Anyone Here Used to Fear Persecution?

by kneehighmiah 43 Replies latest jw friends

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  exwhyzee

  I had a childhood filled with sleepless nights about the tribulation and even a fear that my kind loving non JW Father would turn against us and turn us in, during the tribulation. They said from the platform that this would happen and that our own family would deliver us up to the authorities. My Sisters used to bawl during the meetings and cry for poor Dad who was at home alone during meeting nights while his four children were being turned against him.

  I used to fear that someone would get ahold my 2 little sisters and torture them until I renounced my faith in Jehovah. They used to dwell on this stuff in the meetings and I was certain that it would happen to me. I felt the weight of the whole world on my shoulders . I knew that if they threatened to hurt my sisters I could never be strong enough not to give in even though they promised that once you gave in, they'd kill you and your family anyway.

  For anyone who was too young to remember that time leading up to 1975, the level of cultishness and outright fanatcism that was happenig is hard to even imagine. When you look at the watered down version of what it takes to be a JW today one can't help but conclude that it's not even the same religion that we were baptized into. As far as I'm concerned, by baptisim is null and void and they rubbed the sparkle of my childhood with their crazy lies. I can't help but think that if there really is a God, they will be held responsible for the damage they've caused.
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  quellycatface

  Yes I was. I even used to contemplate suicide before. How crazy they made us feel.
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  factfinder

  Yes! Very much like the above posts. I feared the gt for that reason.
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  Mickey mouse

  Oh yes, I had regular concentration camp themed nightmares as a child. I distinctly remember sitting under a chair at the kingdom Hall as this account was read out and it terrified me. It's from the April 1st 1970 Watchtower (shame it wasn't an April fools joke):

  16 When a Christian witness of Jehovah of Ntifinyire Village was beaten for refusing to purchase a political card, Banda’s youths took a knife and made cuts encircling his arms and then his legs and inflicted many cuts on his head. Other Witnesses had six-inch nails driven into their feet, bicycle spokes were forced through their legs and then these Christians were told to run. Still others were tortured with a burning stick placed against their arms, legs, head and entire body. Still these Witnesses refused to compromise their religious beliefs or deny their God Jehovah under such barbaric torture. Do you have the quality of Christian endurance in you to stand such tests? You may be called upon someday to prove your faith. How will your faith stand up?
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  transhuman68

  There were many magazines with reports of sadistic torture from Malawi at that time, and it must have fed the fears of Witnesses worldwide. I think I had the idea when I was very young that if the persecution came I would just deny everything about the Jehovah's Witnesses, and get away from them all. All I ever wanted was to grow up normally, but with a JW mother and a lunatic non-JW opposed father that was never going to happen...
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  ablebodiedman

  I was disfellowshipped because I spoke up about the reprehensible things they did to Jesus Christs commanded baptism.

  I am constantly being shunned, reproached, persecuted and no doubt they continue to lyingly say wicked things about me.

  Matthew 5:11-12

  　"Happy are YOU when people reproach YOU and persecute YOU and lyingly say every sort of wicked thing against YOU for my sake. 12 　Rejoice and leap for joy, since YOUR reward is great in the heavens; for in that way they persecuted the prophets prior to YOU.

  abe
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  Band on the Run

  This is interesting. I was drawn to Holocaust stories during the 1960s. Nuclear annihilation between the US and the Soviets seemed certain. It was KH and school. Of course, the war was relatively recent. Concentration camp survivors were alive. I saw the tatoos numbers from the camps. The newspapers covered Holocaust survivors. Next, there were articles about their children's tormented childhood. I had an afterschool job with the NY Psychiatric Institute. The doctors was treating survivors. Of course, the big A would be far worse than the Nazis.

  Children of survivors were forming groups. They wanted more normality in their lives. I finally forced myself to stop reading Holocaust literature. No one else I knew was so engaged with it. I thought I was unusual.
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  cultBgone

  I do remember being told we would all be rounded up and placed in camps, probably stripped naked like in the concentration camps, and how horrifying that would be. Not to have "them" see us but to be naked in tight quarters with all our "brothers"! And that was without regard to the child molestation issues.

  Another time the focus was on "fleeing to the mountains" and one of our bethel-trained elders gave a talk about how we needed to be strong enough to help the older ones in the cong get there...so ridiculous now, but we took it seriously.

  Even back then I had doubts as to whether I could "stay on jah's side" if my children were to be tortured.

  So sad that the very ones who were supposed to shepherd us were torturing us day by day...
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  ablebodiedman

  So sad that the very ones who were supposed to shepherd us were torturing us day by day...

  Consider how Micah describes events (in zion) at the final part of the days.

  What you described above fits perfectly.

  Micah 3:1-4:2

  And I proceeded to say: "Hear, please, YOU heads of Jacob and YOU commanders of the house of Israel. Is it not YOUR business to know justice? 2　YOU haters of what is good and lovers of badness, tearing off their skin from people and their organism from off their bones; 3　YOU the ones who have also eaten the organism of my people, and have stripped their very skin from off them, and smashed to pieces their very bones, and crushed [them] to pieces like what is in a widemouthed pot and like flesh in the midst of a cooking pot. 4　At that time they will call to Jehovah for aid, but he will not answer them. And he will conceal his face from them in that time, according as they committed badness in their dealings. "This is what Jehovah has said against the prophets that are causing my people to wander, that are biting with their teeth and that actually call out, ‘Peace!’ that, when anyone does not put [something] into their mouths, also actually sanctify war against him, 6　‘Therefore YOU men will have night, so that there will be no vision; and darkness YOU will have, so as not to practice divination. And the sun will certainly set upon the prophets, and the day must get dark upon them. 7　And the visionaries will have to be ashamed, and the diviners will certainly be disappointed. And they will have to cover over the mustache, all of them, for there is no answer from God.’" And, on the other hand, I myself have become full of power, with the spirit of Jehovah, and of justice and mightiness, in order to tell to Jacob his revolt and to Israel his sin.Hear, please, this, YOU head ones of the house of Jacob and YOU commanders of the house of Israel, the ones detesting justice and the ones who make even everything that is straight crooked; 10 　building Zion with acts of bloodshed and Jerusalem with unrighteousness. 11　Her own head ones judge merely for a bribe, and her own priests instruct just for a price, and her own prophets practice divination simply for money; yet upon Jehovah they keep supporting themselves, saying: "Is not Jehovah in the midst of us? There will come upon us no calamity." 12　Therefore on account of YOU men Zion will be plowed up as a mere field, and Jerusalem herself will become mere heaps of ruins, and the mountain of the house will be as the high places of a forest. 4 And it must occur in the final part of the days [that] the mountain of the house of Jehovah will become firmly established above the top of the mountains, and it will certainly be lifted up above the hills; and to it peoples must stream. 2　And many nations will certainly go and say: "Come, YOU people, and let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will instruct us about his ways, and we will walk in his paths."

  Can you think of any worldwide religion who say this, using God's actual name?

  "Is not Jehovah in the midst of us? There will come upon us no calamity."

  abe
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  Rattigan350

  Fear it?

  I'd welcome it. Any chance to kick some butt is a good opportunity.

  If I were an adult who lived earlier than the 1970s, and I saw people abuse blacks, I'd love that opportunity to kick ass.

  I hate how people make it a point to ruin others' lives.