I think Scully is right. How would this guys ex-wife know he is talking to you on the computer or anywhere else for that matter? He can't be dumb enough to tell her? LOTs of JWs I knew live secret lives. This one just got caught. If you ask for advice here, people are going to give it. So please dont get upset if it is hard to swallow. None of us had a crystal ball to look into to tell the future. If we did, it would have saved us lots of pain. Think of us as your crystal ball. Been there, done that!
lovelylil
JoinedPosts by lovelylil
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31
Need Some Help Understanding
by Broken Hearted ini am a non jw, who has met a jw and we have been online chatting for last 9 months.
i have fallen in love with him.
he has been trying to push me away lately, and finding out one of the reasons is because of the religious background.
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Short Survey for Non-Trinitarians
by Amazing1914 inthe survey is intended for any ex-jws who remain christian, but continue to be non-trinitarian.
please give a concise, well developed statement of what you believe regarding the holy spirit.
please do not go into lengthy dissertations trying to prove your point.
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lovelylil
Hi Star Moore,
Good point about the Holy Spirit. I believe Christ always had Holy Spirit but you are right that it was not poured out on his diciples until Pentacost which was after Jesus Resurrection. This was what John the Baptist alluded to when he said the one coming after him would baptize with Holy Spirit and not water like he. That did not happen until later like you said. I think maybe the spirit is what binds Jehovah and Jesus together as well as all believers. It is poured out on believers and we can see evidence of it in our lives. What is interesting at Pentacost is that the people saw flames above their heads and heard sounds like rushing wind. This was physical evidence that Holy Spirit existed. If they only spoke in tongues they may not not have realized that God gave them the power. But because they "saw" the evidence of it they knew it was from God. Remember Jesus told them to wait for it. This is an interesting subject and one I am going to study further in the future. I agree though with those who will say the Holy Spirit was always part of God. I just don't think you can call it "God" or third person of Trinity.
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New guy
by Mx inhi all i'm mx!
i'm 17 i've been raised a jw and lived a very sheltered life.
i've been baptized for three years now and been a doubter for two and a half years; i think i might leave "the org" in an year or two.
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lovelylil
Welcome MX,
glad to have you. Don't feel bad, people a lot older than you have been duped by the WT. I was one of them. The important thing is you are asking questions. Keep it up. Also, a word of advice, especially if you have family in the Borg (Oh, I meant Org), make sure you have a good support system before leaving. This is a good place to start. You need to have friends and others on the outside. Don't rush into another religion either. Take your time with everything and check it out. I'll be praying for you. Lilly
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HELP! For those being shunned, please share your experience
by Victorian sky ini'm writing a book (i know, it sounds so cliche) but i really am about the shunning experiences of people in religions and how this affected them and their family relationships.
i need your stories even if you were never a jw.
if you would prefer to pm me, i would appreciate it.
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lovelylil
Hi, I would be happy to help.
My husband and I disassociated almost 2 years ago. We have two kids who lived most of their lives in the WT. We do not have any other family in the Witnesses and have been blessed to all come out around the same time. We were in 12 years. The hardest part was loosing really good friends. We have had to rebuild a support system from the ground up. We lost all our friends in a single day. We had been in the same congregation and nieghborhood for the whole 12 years practically. This hit our son especially hard because he had a friend since birth, he is now 11. And they were like brothers. He cried a lot when we left and this really broke my heart. We had to disasociate because the elders kept coming by and intruding on our family and would not let the matter go as to why we were not attending meetings any longer. My husband was a MS and I was a pioneer. The one big mistake we made was not having a support system prior to leaving the Witnesses. This is something you should have. My son now goes to the same school as his old friend so they talk there. His friend told him as soon as he is old enough and does not have to go to meetings, he will look him up. Which I think is really cute.
By the way, we have Witnesses who live on our street. Two families of them and one is an elder. They SPEED past our home all the time avoiding eye contact. Maybe they think it bothers us? Well, to all you shunners out there - most of us DONT GIVE A DARN about you shunning us. Think of this: you are the one who is on punishment. You cannnot look at or speak to me, yet I am FREE to look at, speak to and enjoy anyones company on the face of the earth that I choose too. I just laugh when I see you avoid me in the supermarket and other places, and you almost run into things trying to bet away from me. My husband feels the same way. We have moved on and now have a better, closer relationship with God, new REAL friends, and a great life!
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Going Door to Door...
by Priest73 insome thing just occurred to me.
i live in a city 500+ miles from my home town.
in a large metropolitan area.
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lovelylil
AMEN to that and WELL said!
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31
Need Some Help Understanding
by Broken Hearted ini am a non jw, who has met a jw and we have been online chatting for last 9 months.
i have fallen in love with him.
he has been trying to push me away lately, and finding out one of the reasons is because of the religious background.
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lovelylil
There is no way he can have a relationship with you UNLESS you too become a Jehovahs Witness. And then you will be in the cult too. I have seen this happen to many people. They think they are in love and decide to become a Witness but then their life is in total turmoil, like someone said already, turned completely upside down.
They do not think like normal people outstide of the cult. They believe ONLY they are approved by God and their worship is the only on Gods accepts. If you become a witness, the elders will be involved in every aspect of your life including: how you dress, style of hair you have (a white sister was once asked to remove the beads in her hair as they thought it was inappropriate for her race), how you dicipline your children, what type of job you have, who your friends can be, what holidays you can celebrate - answer NONE. They will even reccomend that you not get together with "worldly" (anyone not JW) relatives. You will also be spied on by people who you think are your true friends. this is encouraged greatly.
think about this: the Witnesses are basically waiting for 99.99% of the world to be destroyed and for birds to pick the flesh off their bones right in front of them, (because they will not be burying any of us) and they are going to REJOICE in seeing that. I am not making this up, all the ex Witnesses here can tell you that is what they are waiting for. I know because I was one of them. And they will not pity innocent children either because they think this is righteous judgement on Gods part. They are told only then will they have their paradise with ONLY Jehovahs Witnesses. Many of us upon leaving have to come to terms of the complete HORROR of what we thought was truth. Sorry if this sounds harsh but please beware. If God is really answering your prayers, he will use you to help this person see that he is in a cult and needs to get out. But please, if you even consider for a second on joining him, please remember the words of everyone here. If we could all turn back time, we would have taken a very different road. With Love, Lilly
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28
Going Door to Door...
by Priest73 insome thing just occurred to me.
i live in a city 500+ miles from my home town.
in a large metropolitan area.
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lovelylil
I was active in the same territory for 12 years and we hardly ever completed our territory in the time the society alloted us which was about 18 months to go thru once. The problem is there is just not enough publishers in most areas to cover the whole thing. Then if you do get interest and do a study or have to do return visits (which are required) that takes more of your time away from going door to door. I also spoke with others who hardly ever cover the whole territory. So this business about them evangelizing the whole world is just plain ridiculous! There are literally millions who have never spoken to a witness. I asked an elder about this once. I said, how can Jehovah destroy them if they never heard the good news? he said basically that everyone at least knows someone who knows a witness and also most people know about Jehovahs Witnesses so that should be witness enough? HUH?
The real good news is that Christ died for everyone and in due time this fact will be testified too. The bible says first the firsfruits, then those who died in Christ, then everyone else on the face of the earth. When the Kingdom rules and all obstacles are removed from mankind and Satan is bound for a while, then and only then will mankind learn righteousness and get to make an informed choice. That means unlike the Witness belief that 99.99% of mankind will be destroyed, that figure 99.99 will actually make up those saved! NOW THAT IS GOOD NEWS!
Noone is killed prior to the judgement and you cannot judge someone for a crime they are not even aware that they committed can you? So the judgement day will actually be a long time not one day. Time to learn what is righteous than your judgement. We should not even expect any less than this from a perfect God. It would offend any humans sensibilites to think otherwise.
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56
Your prayers and thoughts for Randy!
by Atlantis ini realize that randy watters is not the type of person to want to worry others, especially when it come to his own health.
and i also realize that randy might want to kick me in the backsides for posting this little message.
thats ok, i'll even buy him a new set of boots to kick me with, but for right now if we could take a few moments to send our prayers, thoughts, and perhaps ecards for randy's swift recovery, then i know that randy would certainly appreciate it .dear friends of randy, due to some complications from a pain medication randy was using during an attack of his crohn's disease last week, he became seriously dehydrated and was hospitalized this past thursday, april 13th.
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lovelylil
Get well Randy and God bless you, your friend in the Lord, Lilly
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56
Short Survey for Non-Trinitarians
by Amazing1914 inthe survey is intended for any ex-jws who remain christian, but continue to be non-trinitarian.
please give a concise, well developed statement of what you believe regarding the holy spirit.
please do not go into lengthy dissertations trying to prove your point.
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lovelylil
Amazing,
thanks I forgot about the word other being added. Glad you pointed that out. I would love to read your paper, you have my email so feel free to send it along. I started reading the Bio. you emailed me earlier and you are a very good writer. Your story flows so nicely. I see a lot of what I went thru in your story. Especially about trying to decide what to do with your family in the WT. I was able to win the kids over much sooner than my hubby. He was ex military and learned from a young age to be LOYAL to an organization.
About the personification; I dont think the WT got everything wrong. And they are not the only religion that is non trinitarian or that feels that the Holy Spirit is not a person. Their big mistake is not understanding the divine nature of Christ. The personifying of some of Gods qualties started way back in the OT. The bible writers used it to give life to Gods qualities because he is the Living God. What better way to explain his attributes than by making them more than one dimentional. Remember too that they were under inspiration so they were really writing Gods thoughts and not theirs. God knows how to have his qualities conveyed to men don't you think? Also, Jesus was the one who called the Holy Spirit a HE and a HELPER first in the NT. So he would understand the nature of the Holy Spirit better than anyone. The Diciples did not know what it was until it was poured out at Pentecost. Remember that the actual NT was not written until a few decades after the fact and by then they HAD Holy Spirit which would have helped them choose their words to properly understand this term. Plus they could understand it by personal experience. I know I have Holy Spirit, (please don't think I am bragging) yet it is something I cannot see or touch but I can feel it within. It helps give me peace, love, joy, long suffering, etc. It makes me feel closer to Jesus and our heavenly father. No one has ever said they have seen Holy spirit. As a matter of fact, when Jesus was baptized the father sent Holy Spirit down in the "form of a Dove" the bible says. This no doubt was for John the Baptist benefit to see that Jesus was the Messiah. God also spoke to confirm it. But the physical aspect of seeing the Holy Spirit had to be shown to John so that he could fully understand what took place. Also the bible says that God's spirit "testifies" with your spirit that you are sons of God. A great chapter to read that explains what the Holy Spirit is really the Spirit of God is Romans chapter 8.
I agree with you it does have power to accomplish Gods purposes. Therefore I reject the like electricity explanation. It is much more because it is, I would even venture to say "living" for lack of a better word. Because it Lives in all true believers. The Holy Spirit can teach because I have prayed for it, and once I recieved it, I have learned more in a short span of 2 years than I have in almost 25 years of searching for bible knowledge. I cannot see it, but I have the effects of it. The Holy Spirit is really the part of the Trinity doctrine that is the most difficult, yet most interesting to debate on I think. I will wait to add more of my opinions until AFTER I read your paper. I will be away tomarrow visiting some friends for the day. Will be back next day Monday. Good night! Lilly
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How does mainstream Christianity explain "Other Sheep"?
by Alana ini'm preparing for a potential discussion with my mom and, especially if it occurs near this memorial time, the discussion may contain the "other sheep" and how they are different and shouldn't partake of the emblems, etc.
i know that i probably have this information researched already, but since my last move i can't find some my research materials.
i could also ask the pastor of the church i attend, but that involves too much discussion as to what the jw's believe, etc.
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lovelylil
When I left the tower and began reading the bible on my own, it became very clear that Jesus meant the Gentiles when he said other sheep. It was so simple I could not believe how duped I was into thinking there were two classes of Christians. The WT of course teaching other sheep meant non-anointed. Anyway, I was really pissed off for a while about this one!