by jw 39 Replies latest jw friends
Here's the rest of my post...must have been too big to print in one go.
How different from the simple truths that Jesus taught! Sometime if you get the chance, read just Jesus’ words in the Gospels. It is well worth the effort. You will find a message of love and trust and hope. It is where I now put my faith and trust.
Ok...what keeps happening? I'm still missing the last question....last try....
Do you consider yourself a christian , agnostic or an athiest now and why? Christian... I lost faith in a fraudulant organization, but I did not lose my faith in God.
Coffee
What years were you an active Jw? still am.
When was the last year you attended a meeting? Still attend .
Were you a true christian or did you live a double life? I feel I am a true christian.
What turn you away from the WTS? I never was a WTS worshipper just a JW.
Do you consider yourself a christian , agnostic or an athiest now and why? Christian
I can identify with many of the things you wrote, coffee_black. Nice post.
What years were you an active Jw? Baptized in 1963 at age 11, and active until about 1996.
When was the last year you attended a meeting? Probably was The Memorial in '98 or '99. I really can't remember.
Were you a true christian or did you live a double life? I led something of a double life as a teen, but not much different than most JW kids, and far less a double life than most do. After that I was what you might call a liberal and very active Witness. I was appointed as a ministerial servant at age 20 in 1972, when the arrangement was instituted, and an elder when I was 26. Served as an elder until around age 41 or so, when I stepped down. What turned you away from the WTS? Many of the same things that disturbed coffee_black. I had long before realized that the organization was not particularly directed by holy spirit, and that it wasn't quite what it claimed to be, but I was giving it the benefit of the doubt. After I stepped down as an elder, and when the 1914 generation change occured in 1995, along with the sheep and goat changes, the King of the North disappearing and so on, I decided to really investigate my doubts. The end result was a total collapse in my belief in the WTS, followed rather rapidly by my loss of belief in the Bible as anything more than a human written book.
Do you consider yourself a christian , agnostic or an athiest now and why? I'm an atheist. There is no logical or scientific basis for belief in a god. All religion and belief in an invisible diety is a way of comforting ourselves in the face of an inevitable death. S4
What years were you an active Jw? 1983 - 2005
When was the last year you attended a meeting? 2005
Were you a true christian or did you live a double life? A faithful jw, no double life for me
What turn you away from the WTS? I know it isn't the truth
Do you consider yourself a christian , agnostic or an athiest now and why? agnostic. I have no interest in any religion now
What years were you an active Jw?
Too many.
When was the last year you attended a meeting?
Not long enough ago.
Were you a true christian or did you live a double life?
I was a fake christian, as all JWs are.
What turn you away from the WTS?
Got fed up with listening to the rantings of people like you.
Do you consider yourself a christian , agnostic or an athiest now and why?
I consider myself free.
What years were you an active Jw? 1960 as a child convert till 2004 - 44 years in the cult
When was the last year you attended a meeting? 2004
Were you a true christian or did you live a double life? I thought I was a true Christian till I found I was in a demonic cult
What turn you away from the WTS? UN, Bulgarian Blood deception, Mexico/Malawi, lies, deciet, the WTS is the AntiChrist
Do you consider yourself a christian , agnostic or an athiest now and why? Christian - unchurched now due to not desiring to waste anymore of my life believing lies
What years were you an active Jw? Born into the cult, left in 95/96
When was the last year you attended a meeting? 1996
Were you a true christian or did you live a double life? Double life
What turn you away from the WTS? I wanted control of my own mind.
Do you consider yourself a christian , agnostic or an athiest now and why? Athiest because it makes the most sense to me.
What years were you an active Jw?
1967 (baptized at 10) although they counted me as active since I was 5, when I first counted service time and gave talks in the Ministry School.
When was the last year you attended a meeting?
2006. (April, in fact. It's a long story.)
Were you a true christian or did you live a double life?
Interesting question. I know where you are coming from, but as long as I'm answering, I'll have to answer honestly. I was living a double life as a true Christian and as a faithful, but slightly self-righteous Jehovah's Witness. (My self-righteousness was based mostly on my need to be as busy as possible in Jehovah's service.) But I started to become a Christian in the Biblical sense of the word around 1978. I stuck with the Witnesses for another 4.5 years.
What turn you away from the WTS?
Ultimately, I'd have to say it was the study of the Bible. By now I would have turned away on my own, but at the time, I was "turned against" by a few people at the WTS headquarters who had assumed that I must be an apostate due to my friendship and association (including Bible study) with some people at Bethel who were dismissed, especially around 1980, two years before I finally left the organization. I had thought that it was my duty to be faithful to my original "vow" and do the best I could and wait on Jehovah, no matter what evidence I had come across. My friends at Bethel that I was closest to were not actually disfellowshipped. Two of them were dismissed from Bethel based on their work in the Writing Department. One was sent home, and although he got a job, he continued to work for the Writing Department. The chairman, Lyman Swingle, didn't have the same problem with them (or beliefs about them) that people like Karl Klein and Leo Greenlees had. The latter two had literally screamed and thrown juvenile tantrums over their work on some of the publications at the time. A brother who is currently in Writing, but was in the Service Department at the time, met me and told me that one person in particular had led a charge against me based on a kind of personal vendetta over a "promotion" at Bethel. And he was about to be sent home from Bethel due to the fact that his wife was missing too many days of work (sickness along with depression of some kind, I heard). I assume for many reasons that what this brother tells me must have been true, because I had already noticed that my public talks in several different congregations were attended by unscheduled circuit overseers on two occasions and by a conservative member of the Writing Department who also asked to work in service with me after the talk. (It was actually fairly rare in those years to see most any member of the Writing department in regular door-to-door service.) In my own congregation I was suddenly assigned 100% of the talks related to 1914 and loyalty to the organization. (Look at the regularity of these subjects in the KM and Watchtower's from late 1980 through 1982.) I was being assigned far more than my share of talks. And although not the Watchtower Study conductor, I had to conduct two long articles on 1914. The irony is that while I was being suspected of being an apostate, it was evidently more important to catch me in some apparent admission of "doubt" or "unbelief" than to worry about the congregation audience that they should ostensibly have been protecting from apostasy.
It wasn't doctrines, per se, because I always realized that we could be wrong for some temporary amount of time on doctrinal issues, as we had in the past. I never, at the time, would have made an issue of doctrines, per se, even after I found out that our evidence and support was seriously flawed. What bothered me most was a personal and direct knowledge that some brothers at the very highest levels, organizationally speaking, knew that at least some of what we were currently publishing was false and that quite a bit more was intentionally misleading.
I knew, for example, that our 1914 doctrine was not agreed with in full by 3 members of the Governing Body and 4, possibly 5, members of the Writing Department. After reading Ray Franz first book, I realized that there were still others I hadn't known about. I had worked fairly closely with one GB member who was always concerned with producing a "new light" understanding of the significance and order of the segments in Matthew 24, but he had never even hinted to me about at his belief that the generation of 1914 could potentially be moved up to the "generation who saw the sign in the heavens beginning in 1957 with the launching Sputnik". This brother's only son, also a Bethelite, would have been conceived at about the exact time Sputnik was launched. I had done research for this man and I never learned about what he was making of all his research until I read about it 6 years later. (I would have teased him about his own Sputnik launch in 1957.)
Do you consider yourself a christian , agnostic or an athiest now and why?
I am a Christian in that I do my best to follow the fundamental spiritual and ethical standards of Christ's teachings, and I do my best to promote such teachings by example.
What years were you an active Jw?
1974 to 1992
When was the last year you attended a meeting?
I think it was a district convention in 1993 +/-
Were you a true christian or did you live a double life?
Although at times I would say that I did indeed lead a "double life" by WTBS standards, I would like to add that in hind site I can say with certainty that JW's in general are not "true christians".
What turn you away from the WTS?
Doctrinal flip flops.
Do you consider yourself a christian , agnostic or an athiest now and why?
I would have to say Im agnostic. I have rejected the false teaching of the WBTS publishing corporation but have not adopted any preconceived notion of what is right or wrong spiritually.
