by minimus 51 Replies latest jw friends
Mouthy: I am so bitterly angry with them for their treatment of you...
Lone: Thank you for your post.
I began to doubt most seriously as I came out of the water, having just been baptized, at 9 years old. I expected to suddenly "know" God in a new way, feel Him in a profound way. Instead I was only aware of being hustled along through the production line, no one looking at me, no one treating this moment like anything other than the cattle prodding it was.
I was sitting in the book study and we were covering the part of the Daniel Book that discusses all the different kings of the north and kings of the south. I couldn't figure out what basis they had for saying that there was more than one king of the north and king of the south. I thought the Bible was supposed to be easy to understand, and Daniel only mentions these kings in the singular. I realized that these explanations didn't come from the Bible and were not even logically sound.
back in the early 70's we studied a few books about the minor prophets that I sorta found interesting. It was almost like the WTBTS was still wanting to take a stab at theoretical theology back then. I guess after '75 all the typical and anti-typical stuff went out the window. But when one totaled up what was taught it was evident they were getting ready for something big to happen soon.
The stuff I looked at in the early 90's was pure drivel. Bad enough to bore me right out of the "truth"
~Hill
Provable lies by elders
UN/NGO
Hemoglobin-based products made from stored blood are allowed but still saying that blood cannot be stored
consistently............................
*** w93 1/15 p. 5 ‘Caught Away to Meet the Lord’—How? ***
The
Watchtower has consistently presented evidence to honesthearted students of Bible prophecy that Jesus’ presence in heavenly Kingdom power began in 1914
*** jv chap. 28 pp. 631-632 Testing and Sifting From Within ***Something else that was seen as a possible time indicator involved the arrangement that God instituted in ancient Israel for a Jubilee, a year of release, every 50th year. This came after a series of seven 7-year periods, each of which ended with a sabbath year. During the Jubilee year, Hebrew slaves were freed and hereditary land possessions that had been sold were restored. (Lev. 25:8-10) Calculations based on this cycle of years led to the conclusion that perhaps a greater Jubilee for all the earth had begun in the autumn of 1874, that evidently the Lord had returned in that year and was invisibly present, and that "the times of restitution of all things" had arrived.—Acts 3:19-21, KJ.
Based on the premise that events of the first century might find parallels in related events later, they also concluded that if Jesus’ baptism and anointing in the autumn of 29 C.E. paralleled the beginning of an invisible presence in 1874, then his riding into Jerusalem as King in the spring of 33 C.E. would point to the spring of 1878 as the time when he would assume his power as heavenly King. They also thought they would be given their heavenly reward at that time. When that did not occur, they concluded that since Jesus’ anointed followers were to share with him in the Kingdom, the resurrection to spirit life of those already sleeping in death began then. It was also reasoned that the end of God’s special favor to natural Israel down to 36 C.E. might point to 1881 as the time when the special opportunity to become part of spiritual Israel would close.
***kachap.11pp.187-188par.7"HereIstheBridegroom!"***began going forth to meet the heavenly Bridegroom in the year 1874, as they believed him to have arrived in that year and to be from then on invisibly present. They felt that they were already living in the invisible presence of the Bridegroom. Due to this fact, when Charles T. Russell began publishing his own religious magazine in July of 1879, he published it under the title "Zion’s Watch Tower and Herald of Christ’s Presence." He had already become familiar with Wilson’s TheEmphaticDiaglott, which translated the Greek word pa·rou·si´a as "presence," not "coming," in Matthew 24:3 and elsewhere. The new magazine was heralding Christ’s invisible presence as having begun in 1874. This presence was to continue until the end of the Gentile Times in 1914, when the Gentile nations would be destroyed and the remnant of the "chaste virgin" class would be glorified with their bridegroom in heaven by death and resurrection to life in the spirit. Thus the class pictured by the five wise virgins would enter through the door into the wedding.
kachap.11pp.209-210par.55"HereIstheBridegroom!"******
In the year 1943 the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society published the book "TheTruthShallMakeYouFree." In its chapter 11, entitled "The Count of Time," it did away with the insertion of 100 years into the period of the Judges and went according to the oldest and most authentic reading of Acts 13:20, and accepted the spelled-out numbers of the Hebrew Scriptures. This moved forward the end of six thousand years of man’s existence into the decade of the 1970’s. Naturally this did away with the year 1874 C.E. as the date of return of the Lord Jesus Christ and the beginning of his invisible presence or parousia.
Mouthy, Nice picture. I'm fuming at the masogonistic way you were treated. What pigs. (No offense to the real animal porkers).
Mouthy, and you still are a flirt.
Mouthy, and you still are a flirt. TUT! TUT!
For me it was several things over time, but a few stand out:
1. In the late 1980s I was chair of an appeal committee assigned to look into the appeals of eight people disfellowshipped by a special committee looking into problems in the Ogdensberg, NY congregation. It was obvious these eight had been DFed to get rid of "troublemakers." NONE of them had committed a DFing offense. We wrote the WTS disagreeing with the DFing action, and providing over 30 pages of documentation in every case showing there was no scriptural grounds for the DFing.
The WTS upheld all of the DFings, and I realized immediately that there was no Holy Spirit involved in these decisions what-so-ever!
2. A NPR broadcast on continuous ice core drillings in all three of the major ice shelves that could be counted like the rings on trees and all dated back 130,000 years or so. Absolute proof that there was no Flood, no paradise earth under a water canopy, etc.
3. The 1914 Generation change in the mid-1990s. In the midst of the sheep and goats being seperated change, the turn about on going to college and the disappearance of the King of the North, I came to the conclusion that the brothers leading the WTS didn't know jackshit!
4. Reading the book of Genesis without WTS blinders or filters on my eyes. By chapter 22 I was absolutely certain I was reading a mishmash of mythology.
S4
The first time somebody made me "use my brain", was in 1994.
I traveled to NJ for a seminar, and I started talking about the bible with a guy that I met there. He asked me if I was "saved". I borrowed his bible (he had a copy of a Reina-Valera version), and I showed him some specific verses I knew from James, about "faith without works is dead". I thought that I was teaching him about the bible!!! :) He grabbed it, and then showed me dozens of verses from Romans, that showed me that Faith was more important! Then, I started noticing that I didn't knew about the bible as much as I thought...and started reading the context!
As a good WT member, I suppressed all my doubts for years, even when I saw discrepancies between what the WT says vs. the instructions I received as an Elder.
In the beginning of 2007, I started doing a reserch of information for a travel to Europe. I don't know why, I started researching about Jerusalem in Wikipedia, and I noticed the destruction of Jerusalem's date of 587BC by Babylon. I started researching every book and encyclopedia that I found for weeks... The 607BC date had no base, so the 1914, 1918, 1935... all is a fairy tale...
The rest is history...
I just didn't care if it was the truth or not in 1973. I just wanted a year or two of relief from the "TRUTH". I had been so enslaved by it from youth that I just wanted a few years of freedom. It took a few years to realize that it was a bunch of crap. There wasn't any paticular doctrine or event that changed my view, it was all the stuff I read on the internet that cleared my mind of any guilt I had from leaving. I moved to DC in 1972 to get away from it all and moved back in 1973 after my JW wife divorced me. I married a worldly woman 33 years ago and have been OK since.
Ken P.
