Posts by jwfacts

51

Did you ever have a discussion with an apostate that helped your journey out.

by jwfacts in

there seems to be a number of different ways that apostates try to get jehovah's witnesses realise they do not have the truth, ranging from subtle comments to aggressive attacks.

do you have any that looking back helped you finally leave.

some of the methods include:.

jwfacts

"militant" tactics were less than useless ... but if it made some angry "apostate" feel better than i hope it helped them.

Interesting way to look at it.

51

Did you ever have a discussion with an apostate that helped your journey out.

by jwfacts in

there seems to be a number of different ways that apostates try to get jehovah's witnesses realise they do not have the truth, ranging from subtle comments to aggressive attacks.

do you have any that looking back helped you finally leave.

some of the methods include:.

Did you ever have a discussion with an apostate that helped your journey out.

by jwfacts in

there seems to be a number of different ways that apostates try to get jehovah's witnesses realise they do not have the truth, ranging from subtle comments to aggressive attacks.

do you have any that looking back helped you finally leave.

some of the methods include:.

jwfacts

Thanks for the replies.

Interesting that in each case it was not being approached by apostates. Rather there were doubts to start with, and the stealth research.

Rainbow_Troll - Midway through his sermon my mom comes along: "What are you doing with my son?!"

Interesting how if a person approaches a teenager to discuss the Bible, a JW gets all concerned, yet think there is nothing wrong with going uninvited to strangers houses and speaking about their beliefs.

51

Did you ever have a discussion with an apostate that helped your journey out.

by jwfacts in

there seems to be a number of different ways that apostates try to get jehovah's witnesses realise they do not have the truth, ranging from subtle comments to aggressive attacks.

do you have any that looking back helped you finally leave.

some of the methods include:.

jwfacts

There seems to be a number of different ways that apostates try to get Jehovah's Witnesses realise they do not have the truth, ranging from subtle comments to aggressive attacks. Do you have any that looking back helped you finally leave.

Some of the methods include:

Picketing conventions
Ads in newspapers and on billboards
ExJW's on the radio and TV
ExJW's approaching carts
Conversations or emails with an old exJW friend
Conversations when JWs come to the door of an exJW
ExJW's going up to JWs whilst they are at a door in the territory
Kingdom Hall talks where the speaker uses it as the disassociation talk
ExJW's answering at a meeting
ExJW's causing a scene at a Kingdom Hall
ExJW's hiding their previous association when speaking with JWs
ExJW's hosting websites and posting on forums

Whilst I am not a fan of the more aggressive approaches, I accept that different things work for different people, and am interested what may have had an affect on people here that have left. Did convention pickets or conversations help you, or some of the other scenarios, or did you make you mind up to leave prior to becoming aware of any "apostate" information?

I was approached once at the age of about 16 when I was street witnessing and had an interesting talk about Crisis of Conscience. The person raised how Watchtower made a profit from selling publications. That always stuck with me even though it did cause me to leave.

Another time an exJW came up to a person's door whilst I was doing my presentation to tell the householder that I was part of a cult. Quite confusing for both me and the householder, and I quickly left. I'm not sure that had any affect, except make me realise apostates have a lot of anger.

A non-JW householder once told me a lot about the early history of Watchtower, which did have quite an affect on me, though my parents told me it was lies and I never looked into it further.

Looking back, none of those experiences prompted me to leave, but they did remain with me and made me understand that people do have intelligent reasons for not believing it was the truth. That seed of doubt always remained.

Some conversations that had the most affect were with believers that raised their own internal doubts, even though they were not trying to affect my faith.

19

One of the most defining thing that made me question JW church after 27 years was seeing the funeral discourse outline.

by Chook in

it gave the poor bastard who past away no respect, hardly mentioned anything about the deceased.

yet hijacked the event with cult propaganda..

jwfacts

If anyone can send me a link to the later outlines that would be great.

19

One of the most defining thing that made me question JW church after 27 years was seeing the funeral discourse outline.

by Chook in

it gave the poor bastard who past away no respect, hardly mentioned anything about the deceased.

yet hijacked the event with cult propaganda..

jwfacts

Good point. A JW cannot celebrate a birthday because "better is the day of ones death than birth", yet still at death the funeral outline says the person cannot be eulogized.

The outline is at http://jehovah.net.au/books/Watchtower-Funeral-Discourse.pdf

18

May 14, 2017 TO ALL BODIES OF ELDERS Re: Public Reading of Study Material at Congregation Meetings

by wifibandit in

may 14, 2017 to all bodies of elders re: public reading of study material at congregation meetings.

which replaces.

april 22, 2012 to all bodies of elders re: reading scriptures at the watchtower study.

jwfacts

I was always confused when preparing the Watchtower by the number of Scriptural texts that seemed to have no relevance to the point being made in the paragraph. I wonder if the ones in red will be ones that actually have a clear application.

32

If Jesus had to choose his earthly organisation NOW, who would win?

by stuckinarut2 in

we all know that the society claims that jesus invisibly chose the bible students (forerunners of jw) in 1919 to be his organization here on earth.. yet, as we know, so much of what they then taught and did was wrong according to current teaching and practice.. the reply witnesses will give is something like "they were the most sincere seekers of truth blah blah...and jesus could see their potential".

so, pretend for a moment that the current organization and the 1919 organization were both in concurrent existence at the time he invisibly came to choose.... which would he choose?

the current or former?.

jwfacts

Trump. He has the same skill set as the GB.

16

Russian Ban exposed but not THE ARC...WHY?

by tor1500 in

jw
friends

just your thoughts....i've been all over this site, everyone says, that if jehovah was backing the org.

then why so many things happen in the org.

child abuse, shunning, and so on....but my question or thought is why is the banning of witnesses all over the media, but the arc isn't wasn't picked up in the media, like this (oh little leaks here and there, but nothing major) nothing like the nyt or any major media venue where the friends would see it and couldn't deny it, even if they wanted to....why does the media care more about banning witnesses than child abuse...i know even if the arc was exposed many of the friends would stay, but would be shamed, because they talked about other religions...or maybe jehovah is bringing the org.

jwfacts

Banning of religion is a sensitive topic for all religious people. JWs now, maybe them next. It is in their interests to protect freedom of religion and be outspoken against any violation of that right.

31

UK Memorial attendances up this year?!

by Isambard Crater in

jw
friends

my congregation had around 25 more people at the memorial last night than last year, and the two other congregations i have family in all experienced a similar increase in about 25 more people present.

umm, i'm surprised, having thought this year would see a memorial decline again.

and i'm kind of disappointed..

jwfacts

Jehovah's Witnesses are a superstitious bunch, always looking for signs that the end is about to occur. With Trump as president and his sparring with Putin, they will be thinking King of the North and South. A war in Syria, persecution in Russia, an earthquake, famine in Somalia, and their indoctrination must be on high alert.

You may think that the Australian Royal Commission would have an affect, but just a fraction of JWs even know about this. Yet they all can see the unrest in the world. The sad thing is the total ignorance, as the world is still the most peaceful it has ever been.

What do people think the memorial attendance will be this year? It was 20,085,142 in 2016 and the growth over the last 2 years has been a miserable -0.4% and 1.1%.This year I expect the growth to be more than that, probably more than 2%.