First let me say this.
I have constantly been hearing of the legendary honesty/intergity of the Jehovah's Witness for some time now. I have also been informed that they are the happiest people on the entire earth.
My problem is this:
When a Jehovah's Witness comes to your door and you actually decide to give them a few moments of your time they never give the whole story as to what you would be getting involved with when you join the Watchtower.
Case in point. The last conversation that I had with a JW in feild service was a few weeks ago. While at my door I asked several point blank questions and they either directly lied to me about them or they purposely sidestepped the issues. Two topics that I brought up are as follows,
1) Did your Church predict that the World would end within the region of a few months past 1975?
It is important to note that the lady I asked this question was baptized in 1969! She expected me to believe that there was absolutely no shuch statement ever written in their magazines or at any talk or convention. I simply cannot believe that statement due to the fact that I have too much irrefutable evidence to the contrary.
I know that she was lying.
A second issue was,
2) Do you practise shunning people that have left your church by dissociation or being disfelloshipping.
She refused to give me a direct anwser to my question at first. So I had to ask a series of less significant questions inorder to get her to to reveal more information.
I asked her if you could asociate or even converse with a person who had been disfelloshipped and she replyed with this statement;
" Well just the other day a lady who came from another country visited my Kingdom Hall and she said she was disfelloshipped."
Now this was a statement made with one intention and one intenton alone, which was to decieve. For some reason though I wasent too surprised that she said this but I expected better of her though.
I replied with,
"So how long did you two ladies converse after the moment that she stated that she was disfelloshipped?"
Her reply was
"Well she aksed about the elders"
I persisted in asking
"How long did you talk to the lady after she stated thet she was disfelloshipped?"
She side stepped the question with this reply
"Well we have the elders who deal with those sorts of conversations."
The moral of the story is if I hadent known for a fact that the Jehovah's Witnesses are not allowed to associate or even speak to their disassociatted or disfelloshipped individuals that she would have convinced me that being labeled disfellshipped or disassociated was nothing but a trivial matter.
But the truth of the matter is that after you have been baptized as a Jehovah's Witness and you decide to lave the organisation or are disfelloshipped ( given the boot ) that you will most likely loose all your friends and family who remain Jehovah's Witnesses. Since you are incouraged not to associate with non-Witnesses you will have pratically no friends.
Levaing the organisation after you have ben baptized could destroy your entire life as you had known it. There is no error where that statement is concerned.
If I was ever in doubt that the Witnesses utilize decptive recruting tacktics the conversation I had with a mature Witness in feild service confirmed my information for good. I think that she would have realized forshure that I knew more about the Watchtower than the average house holder but that did not sway her to refrain from lying. Ifact I think that she saw me as an agent of satan which would havegiven her evenmore reason to le to me.
At this point I would like to pose a few questions to anyone wiling to anwser.
While you were a Witness were you informed about the usage of spritual warfare? If so then how often did you use it especially while in feild service?
It is because of matters like this that I truly believe that the Watchtower organisation is a menace to society. Since in my opinion most recruits would have no idea of what they are becoming involved with. They would not know that they would be expected to give up their past aquaintances, endure the 3 meetings a week, put up with any ostracism that they may recieve from the congragation, increase their chances of suffering from mential depression, pedal Watchtower literature on a regular basis, refuse life saving transfusions, and basically give up to question authority of the ones controlling your life. This is but a short list of what one is required to give up as a baptised Witness.
It just isnt fair for someone to have to get involved with an organisation shuch as the Watchtower without knowing the whole story.
It is a pity that the Witnesses themselves who have been involved with the organisation for several years dont even know the whole story themselves. Yet they presist in deciving house holders inorder to recruit them into the Watchtower.
This has to be the Ultimate irony.
jerome