by Maat13 34 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Back in the mid-90s I got online with one of those "Free Hours" Internet CDs. Dial-up. Remember that?!
Found a bunch of neat little search engines and just typed in JWs.
Freeminds came up with the most intriguing story about what happened in the 80s with Ray Franz and Bethel.
I read with the most curious mind. With each click of a new link to another xjw site, my raised-in JW worldview began to crumble.
Found this site in 2000.
Phae
I worked with an elder and I uncovered he was embezzling money from our jw employer and it started before he was an elder. Hmmmm I thought Holy Spirit appointed this guy. i was still in but it started me to really question my beliefs. I had some doubts before when they suddly changed the king of the north AFTER the USSR colaspsed. so I was on my way. I was about 20. Then I was at the library and there on the shelf was the book Jehovahs witnesses answered verse by verse. I was scared out of my mind but checked it out and hide it in my house. Once I started reading and was lead to COC I was out and mad as hell. to give every reason would take a book.
At the time, I was in my 10th year of being a very active ministerial servant.
I already had my suspicions that I was "waiting on Jehovah" to clarify.
One in particular I could no longer wait on Jah to answer though was regarding me wondering where the holy spirit was in the congregation I attended and if it even operated there.
I already was begining to think it didn't exist. The question was really bothering me. I decided to look online, while "avoiding apostate sites", to see how other religious people might answer this.
Then I stumbled upon JWnet. I just new I shouldn't have kept reading. But I was finding myself relating to experiences I read on here.
I started to see I wasn't the only one with this concern and that it also wasn't local. It was worldwide in the organization.
That got the ball rolling.
When the "elders" threatened us to stop speaking about the liberating gospel of grace as found in the Watchtower library.
For me, it was largely a matter of finally having a good reason to do the research. I was a barely-active JW who only stayed in because I didn't know anything else. I liked a lot about the religion but the social aspects of the religion were discouraging and hard for me. I simply pissed away my twenties because I didn't think I had any good reason to try to do anything with my life if this system was temporary.
I'd been staying away from apostate info for years, although I didn't fear it, I just thought it was not going to tell me anything that (a) I didn't know and (b) was able to be confirmed. I was already well aware of things like 1975, Russell's mysticism, and various organizational issues, but I still believed it was God's imperfect channel. But more than anything I just didn't have a reason to want to leave.
Finally I had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity come up in my life and I realized that if I wanted to keep being a good Witness (note that I'm not saying "a good person", just "a good Witness"), I would not be able to act upon the opportunity. So it occurred to me that it would be stupid to keep letting life pass me by and not research my religion with all available information. I delayed the inevitable because the prospect of having to leave everything I knew was a bit frightening, but in the next year, I gradually stopped slumbering through life and began reading web sites.
I don't know how I found JWfacts, but it was the main avenue of TTATT for me. I remember reading a few articles and not being totally convinced. Then I got to the one about the organ transplant ban. I thought, "Okay, I have to see this for myself." I read the original QFRs on my Library CD-ROM which started and ended the ban, and I remember clearly thinking, "Well, that's it then. There's no way this can be the truth. This can't even be a highly-imperfect-but-God-chosen organization. He simply would not allow his shepherds to mislead the flock and cause them to die over such stupid misunderstandings of scripture."
