Being a christian is a tough job.
Being a believer in Christ and following His Word takes courage and faith.
Know any Victims of MORE than One Cult?
by GetBusyLiving 24 Replies latest jw friends
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undercover
I knew a guy who got DFd, joined the Mormons, left them, came back to the JWs, got reinstated and then DFd again later.
I knew one guy who left the JWs and joined the Marines(and yes they are a cult)
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Samuel Thorsen
I know a lot of people who is morons and JWs at the same time
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Rod P
Petruska,
I am one of those weak, poor-minded persons you refer to, since I was a JW once and then became a Mormon.
With respect, I would suggest you need to walk a mile in another person's shoes before you so readily pass judgment on what someone else does with their life.
I can understand the pain and suffering that a lot of people have been subjected to when they were JW, and why they are no longer JW. In my case, however, I had not yet experienced all those negative impacts they speak of, and so had no reason to question or challenge the JW's until much later.
I was raised in a home with no religion. In high school and thereafter I became involved with JW's and had nothing but good experiences with the Witnesses, until certain conflicts arose much later. The reason I was even interested in JW and religion was because I had a father who was a JW when I was born, along with my younger brother. Because of my father's zealousness, my mom and dad split up, and my mom just took off. I was billeted out to a JW farming couple who I loved and came to regard as "Grandma and Grandpa", and spent about 3 years there. Some of my fondest memories are from that time period. Later, my dad remarried, and me and my brother rejoined him, along with our new "mom". Because she could not endorse the teachings of JW's, my dad, by default, did not become active as JW again, but told us kids that he "would die believing this was the truth".
In high school, I located the "surrogate grandparents" I remembered from the farm days. I began to study with them, and this time I understood the teachings. I also met weekly with a United Church minister who was a biblical scholar in Hebrew and Greek. I memorized the teachings and scriptures used by the JW's and discussed them at great length with this Minister. To my surprise, he endorsed many of them, such as Creation, no fiery Hell, no immortal Soul, no Trinity, baptism by immersion, etc, etc. (But not the blood issue). What this Minister did was unwittingly reinforce in my mind that the JW's were teaching the "truth".
A dispute broke out at home, and I was forbidden to see my "grandma and grandpa" from the farm days. After high school, I got a job working in a bank, but still lived at home. Now that I could support myself, they were in no position to forbid me from pursuing anything I wanted. I went back studying with the Witnesses, and also attended the Kingdom Hall. This led me to joining the JW's.
Happy to be a witness, I fell in love with a beautiful JW farm girl, and we married in 1964, and had 3 lovely daughters.
It was the very fact that we would go out in the field service and knock on doors of people of other religions that led me to ultimately leaving the JW's. I had met many people of many religious persuasions over a number of years, including atheists, agnostics, pyramid worshippers, Catholics, Liberal Protestants, Evangelicals, Pentecostals, Mennonites, Buddhists, and Mormons. In the process of doing this, I had many in-depth discussions/debates on biblical questions that would challenge some very good minds and theologians. This caused me to wonder "How can I be sure that the JW's be sure they have the "truth" and everyone else is wrong. The JW's would argue that they teach what the Bible teaches, and that none of the other religions do. So, to test a religion, you need only study the bible, and you will see they teach falsehood. But I began to see that this premise had a lot of flaws, and I began to question how one could know with certainty what the Bible really teaches.
When I met a number of Mormons, two in particular, they challenged me to prove that I had the authority (from God) to preach the gospel. If I did not have that authority, then I had no business knocking on their doors trying to teach them about the message of the Bible. Appealing to the Bible as the authority doesn't work, because the Bible is quite capable of being interpreted in many different ways. How do you know for sure, who has the right interpretation? And even if I won the argument on a scriptural debate, what does that prove? It only proves that I was more skilled or informed on that particular subject. It does not prove that I had the "truth".
Because there are so many interpretations, as evidenced by so many different religions, all with scholars of the Bible who are persuaded by their own religion, yet not agreeing with each other what the bible really "teaches" from one church to another, how on earth can we resolve this dilemma?
Now, the reason I was persuaded by the Mormon premise about "authority" was because of their message that there was a Great Apostasy from the Church and of the Church of Jesus' day. There had to be a restoration of the gospel in the latter days.
(This was not unlike the JW platform, who also talk about the apostasy. They talk about Charles Taze Russel, who claims to have been inspired to understand the message of the Bible for these latter days, and then came Russell who continued the process. I was active during the time of Nathan Knorr. But again, I had developed so many questions around JW teachings because of all the exposure I had in field service with so many people of other persuations, and that was making my faith in JW teachings rather shakey.)
Now, the Mormons talk about the authority of the Priesthood, which they claim was bestowed on Joseph Smith and Olver Cowdery, and thru this Authority, they could receive the correct understanding of the Bible by direct revelation from God thru a Prophet, Seer and Revelator for the Church. This was a far more powerful message than the wishy-washy claim that Russel and Rutherford got their inspiration from the Holy Spirit as they read the Bible. Any person of religion could claim that with equal import.
The point is, as a JW, I converted to the Mormon Church, to resolve the issues and questions the JW's didn't. In becoming Mormon, I split our family unit right in half, and for most of the marriage thereafter, we lived in a divided home, with all the insane rules of the Watchtower Society that JW's must follow with a disfellowshipped person. After years of living like this, we split. After the separation, I fell apart emotionally, and took steps to reunite with my wife and 3 daughters. To do that, I had to leave the Mormon Church and come back to the JW's thru getting reinstated. I got reinstated, but just before we got back together again, I realized the tremendous hypocrisy it would be to go back to knocking on doors as a JW, preaching their gospel of "truth". I stopped this in my tracks, and we did not reunite after all. Not long after that, we divorced (1963), I went back to the Mormon Church, which I still believed in. (Actually, I did not really leave the Mormon Church. They held my membership off to the side, while they allowed me to work on a marriage reconciliation. When that did not work out, they restored my membership back to regular status.)
After that I married a Mormon girl in the Mormon temple (1974)- another farm girl. Wouldn't you know it, doing missionary work, I discovered a whole lot of things about Mormonism I had never heard of before. You are never told about these things until much later after becoming a member, and even then, it was very difficult to get ahold of this information. (It's much different now with the Internet). So predictably, I left the Mormon Church, another marriage went down the tubes, and I have not belonged to any religion since then (about 1979). My second divorce came in 1983.
Since then, about 25 years ago, I have learned one heck of a lot, and have a lot of things about the Bible that I now question, but that is another story.
And so, Petruska, I have paid my dues, at a very high cost, but without regrets.
Rod P.
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DanTheMan
I grew up Catholic and joined JW's.