Today's WT Study: "Return to Jehovah" - Lots of Elephants in the Room

by Room 215 43 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Room 215

  Today's article prods active JWs to participate in the effort to reactivate us backsliders.

  Unfortunately, it fails to prepare the participants to adequately address the REAL reasons so many have left and want nothing frtherethan to be left alone: the UN and Child Abuse scandals, prophetic failures; dumbed-down, increasingly specious and simplistic verbiage in literature and talks, the cult of personality and unwarranted veneration of those 8 singularly unremarkable members of the GB, etc., etc.
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  Fadeaway1962

  Written by a bunch of gaslighting narcissistic idiots.

  Wish people would wake up to the physiological abuse .
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  Magnum

  Below are some phrases from the article (bold & italics mine). Notice how JWs are conditioned to think that we are weak and lost and that we have strayed.

  ---Jesus said that Jehovah and the angels feel great joy when even one of His servants who has strayed returns to Him

  ---focus on helping those who have strayed from Jehovah

  ---lost sheep

  ---support those who are weak

  ---LOVINGLY SUPPORT THE WEAK [subheading]

  ---likely weak spiritually because of what they experienced in Satan’s world

  ---need to invest time and energy in helping some inactive ones to overcome their weaknesses

  ---help them to become spiritually strong again

  ---We will find much joy in helping the spiritually weak

  That infuriates me. They are self-righteous, ignorant, weak, & puny. We are the strong ones. And yes, at this point in time, I do also blame individual JWs. They've had enough time and evidence to wake up. I no longer excuse those who remain (not including the younger ones who have been brainwashed).

  If they try to get me to return, they're going to find out how weak I am.... or maybe not. I might play weak - tearfully weak... and then ask them if they can help me with some things that really bother me. For example...

  "Oh thanks for stopping by. We've been really down. You know, we really believed all this material from the faithful and discreet slave [show printed material such as that that indicates the end was imminent in 1960's, that younger JWs wouldn't have careers in this system, etc.], and we acted accordingly. Now we're struggling financially. We have to work so hard and so many hours and such odd hours that we can't come to meetings, etc. And, since this is because we put the Kingdom first, we were wondering whether Jehovah's organization has any provision to help us financially since it put us in this position. We hope so because we really want to return."
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  stan livedeath

  just one thing that gets in the way. dont the faithful regard us apostates and d'f'd as dead ?
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  JW GoneBad

  One doesn't stray from an abusive relationship...one escapes...skedaddles...flees...runs away!
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  Mr.Finkelstein

  Only problem is Jehovah isn't anywhere near these particular apostate false prophets who run the Watchtower Corporation/JWorg.

  Now if you want to return to Satan and these sinning corrupt lying men its your choice.
  
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  jp1692

  Magnum: We are the strong ones.

  👍
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  jp1692

  It’s all hype to make the rank & file JWs think they are caring people. We know it’s not true. They aren’t. Not really.

  There are exceptions of course, but generally speaking the elders don’t make much of an effort, if any at all, to contact people who have left the religion.

  It’s anecdotal, but I believe my personal experience in this regard is fairly typical of what happens when an elder attempts to contact “a lost sheep” who is actually a person such as us that is fully awake to the fact that the JW religion is really a cult:

  I quit attending meetings almost eight years ago. Since then I have only been contacted once by an elder; he wanted to have a “shepherding” call. I politely declined, but said I would appreciate if he would set up a meeting to help me reconcile with some JW family with whom I had been alienated by the religion when I was DF’d six years prior to that—I had been reinstated for two years at this point.
  

  He said he couldn’t do that because they weren’t in his congregation. (Both congregations are less than a 10 minute drive from my house.) I replied, “That’s funny, because that’s exactly what the elders in their congregation said to me—they couldn’t help because I’m not in their congregation!” (I had previously taken the initiative to contact the elders in my family’s congregation asking for help to reconcile our broken relationships. The elders in that congregation refused using the lame excuse I mentioned above.)

  So much for an “International Brotherhood”!

  That was more than five years ago. Since then, none of the elders in any congregation I have ever been associated with have made any attempts at all to contact me. Not one of them. Not even one.

  I’ve lived in the same house for the last nine years and still have the same phone number I’ve had for over two decades. So it’s not like they don’t know where or how to find me. They clearly don’t want to, and I prefer it that way. But the point is that their claims of caring about those that have left is all bullshit. They don’t actually mean it. Not really.

  Frankly, I think they are afraid of me. They know I know the real truth: The Truth About “The Truth.”

  Or as I like to say, let’s review: It’s a cult!
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  LongHairGal

  MAGNUM:

  No, I’m not ‘weak’ or ‘lost’. They can keep telling themselves those are the reasons people leave the JW religion. Maybe it makes some people feel better about themselves for staying.

  JWGONEBAD:

  Yes, that is correct. I didn’t ‘stray’ from the JW religion. I walked away in a planned ‘Fade’. And I walked away before the scandals that hit the media and before literature got dumbed-down to first grade level reading comprehension.

  Those weren’t my issues at the time. It was a combination of factors. I remember one Sunday looking around the hall after a meeting and realizing there was nothing there for me..No true friends. Then the 1995 Generation teaching happened. I added up all that plus their attitude towards responsible people with full time jobs.

  I’m sure reality was a shock with many reaching retirement age and bethelites being kicked out..I’m sorry about them but I certainly wasn’t going to be targeted— ESPECIALLY how I was viewed because I DID work..No Way.

  I knew the long standing policy of the religion knocking college and careers HAD to come back to bite them when people got old!

  The latter reports of the religion’s scandals in the news just adds more reasons why I’m glad I’m Out.
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  waton

  We are not lost sheep, but eagles that escaped from the cage.

  Help us? bring it on, we give flying lessons Isaiah 40: 31. or;

  we are not lost sheep, we are like Joseph, driven out.

  Jws do not know how badly they are in need of help. yet