Who left or got stumbled over the 1995 generation thing?

by Julia Orwell 134 Replies latest jw experiences

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  Julia Orwell

  I love you all! Such great replies :)

  I was 15 in 1995 and had started learning JW-ism in late 1994. The one teaching me taught the old generation teaching, probably not even noticing it had changed...and somehow by osmosis I picked up the new teaching by about 1999. I was still a kid and JW-ism was so novel and bright (I got baptised at 19) that I didn't even think about it.

  It's interesting how someone noted that historians would see 1995 as a turning point. I really believe 2013 will be of similar historical note for JWs.
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  2+2=5

  Some great posts on this thread and it's interesting to read others experiences.

  It wasn't exactly the generation thing that woke me up but it did get me researching 1914/607. I always felt that the overlapping generation explanation did not make sense, since in didn't quite correspond to the generation that Jesus spoke to, who saw the destruction of Jerusalem within 40 years. I got thinking that maybe 1914 was the issue, and not the generation.

  I can understand what someone is trying to convey when they say 'this generation'. It's not complicated. But when I looked into 1914, that sh!t is crazy. It is no accident that 95% of today's JWs could not explain how to arrive at 1914. It is probably one of the only teachings of C T Russel that has endured, and it shows.

  I think Sir was spot on with his post. This generation of dubs are nothing like the old timers, and the late 90's will go down as a turning point for this crazy end times religious sect.
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  erbie

  I clearly remember that fateful District Convention in 1995 during which I was (proudly) acting as an attendant at Cardiff. I just remember standing there and feeling my heart sink whilst realizing that the WT was obviously making all this trash up as they go along. That is pretty much what did it for me and it set in motion a course of events that would be life changing for me and my family.

  At the end of the day, I just experienced a collision course between intelligence and outright lies and nonsense. Pretty nasty but unavoidable.

  Currently I am reading 'The God Delusion' by Richard Dawkins and wish it had been available to me back then.

  Better late than never
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  Julia Orwell

  I've read some Richard Dawkins. I find his style very engaging, but he makes some mad assertions without stating evidence, ie in one of his books he talks about how human penises don't have a bone in them like all the other mammals and that most likely came about because early women found an erection that didn't need a bone to maintain it more virile and therefore better to mate with, therefore the bone was bred out. A good theory, but it was a guess, not something backed up by research. Something about a giraffe's circulatory system comes to mind too. Richard Dawkins is an interesting guy, but I think he's a bit of a fanatic in his own way. He's harmless though because he doesn't force his views on others or use them to exploit them like a certain publishing corp we know...I'll read him before I'll read a WT any day.

  @2+2=5: I couldn't explain 1914 either till I learned TTATT...funny how you know more about JW beliefs once you can see the forest for the trees...my big hope is that there will be a big influx of disgruntled JWs once the 'new light' about the FDS is digested in September's WT study.
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  AndDontCallMeShirley

  in one of his books he talks about how human penises don't have a bone in them like all the other mammals and that most likely came about because early women found an erection that didn't need a bone to maintain it more virile and therefore better to mate with

  I like Dawkins, too, but sometimes he's too cock-sure of himself.
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  erbie

  He certainly is quite cock sure of himself but I'll wade through the bad stuff and try to enjoy the good
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  punkofnice

  The 1995 generation disappointed me as a dub but I was busy raising my children so paid it no mind.

  The 'overlapping(TM)' thing was a big factor in my eventually leaving the cult cold turkey.

  Here's my thread about it 2 years ago...my wife has since left me......

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/experiences/206164/1/The-story-of-Punkofnice-It-was-the-Overlapping-that-finally-got-me-out
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  LisaRose

  By 1995 I was inactive, although I still went to meetings, usually just the Sunday one. I had gotten to the point where I wasn't really paying attention to what was being published, I just thought hmmmmmm, that really doesn't make sense, but oh well, I'm weak, I must be wrong. I didn't give it a lot of thought, it was a difficult period in my life and I didn't have the mental energyy to think about it much. In 1999 I finally came to a crisis point in my marriage, I had stayed due to the divorce policies, and it just hit me how horribly bad that had been for me, and that caused me rethink everything. All those moments where I had just accepted the WBTS bull pucky explanation, while knowing they didn't make sense: 1975, 1995, UN, the generation magazine that showed the older dubs who were supposedly not going to die, so many things. At that moment I lost my faith, it was quite abrupt, the scales fell my eyes, as the saying goes. It was a total aha moment.
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  Think About It

  I left in October 1995. (not sure when the "generation change" WT came out) I left mainly because, by this time in my JW experience it became apparent to me that with all the Governing Body worship that had started, all the peculiar people & disfunctional families in the JW religion, how JW's acted & treated people, along with all the kooky JW rules & beliefs.....that there was no way this JW religion could be God's only true religion on earth.

  The 1995 changing of the "generation" teaching only confirmed that the whole JW belief system was changed. It changed all the Watchtower BS about 1914 starting the end times, the choosing of the WTS as God's Channel, the anointed numbers dwindling down, all the Watchtower's false prophesies about how urgent preaching their version of the truth was, and how Armageddon would come before that 1914 generation died off.

  Now, the Watchtower Society has proved to be nothing more than a bat-shit crazy cult.
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  clarity

  I did the predictable jw reaction ... no action!

  Like most ... running on a treadmill, too tired & busy to

  pay attention & too bored to really look at the watchtower!

  Missed a lot of meetings so never really heard more than

  a whisper about it, at the time. Shoot!

  clarity