If you were a Witness, when did you realize the Governing Body was apostate? (page 2)

When they claimed they were a representative for the F&DS and that they didn't even know who the F&DS were. Didn't sink in right away . . . actually took about two years, but the constant push to the 'publications published by the F&DS' and the 'obey the GB' mantras started to get annoying. When marital problems started in, I did all sorts of research into the 'scriptural reasons for divorce' and found continuous misapplications to Jesus' words, and strangely, three odd rules the WTS attached to Paul's words at 1 Cor. 7, that is, separation is permitted when there is 1) willful non-support, 2) spiritual endangerment, and 3) extreme physical abuse. None of these are supported by scripture. This just lead to one issue after another, and to me actually reading the Bible with the intent to read it without the WTS interpretation.

Kojack57

When I read COC and then I read " In search of Christian freedom" my eyes where forever open to the "Truth about the Truth"

Kojack

shepherd

There were always things that did not add up, and I think most thinking JW's have these, but we were trained to put them to the back of our minds. However, the Daniel book made me realize I was being conned. The description of the 1260 days being from one convention in 1919 to another in 1926 was hard to believe, but when I noticed the actual dates of the conventions were ommited I decided to check because if it were true it would be impressive (I also wondered why a day in Daniel was a year when it suited them, and a literal day when it didn't). However, on checking I was shocked to see a variation of 20 or more 'days'. Would God have got the number of days wrong? A realization occured - not only were the GB wrong, but they knew they were conning me! Waiting for new light is one thing, but this was not a misunderstanding, this was fraud.

Once I read COC, and I related to almost everything written there, the chains were forever broken. I was free of this lying cheating GB.

panhandlegirl

When I read in the WT that Jesus was mediator for only the 144000 and not the "other sheep." They may have always thought that, but they had never

said it openly,as far as I knew. When I read that I knew they were lying. I knew then that I did not belive anything they said. Later, after reading CoC

and the way they managed to get rid of Ray Franz, I wanted nothing more to do with them.

Bubblegum Apotheosis

Just recently, I had my doubts kick up in the last ten years, but not to the extent I see now. Good question asked by you!

Phizzy

As a born in, I struggled with a lot of the teaching from a very early age, but I was more or less convinced it was God's Organization, primarily because it had His name on it, so I thought "He wouldn't allow that Name to be used by a false religion".

It was the old "wait on Jehovah" crap.

Little did I know that other Churches used it in their title. I stopped going DtoD because I could not teach 1914 when I found it is not in the Bible , but I still went to Meetings, finally it was the Governing Body demanding what I saw as worship for themselves, and every week the demands got more shrill.

I do not understand why they do it, they are not even subtle about it now, why should anyone be loyal to seven old farts he has never met ?

jemba

Poor George, you really are a saint to keep going for your wife.

JCs where the elders just cant mind their own business and disfellowshipping breaking up families did it for me but took another decade to be 'preached' to by a workmate who has thoroughly researched Witlesses and told me some rather disturbing truths like about the UN and how 1914 cant be proved, then I came to JWN.....the rest is history.

Thankyou JWN!!

irondork

Even as I was walking out the door of the kingdom hall and writing my disassociation letter, I still believed the WTS to be Jehovah's hand picked organisation - gone awry, like the ancient Israelite nation. I was still fully indoctrinated but I couldn't stay there under the circumstances. It was gut-wrenching.

I suspected there must be other christians who wanted to remain christians who might have left the organization for similar reasons, so I started searching the internet for support. That lead to JWN, which led to reading CoC and ISoCF... and my eyes were opened.

I never learned the truth about the truth until after I left the truth in search of the truth.

What a journey! It's been worth every agonizing, enlightening, tearful, refreshing moment!

Ucantnome

If you were a Witness, when did you realize the Governing Body was apostate

"Now that I've been out for a while, I can see there's a whole damn zoo in there and everyone inside is afraid to talk about it."

It started for me with the summer assembly of 1993 and the watchtower the following february about the change to the sign of the son of man.

Your comment "there's a whole damn zoo" made me laugh but it is true that now there are many more things that stop me being part of the organization.

Reading on this site has helped me to understand more of why i left. Basically it is was the generation teaching.

This teaching altered my life. Believing that the generation that saw 1914 and were old enough to understand it would not pass away before the end of this system would occur made me make decisions that i would never have made had i not had faith in the good news that we preached.

Preaching the resurrection of Jesus is life saving, I believe, whereas preaching about 1914 in my view isn't. In placing faith in the good news about 1914 and the generation that would not pass away I think caused some to stumble. The apostle Paul warned about going beyond the good news that he was preaching. That's my view.

If you were a Witness, when did you realize the Governing Body was apostate?

designs

leaving_quietly