by minimus 44 Replies latest jw friends
I honestly have no idea WHAT the Kingdom Interlinear IS....and yes, i was born and bred in the org!! And because I was such a superficial JW anyways, the thought of digging 'deeper' into things never interested me. Just accepted what i heard or was told...and kept all 'doubts' to myself. It's crazy to think that I 'drank the Koolaid' and never questioned it - never!
Until NOW of course....but that is due to me being OUT of that org and THINKING more.
Never, I just couldn't do it.
B-O-R-I-N-G!!
Very funny Mrs. Jones
THey joked when we went to the amusement park that I would have a bound volume in my hands on the rollercoaster, nuff siad. I too did the Greek/Hebrew word thing. Gotta admit, people loved it till it started to disagree with the official line of the Gov/body. W.Once
Yes, I have.
Nevr read the yearbooks, but loved things like the Creator book and Books on prophecy. I would sit for hours reading stuff on the CD ROM, just researching stuff for the hell of it.
I went through phases, some years I would go into deep studying, others I would half a** it just to get it done. It was so boring at times. I remember once in a blue moon getting so inspired and worked up over a subject, I had all the Publications spread out in my room reading and researching it one by one.
Over all though most of us I think would admit we...
Just reading and underlining whatever it was we were studying. Often times I didn't even read the scriptures that were listed in the paragraph.
MINIMUS- Yes- I actually studied the publications and in the 1980's and before read EVERY Watchtower or Awake cover to cover. But by the mid 1990's I started losing interest and began not doing my " personal " study as much. Started having doubts that by the year 2000 I'd really get bored with it and barely ever pre-study. Just couldn'y buy into the scam anymore. Or the pretend fantasy
We may start with zeal but we end off boredom.
I studied them conscientiously. I remember reading the Truth book - not the one you're thinking about, but The Truth Shall Set You Free - and coming to the realization that while I believed what it said, I did not know the Bible well enough to support any of it. I started looking up all the scriptures and pawing through back issues of The Watchtower. There was no Index or CD then; you had to find the little index at the end of each year's volume and hope it let you to something.
Back then almost all the books back to some volumes of Studies in the Scriptures could be had over the literature counter. I got what I could and scrounged for the rest. I took notes. I filled notebooks with questions and quotations and thoughts. I still have some of these. Pitiful. I thought I was learning the Bible. I did learn the Bible, more in spite of the publications than because of them. I still believe the Bible, and I still read the publications though not with the unquestioning acceptance I had as a young man way back when.
Some things upset me. I remember sitting in a Kingdom Hall waiting for our turn to rehearse a convention part. I wandered down to their "library" and found a copy of Millions Now Living will Never Die. It was the first time I'd read it. I found the 1925 prediction in it. It shook me. That same year I read the Vindication books. Rutherford made a mea culpa statement in one of those volumes. It made me feel better. It's how I coped with the foolishness. Then, damn it! Fred Franz wrote Life Everlasting in the Freedom of the Sons of God. I was angry. He lived through the 1925 nonsense, knew it well. Here he was foisting on us the same idiot approach to the Bible that even Rutherford found discredited.
It took me another two decades to finally give up on Watchtowerism. Even then it was less a doctrinal issue than it was the overweening pride found among Watchtower writers who felt free to regulate the lives of believers. Unfounded statements on medical issues, divorce, and some other issues caused real hurt to brothers and sisters I knew. If a congregational elder had made false predictions, had forced his will on the brothers in place of sound Biblical judgment, had been dictatorial and saw himself as God’s voice for the last days, he would have been removed from his position and perhaps disfellowshipped. Explain to my why Franz, et. al. were immune?
As I look back, though I was very active for decades (Pioneer, Congregation Servant, Elder, Convention Administration, serving where the need is/was greater) I was on a slow and agonizing road out starting with that flash of insight back when I read the "original truth book". I resented the slavish and unquestioned devotion to Watchtower publications some had. God gave us a mind to use best we can, and, according to Paul, his voice to us in the last days is Christ's, not that of some deluded scrawny peanut-eater from Brooklyn.
