"Note: Reports have been received where elders have revealed confidential matters to their wives or others in the congregation." (Pay Attention 1977 p.65)
garybuss
JoinedPosts by garybuss
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How many of you elders shared confidential things with your wife?
by Magwitch ini wonder how many of you truly kept things confidential.
when i was growing up in 70's in a very rural community my father was the congregation overseer.
thursday nights we always had to stay late after the service meeting while my father dealt with matters in the back room.
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garybuss
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Sad ending to a sad era ...
by The Berean inwhile i am new to this network, the evidence seems to be overwhelming that the wbts is in decline.
while many voice their pleasure at this prospect, it is in many ways sad for me:.
it is sad that so many have spent such a great quantity of their early lives supporting a cause that appears to have been a waste of time.
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garybuss
gary.....I take it the lucky white heather I sent you years ago didn't work
That waz you? :-)
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garybuss
What's the choices? Selection of species, vs. a talking snake and some guy walking on water? Hmmmmm That's tough, let me think about that one . . .
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Which 5 Books Would You Recommend?
by leavingwt inwhich 5 books would you recommend?.
there is a wealth of information, just waiting to be shared with persons who have an open mind and a desire to know the truth about the watchtower society.
please list five books (more or less) that you would recommend to new ones.. i hope to discover something new from your lists.
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garybuss
For me, my problem wasn't Witnessism, it was theism. Once theism is researched, Witnessism fades away as an issue because all the assumptions are flawed.
It's really hard for me to name 5 books. I've read over 200 on Witnessism, theism, philosophy, history, and psychology.
The order I read books on my recovery journey isn't the order I would suggest. The first was given to me by a friend in 1991. It was Kicked Out Of The Kingdom by Charles Trombley. Next I went to the library and researched cults. The Jehovah's Witness group was listed in virtually every book I found on cults.
I ordered and read Crisis of Conscience and In Search of Christian Freedom. Then I read Toxic Faith, When God Becomes A Drug, and The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse. Worked in there somewhere, I read The Messianic Legacy and Holy Blood, Holy Grail.
In January of 1995 I had my last head on collision with the Witness group. My Witness son left a suicide note and didn't return home. I found him with the Witnesses and had a 72 hour mental hold put on him. The Witness relatives fought that, they fought me, and they fought his treatment. The Witness people advised him to shun me and not go to psychiatrists or seek treatment for his illness.
He had several more breakdowns, smashed a car into stopped cars at an intersection, ran away, kidnapped a man, stole his car, and ran to Minnesota. He lived with Witnesses, deteriorated, had more breakdowns, and eventually was committed to a state mental hospital. He's been diagnosed as having paranoid schizophrenia and has done extensive damage to his brain by avoiding treatment for so long and from having so many untreated psychotic breaks. The Witnesses won. He still shuns me.
1995 was a very low point in my life. Now all Witness people and Witness relatives were shunning me or trying to isolate me from my family. That's when I sought out former Witnesses and my world was on the up ramp. I first called Joan Centnar, she gave me the Spangler's number in Cleveland, they gave me Jerry Bergman's number and Jerry gave me Randy Watters' number.
Randy helped me a LOT. He suggested I get a modern computer and join the Jesus Witness e-mail cc list. I did that and I bought lots of Randy's writings and tapes. Randy's work belongs right at the top of any list along with Jerry Bergman's.
There are so many good people and good writers like Duane Magnani, Ros, Ron Frye, the Norway delegation, Dennis White, Steve Hickey, and the kind exit counselors who unselfishly helped me sort out what little I had left after the Jehovah's Witnesses were done with me.
Crisis of Conscience is certainly a prerequisite reading for exiting Jehovah's Witnesses. Crisis of Conscience demystifies the Watch Tower organization and removes enough fear to allow the individual to continue with the re-education process.
I probably have as many questions after reading Crisis of Conscience as I did before I read it . . . but they're different questions.
Good topic, thanks! -
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Sad ending to a sad era ...
by The Berean inwhile i am new to this network, the evidence seems to be overwhelming that the wbts is in decline.
while many voice their pleasure at this prospect, it is in many ways sad for me:.
it is sad that so many have spent such a great quantity of their early lives supporting a cause that appears to have been a waste of time.
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garybuss
Hi mraimondi
Maybe you just need to quit reading my posts.
Sunday I'm going to look at the pictures of my son who shuns me because the Witnesses told him to. Monday morning I'm going to visit the grave of my first wife Delores, who refused chemo treatments supported with blood medical treatment for leukemia, because her Jehovah's Witness relatives and friends threatened to shun her if she took rational medical treatment. She died January 12, 1971 just after noon. She suffocated to death. She suffered terribly and it was a slow, painful death.
Monday afternoon I'm going to visit the grave of my father who shunned me the last 15 years of his life because Jehovah's Witnesses told him to. Then I'm going to Arco and visit the graves of my father's family. My uncle is there. He built the kingdom hall in Lake Benton with a cigarette in his mouth the whole time.
My aunt's there. She shunned me because I believed she was going to die. I take a garden spade and a pail and I tend her grave marker.
I'll visit my uncle's grave in Pipestone. He was a Jehovah's Witness pedophile who had three victims that I'm aware of. The Witness people here in Sioux Falls protected him so he could continue to molest little girls. The Witness people shunned me because I thought that was outrageous. I still do!
Last week I spoke with my mother. She's 88 and she shunned me from 1995 till 2008. She's living with my Jehovah's Witness brother who's shunned me since 1992.
Am I worse than any Jehovah's Witness? Damn right! I eat them bastards for breakfast. Did I learn anything from being pushed, shoved, marked, snubbed, shunned, lied to, and manipulated by Jehovah's Witnesses? Damn right! I don't like the sons a bitches! -
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Long Time Reader
by wantarevolution inwhere do i start?
i suppose with "me".
i am mid 20's, born in and live abroad with my wife, "serving" in a foreign language congregation.
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garybuss
Welcome!
Reality is a scary place to visit, let alone live, for a lot of people I know. The gift that education gave many of us is the knowledge of what we don't know. The application of the knowledge of what we don't know is called "agnosticism" by some.
Even the most dogmatic theist is agnostic on some subjects.
In our teens and early adulthood, all of our opinions and beliefs are borrowed. None are our own. Remember this: There's a security in surety. It doesn't matter if the surety is real or a delusion, the security is still real.
Rational thinking and courage to look at superstitions, traditions, and rituals learned from parents and society is scary at first. It's also scary to begin to challenge our own conditioning and objectively look at our own core beliefs and actually challenge those beliefs. A pretty safe place to start is to look at our first language and challenge our understanding of definitions. We learned our first language by guessing at definitions of words based on context. I was shocked at how many words in my vocabulary I was using without actually knowing the actual definitions. Words like "condone".
The Jehovah's Witness group is a very poor context for challenging assumptions:-)
I'd recommend the book: The Demon Haunted World, by Carl Sagan.
For the theist, I recommend the book: The Age Of Reason, by Thomas Paine.
My personal favorites are the works of Ayn Rand. I carry her books of essays in my car and truck to enjoy during my wait times.
My advise is: Don't fear rational thinking, embrace it. -
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Sad ending to a sad era ...
by The Berean inwhile i am new to this network, the evidence seems to be overwhelming that the wbts is in decline.
while many voice their pleasure at this prospect, it is in many ways sad for me:.
it is sad that so many have spent such a great quantity of their early lives supporting a cause that appears to have been a waste of time.
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garybuss
The reason the Witness shunning, the bullying, and the manipulations work is because we let them. I let them get away with it for years. But it stops the second I stop it. It takes two to play their game, the shunner and the shunned. When one stops playing, the game stops right then and there.
I've given notice to any Witness that will disrespect me or anybody important to me, that they are out of my life forever. Many have taken me up on that challenge and they found out I'm serious.
If they don't back WAY off, I go after them. I've done it before and I'll do it again if I'm provoked by them. Jehovah's Witnesses . . . I don't have anything to lost to you, not one damn thing. -
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One of the Governing Body had a stroke yesterday
by AndersonsInfo inon may 19th, theodore jaracz had a stroke.
he's in very serious condition in the hospital.. that's all the information i have for now.. barb.
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garybuss
The only thing the Watch Tower Publishing Corporation does after the passing of every iconic leader is to get bigger and richer. Like any other pot, the crap floats to the top. Bad people are replaced with worse people.
The lost leaders are missed inversely only to the extent of the detriment to progress they caused. -
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Sunday's WT study
by M.J. inhi, just popped in to scan the board for some kind of review of this past sunday's wt study.
i couldn't seem to find anything.. i'm assuming no one is doing a "wt comments" type of thread any more, but i missed it can someone point it out?
i found a couple of interesting statements made and wanted to brush up on the implications (it's been a while so i need a refresher).
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garybuss
The Watch Tower Corporation claims to dispense truth by "spirit direction" as "God's organization" (which is incorporated), standing in opposition to "the world", or "Satan's organization" (which by aggregate, is not incorporated). By the Watch Tower Society's definition of structures, the whole earth is easily divided into two groups . . . "God's organization", and Satan's organization".
So as I read the Watchtower magazine and other Watch Tower Corporation produced art, (literature), I understand there can only be two sources of confirmations offered as proof, or at least support, of claims made. One source would be from God, and and any other source would be from Satan.
When the Society prints worldly wisdom from "Satan's organization" for support of their claims, like the Greenspan quote or references from Thayer, or Vine (who was a Christian pastor in Bath when he produced his work) . . . how can we take the Watch Tower Society seriously? How can the Society seriously use as proof, statements from those the Society condemns and would have us condemn?
These are some of the serious credibility flaws in the Watch Tower Corporation's writings that expose the Society as a scam. A dishonest scam!
If ya got the truth, ya don't call up your enemy and ask him to provide the subjective evidence against himself and then show us that that's all ya got. That's just stupid! -
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JW friend wants to tell me about Christ's return in 1914....Advice needed!
by whyizit inmy long time friend recently took the plunge (baptized) and is now trying to recruit me.
one of the first things she told me is how all the "other religions" should be carefully inspected, because they are all wrong, in a nut shell.
so, i asked the obvious: i'm not concerned with all the others, i'm here to talk about your's.
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garybuss
Deal with this.
Proclaimers chap. 10 p. 137 Growing in Accurate Knowledge of the Truth
As the events following 1914 began to unfold and the Bible Students compared these with what the Master had foretold, they gradually came to appreciate that they were living in the last days of the old system and that they had been since 1914. They also came to understand that it was in the year 1914 that Christ's invisible presence had begun and that this was, not by his personally returning (even invisibly) to the vicinity of the earth, but by his directing his attention toward the earth as ruling King.