I see High Dose recovered from her Euphoria.
The moment I knew it was crap....
by Brocephus 39 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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sd-7
I don't know if there was a particular moment for me. I had little warning signs that I picked up, but I ignored them. Growing up, there was always atalk or two that made me feel like we were being trapped inside this religion. The horror stories about people who leave--I always found myself thinking rationally, "It is possible to leave this place and not be raped and beaten to death by worldly friends. You just have to have a peaceful transition, a careful one." Perhaps in my head, I was already drawing up an escape plan without even knowing it.
But certainly, in reading the Bible, it was abundantly clear to me that the original Christians probably weren't anything like Jehovah's Witnesses. Apart from the glaring absence of Jehovah's name in the New Testament while it was every other word in the Old Testament, the sense of brotherhoood, true friendship, seemed more real amongst those men, less sterile and 'organized' than amongst the JWs. How often did YOU cry when a circuit overseer said he had to leave? Dry eyes everywhere.
The Revelation book and the other similar books (Daniel, Isaiah) were always a little boring. I think the thing I might've thought about was the fact that all these talks, conventions, and books were mentioned as being in fulfillment of Bible prophecy, yet...why aren't we still studying those books, those articles? Why doesn't anyone, anywhere, have a recording or a transcript of those talks? If they were so spectacular that God predicted them 2,000 years in advance, why are they not of paramount importance?
I also had a feeling they were guessing in some of the statements they made. And certainly, seeing that when the end didn't come as expected, they just moved their dates back as necessary, that had all the markings of a charlatan. But I never consciously saw it. It was just a little whisper in the back of my mind.
The thing that did it was when the woman I loved got DF'd. Once I saw just how cold people could be, I realized something was wrong. I drove past her once, a pregnant woman sitting at the bus stop in freezing cold at night, rather than giving her a ride home, because she was DF'd. I couldn't continue to believe that God would want me to do that to someone. Even when she was reinstated, I was told to keep my distance, and it was at that point that I knew it was crap. There was no scriptural basis for that reasoning that I could see.
It just snowballed from there.
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awildflower
I wish I could say the moment I knew it was crap was due to doctrine, but I was so naive to just believe everything I was told by the "slave". But when the "elders" took my minor child into a room for questioning WITHOUT the permission of even one parent or the knowing of his parents, I knew this was bull sh*& and illegal! It hit me then how dangerous this cult is/could be to minor children. If they could do that to a 17 year old boy, what could men do to my then 12 year old daughter?? My son didn't think twice about telling them no. That really scared me and for anyone who is still in, you should be afraid to.
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isaacaustin
They should just schedule restudying the Revelation Book till nobody attends any longer.
'Do a little good each day'
That would be doing a little good each day!
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WuzLovesDubs
Whats really pathetic is that I was getting red flags and warning bells that would have woken the DEAD only a couple WEEKS after starting to go to the meetings! Sick! It was summer and I was single and lonely all in love with the love bombing and was happy to have somewhere to go three times a week. So on a Sunday late afternoon after the WT study, when the sun was still up at 9pm, I went out to my car after the meeting and I went to put the visor down and into my lap fell an envelope. Inside was a cassette tape and a "transcription" of said tape with rapid fire writing and exclamation points and comments all over it...and my reaction was to pop it into the tape player of my car and listen to it on the way home! It was a recording of someone and their df'd brother talking to three elders on the PHONE about how the elders had wrongly disfellowshipped this individual and had broken about 15 different biblical and judicial committee rules in doing so and lied and on and on...it was extremely emotional for the two brothers, and the elders, I noted, were very cold and matter of fact about the whole thing and had no regrets or apologies. I didnt even know what DFing WAS!
So on Tuesday at the School meeting, I went up to one of those same elders, who was standing dead center at the hall in the aisle , and showed him the tape and said, "I found this in my car and...." the elder POUNCED on me, RIPPED the tape from my hand, GRABBED the TAPE and pulled it right out of the tape case...yard after yard after yard of it...all the while screaming "Dont EVER listen to or READ ANYTHING FROM APOSTATES AGAIN!!!" And he stormed down the aisle slam dunking the destroyed tape into the trash as he went by. I stood there TOTALLY embarrassed TOTALLY scared and everybody was looking at ME like I HAD DONE SOMETHING WRONG! I was like what the FUCK have I gotten myself into???
But then during the "congregation needs" part of the meeting, the brother "explained" that many such tapes and transcripts were distributed to cars in the lots and they encouraged the friends to make sure their vehicles were closed and locked and to throw away immediately any suspect articles they found on their cars NEVER examining them lest they be lured by the Evil Slave Class, and how such ones were disfellowshipped for this exact kind of behavior and this keeps Jehovahs Organization CLEAN....and I bought that. I BOUGHT THAT. And that was the beginning of many many many flags and land mines that I ignored.
I guess I wanted to believe it would save me...I really did.
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babygirl30
All the explainations of the 144,000...1914...607BCE...Nissan 14...blood - NONE of it ever made sense! I am NOT the smartest at 'math' as it is, but to have an entire Watchtower study article on the breakdown of how the society came to those specific dates or decisions- it was all too much for me. Since when does a DATE or PRINCIPLE need that much explaining?????? UGH! I used to seriously tune out on those Sundays! -hahahaha
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Brocephus
YUP, BABY GIRL welcome to the board. I saw your other post. Good luck moving on!
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Flowerpetal
I agree with all of you. But the Isaiah book really did it. Every other thought it seemed was an indictment against "anti-typical" Jerusalem aka "Christendom."
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ziddina
Wow... WuzLovesDubs, that's quite a story....
For me, it was the superstitious ignorance of the bible itself that woke me up. Once I heard Exodus 19: 16-19 read from the podium, and realized that neither the Israelites, nor their god, had a frikkin' clue that the mountain was, in fact, an erupting volcano... And the more I looked, the more I saw that convinced me of the primitive, ignorant nature of the authors of ALL of the Middle-Eastern religions...
Basically, I stopped being a Christian right there and then. After that, the only things that kept me in any religion [Jehovah's Witnesses...] were intimidation and violence.
But, since I was forced into the religion by my parents, hit, kicked, slapped and at one point knocked unconscious by my father, I was beaten to the point that I lost much of my innate freedom of choice - otherwise I would have cut and run before I was baptised at 17...
But I had to deal with the extra manipulation and dysfunctionality of my parents and their hidden agendas, over and above the diseased filth of the WTBTS...
Zid
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lostsheep82
I'm with you Dinah! That was my FORMOST proof we were the "truth" while going in service. It worked with my mom, so I followed suit, I'd ask the householder to get their own bible and 'proove' to them that their bible had God's name, thus a return visit, and a BIG atta boy from my parents. I was so good at convincing people!