Did apostates get you?

Peppermint

As a Jehovah?s Witness how did you respond to apostates?

Do you recall from your past any chance encounters with one? Did this actually lead to you leaving the truth?

Or did you put your hands over your ears and run away?

I can remember a couple of examples from my past.

Twickenham assembly London.
A couple of apostates rushed the stage trying to get to the microphone, they didn?t make it and were led away, they then passed right in front of us and were trying to shout something. Everyone in the crowd responded by clapping loudly and cheering to block out any sound.

My Work.
A new manager took over at my place of work, he was a really nice guy until I found out that he used to be a witness.

He then started to talk to me about such thing as 1975 etc. Well I just got up and left my job. He even tracked me down at my next job and would show up from time to time, not speaking about the truth anymore but just being friendly.

I would like to meet these people now.

I?m sure the Internet has increased the average JW?s exposure to so-called apostates considerably, which is excellent.

But the examples I want to hear are when people have really not been looking and apostates have found them. And how they responded.

Mulan

If you call my husband an apostate, then the answer is yes. He was an elder though. I was very gradually worn down.

I would never have listened to the apostates at assemblies.

blondie

I never was approached per se by a "true" apostate but I did hear of JWs who had left and started teaching that more than 144,000 were going to heaven. That was a sitcky point with me (hard to explain scripturally) and I did wonder what their reasoning was.

Then I studied with 2 Protestant missionaries who brought up a) Is Jesus Michael the archangel b) fulfillment of the 2300 days (one of those flipflop JW doctrines) and c) the Mexican cartillas (nothing in WTS literature). While they weren't apostates (ex-JWs), they did make me start thinking more about what I was taught and examining it which finally led to the Internet.

Blondie

Elsewhere

It wasn't until after I left the WTS that I was brave enough to look at "apostate" information.

Euphemism

When I was a dub, I used to co-administer a pro-JW bulletin board called JWZone. I was also involved with various other pro-JW BBs. Basically, I was royally pissed at the "apostates" for constantly trying to sneak on to the board. I felt that they were perfectly entitled to start their own sites and say whatever they pleased, but when they would lie to get on to my site, that just showed how morally low they were.

I do remember two cases where I had to respect the apostate, however. One was when someone applied for membership at JWZone as "Joe Rutherford". Under 'Interests', they put something like "smoking, drinking, and making up bullshit" and under 'Location', they wrote "looking down at you." I didn't approve the membership, of course, but I had to laugh.

The other time was when a lady registered after following a link from JWD. That happened fairly frequently, and we could usually catch them because Web server logs store the referring URL. I sent her an e-mail telling her that her membership was not approved because she came from an "apostate" site. She wrote back ripping me a new one for being closed-minded and judgmental, and finished with: "But you're probably not going to even read this, anyway."

Of course I couldn't drop a challenge like that, and so I replied to her message, and told her that I respected her choice to do what she pleased, and that I had nothing against ex-WItnesses; I was just trying to create a website for like-minded people and she didn't happen to fit the membership criteria. I apologized for calling this site 'apostate', and after then I always used the term 'ex-Witness' instead.

But my most ironic encounters were with the people (Prisca, SYN, and others) who said that I would be on this site one day. How wrong I thought they were...

wannaexit

I lived with an "cloacked" apostate for many years.

He tried for 10 years to keep up a facade for the sake of peace and in the hopes that I would see the light.

I am happy to report that he did get me.

wanna

kgfreeperson

When you were still a believer, did ex-Witnesses or "opposers" have more credibility? (I guess neither had much credibility--but who were you more guarded against?)

ColdRedRain

The "Apostate" that affected me the most was my former Babble study conductor Brandon Wells, of Minneapolis, MN.

He taught me to look things in a critical light, and when he said "It's possible to worship Jehovah and not be a JW" it rocked my world. The 2 seemed inseparable when I was 15.

Now, as a 23 year old, I see the 2 as 2 colors of the same bullshit. Brandon, if you're reading this, THANK YOU!!!

Gill

Wannaexit, like you a cleverly,lovely cloacked apostate got me. My hero!

I would never have listened to apostates at assemblys. I was not one to shun disfellowshipped ones but would not have discussed anything religious with them.

What finally clinched the deal for me was the internet. My mother warned me never to read the 'terrible things they say about the brothers on the internet'. So, I rushed home and read it all. Hallelulahlalalala!

Balsam

For me the WTS propaganda was effective. Beware of the evil apostates, they will lure you out of the truth and Satan will take you over. Very scary.

I do remember one time at an assembly being approached by apostate woman passing out papers, I took one and my ex-husband grabbed it out of my hand and tore it up. LOL Very dramatic. I remember locking eyes with this woman and she had such an expression of compassion on her face when he did that. He shuffled me out of range of her. That has been over 25 years ago.

Then at an assembly, they were warning us about apostates on the internet in 2000. I loved emails and the internet, we had just got a computer 6 months or so before that. They said, "If you get on the internet and read apostate lies and put downs of the Society it will shipwreck you faith". I sat there thinking if the apostates are telling lies, then that will be easy to discover. How could it shipwreck our faith if it is lies that we can prove are lies. Well from that point I knew something was fishy about this warning. It was said with such passion and conviction. Well from that point which was about a year before I left I did read some of what they said.

The thing that puzzled me the most of so called apostate literature was the rantings about CT Russell. I thought so what? That totally did not make sense to me until much later. We as JW then were told to ignore the past, it is the here and now. So when I read the here and now things, it began to seep in. Especially the blood policy, organ transplant change, Vaccinations, and many others. Those made an impact on me. It was the policy changes that caused people to die that really hit home.

Being a JW is such a total conditioning it is hard to break out of it to think freely.

Balsam

Did apostates get you?

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