I think I would have gotten in more trouble as a teen then I did. I think the Witness moral code helped me threw those times.
free2beme
JoinedPosts by free2beme
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9
Please Tell Me The Name Of the New Publication(s) At This Year's Assembly
by Doubtfully Yours in.
pretty please!!!.
dy
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free2beme
Without knowing I would bet the last chapter has something to do with God's plan for the earth and a religion that is doing his work. Maybe it is just my EPS working though.
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Could the Spirit world have helped your exit from the religion?
by free2beme inboy, this might be that can of worms i meant to keep closed!.
i was thinking about something though and wondered what your thoughts might be.
if you believe in angels, the spirit realm, spirit guides or spirits of loved ones that have crossed.
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free2beme
I would congratulate you however on your desire to explore, and ask questions. You are now free to do so and it is the only path to knowledge. Isn't it wonderful?
Yes it is, and I find myself exploring things once labeled evil and seeing that in many cases what we were warned against is nothing short of a "nothing!" Here is an example, ever hear of this man named John Edwards? He is this man who says he speaks to the dead. His entire way of doing things has been disproven time and time again as cold reading. In which men have taken about 20 people, put them in a room and did this. People were crying, feeling touched, etc. At the end they explained how it was done and when you think about it, they're right. Basically, if you take 20 people in a room, someone is going to have a dead relative with the "S" sound and I see they gave you something? Hello, easy connection. I also see they had something to do with your childhood. A relative that knew me as a child, how shocking! Anyway, goes on like that time and time again and the Witnesses warn against this man. Saying he is doing evil demon work and the devil is behind this. No he isn't, he's a scam and the same greed behind this is behind their desire to fool people into accepting their religion to get more hours worked and numbers in the hall. So the other day my Witness relatives are at my house (we never stopped talking and doing things together), and this guy is mentioned. They were all, "so sick, etc." I speak up and start to explain that it is nothing and say, "hell, I could teach you how to do this." Want to see some scared people, you would think I offered to introduce Satan to them. They did not even hear the intro to my comment, in which I stated that it was disproven and a scam. All they heard was, "I will show you something evil" and I did not even say that. I had to spend the next few minutes explaining the scam and then I used an example of how I could take that small group of eight and make it work. Even though they knew I was showing them a scam in action and told them in detail how it worked. They got scared when I did it and told me to stop. Is that weird, or what.
My idea of the Spirit realm and spiritual energy, does not favor this dog and pony show. Not even close
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A Christian question, but applies to all thinking Christian too!
by free2beme inno longer being a christian, it has become a mind opening experience to look back and see certian things i once ignored or just brushed off.
yet now i can not help but see these things and wonder why other christians do not.. if you have ever studied greek, roman or any other cultures religions in history.
then you have no doubt read their legends, about gods and how things came to be, and no doubt you have enjoyed these and at the same time you must have wondered how people actually bought this enough to make it a religion.
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free2beme
Neon,
Your hatred has made you powerful, now give in to your anger and lash out at me again, In all seriousness though, an essay by a Christian to disprove my thought and make it appear that Christianity is correct is not up my ally. What I want to know it what you think, or are you just a puppet of another man's thoughts and have them do the speaking for you? You see, if you look at my original post, I did not ask, "what do people who do not attend this board, think about the fact that Greek/Roman myth is exactly like Christian myth?" No I asked what you think, and since leaving the the JW faith, I only care about individual thoughts and not those spoken by another. That my former Witness, is my path ... perhaps I am the dark side your mother warned you about (I require free thought) As for the "ROAD CLOSED" issue. I can see a sign on the road and know it is there because I can touch it, go to the local sheriff and ask about it and even go to the town hall and see when it was put in place and maybe even meet the man who put it up. That is not Christianity, there is no "hard" proof out there and there is no one on earth that can be trusted enough to give you a hard answer that is able to stand up. Plus, there is to much evidence that Greek/Roman myth evolved into Christ-myth and other Old Testiment stories. Can't swallow that pill, I took the one that sent me way down the rabbit hole and have no plan to re-enter the Matrix. -
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Jehovah's Witness! Nothing but a period in the world novel.
by free2beme inoften, more so then not, my former witness friends have the habit of wondering why more people do not hear or know about things witnesses do in modern history.
yet in time, from being on boards like this one and from knowing far more people that are not witnesses, then ones that are or were.
the crazy acts of the early 1900's that gained public attention, were replaced with a more invisable conformed organization that really does very little to be noticed.
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free2beme
I remember times when leaving conventions, in which Witnesses would be saying things about the new publications, like ..."This is going to put the world on notice"
"This is going to get people to thinking about their life"
"This might cause some hearts to change."
... and so on. Yet from their point of view, they said these because they thought what they did mattered. They thought some newspaper was covering the Convention to spread the warning or something, or that a letter was on its way to the UN or something. Why not think this, we thought we were God's people and the one true religion. Yet the reality was, we were just that religion having some meeting together and rushing to all the local buffets after to eat. Ever drive by a church now with tons of cars in front? Do you wonder, "what major message is God telling them?" No, we think, "Poor people are missing out on a wonderful day." Well at least I think that. It's just weird sometimes to think what we did in the past and realize how small the Witnesses are really noticed today.
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Could the Spirit world have helped your exit from the religion?
by free2beme inboy, this might be that can of worms i meant to keep closed!.
i was thinking about something though and wondered what your thoughts might be.
if you believe in angels, the spirit realm, spirit guides or spirits of loved ones that have crossed.
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free2beme
I understand the thought of, "give yourself more credit," and I do . At the same time I have experienced more times then I could count, wanting something to happen so bad and mentioning it to people alive and then when they died it suddenly happened. Enough to make me think, "what if?" Not that I want to start some religion around that, but enough to make me not close that door of thought entirely.
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100
A Christian question, but applies to all thinking Christian too!
by free2beme inno longer being a christian, it has become a mind opening experience to look back and see certian things i once ignored or just brushed off.
yet now i can not help but see these things and wonder why other christians do not.. if you have ever studied greek, roman or any other cultures religions in history.
then you have no doubt read their legends, about gods and how things came to be, and no doubt you have enjoyed these and at the same time you must have wondered how people actually bought this enough to make it a religion.
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free2beme
I have to suspect that what he really meant was, "I am so biased against Christianity that I am unable to even consider any thought expressed by a Christian or from a Christian point of view." The line in the article that made him "hear", "you're going to hell" was only the second line, and the article was in no way geared toward telling anyone they were going to hell. It was simply his knee-jerk, mindless reaction to anything Christian.
Been around enough Christian's in this life to know one thing, believe my faith and I will be your friend and together we will enjoy the rewards God has for us. Do not believe and punishment (hell/Armagedon) is in your future. No matter how I have seen that doctored up or sugar coated by Christian faiths, it always comes down to that simple thought in the end. I am bating 100% on this one. Even my own father who claims to be in some modern Christian faith that only sees the Bible as something you take what you want from, admited that he does see Jesus as the path of salvation and all other paths leading to pain. So sorry, but yes it is a knee jerk reaction based on years and years of experience. My thought in this whole thread is to ask Christian's if they realize how Greek/Roman myth is just another form of the myth we read in Jesus and other Bible stories. If I am bound for hell for knowing and seeing this, then slap on the factor 1000 sun tan lotion and put some steaks on the BBQ and expect them well done.
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Philosophy - is it worth the bother?
by Abaddon ini fully admit to only having dabbled in the waters of philosophy up to now.
i kept on being put off by the smell... .
having said that, is there anyone more clued up than me about the subject who can tell me anything that might make me change my mind?.
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free2beme
Never hurts to learn, as long as you are not the type to pick up each one and agree without thinking about it some first
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Could the Spirit world have helped your exit from the religion?
by free2beme inboy, this might be that can of worms i meant to keep closed!.
i was thinking about something though and wondered what your thoughts might be.
if you believe in angels, the spirit realm, spirit guides or spirits of loved ones that have crossed.
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free2beme
Boy, this might be that can of worms I meant to keep closed!
I was thinking about something though and wondered what your thoughts might be. If you believe in angels, the spirit realm, spirit guides or spirits of loved ones that have crossed. Do you wonder how much they might have affected your exit from the religion? Did certian information come to light more, when loved ones passed? Did certian topics spark your interest for no reason that lead to paths that found your seeing the light of the Witness religion? Maybe the Witnesses would want the word "demon" included in my list of possible spirit world bodies. Yet when I conclude on what I know now about life, and what I knew then, I would say that something higher and more loving was involved to get me out of that religion and not something like a supposed demon.
What do you think?
(Preparing for the skeptic! )
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Jehovah's Witness! Nothing but a period in the world novel.
by free2beme inoften, more so then not, my former witness friends have the habit of wondering why more people do not hear or know about things witnesses do in modern history.
yet in time, from being on boards like this one and from knowing far more people that are not witnesses, then ones that are or were.
the crazy acts of the early 1900's that gained public attention, were replaced with a more invisable conformed organization that really does very little to be noticed.
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free2beme
Often, more so then not, my former Witness friends have the habit of wondering why more people do not hear or know about things Witnesses do in modern history. Yet in time, from being on boards like this one and from knowing far more people that are not Witnesses, then ones that are or were. I have learned that Witnesses are really a non-issue in society. The crazy acts of the early 1900's that gained public attention, were replaced with a more invisable conformed organization that really does very little to be noticed. Even a negative story, finds back page placement in newspapers, when compared with other larger religions.
When I mention my Witness past, often my friends say things like, "I knew one of you in high school" or "I work with one of them." My seperation from the faith, often finds me answering questions that they were afraid of asking activite Witness. Yet their fears of offending are still in place, when they comment on my past faith. Often pausing to say, "...sorry if I am wrong ..." or "... is it really true ..." I have found in my conversations that they knew very little truth to the supposed "true" religion and often believed what their priest told them or hearsay from other third party books or specials. What I have concluded is that most people, I have meet, know or think the following about the Witness
1. They are those people that knock on your door on Saturday morning
2. They are the people who do not celebrate holidays.
Often too they do have wrong information about the Witnesses, and this kind of still bothers me. For one, when they say things like, "Witnesses do not believe in Jesus." To which I often find myself defending the fact that they do, while explaining that I (myself) do not. Yet it just does not seem right to say crazy fault stories about the Witnesses, when so many true crazy stories are just waiting to be told. Another thing I notice, is that many people think they (the Witnesses) are a new religion or a religion that has appeared recently on the public scene. I like to explain that they started in the 1930's, under a man named Knorr, and were a off-shot religion based on some teachings of men who ran a Bible study program before that. Why the edit from the Witness history we knew, well I have a hard time lying now. I have also learned that coming out with comment like, "... they are crazy" or "...they are terrible people" or any other negative about them, makes me look bitter. It also says something about me, when I then face the idea that these people look at me and think, "yes, but wouldn't that mean you were crazy and terrible in the past?" So often I just say, that my beliefs evolved along a different path from their teachings and found me taking a different road. Trying more and more, as the years go by, to not present my past in such a negative tone. As I do not see it as such, anymore.
It's sometimes hard for me and my former-Witness friends to believe this and we talk about it from time to time, often joking. That the world really does not notice the Witness religion, or revolve around it, when it seemed so important in the past. Much like the world does not care about the new stop light in down town, in this small town I live in. It was front page news here though. Yet the world is a big place, and a group this small and this invisable from the real world society, truly is nothing but a period in the world novel we read from each day.