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to the elders of the maitland congregation and governing body of the watchtower tract.
and bible society,.
They will certainly read the main letter and it is written well enough to make anyone think about their own position.
The second letter to is well written and even if it is not read by the elders it has been read by people on this forum so far 209 times.
Well done for having the courage to do this and yeh start living your life the way it should be led.
I wish you well
here is a link:.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_oldest_american.
as she was 114, this would have made her what, approx 8 in the year 1914?
I know a lady who was 111 on Sunday. in U K. Amazing how some can keep going.
As far as the WT society goes it doesn't matter any more if the old ones do die off as the generation teaching doesn't apply any more to those seeing 1914
...the whole of canada hooked up by phone.. no big announcement that it was all a scam, no cancellation of the field service arrangement, just a praise of the new printing press and some regular drab.
what a waste of my saturday evening..
I am from the U K and have no idea what you are talking about. Can you explain?
having read a lot of threads on how difficult it can be to deal with parents who cannot understand why a child leaves the jw's etc, i decided to post about my mother.... mum joined the jw's in the early 70's.
she had 3 children, about 8,10 and 12. after divorce and remarriage she had two more (twins) when i was 15ish.
we three first children all left home, older brother d/f first, younger sister d/a years later and i left my wife and was d/f too.
You're mum sounds a great woman, she realizes I think that she may or may not be right in what she believes. There are others like her. My mother in law never said anything negative to me when I faded. Unfortunately they are not in the majority. Most take the hard line the society preaches and cut themselves off from the one leaving.
i've noticed an interesting dichotomy in these discussions.
as a starting point, i understand that we are all different --- there is no "we" here except that we have all been, or been involved with, jw's.
but this is interesting..... some people complain about being "hounded" by elders and shepherding calls and previous "friends" and so on.
There is nothing more I would like than to be visited by an elder. Trouble is when I tell him how I feel about things now I would leave myself open to disfellowshipping. I think this is true of many that have faded. We have all learnt so much abour the org. since leaving it would be really good to tell the elders those things. But as I say we can't. They have us over a barrell as it were. So all we can do is help people anonymously, or at least away from the prying eyes of the elders.
i never understood the point of being good and righteous if the only punishment for not doing so was "nothing" i would die and nothing would happen.
just nothing, no hell, no pain, no regret... just nothing.. on the other hand if i am good.... i have to deal with the jw's and their rules and boring meetings forever!!!
no worldly girls to sneak around with on saturday night.. no keg parties to sneak off too on friday?....
It depends on what is meant by good. There are many things the society disapprove of which do nobody any harm. So we could reason that is perfectly all right. Other 'bad things as Terry says will hurt people so most people would call that bad.
The old adage to do unto others as you wish them to do to you is a pretty good benchmark.
The reason JWs try and be good is because the carrot is living forever in a paradise earth. If that were really true it would be well worth living a 'good and righteous' life. Unfortunately it is not, so we have to set our own standards of what we feel is right or wrong
was it a long process?.
is it still ongoing?.
did you have a long range plan?.
Thinking back, I didn't really give it a lot of thought or the possable consequencies. I had gradually realized that so many things simply did not make sense. I was a mini. servant at the time and I remember 2 elders coming round and more or less saying if I don't have and report a bible study with my son then I would be taken off as a mini servant.
I just thought how shallow these people are. From then on I just did less and less until I completely stopped going to meetings and on the doors. My wife was upset but was o k about it. All her family were in so it was difficult but I just new it was all wrong.
Since then my wife and all her family have died and I am still around. A bit ironic really considering they were all expecting to live forever.
the watchtower society claims that all their changed beliefs have scriptural backing since the path of the righteous one is like a bright light that gets lighter and lighter until the day dawns.
so gods people today cannot be expected to have the correct understanding on the scriptures.
of course the watchtower society wont use the word correct.
I think they would say the imformation we have from the first century is in the bible, which was written by men who were inspired by God, to right what they did.
The governing body today do not claim to be inspired like those early christians so they will make some mistakes.
the governing body is powerless (without comradeship) and comradeship is one of the great needs for people.. the price for this companionship is a persons individuality, as individual love is exchanged for communal individuality and communal love.. because of the humun need for comradeship the governing body can teach whatever they like and demand what ever they like from the masses.. iam glad i exchanged comradeship for an individual life and freedom .. acolytes..
I think you're right acolytes. I'm sure the reason I hung around so long was because of the great social life. Always someone to go around with. Friends who agreed with practically all you said which always makes us feel good.
Much harder in the real world but at least you know they are genuine friends, and won't drop you as a friend the moment you decide to disagree with something in their religon
just for fun i decided to have a quick look on the wt website and the first article was of abortion and why it is wrong... http://www.watchtower.org/e/200906/article_01.htm.
what really suprised me is the lack of any scriptual support that the religion used here, normally persuasive arguments are flooded with verses and religious examples.
linked with this, i think it's interesting that so many "studies" here are used to support accounts of mental trauma from abortion when i was under the impression that the wto was far from scientific.
There is a Question from readers about abortion in the 15th March 1975 Watchtower pages 191-192. In it they cite Exodus 21:22-25 which implies if you take a life even of an unborn child then the punishment is death.
