Alex Bogdanov
JoinedI am 30 years old and I am the author of "If Only". My parents are not JW. I started to study when I was 14, baptised when I was 15, became a pioneer when I was 17. I became a JW to study the bible not to follow someone’s leadership. I never gave up my old life and friends. I wanted to study the bible and go on the ministry but not to change into a thoughtless creature. I was questioning elders constantly and when I became a pioneer I wrote a letter to the Governing body with some questions that in my opinion needed to be looked at. When I was 17 I read the “Crisis of the Conscience” and discussed it with my circuit overseer. By the time I was 18 the elders and the circuit overseer hated me. I was a JW, but I had my own life and I continued to discuss with brothers and sisters touchy subjects. When I went to University and started to date a sister who was deemed to be a bad association I was stripped from being a pioneer and told that if I will continue with my behaviour I will be disfellowshipped. The funny thing is that there is nothing to disfellowship me for. Its been 12 years since and along the way I was threatened on a few occasions. They think I troll them, but I truly want to find out the answers to my questions. So why I don’t like the Governing body? I never believed that the New World will come in 2014. I didn’t see it in the Bible at all. I thought that in 2014 the Governing Body will apologise in front of everyone, admit their fault and instead of behaving like they have connection with Jehovah they will focus on studying the Bible. But, they decided to behave like cowards. Published another foolish book (God’s Kingdom rules) and made a new prophecy. I was disgusted. How vile they must be to continue their lies! Don’t they understand that their ideas affect millions of people? Sure, they do! If Satan exists, the Governing body are his mates. I wrote another letter to them asking them to study the Bible and stop creating philosophical ideas. But as usual I didn’t get a reply. I have a wife, half of her family are JW and half are not. I have a 2 year old son. And I am happy that my child won’t grow up amongst JW. Jehovah’s Witnesses are no different to other world religions with its dogmas and destructive philosophy. I am joining your forum because one of my friends, an inactive brother, told me that someone here is writing posts pretending to be me. If you want me to confirm that this is really me I have a public FB, IG and Twitter account for my book (@alexbogdanovuk). There you can message me. I will write a few sentences about the book and after about myself. JW are against my book, but a few JW secretly support me. My book is a fictional love story, but it is not a standard love story. In a compact publication I try to tackle the subjects of religion, philosophy, homosexuality. One of the characters is an ex JW. I chose to do this because I didn’t write this book for Jehovah’s Witnesses, but for people who are not JW. For people who don’t have JW family or friends the behaviour of Jehovah’s Witnesses is a bizzer one. I received a few reviews from non-JWs and they found the ex JW character fascinating. Some readers think that this character’s experiences are not real. But any JW will know that it is real. JW don’t like my book because the character is questioning the fundamental believes of the Organisation. If you want, you can read second half of chapter V from my book. That will be enough. That is the chapter that made JW very angry. In this chapter my character is going through many questions that all JW had at some point but couldn’t discuss them at the meetings. I don’t mind JW because some of them are good people. I still stay in contact with a few JW friends and they know all my thoughts about the Organisation. But I fully disagree with the Governing body.