Posts by HB

47

Wife is on that yellow brick road to the WT.

by trailerfitter in

hi, this is my first post on this forum although i have been reading many posts on here.

i feel safe enough to ask your advice and become involved now......from what i have learned about this forum it is occupied by sensible people who have left the watchtower influences for one reason or another.

i am, for want of a better word, a none believer.

HB

Hi again trailerfitter,

As was pointed out to me by my ex-JW friend, it is a big mistake to try to oppose a JW directly. I also, when I was in your position, tried to challenge my friend who was studying with similar things that you are trying. But as my friend pointed out to me, it will only push the person studying more towards the JWs.

You really need help, as I did, in trying to get your wife to see through it all. It is a mine field and a lot of damage can easily be done in your sincere efforts to help her,

Again, wishing you the best,

HB

47

Wife is on that yellow brick road to the WT.

by trailerfitter in

hi, this is my first post on this forum although i have been reading many posts on here.

i feel safe enough to ask your advice and become involved now......from what i have learned about this forum it is occupied by sensible people who have left the watchtower influences for one reason or another.

i am, for want of a better word, a none believer.

HB

Hi Trailer Fitter.

I was in a very similar situation to you a few years ago. I also have never been a JW.

A friend of mine was in a very similar position to your wife’s a few years ago. She was at the point of baptism. But an ex-JW friend of mine helped me, step by step, to try to avert her accepting the JW religion. My friend didn’t promise any results, but we went to work on her.

I won’t go into all the details now, but just to say that it all ended up for the better and we managed to get my friend out of the JWs for good.

What part of the UK are you from? Might help to chat in person. Will send you a PM, if you wish, with my details on it if you would like to contact me. If not, I wish you the best.

HB

48

Hello to everyone.... and could I ask a really basic question here please...

by JamesS in

jw
friends

i'm james i'm new to this forum as of today and i'm a ex-jw who was "born into the truth" and then left it officially at the age of twenty after "drifting out" of it for some time.

i'm now 34 and whilst i'm not exactly happy with the world i'm living in, i'm largely happy with my own life.. one question i've got about this forum - i didn't join for a long time because i thought it was for active jw's (based on the web-site url), not ex jw's, but then looking at the threads, it seems it is more for ex-jw's!

what is the demographic for the membership?

HB

Hi James,

I see you are from Haslemere..... I'm from Liphook (4 miles away).

I don't post on this forum any more (till today!) but I do read it frequently and find it fascinating. ( Sorry, I would be one of those tiresome people you mentioned on another thread that would question you madly in a social situation if I heard you had been a JW!)

I have never been a JW and none of my family were JWs but I got involved with the forum a couple of years ago because a young vulnerable friend of mine who was in the Haslemere congregation (on Wey Hill) was being sucked in and torn away from her family, and I was appalled at the way her study conductor was controlling and indoctrinating her, so I looked on the internet to learn more about the religion.

I now know that to start with, (being very ignorant about JW beliefs at the time), to my great regret, I was reasoning with my friend in completely the wrong way, attacking her belief in Jehovah directly rather than getting her to question for herself the basis of JW teachings but I didn't realise this until later.

Once I joined this forum and started learning what the Watchtower Org is about, several people gave me good advice but particularly a poster called 'Mr Majestic' who emailed me regularly and taught me how to behave and react and drip-feed information to my friend without setting off her 'apostate' alarm bells.

It took some time and ingenuity, but I eventually managed to get Mr Majestic and my friend together (long story). He used the bible and the WT Societies' own literature to open her eyes and thereby restored her sanity and returned her to her grateful family. As a JW she was constantly fearful and depressed but now she has a life and a future. (She will be in London auditioning for the X factor on Monday!) Another success story thanks to this website. She posted on here as 'Blooming Marvellous' a few times.

She and Mr Maj are now best of friends which is great, especially in view of the fact that when they first met, she acted as if he was the devil incarnate.

Seeing as we are just in the next village to you, if you would like to get together with the three of us for a chat one day, that would be great, we'd love to meet you. I am off on holiday on Saturday for a week, but on my return I will send you a message and see how you feel about it.

Heather

71

Hi I'm new here

by BloominMarvellous in

feeling guilty already about being on here, the familiar words are recalled in my mind "don't go on any jehovah's witness websites except 'watchtower.org'!

so here i am, desperate for some help.

i'm 21 and have been studying for 2 years, i was made an unbaptised publisher in february and it was all going great until i had a problem with getting a little tipsy, the elders had to come scrape me off the floor of my witness friends house and take me home.

HB

Hi BloominMarvellous,

Congratulations on your escape from the mind control and for having the courage to reclaim your independant spirit and the intelligence to reassert your critical thinking powers!

As one of your worldly friends who has known and respected you since you were a small child, I was dismayed at the beginning of last year to see how your normally strong and feisty personality was being repressed and forced to conform and your endearingly rebellious attitude was being sucked out of you.

I came to this forum to learn what you were getting in to, and the more I read, the more I became concerned. I hoped you would see the truth about the Truth before you got too indoctrinated by the Watchtower and thankfully my dreams have now come true.

As a potential convert, you were initially showered with love and attention by the JWs. Being a young person you were a prize catch, a jewel in the congregation. But what I had been told by members of this board would happen, eventually proved completely accurate. As soon as you took one independant step over the line and disobeyed the JWs' impossibly strict regulations, they withdrew the love, and showed their true tyrannical colours.

(Seriously, I could not believe they said that skirt was too short, it was literally knee-length, and worn with thick black tights, so no flesh showing!)

It's ironic that your study conductor is now angry that the two years of effort she put into teaching you and training you to behave they way the WTS dictates have come to nothing, but she cannot see that she personally has been responsible for driving you away by her cold, hurtful, over-controlling and judgemental attitudes. She claimed her friendship was not conditional on you believing what she does, but that claim has been proved completely false.

The JWs now condemn you for pulling away from Jehovah, but you can now see that all you have done is to pull away from the mind-controlling WTS organisation, not from God.

And I gather they blame me for personally causing you to sin, oh well I'll take the blame for that and the faults of everyone on this forum if you like, it's no skin off my nose, but as you know, all I did was to be a friend when you needed someone to talk to. The JWs were not prepared to listen to you without judging, so who were you supposed to talk to when you were so severely stressed and depressed? If they didn't want you to turn to worldly friends, they should have been there for you and demonstrated the Christian love they claim to have, instead of making you feel guilty and miserable, punishing you and pushing you away when you felt so bad.

You couldn't sleep or eat, you were throwing up, you had stomach pains, you couldn't go to work or function normally because of what they call 'loving' discipline. They didn't care how you felt, they just followed the rules. Made me so angry. But now the contrast is amazing, you are free to be you, laughing, joking, being positive about the future, walking with a bounce in your step and looking great.

I would like to thank all the posters here who have either directly or indirectly helped me understand the JW world, it's been like learning from scratch about a previously unknown tribe, whose shocking and bizarre culture is so alien to my life, that I could sometimes hardly believe it is called a religion. During the past year, as I learned, I initially experienced a degree of incredulity, followed by amazement, and it has been an interesting if sad experience to now see with my own eyes in the life of my friend, some cruel aspects of the way the cult operates.

This cloud has some silver linings for me though as I have unexpectedly made good friends with a few people who post here, even though I have never been in any way previously involved with JWs. And I have met a few people in person which was brilliant. Meeting Hope4others, I was quite in awe, like meeting a celebrity! But there is also another poster I have met who deserves a very special mention.

Funny how life goes. Neither BloominMarvellous or Mouthy had any idea that they would be instrumental in sparking a good frienship between two very unlikely people. I would never have come here but for BloominMarvellous and it was on a thread about cockney accents started by Mouthy that I "met" the infamous Mr Majestic. I initially decided he was an arrogant show off, albeit clever, witty and funny. But as others of you who have met him will have discovered, Mr M. is a much nicer and deeper person in real life, a really kind, generous, perceptive and empathetic person (even if his laugh is too loud!). He has become a firm and life-long friend who has taught me so much for which I can't thank him enough.

And now he is friends with BloominMarvellous too and has helped her see what the bible really says about some of the WTS teachings and has been able to support her in ways I could never have managed as I do not have the experience.

So now we're all looking forward to the belated 21st birthday celebrations in a couple of weeks.......... thanks for the invite BloominMarvellous, it's going to be loads of fun, cant wait! (Mr Maj. says you can wear your skirt as short as you like!!!!)

And here's to a bright and happy future of your own choosing.

Love Heather

2

Child witches in Africa

by Caedes in

i watched (with a growing sense of anger and disgust) a program on tv last night (dispatches - http://www.channel4.com/news/dispatches/ ) on the problem of children being accused of witchcraft in the niger delta.

these kids (even babies) are usually tortured, beaten and denied food until they "confess" if they are lucky they may be just abandoned, unlucky ones are buried alive.

the parents can purchase an exorcism quoted as being roughly a years wages, this seemed to entail further abuse of the victims.

HB

I watched the programme with tears running down my face.

The problem has only become big since 2000 when a "Christian" prophetess released a film which was widely distributed which claimed that nothing in life happens by chance and if for example, your crop fails or someone dies, it means that the youngest child in the family has been possessed and must be cast out. The prophetess was interviewed and asked where in the bible it says this but she just became very angry and defesive.

Hundreds of children are affected. I could not bear to look when the physical injuries that the so called "witch-children" received from their own families and communities were shown. Some had been burnt, buried alive, attacked with a machete, had bones broken which had not been treated for six months or had acid poured on them and worse. In addition to the physical abuse, the psychological scars of being rejected at such a young age for something you have not done and don't understand must be very hard if not impossible to heal. One child was only 3 month old.

It was disgusting that even when parents had sold all they had to pay for an 'exorcism', the money was not returned if the bishop or prophetess said the treatment had not worked and then the child still had to be cast out or killed. The 'cure' could involve groups of children being locked in a prison in the church for six months and subjected to horrific treatment including sexual abuse.

The young man who has set up a refuge to help these children deserves international recognition. No one had ever heard of him until this programme was broadcast; he should be more famous than all the celebrities and sports stars, but sadly that's not the way the world works. With up to ten physically and psychologically abused children a week arriving and needing shelter, he is fighting a losing battle, but is doing wonderful work.

He took a group of children to the Government building to stage a protest and after having to wait four hours in the heat, the state governor finally agreed to meet them and took their petition. I may be over-cynical but it made me feel that it was only because a TV crew were there that the Governor agreed to sign the bill of rights for children. But sadly since then, not one adult has been arrested for abuse and the problem is ongoing.

As Caedes said, this child abuse is done in the name of Christianity. It's sick

24

Can someone help me with the latest thinking on Boy Scouts??

by lrkr in

just wondering what, if anything has been published in the past about joining the boy scouts?

is it an automatic da, like joining the army?

?.

HB

My friend who was a Brownie Leader, was told by the Elders last July that if she wished to be baptised as a JW, she must give up helping at Brownie meetings.

(Brownies is the section of GirlguidingUK for 7 to 10 yr old girls, Girlguiding being the UK equivalent of Girl Scouts)

She very reluctantly resigned from being a Brownie Leader, (she loved it), but she is not yet baptised. It was with the aim of helping her that I first came to JWD, and posters here warned me that membership of Guiding would not be tolerated by her congregation. They were sadly proved right.

TV programme: Watchtower mags are Junk Mail

by HB in

thought you might like to hear about a programme on uk tv (channel 4) yesterday in which jws featured.. it was a light-hearted and quirky programme called junk mail britain where the presenter who has hoarded all his junk mail for the past 5 years, went out into his community (willesden, nw london) to meet the people behind the various businesses and companies who were trying to get his custom via leafletting.. http://www.channel4.com/video/brandless-catchup.jsp?vodbrand=junk-mail-britain.

it was fun and much more interesting than you might think from this brief synopsis.

he met everyone from taxi drivers to pizza takeaway firms to find out how much business they got from junk mail and then interviewed some of the people who trailed from door to door dropping unwanted leaflets through letterboxes.

HB

Thought you might like to hear about a programme on UK TV (Channel 4) yesterday in which JWs featured.

It was a light-hearted and quirky programme called Junk Mail Britain where the presenter who has hoarded all his junk mail for the past 5 years, went out into his community (Willesden, NW London) to meet the people behind the various businesses and companies who were trying to get his custom via leafletting.

http://www.channel4.com/video/brandless-catchup.jsp?vodBrand=junk-mail-britain

It was fun and much more interesting than you might think from this brief synopsis. He met everyone from taxi drivers to pizza takeaway firms to find out how much business they got from junk mail and then interviewed some of the people who trailed from door to door dropping unwanted leaflets through letterboxes.

The best item he saved to last. He was in the bath reading a book on a Saturday morning and there was a knock at the door. He went down stairs in his dressing gown to find two demurely dressed ladies offering him a little booklet to read. (Cue backgound chuch organ music!). I'm not sure if these were actresses but I don't think so.

His voice-over comment was that out of all the hundreds of pamphlets he receives, there is only one group of people so polite that they actually ring his doorbell in person to deliver theirs. No obvious disrespect was shown but I think there was irony in his voice.

Various different Watchtower magazines were displayed on screen with the comment that they have the largest circulation of any in the world. Not sure if he was trying to suggest they are the greatest producers of junk mail, but possibly.

He decided that since the JWs visited his house several times a year, it was only fair that he should go to theirs. (I shouted at the TV "don;t go!" but nevertheless I was very curious as never having been a JW, I had never seen inside a Kingdom Hall and now I have).

The presenter interviewed someone who talked blandly about not just dropping leaflets though letterboxes but trying to engage people in conversation, and about people living in fear in the modern world, and how many were scared to open thier doors to people or show hospitality to others for fear of what might happen.

The presenter then dons a suit and tie and attends a meeting. He comments that church attendance has dropped over recent years but the JWs have gone forth and multiplied and their membership is now 130,000 in the UK. This congregation was attended by over 20 different nationalities.

Then a speaker was filmed giving a talk from the platform. He spoke about real freedom being an elusive goal and drawing attention to 'the hundreds of millions of people who have enslaved themselves into harmful addictions, slavery into alcohol, drug abuse and the viewing of pornography".

The camera cut at this point to the face of the visiting presenter which was a picture of puzzlement.

The clip would not be interesting to most of you, as this stuff is or was what you lived with regularly, but to me it was an eye opener. Having read on JWD a little about what happens in meetings, the one thing I was surprised at was that the speaker's voice was really patronising with a slow delivery as if he was talking to 5 year olds. I would have personally felt insulted by his tone if I was an adult there!

Was this speaker unusual or do many of them talk down at the congregation?

22

I read a study about the WTS-Growth

by JWdaughter in

and it said that based on their growth and such, that in 20 years(or by 2020) there would be 28 million jws.

any sign of imminent, widespread persecution that you all have noticed?

i keep hearing about kh's being built and remodeled, and how huge their conventions are.

HB

"Statistics are like a bikini - what they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital". - Prof. Aaron Levenstein

"He uses statistics like a drunken man uses a lamp-post.... for support rather than illumination" Andrew Lang,

16

New Creationist museum in Portsmouth UK

by HB in

it appears that creationist views are gaining a foot-hold here in the uk too.. see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7613403.stm.

by julian joyce .

bbc news .

HB

Morons of the UK show yourself and be counted!

I have many friends and acquaintances, religious, atheist and all shades in between, but I don't know anyone in the UK who even vaguely believes in Creationism. Seeing how many churches have closed in the UK and observing the general trend towards small and ageing congregations, I do find it hard to believe that it could be getting more popular here.

I would be interested to know on what basis the claim that Creationism is growing was based. No statistics were given in the article, and the opening of one museum doesn't necessarily represent a huge swell in support. I have no idea of the figures but at a wild guess, if there were say 5000 British creationists last year and 5500 this year, it is technically growing, but not worryingly so (UK population is approx 60 million).

It would also be interesting to know the demographics, and whether the numbers of Creationists have been augmented by recent immigration. The Portsmouth area where the museum has opened has a large population of Eastern Europeans.

Charles Darwin's home at Downe in Kent is open to the public and when I visited last year, whilst viewing the rooms and exploring the perimeter path in his garden where he walked to help him think, I noticed a hushed reverence amongst the other visitors of a kind that is normally reserved for great cathedrals and other Holy places. (I guess the experience of visiting Downe House is the UK equivalent of going to Graceland for an American rock n Roll fan).

In a country where myth and magic have been part of our heritage since well before Stone Henge was built, it is interesting that in the 21st century it is now quintessentially British to be cynical and suspicious about all things spiritual, whereas in America which is a relatively young country, a large proportion of the population are deeply religious.

Incidentally, when I put < UK Creationists > into Google, (trying unsuccessfully to find out how many exist) Google asked me if I meant 'UK cartoonists', which I thought was telling.

16

New Creationist museum in Portsmouth UK

by HB in

it appears that creationist views are gaining a foot-hold here in the uk too.. see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7613403.stm.

by julian joyce .

bbc news .

HB

Sorry something went amiss with the pasting, if you want to read the article, best to click the link.