I also tie frogs to wooden boards and send them sailing down small streams.
I pop the eyeballs out of the homeless.
I curse God to his face. I am WORSE than the devil.
LOL. I love all the comments on my site re: my most recent of articles. I GLOAT in my evil nature! HA HA HA HA!
Well, if you're captured by this silliness, you are a bit "off."
Let me tell you something.
In 1972 I looked up the JWs after reading "The Truth That Leads To Eternal Life," which my cat told me was the truth. (Not getting into that now).
I went to Bethel in November, 1974, to join the race haters, homosexuals, scrappers, many GOOD people, and bad-assed Knorr and Freddy Franz in their wonderful paradise in Brooklyn. I walked up to the top of the tower in the 124 Columbia Heights building and looked around and said to myself, "This is the only safe place in New York City!" :-))
But... for those who think I'm a hater...
1) I was never burned by a Jehovah's Witness, or the Watch Tower organization.
2) I enjoyed 7 of my 8 years at Bethel immensely, I actually wanted to stay and get married to (...) leaving that out to protect her.
3) I was not disfellowshipped... When I left Bethel in 1980, I was reappointed an elder in the El Segundo congregation near LAX airport. After about 6 months of deep thought, my conscience could not allow me to teach the writings of religious men who acted like bully children and had no real knowledge of scripture. I wrote MY crisis of conscience a year before Ray did, and published it worldwide. Ask Ed Gruss if you don't believe me.
4) NO JW ever said a truly hurtful thing to me, EVER. I love Jehovah's Witnesses, but their leaders belong in jail as far as I'm concerned. Sorry, I know too many of their dirty secrets. Someday I will tell the REAL dirt behind their personal lives. Sick, twisted stuff. But hey, someone has to aggravate me enough to do that. Let sleeping DOGS lie. I don't want negative thoughts ruining my day any more than you do. Besides, it's just too disgusting to tell. A lot of stuff Ray Franz didn't even know about.
5) the day before I left Bethel in 1980, I was appointed assistant pressroom overseer of all the rotary printing operations. I had printed several millions of their Bibles, and then became a floor overseer of all Bible printing in Brooklyn 3 years before.
In 1981 I turned in a letter of resignation, as I was already attending a great church. The pastor, Ralph Moore, a young surfer who had a real heart for God, changed my life by his honesty and personal humility. He actually taught me more about the grace of Christ, and it was a very happy time in my life.
I took almost a year off and didn't tell anyone in the church that I was a JW/ex-JW. I had to watch and see if they were phony, too. Turned out they were a great bunch of surfers and beach families, living in Manhattan Beach. I'm still renting the same place since I left Bethel, I love it so much here.
Hope Chapel was a seeder of new churches... Ralph Moore later established about 14 branches of the main Hope Chapel (technically a Foursquare Church). He is still in Hawaii, check it out HERE. QUICK FACTS ABOUT HOPE CHAPEL, and the churches main page. I learned what being a real Christian was all about. Surrendering your life to Christ. Only then do you receive the Holy Spirit. Just like in the first 5 chapters of Acts.
My former Bethel roommate, Robert Sullivan, came out to visit me from Bethel and ended up leaving Bethel and moving out here and renting another room in the big old house we live in on the Strand, built in 1934.
Next door to us is a house that in 1920 was built on a hill atop the Malibu mountains, built in World War II and was literally moved to this location so the U.S. government could place artillery against a possible invasion by the Japanese forces. The "Strand" that is the beach boardwalk in front of this old house (we don't have a garbage disposal, washer and dryer, and if more than 2 of my four roommates turn on their electric heaters at night, it blows the electrical panel switches). The Strand was actually built to accommodate the tanks that had to patrol the shore. This was the #2 target of the Soviet nuclear missiles during the Cold War, as El Segundo was the home of the defense industry, LAX airport, the sewage treatment plant for all of Los Angeles (that's not funny), and a large Chevron oil refinery that always has two or three huge oil tankers anchored about a mile out. Plus Panchos Mexican food and El Tarasco, where all the surfers hung out.
I live about 1000 feet away from about a dozen huge oil silos. Very comforting.
And of course, 15 miles from the hated home of the movie industry, Hollywood, a favorite target of any terrorist (at least after they got the latest hits on VHS). Once in awhile Southern Calif. Edison forgot to hose down the power lines that had to be done to remove the salt deposits on the power lines, and as soon as it became humid, a transformer would blow out and light up the entire street. We lit candles and celebrated like wild children on the beach, in the summer even going swimming in the dark naked, joined by the neighbors).
We became used to blackouts... one lasted two days. We just accepted it as a vacation and celebrated.
If you ask anyone who knows me personally, ask them if I am a bitter, angry person. I dare you.
Why should I be? I was NEVER burned by the Watchtower. I don't like poison in my mind. So I make fun of it.
Turned out I was the lucky exception. Most former Witnesses were treated badly, and some of them ARE bitter. And rightfully so! They were treated like pigs and tossed out. My family all got out and are happy Baptists again.
A year before Ray Franz wrote his expose' on the Governing Body in "Crisis of Conscience," I wrote the FIRST expose' of what had happened at Bethel, at least from an insider's experience. Ralph Moore was giving a sermon one evening, and mentioned the big printing operation of Jehovah's Witnesses, and how Hope Chapel needed to use their little printing press to spread the real gospel of Christ.
I talked to Ralph afterwards, telling him I had a story that had not been told by anyone (they were all too afraid or bitter to say anything publicly after leaving Bethel after the GB's purge of anyone who disagreed with their silly doctrines). Ralph, having the heart of a church planter and whose focus was on grace and forgiveness in Christ, was used to sending out people he believed were good pastor material, said he would print FREE 10,000 copies of my tract, "What Happened at the World Headquarters of Jehovah's Witnesses in the Spring of 1980?" (partially inspired by meeting Ed Gruss). I stayed up all that night and wrote the tract. I had to print it on the dinky little printing press though.
Hope Chapel never gave me a dime, but they gave me a life.
Thus began my ministry called "Bethel Ministries," my first newsletter was in 1982. Some of you still have a copy.
I was appointed as one of the several licensed Foursquare pastors at Hope Chapel, which had 2 to 3 thousand people attending. That way I could come under the umbrella of being a non-profit organization.
Later, I became assistant pastor of Hope Chapel in Venice, Calif. for a year, under Bob Mallord, preaching to the burned out hippies and buying them breakfast on the crazy Strand of Venice Beach. A short time later I was encouraged by the main Hope Chapel's new pastor, Zac Nazarian (Ralph had moved to Hawaii with his family to surf and start new churches) to start my own church with my group of ex-JWs I had come in contact with. So I became the pastor of Hope Chapel West Manhattan Beach about 1989. We had 35 people, about half were ex-JWS and the rest were local Christians from the neighborhood. Marcia Murray was my secretary, and still is after 30 years.
We rented out the local Manhattan Beach Property Owners' building on Sunday evenings, and (unknown to Foursquare, who never came to visit), I brought my blender and after my sermon I served up my famous Margaritas in the church kitchen. (I don't think Hope Chapel would have approved of that. :-) but hey, we were having the times of our lives.
We went out dancing at the nearby Radisson Hotel afterwards, mostly the girls and I. I was 39 years old and still a virgin, lest you suspect anything more.
Hey, I'm a ornery Okie, so many humorless JWs misread my writings as egotistical, but I never even took myself seriously. I was a 60s hippie turned JW (and converted my girlfriend, Renee, too). We just loved being alive and witnessing all the craziness of the world. I joined the JWs in 1972 because I was afraid of nuclear annihilation, as Cuba was about to launch missiles on the U.S. in what almost became WW III. Some of you youngun's have no idea how close we came to that in the mid to late 60s.
Khruschchev backed off and got his butt beat by President Kennedy, and they knew he meant business, so they took the missiles out of Cuba.
But I needed security and turned to God closer than ever (as usually happens in times of war).
I don't fault Witnesses for falling for all the same crap. We just didn't know the evil that lurked behind the leaders at Bethel. It was 3 to 5 years before I began to piece it together. You just have to see it with your own eyes, kind of like you just saw a ghost and no one believes you. But my stories are all true, and the first person to prove me wrong gets $1000 out of my own pocket. Give it your best shot. I'll even include one of my famous Margaritas.
