Nice opening post. WOW, even though so many were never supposed to graduate high school or grow old, they went on to become grandparents and now, even since their abandoning of the 1914 generation, babies have been born into this religion who have already had babies of their own.
OnTheWayOut
JoinedPosts by OnTheWayOut
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241
Another generation....
by joey jojo init has been 21 years since the 1995 article that pretty much buried the idea of the '1914 generation'.. remember those guys?
the ones born in 1914 that would still be alive when the end of the system arrived.. i'm glad i'm old enough to remember going from door to door, preaching this belief.
the reason i say that is because i have a lot of 'still in' jw friends and family.
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PAINTING THEMSELVES INTO A CORNER or WHY was the "GENERATION" teaching started in the 1st place?
by Terry insetting the scene.
pastor russell died in 1916. those who had 'followed' him were known pejoratively as russellites.
you could call it a 'cult of personality' if you wanted to sneer.
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OnTheWayOut
Doomsday cults need a doomsday to gather followers.
Here's the real simple version of the complicated doctrine of when Jesus supposedly returned and the lastdays arrived/ended/started.
William Miller said that Jesus' Return would be in 1844. (See The Great Disappointment athttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Disappointment ) People who believed what he said were known as "Millerites." It (Jesus' return) didn't happen. This return of Jesus was also known as his second advent, and believers came to be known as Adventists.
Adventist Jonas Wendell suffered in his faith at the Great Disappointment, but later carried the same type of "Millerites" talk in a sermon where Wendell had picked the new date of 1873 or 1874 for Jesus' 2nd return (after studying Bible chronology and being wrong about 1868). 18 year old C. T. Russell heard Wendell in 1870 speak of such a date. Wendell had already published The Present Truth, or Meat in Due Season highlighting such dates. So Wendell invented those terms that would haunt the WT organization and morph into New Light and food at the proper time.
Wendell died in August of 1873, probably confident that his 1873 to 1874 date was correct. When Jesus didn't appear as expected, Russell still believed it (or at least wanted to keep selling pamplets that explained it). He taught that Jesus must have returned invisibly, meaning that Jesus was ruling from Heaven starting in 1874. He taught that 40 years later, a literal application of how long a "generation" was, in 1914, Jesus would take power on the earth. That would mean an end to the Gentile Times in 1914 and an end to the last days- destruction and death and stuff.
Because World War One (coincidentally) started in 1914, Russell used that as a sign that he was correct in his complicated doctrines. He was already good at reinventing understanding rather than admitting he was wrong.All the rest is just calculated backwards- the stuff about 607 BCE and the 2520 years and the Seven Times.
All of it was just made to fit that understanding. When things didn't work out as planned (again) the people in charge just reinvented the understandings and adjusted the math to fit whatever they wanted it to fit to sell more pamphlets/magazines/books. The end of the last days became the beginning of the last days. 1874 was forgotten. They just kept changing the end-date. They even made terrible errors and just changed the math to fit- they forgot there was no "Year Zero" and changed 606 BCE to 607 BCE.
They kept 1914 because it was so well-known to the followers and they already said "See, we were right" when World War One started. Everything about Nebuchadnezzar and the destruction/building of the temple was just made to fit the math. You can find anything if you work backwards. It's like writing a Sherlock Holmes story. Just work backwards from what a great detective would expect to find and make him look like a genius in discovering those things.
It is so unnecessary to understand the ridiculous theories of WT's present understanding when you can see what it was based on and how it changed to suit their need to get a following and sell pamphlets/magazines/books. It saddens me that I bothered to understand it at one time.JW's were "painted in a corner" when their 1914 generation was close to expiring for the 1970's, but rather than adjust then, they let their shelf life expiration inspire them to shout even louder. They built a whole new Watchtower Printing Corporation on the backs of 1975 believers. They wound up with more new recruits retained after the disappointment about 1975 than they would have had if they never had a 1975 campaign.
They tried leaving the "imminent end" open for awhile, but doomsday cults need a doomsday. They went to that ridiculous overlap generation because it serves their purposes better than their "ongoing generation of the wicked" doctrine from 1995. -
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Coming to terms with the Watchtower experience
by Lee Elder init is a challenge coming to terms with your experience as a jehovah's witness.
if you were born and raised as a jw, and your parents were true believers, the impact on your life is profound, lasting, and largely negative.
in some cases quite abusive emotionally, spiritually, financially, educationally and yes, even sexually.. i recently watched "trumbo", and was quite moved by dalton trumbo's speech to the screen writers guild in 1970. here is an excerpt that i think is quite relevant to this topic:.
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OnTheWayOut
Coming to terms with our experiences as a Jehovah's Witnesses could be like the five stages of grief.
Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance.
We have learned that it's not always just like that, nice and neat, even with typical loss of a loved one, so it won't be just like that with discovering and accepting the reality of our JW experience. But it may be a process similar to that. Most of us were long in the denial process before coming to this forum and probably already moved past it. Bargaining, if at all, probably came before anger or depression. Acceptance doesn't mean that all the anger or depression is gone, especially since most have loved ones still captive to the cult.
I am past most of the anger and most of the depression, but there are triggers here and there.
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Who has made an unforgivable sin against the holy spirit?
by atomant inwe all sin and some sins are worse than others but blasphemy against the holy spirit is said to be unforgivable.what is considered to be an unforgivable sin?
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OnTheWayOut
Sin is a term invented by religion so that the religion may offer the cure.
But to me, unforgivable evil is deliberate abuse of another human being, especially children.
Deliberate abuse of animals is also right up there. -
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OnTheWayOut
I don't hate the individuals. I see them as fellow victims.
But the religion that makes them victims, I hate. It causes children to grow up with warped values and beliefs. It interferes in normal family relations. It makes people feel guilty for doing/thinking normal evryday things. It wastes the lives of the victims. -
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Is it true: the memorial will stop after the last anointed have passed away?
by FinchAndWeston ini heard that the memorial will stop after the last anointed have passed away ... is this information true/false?
just curious.
it's secondhand.
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OnTheWayOut
I could read the great answers from others, they probably use the Bible and make cult comments wonderfully.
But let me just say, "It's a made-up fiction, it's their power structure. The 'anointed' will be in charge as long as Watchtower exists. One day, before the last 'anointed' is gone, Watchtower will fail, so NO- The Memorial will stop BEFORE the last anointed is gone." I just hope it happens in my lifetime, but I won't count on it.
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Did You Get Invited to the Memorial?
by Ding ini'm just wondering if jws keep inviting you back or if they've given up on you.. they haven't invited me for years..
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OnTheWayOut
I believe I was invited in 2007 and 2008, and not since then. -
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"M" is for "Memorial"
by OnTheWayOut inmany weeks ago, i apparently put "m" on today's date- wednesday, march 23rd, in my google calendar.
it was supposed to remind me that the memorial that jehovah's witnesses observe would be held today.
i was flipping through my calendar this past weekend and asked my wife "what in the world is 'm' for (that day)?
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OnTheWayOut
jambon1, I agree- pointless.
Dagney, yup. I enjoy not being invited. Regular evening, WOO HOO! -
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I would rather be in the JW cult than the ex-jw cult
by questioningmyfaith ini have posted one other time on this website.
just for the mere fact that i wasn't anger and bitter and ready to declare the gb the sociopathic criminals that so many here ascribe to, my initial question digressed to bickering over ad hominem attacks against the gb and not my beliefs that i'm questioning.
some did give me some help on my questions.
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OnTheWayOut
If I read your post right, questioningmyfaith, you have (or will have) reached a point where you will just go do your own thing. Instead of learning the religion or learning what's wrong with the religion, you will learn a language (and/or other things).
That's great. The most personally successful former JW's are not here. They are not at meetups. They are not protesting outside of Kingdom Halls, nor are they sitting through meetings inside the Kingdom Hall. They are living their lives, wherever that may take them.
Good luck.
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If God is all powerful why did it take six days
by James Mixon inif god is omnipotent (all powerful) why did he take six days (or six thousand years jw.org) to.
crete everything.
why not speak everything into existence all at once?
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OnTheWayOut
There was no paper and pencil "in the beginning." So God had to do everything in his (figurative) head. There was no way to see what it would turn out like, so he did a few steps at a time and stopped to see what it looked like. You know, like choosing the carpeted floor color and having to look at it before you decide what color walls and drapes to have. Should the carpet and drapes match exactly?
So I can imagine looking up from earth at the vast nothingness and trying to decide how to fill that sky and how to provide warmth for life and food for plants and whether to tie them all together or make them separate.
And it only got harder to decide as he created life. Sometimes, he put eyes all over a creature to see if he liked that, or made the front legs too short (t-rex) or morphed them into wings. Tough calls in each instance. You know, why couldn't birds have 4 or 6 legs along with wings?Unlimited power doesn't mean you know what to do with it. Put a blank canvas in front of an artist and he will spend time staring at nothing, painting over what he painted, yadda yadda.