Posts by OnTheWayOut

29

Please explain!

by Freedom rocks in

hi please can someone explain this in laymans terms for me coz i be ever got it as a jw and still don't.

it doesn't make sense to me.

bible chronology indicates that god’s kingdom was established in heaven in 1914. this is shown by a prophecy recorded in chapter 4 of the bible book of daniel.. overview of the prophecy.

OnTheWayOut

Hi please can someone explain this in laymans terms for me ....

Not really. You get it pretty good. It doesn't really make sense when you break it down. Here's the closest I ever came to "laymans terms" :

A dream in the book of Daniel is supposed to have a second fulfillment indicating the time period when Jesus starts his rule on the earth, allegedly the year 1914. That is based on their claims of when events started before that dream took place and when they must come to an end by applying an unrelated rule from some other unrelated part of the Bible.

Really, it was worked backwards to come up with the long complicated current doctrine. But they already had chosen 1914. Originally, Charles Taze Russell believed that Christ had returned invisibly in 1874, and that he had been ruling from the heavens since that date. He predicted that a period known as the "Gentile Times" would end in 1914 (which was "one generation" of 40 years past 1874), and that Christ would take power of Earth's affairs at that time. He interpreted the outbreak of World War I as the beginning of Armageddon. He thought this would mark both a gradual deterioration of civilized society, and a climactic multi-national attack on a restored Israel accompanied by worldwide anarchy.

You can wiki search for "The Great Disappointment" and "Charles Taze Russell" to see the beginnings of these ideas. But the current doctrine was developed to support 1914 after the end of the world did not happen. They pulled silly Bible rules out of whatever they needed to arrive at 1914.

111

Is he interested?

by Sunnybear in

i met a wonderful man on match.com several months ago.

on our first date, there was amazing chemistry and we ended up having sex.

it was not planned, it just happened.

OnTheWayOut

This guy will only be happy if he converts you to JW. Run away! Run away!

If he is clingy and you feel he will be difficult to get rid of, then do as fastjehu says and meet with his mom just to tell her about the sex and all.

He is breaking their rules by seeing you. He is extremely breaking their rules by having sex outside of marriage, and each time adds to his guilt. I am okay with two people doing what they want, but Jehovah's Witnesses are not okay with that. He will only have a "relationship" if you become a Jehovah's Witness, and that's a doomsday cult that uses coercive mind control. Run away! Run away!

26

Im Writing An Ex-JW Self Help Book

by pale.emperor in

we all know waking up from the cult and trying to leave is a very scary and life changing experience.

for many it's traumatic and few find the transition easy.

we have to deal with families cutting us off entirely or keeping us at arms length at best, lies being told about us by the organization, ex members gossiping about us and finding ourselves in a world very different from what we're prepared for.. for this reason, i've decided to start writing a self-help book informing jws of what to expect when they leave the org.

OnTheWayOut

Hey, that's awesome. Writing was very important to my self-help.
I wish you well, look forward to reading it.

25

Did You Ever Find The Theolgy of JWs Reasonable?

by minimus in

jw
friends

when i was a young man growing up in the religion, i would try to defend whatever the understanding of a doctrine was.

i won a lot of arguments based on the idea that i knew better than anyone i was talking to and defended myself admirably.

(lol)....eventually, i realized i was in a cult but for many years i was a believer and i had faith that the gb knew more that i could understand..

OnTheWayOut

TD:
Not reasonable, no...
But there was an internal consistency years ago that is lacking today.

Exactly. That is it. It was unreasonable, but consistent. And that isn't true anymore.

25

Did You Ever Find The Theolgy of JWs Reasonable?

by minimus in

jw
friends

when i was a young man growing up in the religion, i would try to defend whatever the understanding of a doctrine was.

i won a lot of arguments based on the idea that i knew better than anyone i was talking to and defended myself admirably.

(lol)....eventually, i realized i was in a cult but for many years i was a believer and i had faith that the gb knew more that i could understand..

OnTheWayOut

I was recruited at a desperate time in my life. Jehovah's Witnesses came along when I was most vulnerable and said I was looking for answers to life's deeper questions and that God had a purpose for me.

I cannot speak for all former believers about why they could not see past the illusion. I was willing to keep studying their doctrines until I saw the illusion only. I needed the illusion to be real. I was looking for validation, a reason to live.

Even then, "the truth" seemed so bizarre.

Looking back, I've made some realizations. The Watchtower organization told me they had all the answers to the questions I was asking. The way they did that was that they provided the wrong questions. They told me I was seeking a deeper spiritual truth when all I really sought was an ordinary truth. I hadn't actually started pondering, "Where does life originally come from and where are we going after this life?" I simply wanted to know, "Who am I?"

When I was learning doctrines, sometimes it seemed that it was necessary to do Biblical gymnastics to make it all work out. A dream in the book of Daniel is supposed to have a second fulfillment indicating the time period when Jesus starts his rule on the earth, allegedly the year 1914. That is based on their claims of when events started before that dream took place and when they must come to an end by applying an unrelated rule from some other unrelated part of the Bible. But if I wanted to see only the illusion.

I bought it. But NO, it never really seemed reasonable. I just figured that the "real truth" was unreasonable by my standards.

12

Everything I once knew as a JW, is now wrong.

by fulltimestudent in

jw
friends

just had 2 nice witnesses at the door.

without boring you with all the to-ing and fro-ing.

i invented a friend who became a witness back in the early 1950s, this friend tried to get me to become a witness, because his teachers father (a leader in that congregation) told him that the big a was coming in 5 years (which was true).

OnTheWayOut

Is it something of a miracle that every last frigging thing they once believed was wrong and every last thing they changed is completely different but somehow still wrong?

8

I thought all "false religion" had to be destroyed first?

by stuckinarut2 in

it struck me that the organisation has taught that before jehovah's people would be "attacked" by the governments, all of "babylon the great" would have to be destroyed first?.

yet, what do we see worldwide?

governments of all sorts have either already, or are in the process of massive investigations and enquiries into the organisation!.

OnTheWayOut

Well, since they never got anything right, is anyone surprised that they are revising this too?

113

No Bible = No God?

by menrov in

some doubt about the bible completely, some partially.

what if the bible turns out to be a product of humans, nothing divine.

would you still believe in a creator?.

OnTheWayOut

I think a root difference here with believers and nonbelievers is summed up by Carl Sagan above.

A deep-seated need to believe that the Bible is God's Word leads to closed minds. The same people with that need, were they born into Buddhism or Islam, would have completely different mindsets on their need to believe.

Some are a little bit more open and accept that the Bible may be Man's Word, but still have a deep-seated need to believe that a god created everything. We can find these people in varying opinions on whether the god is all-knowing and benevolent or just started it all and left us to our own devices.

Nonbelievers for the most part do not have such a deep-seated need. The likes of Perry will argue that, but if legitimate proof actually showed up that a higher intelligence created life on earth, nonbelievers would examine it for validity, but would not have anything like a faith-crisis over it. They would incorporate the legitimate proof into a new understanding of how we came to be.

113

No Bible = No God?

by menrov in

some doubt about the bible completely, some partially.

what if the bible turns out to be a product of humans, nothing divine.

would you still believe in a creator?.

OnTheWayOut

Perry, the scholars do not agree on this. I am sure you can link many quotes from those with degrees related to accepting theology that agree with you, but there are many scholars who do not believe what you say. You probably don't define 'scholar' the way educated people do. Most scholars are atheists nowadays, so where do you categorize them to say all scholars agree?

There are many things in the universe we don't understand, but we invented this "God" snd placed him where we don't understand. At first, he wasn't outside of our realm until we got educated enough to know what the 'heavens' are. We continued to have our God-of-the-gaps. Now that we understand enough about time and space, we removed God from it, but keep him in it at the same time. Its a great story with not a shred of reality found. There are wondrous things out there we don't understand, but the God of the Bible is an invention of men and isn't out there.

You are misleading, being dishonest to try to wedge a slight doubt about what is unknown to Man into a god that I (and others) don't understand when you don't even believe that yourself- you only accept that God is fully the one that your brand of Christianity says he is. So you cannot have your cake and eat it too.

113

No Bible = No God?

by menrov in

some doubt about the bible completely, some partially.

what if the bible turns out to be a product of humans, nothing divine.

would you still believe in a creator?.

OnTheWayOut

Also I asked before Perry - The bible says god lives in a specific place - HEAVEN. DId HEAVEN exist before god, is it co-eternal with god, did god make heaven himself, if so when did he make it? How long was he around before he made heaven? If he was COMPLETE in himself, why did he need heaven?

Hey, God exists outside of space and time so that universal laws and beginnings do not apply to him, but if it is convenient, then he has a physical place of "dwelling." If it is not convenient, it is a metaphor.

It's all so simple. Just like the Bible. It's very literal until it is demonstrated that it cannot be literal, then it is symbolic. It is scientifically accurate in its literalness until it is not, then it was speaking metaphorically.

Jesus was not "created" but is part of that Trinity....unless you refer to other scriptures that suggest otherwise, then some part of it is symbolic....depending on which doctrine Perry or others want to believe in.
It's all so simple. Where is the argument?