Who REALLY believed in the idea of living forever on earth?? (page 3)

Doubting Bro

Of course I did. Why on earth would I put myself through all the hassle that being a JW entails without believing in paradise (as crazy as that is)

Designer Stubble

I bought it hook.line and sinker. I must say that I mainly focused on the first thousand years.

freemindfade

In my gut I never bought it, which depressed me.

Heaven

Of course I did. Children believe everything their parents tell them.

I also believed in the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and Santa Claus. When I was a child my Mom was getting involved with the JWs, but my Dad was not. We did actually celebrate Easter, Hallowe'en and Christmas when I was younger.

But then I grew up and realized a lot of my childhood was full of fantasy.

OneEyedJoe

Obviously as a child I believed it. As an adult I really wanted to believe it and tried hard to. At that point I mostly wanted to get to paradise to be free from all the JW nonsense.

The parts that made it difficult to believe (or at least difficult to be excited about) was that the current life-supporting capability of the earth and indeed the universe would only be sustainable through constant divine intervention. It just seemed too inelegant for a supreme being to have set it up this way. Then there's the issue with the fact that essentially everything that I enjoy would be in direct conflict with the image of paradise that we're sold. Many things I enjoy pollute (either directly or indirectly) and couldn't be allowed, eating meat would be a thing of the past, etc. I hate menial work, so the 'build and have occupancy, plant and eat the fruitage' thing never seemed like the great scenario that people acted like it was. With the promise that we'd all be happy, I often wondered just how much of a lobotomy god was going to have to give me to achieve that.

To those wondering why you'd do it if you don't really believe - it's all I knew. Plus, it may have been the carrot, but even if you don't like carrots, you still have to worry about the stick.

Ding

The prospect of living forever with loved ones on a paradise earth is what brings a lot of people into the WT.

The fear of not living forever with loved ones on a paradise earth is what keeps most JWs in line.

life is to short

Totally Why else would I have put my life on hold, not had kids, buy a home, go to school, live life. I put everything off for the new system. I believed everything that was told to me. If I questioned anything I was told my thinking was skewed. My whole life was the JW world and I thought everyone felt the same.

Now I look back and realize that I was so stupid. If everyone felt the same then why are there JW kids. Why did the parents not pioneer and go where the need was great, go to Bethel like I did. My husband kept telling me to keep my blinders on. One day they just feel off and I realized that no one else bought all the garbage that I bought otherwise there would be no kids at the meetings, no one would own homes, no one would be buying new cars because no one could really afford them living on part time minimum wage like we were.

I was just so stupid to keep my blinders on as long as I did,

LITS

nicolaou

Totally. When you consider that so many grown men and women still believe they are going to live forever how can there be any doubt that this is a cult?

I mean, how much more of a mind f**k do you need as proof that you were indoctrinated?

Terry

I can say now, with a lot of years under my belt, I wasn't born with the genetic makeup of person who plunges into belief. The stress and paranoia of imprisonment, I believe, drove me into the delusion as an escape.

I also simultaneously focused my entire attention on acquiring expertise in my religion. When I was paroled, I was railroaded into Regular Pioneer work.

There was so little of my life left with__time__to be a person, I was swallowed up in a kind of rushing torrent of servitude and commitment. Call it active inertia, if you will.

But eventually on a conscious level, I knew I had to escape the prison of belief or risk losing myself and my sanity. By physically uprooting my family and moving fifteen hundred miles away, I managed to salvage my mental health, create a meaningful career and break loose from the superglue of social engineering, which is the lifeblood of the JW scam.

Now what does all that have to do with my belief in LIVING FOREVER on a Paradise Earth.

Nothing and everything!

It was the "reason" I gave for doing what I was doing. But, there wasn't any reality attached to it. I never ever visualized experiencing it. I didn't long for it. I was not convinced of it intellectually.

I'm not very good at believing things by nature, you see. I'm skeptical of happiness connected to wishful thinking, I guess you could say.

Religion is a lot of wishful thinking, imho.

From my study of the Early Church Fathers, I do know that Papius (who interviewed the remaining eye and ear-witnesses of Jesus) related a belief in the 10,000 year reign of Christ on Earth.

What that means is beyond my reckoning. The Church held him to be dangerous to the faith and branded him a heretic!

Heck, I can identify with THAT!

blondie

I actually never wanted to go to heaven...for a visit maybe but I love it here on earth. If it were so wonderful, why did some of the angels leave.

This group, the Christdelphians believe:

http://www.christadelphia.org/archive/eternal.htm

It is a common belief that heaven is the reward of the righteous, but the Bible does not teach it. Jesus declared that "no man hath ascended into heaven" (John 3:13), and this was endorsed by Peter, who pointed to the fact that not even the righteous David had ascended thither (Acts 2:34).

What the Bible does teach, and that from Genesis to Revelation, is that man can attain unto an eternal inheritance, upon the earth. Read carefully Psalm 37, and note the emphasis upon the earthly inheritance of the righteous. Four times it proclaims that "such as be blessed" of God shall inherit the earth (vv. 9, 11, 22, 29). It contains such statements as "Evildoers shall be cut off; but those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth" (v.9); "the seed of the wicked shall be cut off" but "the righteous shall inherit the land, and dwell therein for ever" (vv.28,29). It proclaims the promise (later quoted by the Lord. see Matthew 5:5), that "the meek shall inherit the earth" (v.ll), and points to a time when "the wicked shall not be." That is not the case today, but the very reverse; but it shall be brought about at the second coming of the Lord Jesus.

Who REALLY believed in the idea of living forever on earth??

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