Did You Know Any "Genuine"" Old School Anointed?

by Number 6 43 Replies latest jw experiences

asp59

Hade short talk to one of the new annoited that been participating in THE latest years. I have to agree with org when they write many new annoited have mental problems. This one hade mental problems
Earnest

We had three in my congregation in the 60's and 70's, all dating back to the 1920's. All very sincere and knew their Bible but none of them seemed to think they were in any way special. In fact, one of them whose husband was not a JW never told him of her calling to be a king and priest in a marriage of 70 years.
One of them was a bit eccentric inasmuch as she would collect newspaper cuttings every week which in some way suggested we were in the time of the end. I just remember one which spoke of the skyscrapers in New York and she linked it with the giants at the time of the Flood. As a young child I was in awe.
Ding

To me, one of the biggest non sequiturs in WT teaching is that it isn't important for the GB to know who the anointed remnant are.
If they are so super spiritual that they have been designated by God to rule with Christ from heaven, their wisdom and counsel should be sought throughout the organization.
Instead, anointed sisters have to be quiet and submit to the authority of any baptized male JW in good standing, no matter how young, how obnoxious, or how loony.
DesirousOfChange

To me, “genuine, old school” would suggest that they felt the calling before the old rules changed — before 1935. Thus they would have had to have been born before 1915. So they are all dead. The ones I knew as a child seems like any other JW, just older.
Whereas any “new partaker” that I have known has had issues with mental illness, usually bi-polar. Additionally, I think that anyone who really thinks they have this special personal calling from God to rule over all their JW peers has to at least a bit narcissistic and an inflated opinion of themself.
Pete Zahut

Growing up in the 70's there were a few of what I thought of as legit members of the anointed class.
Two of them were sisters and one was a brother.
There were a lot of JW's at the time who sold their homes and bought mobile homes and they moved into a mobile home park across from our Kingdom Hall so they could hunker down and wait out the end of the "system of things".
The two anointed sisters lived side by side with their husbands and family in double wide trailers and were pioneering. Neither knew how to drive so being across from the Hall meant they could walk over there for meetings and service. Both sisters were married, one of them was elderly and always wore a turban. (as a kid I used to think she didn't have time to dry her hair before the meeting and had it wrapped in a towel LOL!) She was married to an elder and everyone spoke of her in hushed tones and the hall would grow quiet whenever she would answer at the watchtower study. Years later when she finally died, her obituary said that she was once a palm reader before becoming one of Jehovah's Witness. (This somewhat explained why she always wore a turban LOL! ).
The other anointed sister was married before becoming a JW and had 3 teens who were holy terrors. Her husband was opposed and used to look into the windows of the Kingdom Hall at night to see what she was up to in there. Her kids came along reluctantly but progressed. The son gave his first talk while high on Mescaline he had purchased behind a pet shop in the city (he told me this years later). Eventually this sister convinced her husband to study and get baptized but as time went on, this she got the "heavenly calling" and began partaking of the emblems. Her husband was genuinely pissed because this meant that she had gotten him to believe that he was going to live forever in paradise but now because of this anointed business, she wouldn't be there.
The older anointed brother that attended our Hall was a bit of a country bumpkin and would give the Memorial talk each year. When looking up scriptures he'd use such expressions such as "Lookie' here at what da' Bible say at Luke 22...". His talks were ploddingly slow and confusing and if you weren't already familiar with JW teachings, you'd be thoroughly confused. I saw many a "visitor" scratching their heads in confusion during his talks.
When our boys were babies, I took evening classes at the local community college. The classes were sometimes on Tuesday which meant that I couldn't attend the book study. This anointed brother came over and told me that end was so close that the book study was our lifeline and a college education was a waste of time and that I was putting my spiritual welfare in jeopardy. He asked me how I'd like the idea of some other man raising my boys and being married to my wife in the new system instead of me. I wanted to throw him out of my house but he was of the "anointed" so he too was special for that to happen.
That was 30 years ago, my boys are grown, have college degrees and children of their own and I retired early with a pension. That anointed brother has been gone for at least 15 years . Armageddon didn't come and there is no longer even a "book study". His much younger mail order asian wife is married to another man. Jokes on him I guess.
silentbuddha

Every annointed in my hall (we had alot), was literally a nutcase.
1. One wore fishnet stockings and only came to meetings 2 weeks before and the meeting after memorial.
2. One was literally a murderer and killed her husband who was an elder. Went to jail for manslaughter and was still partaking.
3. One was a fucking bearded lady that was obsessed with acting out in character excerpts from the gospels after meetings.
4. One was claiming being annointed immediately after baptism and religiously beat his wife.
5. The most insane was a brother that everyone knew was gay. He lived on the first floor and his former gay boyfriend lived on the second floor of his house. We had book study at his house and the gay lover came down after book study with cookies and shit and talked to us like everything was normal. One night he died in front of the kingdom hall of a heart attack and was found by a neighbor because his car horn was going off for like 5 mi NJ Tuesday after a meeting in ng
stan livedeath

Reading all this thread...it strikes me there were far more partakers than those decreasing numbers back in the 60's suggest.
Terry

The first time I encountered Mildred Pettifog she was a full time Pioneer knocking on stranger’s doors. She had been brought up as a Bible Student since the late 19th century.
In case that means nothing to you, think of it this way, the Civil War was fought 15 years before Mildred was born.
To gain a perspective, just think about the day airplanes flew into the World Trade Center in your own lifetime. That was 18 years before I’m writing this.
By the time I was introduced to her (1960), this interesting little bundle of dynamite was already 80.
In today’s world, older women chase after eternal youth cosmetically in ways which hide or disguise the aging process. Hardly anyone actually knows what an old person would look like without this lavish attention to diet, exercise, Botox, facelifts, and youthful stylishness. However, back in 1960, when I first attended the Fort Worth Kingdom Hall as a guest, old ladies looked like old ladies.
For example . . .
Sister Pettifog sported a funny little purple hat riveted to the back of her head by a long hat pin with an improbably large pearl on its end about the size of a Robin’s egg. Her hair was mostly silver-white tinged with an incomprehensible blue tint.
What a face this lady had!
This elderly Sister flashed a crinkled smile and possessed large brown eyes like a puppy in a pet store window eager for adoption. Her skin was quite pale and her cheeks radiated a pinkish orange circle of something she said was “rooj” (rouge) a proper style back in the olden days. Once seen, Sister Pettifog was not soon forgotten!
Her dresses appeared to be handmade on her old Singer sewing machine using striped or polka dot patterns prudently selected at the local fabric shop. The steel rimmed bifocals framed her wide-set eyes perfectly and bestowed an impression of quiet intelligence and wisdom.
Sister Mildred always wore so much perfume you could tell if she was within a half mile of where you stood. Her favorite scent, Jungle Gardenia, had replaced her previous all-time passion, Chanel No. 5. I was told all this on the spot, of course, by the lady herself within 5 minutes of meeting her.
Although everybody who met Sister Mildred loved her instantly, the effect of that powerful perfume was devastating! It was like taking a large stone and tossing it in a small still pool of water--the splash and waves and ripples seemed to reach out in all directions tossing people’s nostrils hither and thither in pandemonium!
The most remarkable aspect of Mildred Pettifog’s persona was the fact she was one of the elite anointed members at our Kingdom Hall.
(At the time, it was special - very special. In recent years, the ruling Governing Body has taken all that special cachet for themselves alone.)
What did it actually mean to be “anointed” by holy spirit as a JW?
Sister Pettifog had what was known as “a heavenly calling.”
Rank and file Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t set their hopes on going to heaven when they die.
No, not at all!
The vast majority aim for an “Earthly hope.” Life everlasting in a new Eden.
Scant few possess the interior tingle of a self-aware frisson. (A special self-awareness)
If you’ve never been a Jehovah’s Witness, you’ll be scratching your head about now wondering aloud just how cuckoo this denomination really is.
Don’t worry about that right now, suffice it to say Mildred Pettifog was a rare individual viewed with almost “magical” specialness (although no JW would ever employ the word “magic.”)
Until fairly recently, the eight million of Jehovah’s Witnesses all over the world were under the impression the “anointed” got direct messages from the heavenly realm tipping them off about sacred secrets and advance prophetic divinations. These whisperings were better than stock market tips! (Although none has ever paid off).
Certainly this was the case when I was introduced.
The person introducing me spoke in a sudden and respectful hushed tone of awe in their voice as Mildred’s name was intoned. This created a funny feeling inside of me too. The psychology of awe is quite contagious! Sort of like, “Ya wanna meet Elvis?”
____
In a conversation many, many years later, with Pettifog's grand-daughter at Starbucks, I learned something
remarkable and downright shocking.
____
“The first time my great grandmother said one bad thing about the WatchTower organization I thought I was going to have a heart attack! It was like a bomb went off in my head! Granny Mildred is the one person most able to turn a Bible study into a Baptism. She had a way about her. She was not just the best; she was the best of the best. But, as you well know, the Truth, so-called, of the WatchTower organization has a way of changing infrequently with a strange anonymity to the process. Granny Mildred noticed it and used the word, “Sneaky.”
This shocked me. I didn’t believe my ears. I asked her to explain. When I heard what she had to say, I wished I hadn’t! She stood there in the kitchen helping me wash dishes like she always insisted on doing and at the same time started ticking off a long list of horrible things she claimed the Organization had done over the years to prove they were NOT the true religion! I kept telling her not to continue. I was panicking! I immediately thought of rushing her to the hospital. It was obvious to me--or so I thought--she had suffered a stroke and wasn’t responsible for her words!”
“It took her almost a year to deprogram me! We moved to Oklahoma and started going to a new Kingdom Hall. All the while, she kept going to all the meetings and out in Field Service, (door to door,) like nothing inside her had changed. I asked her how she could stand it. How could she pretend this was still “The Truth”?
“Granny smiled and explained she could do a whole lot more good ‘undercover’ than as an Apostate, because nobody was allowed to listen to an ex-member. But everybody would listen to her as one of the anointed remnant!”
At this point in her story, I was laughing out loud. This was amazing me! I begged for details. The granddaughter glanced at her watch. She had to go shortly but she said she’d tell me this one thing Granny always did when she was around young Witnesses.
Sister Mildred Pettifog would wait until she was in the car with a trapped audience who couldn’t flee. Then she’d start talking about her life as a Jehovah’s Witness. . . .
“I was born the year after the WatchTower was first published. My parents were among the first Bible Students to subscribe. Pastor Russell taught the Time of the End had begun in 1799 when Napoleon took the Pope hostage. You don’t know that, naturally. The organization finds that embarrassing. Pastor Russell taught Jesus returned in 1874 invisibly. You don’t know that either, of course. Pastor Russell used measurements on the Great Pyramid to predict 1914. The Pastor assured all of us, 1914 was Armageddon! Until the 1930’s, Pastor Russell’s successor, Judge Rutherford, continued the Pyramid nonsense! Guess what? We were all surprised when everything we had been taught--everything we had been teaching our friends and neighbors was sudden changed overnight--and no longer the Truth anymore!
By that I mean this.
Judge Rutherford finally changed everything by moving dates forward just like it was nothing--game pieces on a board! Lots of Brothers and Sisters fell away over the years because they were more loyal to the Bible than to the changes the WatchTower kept on springing! Can you imagine that? Just think how I felt as a young girl and then as a teenage woman to have to erase everything I was told was true and just pretend it never happened! But let me tell you--I was not faithful to the Bible--no sir! I stayed faithful to the Organization! I knew I was going to heaven no matter what the Governing Body decided was true! I didn’t graduate from High School or go to college. You know why? Because Armageddon was coming in 1914--what good would a worldly education do for me?
But it never happened!
Then, when I was 45 years old, Armageddon came again. By that I mean this--it did NOT. It was ‘supposed to’.
But, once again, we remained loyal to Jehovah’s Organization--never mind the Bible. The Bible says “No man knows the day and hour.” Well, that didn’t seem to faze Brother Fred Franz! Franz was like an Old Testament prophet. If he said it--it was considered true.
He came up with 1975 as the End of six-thousand years of human existence . That’s what he called it. That’s code for: Armageddon.
We all knew time was short by the time I was in my 90’s because we, the anointed, were dying off. We, the anointed Generation of 1914, had to still be alive to SEE the end. Our life was the Countdown Clock. Each year, more of us anointed would die and that proved Armageddon was getting closer and closer. I’m 98 years old. I was 95 the last time Armageddon didn’t come. You understand? That was 3 years ago we were taught the world was ending because of Earthquakes, famine, wars, and I suppose the heartbreak of psoriasis too--except IT DIDN’T HAPPEN. So many have gone away now. They lost faith in Jehovah’s Organization. But, not me! I’m faithful and loyal to the bitter end.”
The granddaughter shook her head in wonderment at the words she related to me and added, “How she got away with that--I just don’t know. You could see the young kids’ faces. They didn’t know if she had lost her mind or what! If a young person were of college age, she went out of her way to talk to them. She’d get them off by themselves and say: I never got a proper education because the world was ending. It ended over and over and over. (With a wink.)
“I have friends who never married because of that, too. They have no kids or grandkids because we were assured we’d all be in heaven or Paradise. Many people now are old, bitter and unhealthy thinking they never lived a real life just waiting around for Armageddon. But, I went ahead and married and I had beautiful kids and grandkids. Do you suppose I’m sorry? Well, I am sorry I didn’t go to college. I could have earned enough money to give my children and grandchildren a start in life. But don’t listen to me. I’m just a grumpy old lady and my mind isn’t as clear as it used to be.”
Then Granny would walk away leaving those young JW’s with a dazzled expression of pure horror and puzzlement behind.
I asked if any Elders ever gave her a good stern talking to.
“Oh for heaven’s sakes! Are you serious? Granny was too slick for that!
She knew her scriptures and she’d start quoting them one after another until the busybody would shrug and give up. You see, she knew they had too much respect for her to get mean--like they do with most members who have loose tongues.”
I asked what happened to Sister Pettifog.
“Granny died peacefully in her sleep 10 days before her hundredth birthday. She had written a long letter to be read to the congregation at her funeral. She mailed it to the Presiding Elder and a copy to WatchTower headquarters a few days before she died. Do I need to tell you, that letter disappeared and was never read or mentioned by anybody. I was asked if I knew anything I needed to tell--about Sister Pettifog’s state of mind. I told them she had only grown more loving, kind, cheerful and open hearted the older she got. I told them what she had said about loyalty to Jehovah’s Organization, too. They didn’t catch the telltale irony.”
Then, the granddaughter had to leave. I thanked her for stopping to talk to me.
“How long after your grandmother died did you start to fade?”
She turned to go and stopped reflectively.
“It was probably the day after her funeral.”
a watcher

There was a wonderful old anointed sister in my first congregation when I was baptized as a young woman. We had so much in common in spite of the difference in our ages. I didn't know how to relate to her being anointed, I was so new as one of JWs. Now that I'm getting old, I often remember her. I wish I could be friends with her now, with me as a mature Christian, but she's long dead.
fulano

We had brother Salvino Ferrari (second class if I remember well) and his lovely wife Helen sometimes in our missionary-home. He was a very sincere, humble, kind brother. Very interested in our life and I really loved at that time listening to his experiences in Cuba where they left in 1961. The last time we went together out in service, he could hardly walk in the extreme heat but went on until lunch.
It’s all so sad remembering those details.

Did You Know Any "Genuine"" Old School Anointed?

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