In the last year or so, many Bible passages that I used to strongly and confidently apply to non-JWs, began to seem to apply to JWs. This change in my thinking was shocking and disturbing. I can best describe the feeling by comparing it to the feeling I got in 1981 when I watched the movie Dead and Buried starring James Farentino.
In that movie there are murders committed in a small town by dead people reanimated by a doctor doing experiments. The living dead appear as normal people. James Farentino plays the sheriff in the small town. He’s a good guy who’s sincerely trying to figure out what’s going on. To make a long story short, in the end he finds out that he, too, is one of the living dead. He's shocked. I remember the feeling I had at the moment the movie began to drop hints that the sheriff was one of the living dead. It was a sobering, shocking feeling of dread.
So that’s how I felt when it first began to dawn on me that the passages I had to applied non-JWs for many years seemed to begin to apply to JWs. I felt like that sheriff must have felt. All along he thought he was a normal good-guy sheriff trying to figure out what was wrong with everybody else. Then he began to see, shockingly, that he was one of the "them". I began to think, shockingly, that maybe these Bible passages that I had applied to others applied to the group I was in.
I have a list somewhere of a lot of such passages, but I can’t find it right now. Listed below are the ones that come to mind right now.
passages that now seem to apply to JWs:
Joh 8:32 - and YOU will know the truth, and the truth will set YOU free [When I was really starting to have doubts about the JW religion, I started praying fervently to God to help me see the truth, whatever it might be. I don’t know whether it was answered prayer because I don’t even know whether God exists, but during this time I began to really see more clearly the wrongs in JWdom and I began to feel that the setting free was from JWdom.]
Re 18:4 - And I heard another voice out of heaven say: “Get out of her, my people, if YOU do not want to share with her in her sins, and if YOU do not want to receive part of her plagues. [I began to feel that maybe this applies to leaving JWdom]
Mt 7:21-23 - 21 “Not everyone saying to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter into the kingdom of the heavens, but the one doing the will of my Father who is in the heavens will. 22 Many will say to me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and expel demons in your name, and perform many powerful works in your name?’ 23 And yet then I will confess to them: I never knew YOU! Get away from me, YOU workers of lawlessness. [How appropriately this could apply to JWs. They constantly point to and brag about their “powerful works”. I used to fervently apply this passage to so-called Christendom and its members, but I began to think, OMG, this applies to JWs. I can imagine their shock at finding out they’re not approved and their saying “but didn’t we go out in service many hours per month and go to all the meetings and support the FDS and read all the mags and promote our website…]
1Co 10:12 - Consequently let him that thinks he is standing beware that he does not fall. [JWs smugly, self-righteously, and over-confidently think they are standing. I think they are due for a fall.]
Mt 15:14 - LET them be. Blind guides is what they are. If, then, a blind man guides a blind man, both will fall into a pit. [JW leadership leading their drones]
Jer 5:21 - Hear, now, this, O unwise people that is without heart: They have eyes, but they cannot see; they have ears, but they cannot hear. [JWs are deaf and blind to logic, fact, and reason. My wife recently tried to reason with my JW mother and said to me “You’re right. It’s impossible to reason with them.”]
Ps 146:3 - Do not put YOUR trust in nobles, Nor in the son of earthling man, to whom no salvation belongs [JWs put complete trust in their nobles – the GB, COs, etc.]
Please add any passages you can think of to the list.
Has anybody else experienced this? Have you found that some parts of the Bible that you used to apply to non-JWs now seem to apply to JWs? I already know that a lot of you don't believe the Bible is inspired and I'm still trying to determine whether it is, so for the sake of this discussion, just please assume it is inspired.