by jwfacts 51 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
I had already parted ways with the WT after seeing many ways in which the Bible and WT doctrine didn't match.
Then some "apostates" told me about Crisis of Conscience and Randy Watters' "Thus Saith" booklet and other materials.
When I read those, I was really surprised by the depth of WT deception.
For me it was JWs themselves. I got sick and tired of having to report myself to the elders, watching my back, hiding mundane things from my family and friends that were no big deal. I could see a lot of hypocrisy and i wanted no part of it.
This statement really resonated with me.
I am often told by my wife that she hope that it wasn't anything she done to cause me to reject being a JW. It would probably crush her to no end to know that she herself was the catalyst.
I came from a big family and we regularly had familial events on weekends and holidays. Me and the wife used to really enjoy these events, however, the deeper she got into being a JW the more fault she found with them.
What I grew most tired of was how everything to the slightest degree revolved around meeting attendance and not causing conflict or being in complete agreement of whatever circle of JW friends we were around or whatever was in the latest magazines. Another thing she would do is right in the middle of the fun of a family event, she would proclaim that she wanted to get home early and leave so that she could make a meeting later that day or the next.......then she'd find a reason to not go to the meeting we left all the fun for. This infuriated me.
That always stuck with me even though it did cause me to leave.
Looking back, none of those experiences prompted me to leave, but they did remain with me and made me understand that people do have intelligent reasons for not believing it was the truth. That seed of doubt always remained
That was my experience too. Little things people said but in a very non confrontational / non-challenging way ... like "Oh sorry, I thought Jehovahs Witness believed [something crazy], I think it was in one of their books".
I don't think you can reason or convince someone to leave, they have to be ready for it, but if you can leave them snippets of info that are no such "big" things that they blank them out completely they do stick with you.
Later, you come across something, probably in the Societies own older literature, that confirms what you were told was really true and proves that the WTS lied about something. Once you get that trigger that the WTS lies about things and other people tell the truth about it ... you are on your way to freedom. You can start to question and inspect more and more without the goggles on.
The only apostate thing that I ever encountered prior to waking up was when I was probably 14 or 15 - my friend (similar age) and I were at a door together and the person at the door gave us a little pamphlet that gave lots of information about CTR - talking about how he sold his business and made the equivalent of about a million dollars and sunk it into publishing bible literature and then he started his own stuff. I think there was something in there about miracle wheat and some of the other cons of the time. It all sounded so outrageous to me - we actually read through it with my friend's family after we finished for the day and we all had a good laugh. It just solidified to me that apostates must be conspiracy theorists and are all crazy.
After I woke up I went to one more convention (2014 international convention) as I tried in vain to wake up my wife. That was my first time encountering protesters at a convention, and they were trying to hand out pamphlets and were reading from a bible some scripture about jesus and shouting at us about how it's only through jesus that we can have salvation. I tried (but failed) to catch back up with them on a subsequent day to explain to them that nothing they're doing is helping and give them some better tactics, because it seemed to me that either they couldn't be exJWs or they were so deluded by whatever evangelical group they landed in upon exiting that they thought they could reach people by just shouting bible "truths" at them.
jwleaks and jwfacts were by far the biggest influences on me waking up as far as the actions of apostates goes. Ironically my encounters with apostates had a smaller influence on me than all the rhetoric about apostates. I could accept it when I was told that apostates were bitter/angry/lazy/selfish/etc and that's why they'd left and even that some wanted their own followers, but what always bothered me was when we were told not to take their literature even if they promised to read ours if we read theirs. Obviously if one was the truth and one was lies, it would be clear which was which and we might have a chance to sway this pour lost soul, but no we were told to write them off and run away. That always struck me as hypocritical (which of course we were always cursing hypocrisy in others...) and never sat well. Also a few times I heard my elder father talking about how important it was that apostates not be able to get JW literature (this was about the time that the first watchtower library CD was released) and I just couldn't rationalize why that'd be a problem - shouldn't they be encouraged to have the "spiritual food" that we had? I just couldn't understand the fear that people had about these apostates that were armed only with lies.
Interesting that in each case it was not being approached by apostates. Rather there were doubts to start with, and the stealth research.
This was my case as well. Doubts bubbled up, looked to see if others online had them too, found CoC and jwfacts.
Interesting that in each case it was not being approached by apostates. Rather there were doubts to start with, and the stealth research.
No question about that. It really has to come from inside a person. The proof for that is how many have we heard from on this forum who experienced being treated in a disrespectful way....if not themselves a loved one, their child or mate......and it woke them up?
Or how many went on line and stumbled into information that caught their eye and then their heart like a forum like this or jwfacts.com?
When my wife and I exited the JW construct back in the mid 1960's we came to realize that it was the social and family life that had mattered to us.....never the WTBTS which had always been questionable. Especially when at age 16 an older friend gave me a copy of Eric Hoffer's The True Believer which while never mentioning the WT Society gave a description of how and why Mass movements were able to capture and use their true believers.
It would take a few years but we finally walked away and never looked back.
Today with jwfacts.com I could have accomplished in one week...... information wise.......... what it took us three years to do.
When i was a JDub i used to sneak onto JWFacts and this site and get annoyed at the "lies"... something must have stuck though because i kept coming back and now im an all out apostate.
The brother who took me out in service for the first time, circa 1966, had left Jehovah's Witnesses. We had phone conversations and letters back and forth over the years where he discussed his reasons for leaving.
Among other pieces of apostate literature he sent me were copies of The Free Minds Journal. The story of Terry Walstrom was the first. Later, that of Nils and Sherry Jansma, friends from Bethel. That was the eye opener; how could my friends, so devoted to Jehovah, abandon their beliefs and life's work?
That was just the beginning . . .
Depends on how you look at it, I guess. When I was fully 'in', I obeyed the WT law of avoiding apostates like the plague. Even when I started doubting, and questioning, I avoided apostate literature and websites.
In my early days of Internet searches, I kept stumbling onto apostate sites, including this one, but avoided them. Even when I accidentally clicked on a link that led me to a forum, I quickly left.
But, by the time I was truly on the way out, I started lurking on ex-JW forums. I read experiences, doctrinal debates, and really took to information from the greats of the time - Maximus, Farkel, AlanF. I still avoided some of the crazier looking sites. I was more interested in facts, not sensationalism.
By the time I posted here I knew deep down I was on the way out, but was trying to find answers to all my questions, yet not quite ready to let go. Cognitive dissonance and all that. So in that respect, I did invite apostates to have discussions with me.
None of the aggressive methods work for me...can't see them working for 99% of folks.
Lurking on forums, reading, studying, and putting piece by piece together realizing the JW's do not have "the truth" was the key for me...
Cedars site before he came out was very neutral and balanced, jwfacts.com of course but Ray Franz' book and especially Don Cameron's Captives to a Concept was a great influence on me getting out.
