I'm going to be a Witness again!

by dedalus 9 Replies latest jw friends

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  dedalus

  Recently I wandered over to Derrick's site, H20, just to check things out. While casually looking around, I came across this, a description of one of the forums over there. I've bolded the part that caught my eye:

  Jehovah's Witnesses and Bible Prophesy
  Are you a Jehovah's Witness who needs to witness for a few more hours in order to meet your Pioneering commitment or to simply put in a minimal number of hours? Are you someone from another faith who wishes to witness to Jehovah's Witnesses? Or maybe you feel the spirit moved you to share your prophesies or divine inspiration with Jehovah's Witnesses? This is the place for you to speak out. If you dare claim divine inspiration then you better get ready to take what you dish out. This is the ONLY Forum where this type of discussions are permitted. [MODERATED FOR ILLEGAL CONTENT ONLY: PARENTAL DISCRETION ADVISED]

  Can this be so? A place to witness online? Fabulous!

  I realized then how easy it would be to slip back into the brotherhood. All I'll have to do is snooze through a few meetings a week (I'll think of it as community service), post on the forum a couple of times a month (all replies to my threads will count as return visits, which the elders will like), turn in a time slip -- and what do I get in return? My father will talk to me again, my brothers will eagerly hang out, my nephew and neice will get to know their uncle, my daughter will know her grandfather, childhood friends who've known me practically since birth will be restored, and for the most part, my profoundly fragmented family, a family I was very close to growing up, will be together again.And here's the kicker: to get all this, I wouldn't have to change one single other thing in my life. Not a thing. Be seen at a meeting here or there, and turn in the time slip.

  The only thing messing it up is a little integrity I can't seem to part with.

  Dedalus
• 

  95stormfront

  The only thing messing it up is a little integrity I can't seem to part with.

  I can respect that.

  If you cave in and let the JW take that away from you, you'll probably be a lot less happy then you are right now.
• 

  larc

  I often take a bus down town. It occured to me that an easy way to get hours in would be to sit on a bench with a stand in front of you, holding the magazines. This would allow the publisher to people watch, read a book or just soak in the nice weather. I am surprised that some enterprising publisher hasn't thought of this. I used to occsaionaly see JW's down town. Haven't seen any in over three years.
• 

  Carmel

  Ded,

  Can you afford the cost of the lobodomy so that you can endure the stale meetings? If so, once its done you won't even mind being shunned anymore..

  See, I just saved you a whole bunch of time and enegy,

  Mt. Carmel
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  Francois

  Y'know, I remember going to meetings back in the mid 50s. And I remember some of the content, too. I swear and be damned if, by the time I left in the middle seventies, they weren't preaching about, and talking about, and having great expectations about the very same damned things they'd been going on about when I was ten years old. Now, over 25 years later, I will pick up the odd WT in a laundromat and skim through it and S.O.B. if it's not the same shit I was sitting through half a century ago. It's just damned amazing if you ask me.

  francois
• 

  rocketman

  Recycling at its finest.
• 

  ScoobySnax

  "I remeber going to the meetings in the 50's".......Jeez Francouis, you're old git. LOL
• 

  larc

  Francois, I too occasionally skim through an odd magazine now and then, and they do seem odd now don't they, and yes it is like going back in time. I had the same experience when a spent a few hours at a convention the summer before last. They could have used the sripts from 50 years ago. Hey Scooby, I am even an older git. I remember the meetings in the 40's.
• 

  anti-absolutist

  I had an uncle that used to be an elder in the seventies. He drifted away, intelligently without being df'd. Every Tom, Dick and Harry tried to get him df'd for apostacy and they failed.

  Even still (I was df'd in 1991 for having sex with my future wife) in 1993, when they (aunt and uncle) came to visit me, he suggested that I go back, get re-instated, and then drift away again. (The idea being that my family can be united again.) I'm not sure if it was WHAT I FEEL was a strong stance against hypocrisy or just stubbornness, but I definitely felt very strongly about not going back and I never did.

  I'm now 34, and I struggle with whether I made the right decision sometimes, but then I think of the bigger picture and thought in the Bible and in good people in general.

  I remember this quote, "If you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything." I'm glad that I stuck to my guns and refused to give in to hypocrisy. Without a deep feeling of inner strength, I'm not sure what strength we can actually share with others.

  Brad
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  benext

  I've seen people sitting on park benches holding mags. On the subway with the mags propped up on their laps. Outside the Supreme Court Bldg. in Brooklyn there's a table set up with all kinds of literature being manned by 2 or more. I've seen the same thing at the Port Authority Bus Terminal. This counting time thing is a joke.