i know this sounds crazy however being raised a jehovah's witness gave me the tools of respect for my fellow man.
also my parents had a huge role as well,of course.. i just find today there are soo many twisted people who are amused by the sickest of circumstances and pride themselves on belittling people.i mean i am the first to say.
i love funny sarcasm and making fun of the jehovah's witness religion because i believe in my heart its a crazy cult and way out in left field.
Good things about my being a JW:
(1) It made me absolutely disdain racism. Which probably led me to accept everyone for who they are as an adult. (Particularly those of different religions.)
(2) Drug-wise, it kept me away from ingesting anything harder than pot and mild hallucinogens.
(3) Made me not have stage fright, or a fear of public speaking. Let's face it. If I could go door-to-door and spew outrageous fantasies and lies to strangers, how hard can it be to tell the truth?
it's been a while i think since we've did this....anyway, i dug out some older covers that i think we could do some damage with:enjoy!!.
here are the originals:.
and here's the blank ones for you:.
i have found these 14 characteristics of a typical cult and below are some questions regarding the behaviour of a cult.
my personal opinion is that the watchtower society fits into most of these characteristics, with the exception of 1& 14. possibly part of number 10 fits, but not all.
i feel that all of the questions posed should be asked of jw's and all of the further symptoms apply too.
Yes, they're a cult.
i have a few which still either anger me, make me sad or just make me grateful that i am no longer one of them.
1 - "well, everyone is going to die anyway, so if it at armageddon then ce la vie" 2 - "the disater today at the world trade centre is sad, but exciting" 3 - (an elder) "when armageddon happens, i want to be at a window, watching it all".
sick, sick, sick!
Well, most of the inappropriate remarks I got from my mom were related to whether certain things were demonized, like guitars, alarm clocks, black clothing or Springsteen albums.
Other than that she wasn't really offensive, but the closest she came to an inappopriate remark was when she fumed about having to drive me to a high school rehearsal for The Sound Of Music:
"Why are you in that stupid show anyway? It's stupid! It's got all those Catholics in it!"
the stars fall from heaven?
~sigh~ and youll fall across the finish line into the new world!
we dont want that brothers.
4 And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and was adorned with gold and precious stone and pearls and had in her hand a golden cup that was full of disgusting things and the unclean things of her fornication.
5 And upon her forehead was written a name, a mystery: “Babylon the Great, the mother of the harlots and of the disgusting things of the earth.”
6 And I saw that the woman could not even pick up money with her bare hands because her fingernails were so frickin' long.
i had just became a witness and a guy i worked with, who was also a jw, told me a story that actually made me laugh and i think it upset him a bit.
the storys were almost always in the third person.
it went as follows.. this brothers wife and him were sitting at the kingdom hall on the end seats of the row next to the back of the room.
The very oddest part was about 10 to 15 minutes devoted to the subject of "ectoplasm" - a sort of demon slime that could float around in the air and take on the suggestion of a ghostly shape. If the spell was broken, it would sort of collapse to the floor in sort of a demonic snot-pile. Wet Cleanup on Isle Four ! But - silly as it sounds - I am serious. This stuff was all in that talk outline - as provided by the society. Of course, some speakers saw fit to include their own stories or heresay "as needed".
They must have gotten this idea from the movie "Ghostbusters." Remember -- "He slimed me"?
when i was active, i was always (usually) proud to talk about being a jw, our faith, reasons for our stupid beliefs on birthdays, x-mas, etc.
now with everything i'm going through, given how much of an impact this is to my life, i want to talk to others about it, like coworkers, and other friends.
but thinking about how i would explain how it's a mind-controlling cult, i feel stupid for falling for it.
I'm not embarrassed. At least in my case it provides ample opportunity for comedy. A lot of people I know are embarrassed about their religious upbringings anyway, I'm just another one in the mix.
an elder mentioned yesterday in casual conversation how the end must be close 'because this is the first time in human history that a black man will probably be president of the us.
all other forms of government have had their day, now that a black man will be president, the angels, mankind and satan cannot claim that jehovah didn't give every possible chance for humans to make it without his rulership'.
almost verbatim!
Well, evidently this nonsense is making the rounds. A "sister" called my office today for her personal business but before ending the conversation she said 'What do think about these elections? Interesting times indeed, the end has to be close with a black being the favored candidate to win the election and the fact that it the was first time in history that a woman came so close blah blah blah' Mind you she is not in the same congregation as the elder mentioned at the begining of this thread.
I said, "England had Margaret Thatcher, Germany has Angela Merkel, I don't think it would be a big deal if Hillary would have clinched the nomination. Regardless of whether a black man or a woman became president, it would still be an American democracy, not a different form of government."
She said ' yeah, but it still is unprecedented and the fact that the US is the LAST world power this has to be very significant!!'
Not wishing to waste my time discussing a moronic issue, I said "sorry, but I have a lot of work to do, talk to you lalter."
I gave up. You cannot fight circular reasoning!
This is the greatest proclamation in the "signs and wonders" category that I have ever seen come from the JWs. And by "greatest," I mean stupidest.
"Oh my gosh, we're going to get a black man as President -- the end of the world's coming for sure!" Does anybody find that just the weeist bit racist? I wonder how African-American Jehovah's Witnesses would react to this.Or any other races who haven't been elected to the main office. Wouldn't a Latin-American or Asian-American be pissed off that their races didn't get a chance to rule the world?
Oh, oh, and this hypothetical: What if Obama is elected and the country gets better? Then will mankind have succeeded at ruling himself? The angels and Satan would have to say mankind succeeded in ruling himself.
Is Jehovah going to give Obama a full two terms? The way I see it he owes the dude at least four years to see where he's going.
This is positively olympic in its stupidity.
--P
my wife excitedly told me that she talked to the wife of an elder that just came back from.
the special training for elders in upper state new york and that the elders are being told .
to go back to their congregations and to get them ready for the great tribulation.. i said to her that is great news !!!!
I had one JW tell me recently that this system can't last more than 3 years. I think many are expecting something to happen before 2014.
My mom told me the exact same thing. I asked her if the New System would be coming within 3 years, and she said "Oh, absolutely." This was in 1977.
by that i meant - how many remember being an active jw when this happened?.
what was the general reaction from the rank & file, the elders, even the co/do?
does anybody remember there being magazine articles on this?.
I was a kid at the time, but I remember it. We lived in Northern California at the time, so it was fairly close to home; in fact I think my mom had a very distant cousin who was one of the Jonestown victims.
I believe they pre-empted the Service Meeting agenda the week that it happened to give a talk about the dangers of cults or something; I don't remember specifics. Jonestown's been popping up in my head a lot lately.
