My mom instilled the fear in us from an early age that all apostates were demonized. I can remember in our congregation the apostates were marked on the back of the territory cards as Do Not Call - apostate. In one territory, apparently there was a particularly bad apostate and I remember my mom and the other sisters saying that they could just FEEL the demons emanating from his house.
Posts by lucky
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34What view did you have of apostates when you were a JW?
by bull01lay ini can remember being an attendant at one of the circuit assemblies in nottingham, where a group of pentecostals were picketing out by one of the gates.
i was intrigued for a short while, until a guy in a motorised wheelchair type thing, tried to get into the assembly by ramming himself into us.
i could of quite happily baptised him in the trent !!
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21
Did you ever 'Google' yourself?
by Legolas ini'm not on it, but my husband is!...
(his business picture)
try it and if anything funny comes up show us!
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lucky
I got 76 legitimate hits.
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What's the most ridiculous thing you were ever counselled on?
by micheal inone of the cornerstones of jw's is counsel.
they just love to give counsel and many times they will literally make things up just for the sake of counsel.
i was once counselled for joking around too much.
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lucky
Someone in my pioneer school told me I looked like a JCrew model. I took this as a complement at the time, but apparently not everyone was so keen on the fresh-faced, preppy look. The elders counselled me that I should get my hair cut and get a perm (I had waist-length thick blond hair), start wearing makeup, and not wear such long skirts. I guess they preferred that I look like someone out of a ten year old JCPenney catalog, like all of their wives.
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Do you feel comfortable with celebrating the holidays?
by Jamelle injust curious how different individuals have reacted to the though of celebrating holidays after they left the jws...?
any holidays you have more trouble with than others?
does halloween freak you out?
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lucky
Like others have said, my biggest stress is the fear that my mom will find out (I'm not df'd or da'd). It hasn't been too much of an issue since we live across the country and don't do much for the holidays, anyways. But, we're hoping to have a kid and I'm not sure how I'm going to deal with the holidays after that. I definitely don't want to deprive the kid of the holidays, but I would hate to have to resort to something like, "make sure you don't tell grandma about this". On the other hand, I don't want to tell my mom we're celebrating and then have her never speak to me or any of her potential future grandchildren again. Any advice from those out there in a similar situation?
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lucky
I knew a couple people in Kingman. Carrie and Wilma? (last name escapes me at the moment). Wilma was the mother; Carrie the daughter. Carrie was a pioneer (this was about 10 years ago). they had moved to Kingman from the congregation I was in (in the eastern part of the state). Were you in the Kingman congregation?
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Earthquakes in one place after another
by free2beme ini realize that in the 1990's, the witnesses changed their view on this thought of "earthquakes in one place after another" to be more figurative and not literal.
yet most active witnesses still see them as signs of the end.
i did when i was younger and something occurred to me today as i watched the news from pakistan.. did anyone ever have witnesses that expanded beyond the warning of this natural disaster (earthquakes) to include all natural disasters?
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lucky
The reasoning in that watchtower article is just mind-boggling.
I would venture a guess that the population in Tangshan was quite a bit smaller in 1914 than it was in 1976. But if the earthquake had struck in 1914, it would still have been in "the last days".
I would venture a guess that the bay area earthquake that hit in 1989 would have caused significantly more damage had it hit in 1913. Was Jesus not able to forsee engineering advances? Or do only earthquakes that cause a large "magnitude of human distress" count towards the "signs of the times"?
All indications are that the world's population will keep growing. What's to say that an earthquake that killed 15,000 people in 1980 wouldn't kill 50,000 people in 2080? How can they say that "the population is big, so that means the time of the end is now", when there's no indication that the population is going to stop growing? Although, I guess with the "new light", 2080 will still be "the time of the end."
It's disturbing that I use to buy into this crap.
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149
Finish This Sentence....You Know you're a JW teenager If....
by doodle-v induring class the teacher asks "who all plan to go to college?
" and you shrink down in your seat in an effort to become invisible as everyone in the class raises their hand.
-doodle-v. your turn!
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lucky
you take the PSAT on a whim to get out of saturday morning field service, get the highest score in the school district, become a national merit semifinalist, have a big debate with your mother as to whether or not to write the required essay for the national merit competition, decide to write it on the topic of "why the truth is more important than college", and completely mortify all the teachers and counselors in your school.
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SHOULD I PIONEER OR COLLEGE?
by stillAwitness indo you think the wt has become more lenient or stricter over the year?.
i am 21 and i remember just 4 years ago going to college was looked at as something negative.
girls my age, we had plans to be ft pioneers and become secretaries.
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lucky
Definitely go to college. I started college when I was 21 after 3 years of pioneering, too. I graduated when I was 25, and even though I felt really old at the time, I think being a few years older was actually a benefit, because I was a bit more serious and wasn't taking college for granted. I didn't have a declared major when I started and I didn't know what I wanted to do for my first year and a half of college, but I tried to take classes that would apply to any major and I didn't take too many electives so that I wouldn't be too far behind when I did figure out a major. I talked to other students in my classes and asked what their majors were, and when I found one that seemed interesting to me, I volunteered half a day a week for a semester at an organization that did what I was interested in and tried it out. Once I made up my mind, I was able to finish up with my newly chosen major on time, got a job right after graduating, and eight years later, I'm still happily employed in my chosen field.
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Were there any professionals in your congregation?
by JH in.
i was just wondering if you had any doctors, lawyers, pyschologists, psychiatrists, engineers or any highly educated ones in your congregation?
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lucky
I can't say that I entirely agree with Blondie, at least according to my experience. I grew up in one of the wealthiest counties in the U.S., with a highly educated general population. I believe that my mom was one of the very few in the three congregations in my town who had been to college. Only two of the many elders and ministerial servants had college degrees; one was an accountant, I'm not sure what the other one did exactly. Most of the brothers in the congregation were janitors or in construction trades.I went to college in a typical "college town". I think only one of the elders and ministerial servants in the two congregations there had a college degree.
When I moved to "where the need was greater" to a dinky community of a few thousand in the middle of nowhere, three of the four elders in the congregation had graduated from ivy league colleges. Of course, they had moved to where the need was greater, too, and none of them lasted too long.
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New Watchtower artists?
by lucky in.
the website worth1000.com recently held a photoshop contest, asking for entries that depict mass destruction.
it looks like some of these entries could have been taken straight from the pages of the watchtower publications..
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lucky
I think these images can still be considered "art" because they are photo montages done using Adobe Photoshop software.I realize that the Watchtower artists create original drawings and paintings, and that the publications often use "stock" or purchased photography when appropriate. I wasn't trying to imply that the Watchtower was purchasing art; I was just struck by the similarities between the contest artists' depictions of mass destruction and the pictures of mass destruction that have appeared in the various watchtower publications, such as the Revelation book.