Posts by neverendingjourney

19

Wolves in sheep clothing

by Israel Ricky Gonzales in

i was baptized then i was 15 years old and just entering high school.

i had been a perfect jw teenager through out my high school years, although i craved to be a little bit worldly.

when i graduated high school, i moved out and got a job working with my older non-jw brother.

neverendingjourney

I was publicly reproved for drunkenness in my early 20s. I started dating a girl roughly two years later and her parents loved me at first until they got wind of this stain on my reputation.

They made it so difficult for us that I gave up on the relationship. Had it not been for that, I would have almost certainly married her. Oh well, road not taken and what not.

Sad thing was the congregations were littered with youthful "sinners" who either kept their behavior hidden or were given free passes, but I got drunk a few times when I was young and discovering what my alcohol tolerance was and had my reputation ruined as a result.

All's well that ends well, though.

58

My introduction and confession

by elderINewton in

jw
friends

well another big bad elder here just wanting to say sorry.. i'm sorry that so many were treated like crap, and shown that god's love is not to be found around jehovah's witnesses.

i'm sorry that inadvertently i've likely taught many to judge and as such see that racism permeates every corner of the jw world, else why else would someone be of the world, or even inactive.

i'm sorry i sat in on a jc, and voted to df.

neverendingjourney

Like my hero Isaac Newton, I'll always strive for truth and as such, I'll enjoy seeing how many I can bring with me, subtly of course.

Spurred by suggestions to this effect in WT literature, I was convinced during my JW days that Isaac Newton formed part of the uninterrupted FDS/anointed chain reaching back to 33 A.D. After I left, I realized his religious ideas were utterly insane.

There's a lesson to found here. One of the two most brilliant physicists to ever walk the Earth simultaneously held asinine religious views. How many batshit Witnesses could have possibly contributed something useful to society? After all, Newton proves holding insane religious views doesn't mean you can't be otherwise brilliant in a different field.

69

The 1995 Generation Change

by sloppyjoe2 in

jw
friends

i was just a teenager and have a vivid memory of sitting in a chair doing a microphone for the sunday meeting.

everyone was commenting that it didn't mean the end was far off, and it didn't change the condition of the dead, or the 144,000, or the trinity so we should still remain faithful.

this is my first memory as a kid being just a teen that i ever had a single doubt.

neverendingjourney

The 95 change was weird for me. I was 16 years old and in the middle of wholeheartedly embracing the religion. I would read all the magazines as soon as they came in the mail, so I was in all likelihood the first person in my congregation to find out about the change.

I called up an elder or two to discuss and they sort of got the idea I was an impressionable newb reading too much into things. I started discussing it at the hall and got weird stares from people.

When reality started hitting home for people, they sort of forced themselves to discuss it with me, but in hindsight it was obvious they were trying very hard to hide their disappointment.

I was under the wing of a young and extraordinarily strict JW elder. A few months after the change he got DF'd for cheating on his wife and running off with another woman. It was a loveless marriage and it seems pretty obvious to me now that the 95 change indicated to him that there was still time left before the end came, so he used that as an opportunity to get out from under that marriage. A year or so later he was reinstated, new wife in tow. I believe he's serving as an elder again.

14

I joined this site 13 years ago...

by Funchback in

hello, everyone.. as noted in the topic, i joined here 13 years ago.

i last posted here over 5 years ago.

i just now learned that this site still exists!

neverendingjourney

I can relate to your story.

I began waking up in the summer of 2003.

I became inactive in the summer of 2005.

I found this site in 2007 and have never looked back.

I still keep in regular contact with my Witness family or else JW-related thoughts would rarely cross my mind, but it was a long road getting there.

I was borderline suicidal when I realized this religion wasn't "the truth." As of 2 or 3 years ago I kept my JW past hidden from people. I speak about it freely now and the fear, shame and additional baggage is almost completely gone.

For people who are just awakening and feeling lost, there's hope out there. Things will eventually get better.

128

Looking Back In Retrospect To 1975...

by titch in

greetings, folks: so, it's been 40 years since 1975. and, if you were actively involved with the witnesses back then, the mindset of many was, that by early autumn of 1975, it would mark the anniversary of 6000 years of human existence.

and, the hope was then, that it would mark the start of the 1000-year of christ, from the heavenly realm.

but, looking back now, 40 years ago, in june of 1975, only 3 more months remained until early autumn.

neverendingjourney

I was baptized in 1995 when I was 16 years old. I was unaware of the 1975 fiasco. I don't believe a congregation was formed in my hometown until the early 80s. There were maybe one or two people who had personally experienced it and they were from out of town. They never spoke about it, though.

Some time after baptism, a Witnesses brought up the subject and explained it in terms of greedy Witnesses who invented this notion of the end coming in 1975 as an excuse to buy expensive items on credit thinking they wouldn't have to pay the money back. When the end didn't come, they stumbled and invented lies about their former brothers.

There was a lot of anger when I finally left the Witnesses and learned what had really happened. Those who left in the aftermath were universally maligned and painted as villains who were out to subvert the faith of others. It's truly remarkable how they managed to whitewash their history.

22

How the new US gay marriage ruling could cause trouble for the WTS

by sir82 in

jw
friends

here are a couple of ways that come to mind:.

-- suppose a married gay couple, or even one of the partners, starts studying the bible with jws and decides he wants to baptized?

would the jws require him to get a divorce?

neverendingjourney

Of course no JW elder would agree to perform the ceremony, nor would they allow the Kingdom Hall to be used for the ceremony. Isn't that discrimination? What would the legal consequences be if the JWs refused to sanction the union?

That's basically the slippery-slope argument evangelicals of all stripes have been making in response to the ruling.

In short, the law does not currently require that churches marry gay people no more than it requires that a Catholic Church marry a pair of Muslims.

But what about that bakery that was forced to bake a cake for a gay wedding? If you can force a bakery to bake a cake can't you extend that logic to churches and force pastors to marry gays? Can the government revoke a church's tax-exemption in order to force them to marry gays?

Well, in a word, "no." At least not yet.

Seems to me that the underlying paranoia is less about this particular court ruling than it is about secularization trends. It's not difficult to imagine a world where society would no more tolerate a church refusing to marry gays than it would it refusing to marry black people. We don't live in that world and it's possible we never will. Evangelicals do not have full confidence that they'll be able to stem the tide of public opinion, though.

9

30 most edited regular Wikipedia pages

by biometrics in

jehovah's witnesses topic made it to the list:.

http://i.imgur.com/7m2xgzz.png.

neverendingjourney

Surprised Scientology isn't on the list

If I remember correctly, Wikipedia banned a bunch of users who were constantly making edits to the Scientology page, accounts that were in some way linked to their headquarters.

9

Anonymous email arrived in my inbox! Advice needed please...

by Anon_SA1 in

jw
friends

hey guys!

i am not a jw, never been one, but linked to a born in jw via family.

last week i received an email from an anonymous person.

neverendingjourney

When I was a child, my Catholic aunt made me sit down and read some anti-JW pamphlet published by her church. It contained all sorts of "lies" such as how the Witnesses had actually predicted the end of the world in 1914, 1925 and some "nonsense" about 1975. I immediately dismissed it and went back to living my normal life. It wasn't until I was in my mid 20s that I began doing independent research and realized what I had read was actually correct.

I know it's not of tremendous use to you, but take that story for what it's worth. The indoctrination we're subjected to is very strong. In my case it took many years of suppressing doubts and some very specific circumstances to get me to entertain the idea that my beliefs were wrong.

Combating Cult Mind Control has the best suggestions I've ever read regarding how to attempt to get a JW family member to reason. There's probably no advice we can give you that isn't already in the book. I wish you luck.

35

THIS IS WHAT WITNESSING HAS BEEN REDUCED TO IN 2015

by steve2 in

threads on the newer jw face of public "witnessing" have shared in common the astonishment that jws safely park themselves behind their literature trolleys and exercise incredibly little contact with passersby.

whether the poster is talking about europe or the united states or australia, descriptions here are the same.. literature stands are protective sheilds behind which jws huddle, talking to each other, sipping on their espressos, whilst the disinterested world passes by.

neither the jws nor the passersby catch each others eyes.

neverendingjourney

I don't see what the problem is. Isn't this the same method Noah used to convince people the flood was coming? After all, he spent decades at it and made a grand total of zero converts.

8

Sometimes the most obvious connections are the most difficult to make

by neverendingjourney in

i had a sudden realization the other day, one that took me many years to make but that should have been fairly obvious in hindsight.

let me explain.. my parents are immigrants.

they moved to the u.s. when i was a toddler.

neverendingjourney

So true. From among the batch of kids my mom first met in the kingdom hall, three have done prison time and at least one of them is a registered sex offender.