Posts by Hoffnung

14

Special Assembly in Puerto Rico Coliseum to annouce Branch Closure

by Calebs Airplane in

so, 2 weekends ago, my wife is showing an apartment to a potential buyer in the financial district of san juan and walks the buyer over to the balcony to show her the awesome views.

the buyer looks down at a crowd approaching puerto rico coliseum (aka jose miguel agrelot coliseum) and asked my wife: "are those jehovah's witnesses?

" my wife looks down from 19 stories up, notices the "pioneer pace" of the crowd and says: "yes.

Hoffnung

they did the same when they closed the Swiss branch office, standard operating procedure.

Hoffnung

8

Silence is Consent!

by DonJuel in

please like our new page "silence is consent"!

we have made the page to make awareness about children who grow up in religious cults and are put in harm's way by the cults rules!.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/silence-is-consent/372373866194292.

Just "liked" the page. Honestly I do not see any negative outcomes from liking this page, as it is not anti-witness. And as it is kept under the radar here there was so much negative publicity in Norway, nobody will see a connection.

Congrats for the facebook page, good job BO, keep it up.

Hoffnung

8

For those of you who read/understand German

by Nika Bee in

jw
friends

there was a documentary about jehovahs witnesses (in austria) on the austrian tv channel orf2.

http://tvthek.orf.at/programs/4204899-kreuz---quer/episodes/5322965-kreuz-und-quer.

for some reason i can't hear the sound, just read the subtitles.. i am watching it at the moment, so i cannot say much yet, but might post something later or tomorrow..

Hoffnung

thanks for the link.

indeed a weird kind of documentary, where there isn't any narration, just a sequence of scenes. The introduction states that it took them several years to get the Witnesses to work together with them for this, so I guess it was part of the deal.

One particular detail, 2 sisters are doing door-to-door on appartment blocks, and they did not get a single positive reaction. and every 5 minutes or so, they showed another door with the 2 sisters, same result, over and over again.

It overall shows a watchtower world where nothing is allowed (including plays to help children refuse worldly invitations), and everybody is dressed up every second of the week. A creepy movement to be in.

So I guess, all in all, not too bad, however kind of boring.

Hoffnung

34

yet another newbie..

by ragnarok75 in

jw
friends

i've been lurking here for some time and now that i've registered here's a little bit about myself... i'm in northern europe (so english is not my own language,but i have indeed studied it for more than 18 months) and i was born into this hateful cult in the "momentuous" year of -75.good that my parents stayed alive till then!.

as far back as i can remember i had doubts both about the doctrines and the whole existence of god.however,i instinctively knew that these doubts are not to be mentioned.so i learned to be a fake at an early age.though having read many other stories here i realise how easy i got it.i now understand that we lived in a rather liberal area and also my family was quite liberal eventhough my dad was an elder since mid -80 and mom was really "strong in the truth".i never brought up the religion at school or with friends and was never bullied or anything.it helped that i was good at sports,especially football (soccer for americans) and football is also the source of my biggest hurt in childhood.i know it may sound very trivial,but the fact that i wasn't allowed to join a football team felt just so unjust and painfull and it lasted all through my childhood.whenever we had a new gym teacher,the first thing he asked me was which team do i play for.i was too embarrased to tell the truth and i just gave the impression that i only wanted to play for fun and not join any team.oh,how badly i wanted to!.

somehow i managed to silence all those doubts and got babtised as a young man.very soon after the babtism i knew that it didn't have the hoped for effect of making me more spiritual and meetings and field service still felt an absolute bore.now began the long years of just "going through the motions".all my family (parents,many brothers and sisters,uncles and aunts,nieces and nephews) and most of my friends were in.i never reached out and attended only one or two meetings a week and penned my hours.i kind of liked my congregation (also,the seats at our kh were really comfy,so i often slept through the meetings) and made some very good friends.friends that - as you all can guess- didn't turn out to be so good in the end,but with whom i nonetheless had some good times and felt a strong connection to.. for a long time nothing happened that would've disrupted my rather non-eventfull life as a lacklustre jdub with at least another foot in the "world".i'd done many things that would've gotten me d'fed,but i never had any intentions of going to the elders about it and i had no pangs of conscience about it either.it was just a matter of convenience..i liked my witness friends,wanted to hold on to them and not to lose my family.. however..there was this girl... a (worldly,of course) girl that i had absolutely fell for and had a brief romance with many years ago.now she was back in my life.i must omit the proceeding turns of events for the sake of anonymity,but the end result is that i'm a proud father of a lovely baby girl.well,not so much baby anymore as she starts school soon.i love her so much and it gives me great satisfaction that she is growing free from any influence of vicious cults or of any gods for that matter.we live now in different countries but i see her often and there's always skype.. her birth also acted as a catalyst for the change in relationship between me and the society.i decided that i wanted to share the joy of her birth and existence with my family,eventhough i also knew that that would mean i'd have to go the elders too.if i didn't,they would,and that would result in automatic disfellowshippping.. a jc was duly formed and i had decided that i'm not going to go there and tell them that i regret her,as having her is the best thing that's ever happeded to me.

Hoffnung

Welcome. Good you made it out quick enough so you can enjoy life.

Hoffnung

38

The story of Bo Juel Jensen - the man behind the Anti-Watchtower media campaign in Norway

by cedars in

hi guys.

richard e. kelly has kindly contributed a great article to jwsurvey.org on the link below.... http://jwsurvey.org/child-abuse-2/bo-juel-jensen-could-he-be-watchtowers-worst-nightmare.

richard tells the story of bo juel jensen, an ex-witness who has been doing marvellous work in raising awareness of watchtower child abuse mishandling in norway.. as with most child abuse victims, bo's story is a disturbing one.

Hoffnung

Hey Bo,

Man you rock. Just all the media attention on the Norwegian NRK during an entire week must have rocked more than a few chairs.

Your story, although extremely painful, is even more hideous as we know it is facilitated by the WTBS policies, and that is true to this day.

I have tried to reason on this with my parents, going as far as comparing the orgs policies with those of the Protestant church, but they still believe theirs is the best.

Would it be possible to expand this beyond Norways borders? Your video on youTube was quite impressive. Are you mastering some other languages like german?

Keep it up, I like what you are doing.

Hoffnung

98

New Member-Active Elder

by Promitheas in

jw
friends

i'm a new member & i'd like to say hi to everyone, intoducing myself.. i am a 3rd generation born-in at mid 50's & an active elder.. english is not my mother language, so pls ignore any grammatical errors.

i live in a small country in europe.. i'd like to thank you for all information posted.

some of them have rally helped me to understand and examine again my beliefs.. last new light concerning f&ds=gb has verified the idea that they are popes in the position op pope.. i still believe in god & in his son jesus christ but not in the gb..

Hoffnung

Welcome Promitheas,

I also live in Europe, good to have you on board.

Hoffnung

110

Greetings from a new member

by EdenOne in

jw
friends

greetings everyone.. just wanted to say hello to everyone, being a new member from western europe.. some may know me from another forum (eden, from e-jehovas-witnesses.com), but most don't, so this is my little intro.. male, in my early 40's.

still an active member in good standing of a jehovah's witnesses congregation in my country, and honestly not planning to change that status, despite my unorthodox beliefs.

sometime i will elaborate the reason why i don't feel i must leave.

Hoffnung

Hi Eden,

I checked out your website and can identify with how you feel about it all. You made some real good points in the 2nd part of your Mission Statement. It is great you can do all this research and draw conclusions at your own pace, and just as you I was struck by the somehow peaceful way Ray Franz wrote about his own experiences inside the GB.

You wrote that meetings provided you a spiritual routine and fellowship, and you just have to weed out what you know to be incorrect. I thought like that for a while too. The problem is, or will become, you know now what it means to really see. It will be hard, if not impossible, to become blind again. The longer I kept attending meetings, the more I noticed how many points were advanced without back up from the bible, and how many verses were pulled out of context to fit an idea. In the end, the ride home after every meeting, was a discussion between my wife and me about such points we had noticed during the meeting. After about one year like this, it became obvious for us that attending meetings was a waste of time. By then, I had also stopped going in service because I could not continue spreading ideas that I knew to be falsehoods, and as a reaction to being inactive, our "friends" started to keeping their distance from us, so that took away the last reason for us to keep going.

We are both inactive now, and reconnecting with the worldly family of my wife, and making new friends, enjoying simple things like birthdays etc.

I don't know if anybody recommended it, but I would like to encourage you to read Steven Hassans book: "Releasing the Bonds, empowering people to think for themselves". You will understand better what really happens at the meetings, and why many people need a lot of time to move on after having quit being a witness.

Hoffnung

259

The Gentile Times Reconsidered (607 B.C.E.) -Part A1 - Jeremiah 25:10-12 Reviewed

by FaceTheFacts in

during the last three to four months, i have spent a great deal of time sinking my teeth into various critical biblical commentaries and lexicons.

naturally, after beginning to research "the truth about the truth" one of the most commonplace yet controversial arguments revolve around the "gentile times" doctrine (i.e.

the application of the seven times of daniel 4 from 607 b.c.e.

Hoffnung

Thanks Ann,

it can be added that Jeremiah's words "these nations will have to serve the king of Babylon seventy years", leave completely open how the Babylonian kings go about making-the-nations-serve. Sacking the city 1st, together with plundering and taking prisoners as ransom, is defenitely one of the possibilities within the scope of Jeremiah's words. Vassalage was another option, but there is no record of that on Babylonian Chronicle 4. Either way is absolutely acceptable to fulfill the prophecy. Assyria was indeed the 1st to get the full load of the emperialistic style of having to serve Babylon, many others followed soon thereafter, as shown in the Babylonian Chronicle 4.

Another strawman of FTF debunked.

FTF, by the way, you are providing a great platform for free publicity for C.O.Jonssons great book:

The Gentile Times Reconsidered

Thanks,

Hoffnung

259

The Gentile Times Reconsidered (607 B.C.E.) -Part A1 - Jeremiah 25:10-12 Reviewed

by FaceTheFacts in

during the last three to four months, i have spent a great deal of time sinking my teeth into various critical biblical commentaries and lexicons.

naturally, after beginning to research "the truth about the truth" one of the most commonplace yet controversial arguments revolve around the "gentile times" doctrine (i.e.

the application of the seven times of daniel 4 from 607 b.c.e.

Hoffnung

FTF, I am not even dreaming of convincing you, that was never my idea. That would be like trying to convince a born-deaf person of the beauty of music.

However, many honest-hearted others will read this and will draw the same conclusion as I did.

Hoffnung

47

2012 report analysis - countries with reduced publisher figures

by cedars in

jw
friends

i've just started munching through the figures for 2012 in the new 2013 yearbook, now available on jw.org.. i thought you might be interested to see which countries saw "negative growth" over 2012.. these are as follows.... .

*sudan is so dramatically reduced because south sudan is now independent and the society has adjusted the publisher figures accordingly.. .

countries added.

Hoffnung

also interesting how they shuffeled population numbers around in countries that moved under another branch. Quite unlikely that Luxemburg lost 15% of its population in just one year. I guess somebody had used the wrong stats in the previous years.

Hoffnung