Posts by besty

61

New here

by MarkofCane in

hello and thanks to everyone for participating on this forum it has really been of much value, for those of you that post here know that your words are not lost you never know who is reading your expressions, lives are being changed and nonsense challenged.

i’m not much of a writer so excuse my untrained writing style and grammar but i want to share my story to help anyone who is visiting here to see that we are real people, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters who have come here for answers, there is no agenda, just searching for truth.

i hope my story will help others as so many here have helped me..

besty

Welcome to the forum MOC, and to the rest of your life :-) Right now you are still a JW, sometime soon you will be an ex-JW and eventually hopefully you can graduate to ex-ex-JW. And then you won't be on this forum so much...

But for now, in my experience (most of it on here somewhere) the big things are:

1 - make sure to know that most people on here are supportive (sometimes misguided, mistaken and misspelt so take it all with a pinch of salt),

2 - that you have time to plan and make the best moves for you and your family. Try and treat it as a game you will win, and try not to be too rash, difficult though that is.

3 - do not worry about 'what' to believe next - you have plenty of time to figure that out - it's ok to give yourself permission to accept that now you don't know the answer to some of the bigger questions, and also to accept that you might never know. In short, don't rush towards an alternative belief system. It's one of the big advantages of the Internet that the only exit door from JW'ism is no longer manned by Evangelicals. Atheists/agnostics have a different door you can choose to walk through.

4 - Give yourself permission to accept that many of your life choices so far are not your fault. You have been brainwashed in a cult and are starting a journey to recovery towards a more standard way of thinking. IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT. :-)

5 - Accept that you will eventually be shunned by some, whether you are disfellowshipped or not. There is no honourable way to leave this religion. That's the way it has been set up against you by others. In time, think carefully about fading versus being disfellowshipped. There is no right answer for your circumstances, particularly not from strangers on a web forum. (You may decide that your time on this planet is not a dress rehearsal and that the inevitable years of deception to possibly maintain conditional friends and family is not worth it for you). Consider carefully how much longer and to what extent your life will be ruled by 7 grey men in grey suits from a grey office block in Brooklyn.

6 - Post any/all of your thoughts and questions on here. I have never seen a decent question not get a bunch of answers.

Wishing you the best of luck, you will need it.

Paul

PS www.jwfacts.com is the best resource for unravelling the doctrines and claims of of JW's, and was instrumental in helping me get my wife out with me.

35

After 17 years, I went to a KH....really shocked!!

by Prometheus in

after severe pressure from my family, i have decided to attend to the nearest kh.

and a little history regarding my self: i became inactive and lost completely contact of the wt changes and "new light" 17 years ago.. everything seemed so odd and strange during the meeting.

latest technology, animated movies, watchtower web tv, a website that you can download everything, including km and wt study articles.

besty

take the study - make sure the format is:

Part A - what I used to believe was the truth

Part B - what you now believe is the truth

Part C - make them explain from the Bible how to from A to B

26

United States baptism stats 1969-2015

by the comet in

whenever the new yearbooks come out, we all look at the figures and see the publisher increase never really matches up with the baptism figures.

it never should match up as all newly baptized ones are already publishers, and may have been for many years.

i, as an example, became an unbaptized publisher at age 11. i didn't get baptized until i was 17. .

besty

http://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/statistics.php

43

Evolution is a Fact #3 - ERVs

by cofty in

part 1 - protein functional redundancy.... part 2 - dna functional redundancy.... imagine you are teacher with suspicions that some of your pupils have been copying from each other.

comparing the correct answers in all of their assignments might not provide conclusive evidence.

they could simply claim they had all carefully revised the same textbooks so it shouldn't be surprising that they all gave the same answers.

besty

@clambake - you're a reasonably bright guy - start a thread with a subject you find interesting for us to comment on please.

meanwhile leave cofty to his subject please...

;

<<<<waiting for thoughtful topic starting by clambake here >>>>>>>

48

Massive Plunge in Number of New JW Congregations from 1990 to 2014

by steve2 in

in a separate thread on the very latest figures for the current world wide annual report of jws, discussion turned to how "we'll know decline has really set in.

one of the posters said: .

the figure that interests me most is the number of congregations.

besty

or those figures another way:

1990-99	66,207 to 91,487	3.7%
2000-09	93,154 to 107,000	1.55%
2009-14	107,000 to 109,297	0.43%

percentages are CAGR

62

Umbertoecho here.

by umbertoecho in

hello people.. i'm tired and a bit sick at the moment but i can't let anyone think that this is going to go away.... i am able to tell you a few things in order to prevent any confusion in the minds of those who are thinking that nothing will come of this arc;that nothing will effect the wtbts in america and other places.. i have been there and given my testimony.

helen milroy and her assistants were there along with another group of people who are there to lend assistance if you crack up at any time during or after the hearing.

i did not crack up but can see how this happens.. security is tight and anonymity is sacred to them as they want to protect all who come forward.

besty

Thanks for sharing this with us, for giving yourself permission to speak up, for having the courage to execute your plan and for giving voice to the thousands of children sexually abused by Jehovahs Witnesses.

Thank you.

142

Governing Body Member Gerrit Loesch Must Eventually Take The Witness Stand In Child Molestation Lawsuits

by frankiespeakin in

with many more cases in the offing the zalkin lawfirm will press the issue again and again and force gerrit loesch to testify.

what say you?.

.

besty

* I think it was "theocratic warfare" he had heard of but didn't know what it meant, thereby neatly walking into the trap.

46

Should doctors tell JW patients that there is disagreement about Watchtower's blood policy.

by Lee Elder in

this has been a controversial issue among doctors and medical ethicists.

i think it basically comes down to the fact that physicians have a responsibility to establish the presence of informed consent.

is it really possible for a person to give informed consent if they are not accurately informed?.

besty

It's not a question of belief. It's a question of what is the most reasonable, natural and simplest understanding of all the scriptures within their context.

Cofty made his argument and you failed to overturn it. So please don't rewrite history on another thread.

46

Should doctors tell JW patients that there is disagreement about Watchtower's blood policy.

by Lee Elder in

this has been a controversial issue among doctors and medical ethicists.

i think it basically comes down to the fact that physicians have a responsibility to establish the presence of informed consent.

is it really possible for a person to give informed consent if they are not accurately informed?.

besty

Your post that you refer to above and your premise was debunked

no it wasn't - what actually happened was you got your ass handed to you.

11

Ever wondered which country in the JW Annual Report is most likely to reflect overall decline/progress of the WTS?

by besty in

a bit of spreadsheet fun - trying to ascertain which country is the bellwether for the wts.. my methodology was as follows:.

take the individual ar's from 2010 - 2016 and calculate an accurate (.00) ave pub increase/decrease for each country.

sort the countries into descending order by this value with the grand total row included in the mix.. assign the countries 5 places above and 5 places below the grand total 1 point.

besty

also this is just based on 2015 - would be better if all available years could be modelled to show trends over time