First of all, hats off and thank you to all the wonderful and intelligent people I've met and observed on this incredible forum. It's about time to share some more experiences regarding my recent fading, which began end september. Not very spectacular I think, but reckonizable maybe. I must say, my fading went extremely well so far. As I wrote earlier, I dropped the A-bomb during CO's last visit by writing a letter that put forward my doubts regarding 1914 and the handling of sexual abuse. The content could have been enough to send a JC after me, but I played the game well. During my fading, I only had a few concerned brothers at my door now and then (no problem) and only two meetings with a few elders that wanted to know about my family conditions and personal doubts. When discussing doctrine, it was a draw twice. They simply clung to the old, dusty WT literature and guidelines and I carefully tried to reason out-of-the-box, not revealing my sources, such as jw.facts, ad 1914 etc.
One of the elders tried to make an appeal to emotion twice, looking at me with melancholy eyes and reminding me of my visit to an international convention in the USA back in 1998, where I took some photographs with some GB members personally (John Barr and his wife and Daniel Sydlic). The elder knew how this always has been one of my personal highlights in the Borg and that the impact got me to become a regular pioneer soon after. Nevertheless his tactics didn't work, just as they didn't work regarding WTdoctrine. I always felt this was a conscious attempt to unbalance me, but I also felt I always was one step further in this psychological game. It also showed that, during this stage of our discussion, they must have felt that I wasn't going to give up my new insights!
Another example, also known as circular reasoning (a classic example is: the bible is the word of god because the bible says it is the word of god).
I brought to their attention that the WT's own literature gives room to the idea that 70 years of Babylonian domination does not necessarily imply literally 70 years of Jewish exile. To reinforce my argument I let them read the following section:
*** ip-1 chap. 19 p. 253 Jehovah Profanes the Pride of Tyre ***
“She Must Return to Her Hire”
21 Isaiah goes on to prophesy: “It must occur in that day that Tyre must be forgotten seventy years, the same as the days of one king.” (Isaiah 23:15a) Following the destruction of the mainland city by the Babylonians, the island-city of Tyre will “be forgotten.” True to the prophecy, for the duration of “one king”—the Babylonian Empire—the island-city of Tyre will not be an important financial power. Jehovah, through Jeremiah, includes Tyre among the nations that will be singled out to drink the wine of His rage. He says: “These nations will have to serve the king of Babylon seventy years.” (Jeremiah 25:8-17, 22, 27) True, the island-city of Tyre is not subject to Babylon for a full 70 years, since the Babylonian Empire falls in 539 B.C.E. Evidently, the 70 years represents the period of Babylonia’s greatest domination—when the Babylonian royal dynasty boasts of having lifted its throne even above “the stars of God.” (Isaiah 14:13) Different nations come under that domination at different times. But at the end of 70 years, that domination will crumble. What will then happen to Tyre?
I found this on jw.facts, but of course I didn't tell them, because it was straight from our own literature. So I asked the elder: Why can't this same interpretation be applied to Israel's exile, in order to honestly take in account the evidence against 607 BCE?
His answer was..."Well, you know, 1914, right?
I couldn't believe my ears! In order to get to the right interpretation, the desired WT answer became the evidence itself, no matter how strong the case for a better, more truth based answer may have been!
At this point, I even was more convinced I had chosen the right path by taking the red pill again (yes, the Matrix analogy). The first red pill (my bible study period during the 90's that got me out of the assumed Babylon the Great), didn't turn out to be a real one, but hey, there truly is good news...I'm not alone! The number of deserters is growing by the day, what an exciting time!