Anyone Here Used to Fear Persecution?

by kneehighmiah 43 Replies latest jw friends

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  John_Mann

  I can relate to all posts of this thread! I remember thinking in plans to how hide literature and have secret meetings and field service. I remember I listened to some brother who was a door salesman in persecution time, and he tried to sell salt for a very expensive price so people would be asking why the salt was so expensive and then giving opportunity to preach something crazy about the expensive salt related to the horsemen of revelation...

  Can you imagine a lunatic selling expensive salt at your door and then talking about mythological horsemen?

  WT loves to mess up with the mind of innocent children.
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  Band on the Run

  Rattigan,

  White civil rights workers, mostly clergy, did go South to help with voter registration and the NAACP's effort to end Jim Crow. People were murdered. You would place the lives of every black person at risk to kick some butt. My friend went South. A local black teenage girl was murdered as a result of the political activity. Thurgood Marshall did not kick butt in the South. In the end, the whites could return to the North. The local residents had to deal with the consequences. The ACLU has looked the other way when severe violence was likely.
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  tiki

  oh yes......i grew up totally believing and in fear of being beaten up, thrown in a concentration camp, tortured, abused - the whole thing. and they'd say that after the first few punches Jehovah allows you to go numb so you don't feel any pain.....and you "won't be tested beyond what you can bear" BUT - you can bear one helluva lot more than you think because you will be made into iron person IF.......and only IF you are good enough and faithful and trusting. I ended up with serious anxiety disorder, panic attacks and my brain chemistry has been damaged - altered for life. Oh and all this would happen before I was married or had kids (the ultimate female accomplishment). hah.....i can collect social security....that's how old i am.

  dysfunctional people are drawn to this religion.
• 

  Vidiot

  kneehighmiah - "I was thinking today about how I no longer have to fear the attack of satan against the JWs. I used to fear being rounded up and beaten by mobs. Seeing my family tortured. I realized it feels great no longer having this fear. did anyone else use to have the same fears?"

  Oh, yeah; I remember that.

  I was always scared, 'cause I was just a kid and felt that I was too much of a lightweight and wouldn't be able to handle it. I remember the relief I felt when I came to the conclusion that it probably wasn't going to happen.

  Actually makes me laugh a bit, now; believe it or not.
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  designs

  Being in prison was bad enough.
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  AlphaMan

  The Watchtower cult routinely made kids sit through meetings where they heard talk abouts demons getting people, all the terrible things that was going to be done to them during the persecution, and all the sexual deviant stuff talked about. Not sure how much of this stuff is talked about now at the Kingdom Halls, but the Watchtower was and will always be one messed up religion.
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  Ucantnome

  yes and no. I always thought i would probably say the wrong thing and give them the info they wanted about the brothers, accidentally, and i was always afraid they would cut parts off or something. I always thought if i'd been on the plains of Dura or whereever the three hebrews were i would have bowed down and done obeisance and argued that it's not worship. I was more a Peter than a Paul.

  The no was i thought God would take the pain away when the beatings started, especially if i promised to do better if i survived.
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  Band on the Run

  Oh, the demons! I still keep lights on at night. Don't forget the cow head pagan god being fed infants in the orange book. Also, the lone dinosaur roaming the earth on the cover.I was glad the ones at the museum were dead. Does anyone here think that the neighbors did not appreciate being preached at by little kids. Armageddon spooked me. I always assumed I would die. The Holocaust lessons were not appropriate for children. Your mind gets twisted so many ways. I don't recall what they were for. There was no joy, only terror.
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  blondie

  I never feared persecution. I had abusive parents. Outside the family I found that I could negotiate any misunderstandings.
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  AnneB

  In one of the WT mags in the early '70's there was a picture that had people falling to the ground around one lone person who stayed standing. There were labels around the fallen people, "drug addiction", "fornication", etc. then a dome around the standing person, protecting him from what looked like a meteor shower. The caption made reference to the verse which states that though all those around you would be falling, Jehovah would be protecting the righteous. That's a very imperfect description of the half page drawing but if you were around WT back then you might remember the picture I'm describing.

  I heard all the descriptions of the concentration camps, the tortures in Malawi, etc., and it made me quake in my shoes. I thought that if I was very, very "good" that Jehovah would protect me like he was protecting the standing person in the picture. When I would see people I knew fall prey to street drugs and then suffer their effects I thought I was seeing that picture in action. I spent almost every waking hour (and a lot of my sleep time) focused on doing everything "right" so that my family and I would be protected when the GT and the Big A began..."it could start tommorrow, brothers, and if not then, the day after that!"

  I made myself sick, physically, and I spent far too much time trying to please others and to live a perfect life.

  When the persecution came, it was from inside the congregation and all my preparation did no good at all.

  PTSD, anyone?

  AB