Posts by neverendingjourney

107

Will firing the DOs be the first step to a new Watchtower?

by Juan Viejo2 in

against my better judgement, i've decided to share the following as a response to guy pierce passing and the announcement of the elimination of district overseers later this year.. late in january (2014) i got an email from one of my contacts (a fader) who served at bethel for several years, but is no longer at wt hq.

he still has a lot of close contacts within the service department and in other departments at patterson and knows people in all of the ny offices.

i kept this email set aside on a flash drive and haven't shared it with anyone - figuring i'd publish an article about it later this year when i had more time to do it right.

neverendingjourney

If you stick around long enough, you'll see a pattern here on the board. Every now and then a stir is created by people who post news they received from inside sources regarding upcoming changes. Most of the time it turns out to be wishful thinking and hyperbole. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather they pass along the info than not, but readers should to be shrewd enough to take such posts with a large grain of salt.

I don't think it's necessarily malicious. When I was a young ambitious JW a CO shared a confidential inside scoop he'd gotten from his son who was a bethelite in Brooklyn. The society had decided to stop printing deluxe bibles, so I should take advantage and order one or two while I still had the chance. Before long, everybody in the congregation had heard the rumor and it spread quickly. Turns out the society had decided no such thing. Some 10 years passed and they were still printing deluxe bibles. For all I know they're still printing them.

JWs lead a boring monotonous life and any "inside scoop" can quickly morph and take on a life of it's own. Eventually, some of those rumors end up on this board for us to read.

16

Why do "Awake" vloumes only start at 1970 on computer disk?...interesting!

by Witness 007 in

yet watchtowers go way back to 1950's....i picked up three awake volumes 1967-1969 i was struck by the poor science {aluminium is posion}, demon articles and anti-organ transplant articles.

also much was said about 1975 being the end of the system and "the generation.

" it feels like fred franz was writting alot of these which now is plain embarrasing and better left un-published.. .

neverendingjourney

What gets me about the "it's old information so I don't care" mindset is the double standard.

They'll happily denounce the Catholic Church for its 500 year old crimes (Inquisition, treatment of Galileo, etc.), but their own religion should not be judged by crap they wrote 50 years ago.

11

Interview with an "Unbelieving Mate" (UBM): Gary Neal

by garyneal in

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neverendingjourney

Now that I think about it more, most of the UBM's that I can recall were always the husbands.

There was a recurring pattern in my area with recent female converts with UBMs. They would often talk about their husbands as these terrible monsters who persecuted them for their faith, but almost in every case when you actually met these men they were very normal and even docile. You could see the embarrasment in some of these women's faces when their UBM attended meetings. Lots of these women (like a lot of JW converts) were mentally damaged and were looking for sympathy.

There was this one lady whose husband eventually became a witness. I remember on one occassion over lunch a few witnesses asked the husband how he could have been so cruel to his wife before he became a witness and he was dumbstruck. He didn't know his wife had been spreading these lies about him and she looked like she wanted to crawl under the table. He eventually became an elder. The one who actually ended up on the receiving end of the congregation's empathy was the husband because he was a stand up guy married to a crazy gossip.

23

JWs - A View From Outside

by Joe Grundy in

jw
friends

i never was a jw (i make this point in - almost - every post) but having been brought up ('raised' for our us cousins) in a non-conformist fundy sect with 'rapture' aspirations, it wasn't that different.. i still have extended family members in it, or in that mindset, but we rarely discuss religion.

in particular, my sister and bil lost their son (my nephew) some years ago when he was just 13. their comfort is that he is in a 'better place' and i don't want to challenge that to them.. i keep up with all things jw here in this forum and maintain my academic interest and these are just my thoughts as an outsider, for what they are worth.. ime, those people who have heard of jws tend to lump them in with mormons and other crazies and have no knowledge or interest in them - other than to warn neighbours when they are about.. where i live should be prime 'witnessing' territory but they rarely come round, even in the recent leafletting campaign.

they are not as effective as the people who regularly call with the latest menus from the local curry/chinese/kebab houses.. on the occasions when jws have called, despite invitations to come in and have a cup of tea, etc., none has ever wanted to engage in conversation, far less progress to an invitation to a kh meeting or start a bible study (and i always present myself as an 'imterested householder').. my conversations with people in general and friends in the real world lead me to conclude that few people have heard of jws, those that have regard them as a minor irrevelant nuisance and that there is no interest in their message or beliefs.. a few months ago i did a 'drive-past' of the million pound seafront property in bangor, north wales that wt recently bought for use as a 'translation office' (ha ha!).

neverendingjourney

They are at best a minor footnote in history.

I was terrified at first that people would find out about my JW past and would be able to deduce what a weird and awkward upbringing I had. It was a surprise to learn that for the most part people had very little to no idea what it meant. Many simply didn't care. They don't have the context to be able to appreciate what it fully means.

Losing the fear of having people discover I was once a JW was a big step forward in my recovery.

40

Armageddon will be here in less than 4 years!

by hoser in

jw
friends

that's the word according to my mil.

mrs hoser is starting a new career and the college and work training will take her four years to complete.

her mom is giving her a hard time telling her that the system will be over before she graduates.

neverendingjourney

That's great news! My car loan is for 6 years!!! I end up saving a lot of money!

In the late 90s I followed the WT's recommendation and enrolled in a technical course of study. I took out some student loans and one of the options was a graduated repayment plan where the monthly payment kept getting bigger as time passed. I felt I was getting one over on them by agreeing to it since Armageddon would arrive before I finished paying my loan. Five years later I ended up rolling it into a student loan I had taken out to pay for a legit college education. Since it got consolidated into my college loans, I will probably end up paying three times the value of the loan by the time I'm done. They give out the worst advice when it comes to higher education and vocational training.

40

Armageddon will be here in less than 4 years!

by hoser in

jw
friends

that's the word according to my mil.

mrs hoser is starting a new career and the college and work training will take her four years to complete.

her mom is giving her a hard time telling her that the system will be over before she graduates.

neverendingjourney

In 1969 they said I would not graduate from high school, but I did and now I am retirement age.

In 1941 the Watchtower published the aptly-named children's book entitled "Children." The book admonished kids to forego thoughts of marrying in this system because the end was near, close enough to where it didn't make sense to burden themselves with marital responsibilities. For some years marriage was frowned upon and seen as a sign of spiritual weakness. It wasn't until Nathan Knorr's marriage in 1953 that this policy and outlook was reversed.

A 10 year old who received that book in 1941 would now be 83 years old. Hopefully they didn't follow the book's advice.

59

Is Anthony Morris III gay?

by Calebs Airplane in

jw
friends

why else would he constantly bring up "gay-inspired" clothing when speaking to such large audiences?.

nothing wrong with being gay.

but he should just come out of the closet already and stop all this stupidity... just saying.. .

neverendingjourney

Did a tight-pants epedimic break out in JW-land in the past decade? If so, I'm almost sorry I wasn't around to see that. I said "almost."

Seems like a pointless thing to get worked up about.

50

My family has known I'm an apostate

by cognac in

jw
friends

i found out that my husband has not only gone to the elders, but has been going to members of my family about me over a period of a few years.

this piece of news is just so depressing.

i've been wondering how my family knew i didn't go and thats why so many of them have becoming more and more distant.

neverendingjourney

It's complicated. I betrayed my best friend by turning him in to the elders. Twice. The second time resulted in his being disfellowshipped.

Thankfully he didn't hold it against me because he knew I was coming from a good place and that I was deeply conflicted about how to proceed. We've both been out of the JWs for a while now and our friendship is still strong 10+ years later.

I remember being completely conflicted about how to proceed. At the time I felt I was in a position of having to either betray God or my best friend. The indoctrination compelled me to behave in a way that I would never have acted otherwise. The few weeks leading up to when I finally turned him in were horrible. I think I lost something like 20 pounds in five weeks worrying myself sick over the situation.

38

US Zone visit: disappointing, depressing, discouraging

by sir82 in

jw
friends

i will have plenty of "snark" to post later on, but please indulge me while i get this out of my system..... suppose you are the leaders...yes, the leaders...there are only 7 of you...for the one true religion in all the universe.. jehovah the god of the whole universe speaks to you, you alone, out of 7 billion+ people on teh planet.. you have an opportunity, thanks to the advancements in technology, to speak to 750,000 of your followers "live", and another 750,000 or so within 24 hours.. 1.5 million people!

hanging on your every word!.

this is the first time in history you can simultaneously, or nearly simultaneously, address so many of your adherents.. what message are you going to present for this special occasion?.

neverendingjourney

It's interesting to take a step back and see when things really got off the rails. As far as I can tell, this general attitude developed in the early days of Rutherford's reign. He was in a power struggle and was fighting off massive defections. He chose to purge the ranks and increase the control the religion had over its members in an effort to solidify his hold on power.

By the time the GB was formed in the early 70s, it was composed exclusively of men who had served under Rutherford and had adopted his view. Most revealing is a quote from Crisis of Conscience where Ray Franz quotes from GB meetings where the prevailing thought was that "brothers couldn't be allowed to decide" on various issues lest it lead to a complete collapse of morality (or something like that, it's been a few years since I read it).

What you have today is a group of men who came up under the tutelage of a group of men who learned from Rutherford. The groudwork was laid nearly 100 years ago and Rutherford's choices continue to impact millions till this very day.

23

Millerites, Jehovahs Witnesses and Purple Triangles

by Simon in

i came across this after posting another iq video to a different topic.

interesting how much the jehovahs witnesses are featured ... but it is because they are a millenial cult with failed rapture prophecies:.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chug6f0tnfg.

neverendingjourney

For us Yanks, a different YouTube video along the same line. Long but worth it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_c-PdT0SsE