My baptism was the result of fraud on the part of the WTS and emotional manipulation on the part of my father. As such, it is at best meaningless and at worst a symbol of my being taken advantage of and manipulated by those I trusted for the first ~30 years of my life.
OneEyedJoe
JoinedPosts by OneEyedJoe
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59
What does your baptism mean to you now?
by GiftsinMen ini was baptised on 1st sept 1990, 25years ago today.
it is still a date with deep meaning for me.
i never dedicated my life to serving any man or any organisation, this was my choice - as a grown adult - to serve my god through jesus christ.
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U.S. JWs: 36% White, 27% Black, 6% Asian, 32% Latino (PEW)
by Gayle inhttps://baptistnews.com/ministry/congregations/item/30426-racially-diverse-nation-isn-t-mirrored-in-most-religious-groups.
seventh-day adventists and muslims about the same.
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OneEyedJoe
Actaully the black demographic had a 5% increase. Of course, I wonder how many of those are immigrants as well.
Crap, you're right. Even so the increase in the latino population is proportionally much larger. I wonder how these numbers track against the demographics change in the US as a whole, too. That might well have something to do with it, though I'm pretty confident that the US population didn't change nearly as much as the JWs did, so there's still definitely a lot of churn indicated.
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Intro and Thoughts
by ThinkerBelle ini've been lurking on the board for almost a year now and i think i'm ready to come out of hiding (although, i'm so nervous as i type this).
i'm not ready to share everything about my story, but the basics are that i'm a born-in, elder's kid, baptized as a teenager because i was tired of hearing people ask me "all your friends are baptized, when are you going to get baptized?
", married an unbeliever (was df, but came back shortly after) and we have two kids.
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OneEyedJoe
Welcome!
I can definitely relate to the adrenaline rush of that first post and the paranoia that came with signing up on this site. That in itself really says something about this cult - the fact that almost everyone in your position relates a similar feeling of fear as a result of that first post really shows how controlling this cult is. When even anonymous speech is a frightening concept, something's wrong.
As difficult as this process is for anyone, it sounds like you're in a pretty good position, all things considered. Definitely keep learning and researching, but remember that there's no rush. Just because you're leaving one belief system doesn't mean you need to jump into going to another church or whatever. It seems that a lot of those that leave still have trouble with the concept that there's time. Armageddon isn't coming, and you have time to figure things out at your own pace.
I wish you nothing but the best on this journey.
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U.S. JWs: 36% White, 27% Black, 6% Asian, 32% Latino (PEW)
by Gayle inhttps://baptistnews.com/ministry/congregations/item/30426-racially-diverse-nation-isn-t-mirrored-in-most-religious-groups.
seventh-day adventists and muslims about the same.
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OneEyedJoe
There's a lot of churn in the cult, and it looks like they're losing members and replacing them with immigrants that make an easy mark, having left their entire social structure behind. Doesn't bode too well for the cult, but unfortunately there's always money to be made by exploiting the poor, so if they restructure some I'm sure they'll be able to manage this shift just fine.
It's not much to go on but since there's a comparable drop in the blacks and whites, this seems to indicate something that will probably be pretty obvious to most here - the largest factor at play here is social support. A quick google search turned a comparison of income by race (http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0104552.html) which if I'm reading this correctly shows that blacks tend to have a lower household income than both whites and hispanics. If income (which usually tracks reasonably close to education) were a huge factor then I would expect to see the demographics shifting towards blacks and to a slightly lesser extent hispanics. Since it's only shifting to hispanic, that indicates to me that this is more about immigration than education or income.
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United Nations Global Peace And Security Announcement September 2015 / Attack On Christians
by Timothex inthe united nations will shortly announce global peace and security.
this will result in the attack on the true religion [ jehovah's witnesses ] lead by pope francis and intern will bring armageddon / paradise.
please brothers and sisters share this information with everyone!
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OneEyedJoe
I think you've got your eschatology a bit off - the cry of peace and security comes, then the governments turn on false religion and that's completely wiped out leaving only JWs. It's only at that point that they turn on JWs.
Interesting that it seems that the governments (especially in Russia, China and Austrailia/UK here of late) are turning on JWs while leaving "christendom" alone. In any event, if it happens like you say it oughta be a great light show - I'll be sure to grab a drink and sit a chair out on my balcony for the best viewing.
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I feel trapped...I might return to the Borg....
by JustHuman14 ini have being thinking quite a while before posting.
actually i haven't post for quite a long in the forum and i guess i'm one of the old ones, since i became member since 2001.. after leaving the borg for almost 16 years and disfellowshiped 10 years ago.
you can see my relevant post:.
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OneEyedJoe
From what I've read on here it seems that reinstatement takes a minimum of 6 months, but there's been a recent push at elder's schools to keep them from reinstating in less than a year. It can depend a lot on the congregation, though so maybe you'll get lucky. I know for some it takes multiple years. They'll also likely grill you and try to get you to confess any and all sins that you committed in the last decade, and I suspect that will also influence the amount of time that it takes for you to be reinstated.
Best of luck to you!
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Give Jehovah Only 6 Months!
by naazira inmain question: what do you think would happen if jehovah's witnesses stayed away from the watchtower organization for 6 months?
instead of "us" staying in their world for 6 months.
personally, i think they would be like the amish youth on rumspringa- many to never return.. i came across a thread here, where the poster said that their parents told them to give jehovah's org 6 months.
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OneEyedJoe
I can see the "commit to it completely for 6 months" thing working on a lot of people who are just beaten down but don't know TTATT. The way cults work is to get you to participate in spite of your better judgement and that causes cognitive dissonance, which forces you to have a better view of the cult (your participating in cult activities is contrary to your negative feelings about the cult so you either have to change your actions or your feeling about the cult - if you've committed to trying it for 6 months, most likely it will be the latter).
What I'm wondering is if this 6 month trial period is an institutionalized thing. Is it a recommended tactic in the elder's manual or at the elder's school, or is it just a fluke that a couple elders hit upon the same thing? It always interests me to see what bits of the cult indoctrination and mind control come from the top. It seems like most of it does, but there have definitely been a few cases that I've seen where it seems like a few elders or a CO have happened upon some particularly unique method of controlling people that isn't used by the organization as a whole.
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I was unkind & I am deeply sorry
by Dolosus inearly this morning, i was stopped at a service station dealing with a mechanical issue with my motorcycle.
i was approached by 2 young men who pro-offered some of your reading material.
i deeply regret that i was very unkind; in actual fact, i was quite mean in my response to them.
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OneEyedJoe
I don't take it personally how I was occasionally treated in the past while trying to push my cult on other people. I was (unknowingly) trying to force people into the same mental prison that I was in... I think that warrants some hostility.
In case you haven't worked it out, this forum is mostly made of people that have left (or are trying to leave) the JW cult :-)
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I feel trapped...I might return to the Borg....
by JustHuman14 ini have being thinking quite a while before posting.
actually i haven't post for quite a long in the forum and i guess i'm one of the old ones, since i became member since 2001.. after leaving the borg for almost 16 years and disfellowshiped 10 years ago.
you can see my relevant post:.
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OneEyedJoe
I'm sorry to hear of your health problems. That's difficult with the best of support systems... for someone who's left their family behind to exit this cult it must be incredibly daunting. I hope you have some support outside the cult.
Personally the only reason I'd go back is if I needed the support of my family and had no other options. It sounds like you're only considering it to make your family feel better. In your situation, you don't owe them anything. It's well within their power to put you before their cult and you shouldn't feel bass for leaving a barrier between you and them because you're not the one putting it there.
Whatever you do, there's no shame in either course. Just remember that you have value for who you are, not for what you (pretend to) believe. Being around people in this cult make it easy to forget that.
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What Convinced you to Leave?
by LaurenM ini've been posting here a lot, but these last few weeks have been very difficult for me.
anyways, lately, i've been thinking about confessing everything i've done to the elders and going back, but deep down, i don't really think it's the truth...so my question is, what convinced you it wasn't the truth and that leaving wasn't a horrible decision that everyone in the truth makes it out to be?
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OneEyedJoe
For me it was a culmination of a life full of "that doesn't seen right"moments. Then allowing myself to see the false prophecy for what it was, and discovering the dishonest, deceptive, and untruthful statements in the literature (most notably in the creation book) was the final push that sent me over the edge.
One thing I'd suggest that you try would be to stop calling it "the truth" for a while and see if that changes how you feel. Getting people to call it "the truth" was probably one of the single most manipulative thing the jw leadership had done. Words are the tools you use to think and when you allow someone to tamper with their meaning they have a great amount of power to influence how you think. When you stop calling it "the truth" when you think about it, you might find that it becomes easier to find how you really feel about things.