to deal with these people.
Since it's a cult, the "leaders" got rid of the old doctrine that says anybody can be FDS and just tweaked it enough to say they can be anointed, but their rule starts in heaven- so shut up and follow the leaders.
It's a cult.
so i was reading the book of daniel, starting with chapter 4 (nebuchadnezzar's famous tree chopping/banding dream where the 7 times is introduced) but i noticed that when you don't cherry pick verses and just read straight thru - it really seems like some children's book that was poorly written.
even though the borg says that this book as written by daniel, chapter 4 is clearly written by "king nebuchad·nezzar to all the peoples, nations, and language groups dwelling in all the earth" after the tree chopping business.
) of the rest of the chapters seem to be written in 3rd person (odd, if you are writing about your experiences).
If the Bible was inspired, then we would not have "different" Bibles which depend on which particular books your beliefs accept. The accepted books should have offered something incredible ahead of time that was known to be ahead of time and immensely helped people- something about avoiding the plague or cancer, or even just a warning to save a hundred thousand children from a tsunami in 2004.
If I was 100% wrong, I would still not be wanting to base my life on what the Bible says when I read about slavery and men ahead of women and the reasons for killing individuals, groups, and whole nations.
those of us still attending meeting are actively encouraged to use out tablets or smartphones to direct people to jw.org.
how about, after doing the standard presentation casually say to householder, you can also look at this forum to read of experiences of life as a jw as well as the official version?.
obviously you need to be working by yourself or with a pimo jw..
I typed it, but don't see it above. If you work by yourself, don't bother to do anything like that.
Just tell people that might be the slightest bit interested something like, "I am just in it for family." Nothing else.
let's play devils advocate here.. put yourself in the governing body's shoes.
they are well aware of all the issues they are facing.
they know their numbers (they 'do the math' as they say in the us).
Good point, Flipper. The Mayan calendar expired and there was no apocalypse. So too, the Watchtower calendar has run out because of the grand promises made. They will not turn that around, they will just take all the money they possibly can before it all topples over.
those of us still attending meeting are actively encouraged to use out tablets or smartphones to direct people to jw.org.
how about, after doing the standard presentation casually say to householder, you can also look at this forum to read of experiences of life as a jw as well as the official version?.
obviously you need to be working by yourself or with a pimo jw..
How about, after doing the standard presentation casually say to householder, you can also look at this forum to read of experiences of life as a JW as well as the official version?
Obviously you need to be working by yourself or with a PIMO JW.
i'm an active elder, cobe, just got home from the meeting where i handled the treasures part and concluded by announcing a friend of mine has been d/f,.....blah blah blah...and over the last year have woken up.
i simply cannot spill my guts to my wife and children as it would be family suicide.
i have zero desire to bash, spread my feelings, or become an "apostate".
Only you can know how far to go. I will tell you that I needed out for my own mental health and my wife did not receive it well. She is still in more than a decade after I left, but I am so glad I left.
If I had kids, I would not have faded away, but would have offered a way for them to have a more normal upbringing by disassociating.
Regardless of your decision on how to go about this, you may want to shake loose of those elder duties.
