i have met many who i call " jehovers witnesses untill the day they die".
and i think one of the main reasons is jehovers witnesses do not wan't to change their living conditions.. i have reasoned that my motivation to awaken was i wanted to change my living conditions.. this motivation made me an enemy to watchtower indoctrination, which i now saw was blocking my energies for achiving my personal goals.
the " watchtower club" had now become my enemy.. i was now able to question the reationalism of watchtower doctrines, and i saw free discussion was not toletated.
I fully agree with your asessment. Some times we make the mistake of thinking that people do not change because they do not know the truth about something, but the reality is many people are okay with their routine and are not interested in changing their mind or their behavior.
Philosophical or ethical considerations are not something they are concerned about and, if they are, they have decided that changing due to those considerations is worthless or too inconvinient.
a documentary states that this cult leader, who claims to be jesus, used to be "a jehovah's witness pastor".
i guess they mean elder.
does anybody from australia recognize him?.
Guess I should have been paying closer attention. Had it playing in the background and missed the JW connection. :(
At 5:30 minutes it says he "was a Jehovah's Witness Pastor..."
great quotes viewed with jw's in mind_______________________________________ some people die at 25 and arent buried until 75. benjamin franklin________________________________________________jehovahs witnesses stop growing, improving, learning when they accept the watchtowers misnamed truth.
lost souls waiting at a bus stop for a bus that never comes; all the great things they could have done, people they could have helped, productive lives they could have led are suffocated by standing there waiting for armageddon to solve every problem for them.___________________________________________________ most people are other people.
their thoughts are someone elses opinions.
Great selection. Nietzsche and Wilde always seem to be right. I discovered Nietzsche while I was a Ministerial Servant and kept reading his books while an Elder. He is one of my favorite authors. As a Jehovah's Witness, you start your path to freedom when you realize that no one should limit what you read or watch privately. Your quotes and great comments remind me of how fearful many Jehovah's Witnesses are of philosophical ideas, or ideas in general unless they can find them in literature from the Watch Tower.
a documentary states that this cult leader, who claims to be jesus, used to be "a jehovah's witness pastor".
i guess they mean elder.
does anybody from australia recognize him?.
A documentary states that this cult leader, who claims to be Jesus, used to be "a Jehovah's Witness pastor". I guess they mean Elder. Does anybody from Australia recognize him?
it used to bother me that people would say that about my well meaning religion.
how do you prove that witnesses are indeed, false prophets?.
LP97: And, if the words of the organisation are fallible, why do I have to unquestioningly obey them? After all, their predictions have a 100% FAILURE RATE. If a fallible person made predictions that had a 100% failure rate, then I wouldn't trust them. Why should "God's organisation" be any different?
This one has been for me, and I guess for many others also, the main cause of distress. You are obligated to immediately believe and embrace any doctrine or prediction they publish, even if there is no basis to support it, but when that doctrine clashes with reality and has to be modified, they are ready to be infallible all over again. In other words, they do not claim they are infallible, but hey require you to treat them as such.
i've been a lurker for quite some time and enjoy the forum.
i've reached a point in life where i don't argue ideologies anymore so i don't have much to say.
i've been out for decades and believe i've been mostly de-cultabilized (if that's even a word).. my family is still in and i haven't had contact with them in years.
Welcome Mark...
Don't these people read?
The majority of Witness are not readers of anything other that WT literature. And also usually distrust any Witness that is an avid reader of secular literature.
just out of the blue i asked my wife whos been a jw for some 30 odd years can she explain the overlapping doctrine.
she said to me she never heard of this and said she will have to look it up.
i thought oh s#^%!.
Only apostates understand this doctrine.
so the governing body likes to keep claiming incredible growth.
at the same time they claim bible studies are way down.
are the finally admitting what we've known all along, that they can no longer recruit outsiders?
It's my theory of the moment that the Society sees the writing on the wall w.r.t. field service, and in order to continue to be able to boast about growth, they are moving towards other figures that they can reliably brag about, such as translation and web site statistics.
I would not be surprised if it emerges that they have found a way to count visitors to JW.org and the time those visitors spend on the site as hours of service and return visits.
Since they stopped publishing the statistics of the worldwide work on the Watchtower magazine (although it still appears on the yearbook) I suspected they were preparing for the day negative numbers start to appear.
many of the recent changes in the jehovah's witness organization are a clear sign of a cult that is struggling for survival.
the internet has change the scenario in a very dramatic way.
many of us who for years struggled alone with doubts and cognitive dissonance thinking that we were the only ones, that we, as individuals were the issue, now know that there is a large community of individuals who see the organization as what it is, a mind controlling cult that is not only false, but also dangerous.. the governing body clearly understands the consequences of this awakening.
This affects them all the way to the top. They used to have Fred Franz or even Ray Franz, and Ed Dunlap. Remember the level of writing there was in the older publications. That is all missing. Now they have Stephen Lett or Sam Herd, and someone who homeschooled & pioneered working in the Writing Dept.
Great observation. I remember the level of writing and the issues being covered on the magazines. Since I was intellectually curious since I was a teen, I loved reading articles that were of an intellectual nature. I remember, for instance, when Salman Rushdie was threatened by a Fatwa from Iran for the publication of The Satanic Verses. I first read of that through the Awake! magazine.
Books like The Bible, God's Word or Man's? Revealed that the writers were well versed in History and Philosophy. You no longer see that type of stuff.
Sometimes I think that they are trying to leave as little room as possible for intellectuals, since the more you think, the closer you get to figure out nonsense. As explained on my first post, I was an Elder for some years until I stepped down giving vague reasons (that I had to take care of some personal issues).
I still attend meetings because I have a family that I am not planning to lose. But I will eventually fade.
The point is that there were times a couple of years ago when I could freely comment on the Watchtower study without saying something I did not believe. Now this is less frequent. Almost every article has to do with promoting the WT or why this is the truth, etc. As a result of this, I rarely raise my hand.
many of the recent changes in the jehovah's witness organization are a clear sign of a cult that is struggling for survival.
the internet has change the scenario in a very dramatic way.
many of us who for years struggled alone with doubts and cognitive dissonance thinking that we were the only ones, that we, as individuals were the issue, now know that there is a large community of individuals who see the organization as what it is, a mind controlling cult that is not only false, but also dangerous.. the governing body clearly understands the consequences of this awakening.
While they have lowered the standards within the brain and heart and efforts, the Governing Body just can't help but be their own worst enemy and keep raising the standards as far as dress, grooming, obedience, staying away from independent thought goes.
Can you even imagine from all the things to choose from, taking "overlapping generation" as your way to motivate members?
Can you imagine getting over a million Witnesses to your Zone Meeting and just beating them up over stupid things like sock colors and tight pants? .....and generally forgetting to say positive things about how they are doing?
Totally agree. They are also dumbing down the message.
