Hey Hal,
Good to see you here. It always warms my heart to see someone who is openminded enough to look at both sides. Glad to hear you visit H20 also, great place, and I think most apostates would be glad to see you reading things closely for a change and holding people to their claims as in the individual H20 claims to "insider" info. Now, I want you to start transferring the skills you have learned into the rest of your life. It is also possible for Organizations to make false claims. Use your new skills and see if you can find any there, (if you can't, check back and I will give you some hints and clues) ok? Well, stick around, or lurk around, whichever you prefer, and continue to pay close attention, I wouldn't want those apostates to slip anything by you!
Posts by Grunt
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20H20 Never Knew what Hit Them
by HAL infirst off, we want to thank everyone who emailed us in response to our last post.
yes, your concerns are being addressed, and what went on at the annual meeting was only the first step.. h2o and many similar sites were thrown in disarray as they were forced to admit that they were blindsided by the reorganization announcement.. so much for their claims of higher ups in the reform movement, funneling them inside information.
the truth is that reform consists of isolated embittered individuals with an ax to grind.
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Grunt
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Thank You Ray Franz.
by Martini inhello friends,.
in a thread over at witnesses.net entitled "society bracing for law suits" fellow jw's are taking swipes at ray franz.
not too long ago, while i was still under the wt spell i also would have similarily spoken abusively of ray.
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Grunt
Hello All,
The good thing about that thread was that the lies were pointed out. That the labels were renounced in public, like pointing out that he had been one of the few GB members that actually did go out in service. All in all, I think the thread did some good, first by bringing out again the fact that an "annointed" GB member did leave and that he was not a homosexual or trying to start a new religion. I think it is good for Witnesses to have to confront the lies that were told, and believed, to admit that a man who wrote or helped write their publications, disagreed and wrote a book explaining why. The more information the average Witness gets about what really went on, and goes on, the better as far as I am concerned. The same can be said of the "75" thread. Some of the people at Witnet knew far less at the beginning of that thread than they knew at the beginning. Knowledge is the best weapon we have. Even if they are too hardheaded to listen now, it seeps in and if they can't answer maybe it will eat away at the web of lies they are wrapped in. I rarely post at any site, but I think more real good is accomplished in regards to teaching Witnesses at Wit.net than at H20, as they are less likely to flee or avoid discussion there. -
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The "Great Preaching Work"
by Pathofthorns insorry waiting, .
path.
edited by - pathofthorns on 24 september 2000 6:22:50
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Grunt
I enjoyed the post. When you get down to how many hours it takes to get one person it really does show just how much of a farce the claims made about the preaching work being a success really are. If you subtracted the numbers disfellowshipped, disassociated and who just quietly quit attending on a regular basis and divide the number of hours into it, wow. I can't imagine a poorer showing. Any sales organization would fire everyone involved and close the doors if they had a similar ratio of hours to results.
Thanks again, I enjoyed it very much. -
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Most disgusting thing from Watchtower Corp.
by spectromize inone thing that really doesn't add up with the organization and their registrating to be a corp.(yes i have to put this in quote sorry it's called non-profit corp.) is the very fact that they play in the worldly system of things while they tell you to keep out of it.
(while they see nothing wrong in themselves playing the stock market with other peoples money) think about it where did jesus say to register god's organization as a corporation?.
furthermore if you were living in jesus' period of time who would be the president-vice-president-secratary- treasurer-shareholders...?.
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Grunt
"Now that we have 'grown up' a little (which, giving some credit where it is due, the WTS has helped us to do) we want to be treated differently."
Nope. I wanted to treated honestly from the start. The poor sincerely duped people I dealt with were being honest, they thought. Still they were spreading lies. Kind of like the Witnesses were when they were telling people that vaccinations were worse than the diseases they protected you from. I owe the Society nothing except a good kick in the teeth. I come on line iin various forums only to help those who have not seen the Jehovah's Witnesses for the lie they are. They are the exact opposite of what they claim. Look at the lies they have on their PR site. I love it as every Witness that reads it knows in his or her heart that they are lying through their teeth when they say that family ties are not severed and some of the other lies there. I am happy and my life is good, yet I do still those of my family that are still in were free. If they could follow the advice that the hypocrites and liars give in the Awake as quoted in other posts on this board about looking at their own religion, then they could be free. Meanwhile, I greatly enjoy seeing them chased from various forums, having their discussion boards taken over by ex-witnesses as they almost invariably are and in short getting their lies shoved up their noses in public. A lot of witnesses have had their eyes opened because of trying to stand up and deliver when their gun is empty. Like some of you have pointed out, their ship is sinking. Any group that spends so much time going out and trying to sell a product and has so little success, has a bad product and a rip-off price. Millions of hours and zero or negative growth in the Western nations???? I would just like to see more abandon ship before they die.
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Moment of Truth/ Cognitive Dissonance
by Zep inso how long have all you guyz here been apostates anyway, just curious?.i mean, it must be kind of cool to reflect and think...."well, heck, i'm a damned freaking apostate" or altleast a closet apostate, of which most of you are, i think?, right?.yeah, such a cool label is "apostate" huh!.but i'm interested, just how did all here personnally come to realise 'the truth' aint really that?, what set you on that track and made you look outside the bounds of wt literature into so-called apostate areas.. and what finally convinced you that its all just a heap of nonsense?
and forced you to shockingly conclude you had been living a lie?.what did it do to you at that moment, i mean, how did you deal with this blatant self admission that the wt was wrong?
did it crack you up or what...or did you just laugh it off or something?..
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Grunt
I don't think of myself as an "apostate." Never have. I now think of this group that I once thought was the closest thing to right of all the religions I had discovered, as being foul and hypocritical, not apostate though as they never really had the truth. I do feel guilt over having been in it and in having caused my child to see it as truth and join it. I do feel anger at myself for not really researching them before joining, but as my parents and other people I trusted were in it, I lowered my guard I guess. I viewed looking up the scriptures and "studying" with them proving it, which is laughable. As for any jackass who was never part of it being critical of those who were, well I would have to say his presence on this board is at least as hard to understand as being duped by a sincere group of people who are in turn being duped by a group of lying hypocrites. Ah well, no use in stopping the car over one barking dog.
Anyway, the problem I now have is how to get the ones I love "Out" when they are so indoctrinated and when what I say is viewed with suspicion. I think that most of us are credible, responsible people. I have always been honest and have always been a good father, son, brother, and friend to those still in. I think that the most good that can be done has been done just by my leaving. They know me and know that I wouldn't leave without good reason. Despite the propaganda, despite the constant pounding of the near hypnotic messages about the Organization, maybe our leaving has made an impact. I think it has. The good news is that their future in the Western nations seems sealed. The young (and many of the old!) are leaving in droves, the growth rate despite millions of hours of advertizing is negative or zero, the message is boring and they don't dare set another date to rev things up. I just wish they would go ahead and die quickly so the hostages could be freed.
Again, I enjoyed your posts, thank you.
OvertDisciple -
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Free to make a friend
by Grunt inwhen i got out of the service and returned home, my parents had studied and become witnesses.
my aunt had been one all of my life but i never thought it would affect my parents.
i was disgusted and surprised.
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Grunt
Thanks to all of you for responding to the post. I think I really post them more for myself, but it feels good to interact with people who have shared a life experience. To borrow a phrase from a poem by Walt Whitman, these posts are my great "Yawp" at the world wherein I sing myself. As for freedom, I am only as free as a man with loved ones in bondage can be. I guess that is true of most of you as well. I have been totally honest with the ones I love in this life regarding the "Truth" as I see it. It really hasn't done much so far except ease my own conscience and probably bother theirs for continuing to stay close to me. Except of course for the one child whose conscience is clean, and whose course is wrong. I do always hope, that some honest hearted Witness will read what I say, recognize the truth in it and open their eyes a little to just what they are involved in and supporting. To turn your back on a loved one, they should have done something much, much, more awful than just disagree and point out why.
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Free to make a friend
by Grunt inwhen i got out of the service and returned home, my parents had studied and become witnesses.
my aunt had been one all of my life but i never thought it would affect my parents.
i was disgusted and surprised.
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Free to make a friend
by Grunt inwhen i got out of the service and returned home, my parents had studied and become witnesses.
my aunt had been one all of my life but i never thought it would affect my parents.
i was disgusted and surprised.
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Grunt
When I got out of the service and returned home, my parents had studied and become Witnesses. I could hardly believe it. My aunt had been one all of my life but I never thought it would affect my parents. I was disgusted and surprised. I really was patriotic, believed in hellfire and thought it was crazy not to celebrate birthdays. I began a study with an old brother, supposedly of the anointed, named Walker. He was a good man, and a gentle man. He moved to where the need was greater and turned my study over to a man named Casper. He also was a good man, though a man of a different nature than Walker. I knew nothing and as I followed along in the Truth book and the Bible I became convinced that the Witnesses were right about a number of things, the immortality of the soul, hellfire, the wrongness of killing your fellow man for political governments or really, any other reason. I didn't know enough to ask hard questions, and did all my research in the Bible led by the brother and the publications. I never could really buy the 1914 date, or the stuff about the length of time the guys spent in prison in Atlanta having been predicted in the Bible. Though I had strong reservations, I did begin to believe the 7000 year day stuff which meant that 1975 was going to be it. I felt real guilty when I financed anything that would pay off after '75, as I knew I would never really pay for it. This changed for me when I found an old publication telling about the pyramids. It sounded just like the stuff we were still reading, only the names had changed. They sounded so certain, and it would have been like doubting God to doubt what they were saying, which of course I could see had been totally wrong. King of the North Napoleon???? Great Britain for King of the South? Or so I think it said. Anyway, this began my serious doubts, about 1973. I tried to research it, and ran into a wall. Nobody wanted to talk about it. I tried to ask about the creative days, and got terrible explanations followed by blank looks when I continued to ask questions. Nobody said anything, but I could tell pushing it was just changing the people I cared about in the congregation's view of me. So I began my disengagement. I just couldn't keep going door to door talking about 1914 after that. I really didn't believe any of the dates anymore. I still thought they were closer than anyone else I knew of, but you couldn't pick and choose, you had to take the whole package. As I had been having terrible fights with my wife over religion for the entire time I was in, I began to rethink the whole package. I finally decided since I couldn't buy the whole slant in the "Truth" and I couldn't buy the Trinity and hellfire and all that, to just read the Bible on my own, live as clean a life as I could and back out. My parents were going to be a problem. I loved them too much to hurt them and had nothing to offer them besides the Witnesses. My children were small and during this time I did not push my wife to take them to the Kingdom Hall but wouldn't let them go to church with her except on special occasions and I would take them on Memorial and one for one any other time. The elders talked to me but I told them it was the way I was doing it and it would cause a divorce to do it any other way and they let it go and never gave me a hard time about it. As our congregation was small and mostly made up of my relatives I think they were afraid it would cause more trouble than it was worth, or maybe they just really felt empathy for me. Anyway, I didn't know what to do, about the Truth, about the kids, about all of it. I jogged a lot and prayed a lot and sometimes felt like I was in a vice.
So I decided to move and not tell anyone I was a Witness. I found a job a couple of states away and on the way there I stopped the car and told my kids, "I don't want anyone here to know I was a Witness. I don't want you to talk to anyone about the Witnesses. Not for fear of man, but because in my new job I will be working with the public and don't want the Witnesses judging me as disassociated or trying to involve me in some kind of judicial deal over my views which would hurt my family back home." I stopped attending and just went to Memorial back home, or on the odd occasion when I was home visiting on a Sunday. When I did go, it felt just like I was reading propaganda. I had a hard time sitting through it. It was strange when I stopped going. I remember feeling so free. I was free to choose a friend, not because of his religious views, but because of his qualities. I was not looking for friends at all, didn't really want to associate with them, just wanted to do a good job and then be with my family, but they would seek me out. I remember having a knock on my back door, opening it and it was a guy from work with a big croaker sack full of oysters, some hot sauce and some crackers. He asked if I had ever eaten raw oysters, I said no and he proceeded to sit down on my porch and demonstrate how to shuck them and eat them. I wound up enjoying that and he is my friend to this day, though I have long since moved away from there. Funny. The ones I had thought were my friends I really had little in common with and don't know today.
That glorious sense of freedom, over choosing a friend. Pulling that car over and telling my kids I didn't want the Witnesses to judge me, was in a way prophetic. I was judged, but it was by someone in the car that day. Freedom is wonderful, and it does carry a price, regardless of what kind of freedom you are talking about. -
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Witnesses and Marines
by Grunt inthings about the jehovah's witnesses that remind me of the marine corps.
1. both demand conformity in hair cuts, dress and attitudes, failure to conform will bring disciplinary action and forestall.
2. both try and isolate you from the world, though only for three months at parris island, a lifetime with the witnesses.. .
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Grunt
Things about the Jehovah's Witnesses that remind me of the Marine Corps
1. Both demand conformity in hair cuts, dress and attitudes, failure to conform will bring disciplinary action and forestall
promotion.
2. Both try and isolate you from the world, though only for three months at Parris Island, a lifetime with the Witnesses.
3. Both talk insultingly about other groups, and disparage the abilities of the competition using nicknames like "Squid,"
"Airdale" "Worldling" and "Apostate." Marines will call them names to their faces though, while Witnesses won't.
4. Both show great loyalty, though Ex-Marines continue to show this loyalty and Ex-Witnesses rarely do.
5. Both try to tear people down and build them new personalities, neither are very successful over the long run though
the Marines do manage to instill in most a real love of firepower. Thieves remain thieves, ex-Marine thieves are better
with weapons though.
6. Both are insulting toward things you used to love and hold sacred. Marines frequently make nasty remarks about your
parentage and homelife, Witnesses usually attack your former religion and its priests or ministers. The Marines quit
after training, the Witnesses continue for your lifetime insisting that you agree and participate.
7. Both anticipate the destruction of their enemies and revel in the thought though the Marines take more joy in describing
just how they will do it and the Witnesses are more mercenary about it, thinking of the property they will get from
the dead. I never heard any Marine talk about looting the way I have heard Witnesses. Marines anticipate doing
the killing themselves whereas Witnesses think Jehovah will do the dirty work and the Witnesses are thinking on a
global slaughter scale whereas the Marines deal with it on a much more limited basis as in the Japanese Empire,
The German Army, the North Koreans or the Viet Cong. Despite favorable kill ratios with all of these they never
approached the level of slaughter the Witnesses dream of.
8. Both have harsh punishments. Marines will torture you at Parris Island or in the brig, strip you of rank and give
dishonorable discharges to those judged guilty of a serious crime before a jury in an open court. Witnesses will
strip you of all you love, parents, siblings, life-long friends, in a judicial committee before which you have no rights
other than the right to repent. If you do not repent you are condemned for life and condemned to death. Though
as in the slaughter of the worldlings, they will let Jehovah kill you. They will just shun you, and all other Witnesses
who don't shun you. It is, however, much easier for Marines to avoid trouble as the rules are spelled out in the UCMJ.
For Witnesses the rules are always changing and frequently the opposite of those stated to the public at large in
print.
9. Both have two groups, an officer corps and enlisted (in Witnesses: Anointed and the Great Crowd) with vastly different
treatment and privileges. High ranking Marine officers get their own homes, cars with drivers and helicopters.
Anointed Witnesses don't get the helicopters.
10. Both as organizations have clear cut ideas as to what they are to achieve and are willing to inflict death and
destruction on all defined as enemies, the Marines are more selective as to who the enemies are. They don't
include women, children, and other non-combatants. As stated above Witnesses have a more thermonuclear,
"let GOD kill them all AND sort them out" approach.
11. While both groups have heroes, the heroes of the Witnesses are mostly ancient biblical characters like David (who by
the way would have made a great Marine) and Gideon (he was drafted so would not be a part of the all volunteer
Marine Corps we have today unless a judge ordered him to either join up or go to the pen), not many contemporary
heroes that all Witnesses know and recognize. Marines have Chesty Puller (God Bless you Chesty Puller, Where
ever you are!) and countless others who wrapped themselves around grenades and such and are commemorated by
bldgs. and things. (John Wayne, a movie Marine,was commemorated by a small c-rat can opener)
12. Both listen to the same music over and over but the Marine Corps Hymn is much better to march to and I would say
all in all a better peice of music than #54 or the others I have heard.
13. Both have emblems, the Marines have the fouled anchor and the globe with an eagle above it, the Witnesses
have a big stone Watchtower off some ancient city wall.
14. Both have records they love to brag about. The Marines have fought all over the world and killed the enemy at a
tremendous ratio. In one battle on Guadalcanal during repeated Japanese charges and in close fighting
they killed 1400 Japanese to 70 or so Marines. They love to point to Belleau Wood, The Frozen Chosin, Iwo Jima,
Inchon, as examples of who they are and why they exist. The Witnesses like to point to all the times they
have been killed, banned or persecuted, like in Germany, Malawi and the U.S.A. for refusing to fight, give blood or
vote.15. Both love nicknames. Marines like to refer to themselves in a number of ways from Lean, Green, Fight'en Machine, to
Mean, Green, Amphibious M. F.ers, and to their organization as The Corps (unless they are mad at it when they call
it Uncle Sam's Malignant Crotch, or Crotch just for short) Witnesses like to call themselves The Brothers or Friends.
The Witnesses refer to their organization as The Organization or The Society, unless angry with it in which case they
can no longer be Witnesses and what they call it then is immaterial as they are no longer Witnesses. (The Borg is
popular among some ex-witnesses.)
16. Both do give standards of comparison for the rest of
their lives. A Marine broken down in the desert with loved ones would think, I can do this, I have been in worse
situations. An ex-Witness might say, hey, at least they are talking to me, I have been in worse situations. -
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True, or FAlse?
by Andyman ini am sure most of you have seen the following quote form the wbts's pr site:.
"do you shun former members?.
those who simply cease to be involved in the faith are not shunned.
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