yes, this comment was just made by the speaker today!:.
"if you find that you are lacking in joy or experiencing problems in life, this is evidence that jehovah's spirit is lacking or being blocked in your life".
i sat there thinking "are you kidding me brother?...
This is evidence that Jehovah's spirit is upon me.
No, that's the devil's joy. But the joy he (He?) gives is shortlived and minor in comparison to the joy Jehovah gives, even if what Jah gives looks and feels like abject misery at the time. That's roughly what I remember them writing somewhere.
we live in democratic, not theocratic times.. churches no longer imprison, torture or execute.. cults have absolutely no authority over non members.
we don't have to obey.
we don't have to subject our selves.
I've never really understood the urge to honour them with a resignation (unless it's to stop harassment).
I just decided it was me who determined my religious status, no one else. So I just stopped going and cut them off. I did step down first ('health'), I thought that was the right thing to do. I never went back after it was announced. I didn't bother myself or them with anything written. In time they got the idea.
yes, this comment was just made by the speaker today!:.
"if you find that you are lacking in joy or experiencing problems in life, this is evidence that jehovah's spirit is lacking or being blocked in your life".
i sat there thinking "are you kidding me brother?...
Spirits usually take away problems and give joy. Until the hangover in the morning...
12 years for me and before i actually became a member, i looked at this site (jwd) for a few months..
[Apart from Simon who's been rightly disqualified...] according the the date joined on this thread so far, only Mouthy's been here longer than me! And that's only by two days! LOL! Me 24 November 2001, her 22 November.
The rest of you are mere newbies! :-)
I probably am a contestant for the slowest poster ever though: by my calculaton it's 0.1 of a post per day for 13 years and one month! :-) (ie: 479 posts in 4777 days).
But I have spent so many hours reading this place. Too many. Thank you Simon.
as we all know, the internet is a real game-changer in allowing us to know the truth about the watch tower and its history.
i always had doubts and it was the internet that presented me with the ever-growing number of individuals who were going through a similar struggle.. i give the internet a 9 in my awakening.
what about you?.
I started down the road out through disatisfaction with the JW life and the actions of elders about 1994 or 1995: that was nothng to do with the internet which I hadn't used then.
When I gathered up enough unhappiness, I wanted to find out about 'that book' written by 'Fred Franz relative'. That was around 1996 or 1997 just as the internet was becoming popular and accessible and useful. I found Crisis in a libary after getting the title etc via the internet (as I recall). After a few pages I knew I couldn't stay a JW. Then I found H2O, and I was really going out of the JWs fast. I remember my heart racing doing all that for the first time!
So, the internet didn't start the slide, but it heped push me along the slope to getting out.
5 for getting out.
10 for being the right tool at the right time for everything JW related since then.
i can't see that there's a posting about the tragic death of australian cricketer, phillip hughes last week.
he was an extraordinary talent, grew up on a cattle farm and, by all accounts, was a thoroughly decent and happy 25 year old man.. he missed hitting a ball bowled at him and was struck by it in the neck: the rock hard ball would have been travelling at about 85km/h.
the blow ruptured an artery causing too much blood to flow into his brain.
I can't see that there's a posting about the tragic death of Australian cricketer, Phillip Hughes last week. He was an extraordinary talent and, by all accounts, was a thoroughly decent and happy 25 year old man.
He missed hitting a ball bowled at him and was struck by it in the neck: the rock hard ball would have been travelling at about 85km/h. The blow ruptured an artery causing too much blood to flow into his brain. He dropped face down seconds after and never regained consciousness, despite every possible effort being made.
Too sad. He played at the top level and broke several records from the age of 20. This video is an official tribute to him. The gory details are a Google search away.
https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/wa/a/25697590/three-injured-as-car-hits-park-bench/.
an elderly driver crashed into a park bench in mandurah, western australia today where 3 jws were sitting.
they had set up their jw cart and their literature was also strewn across the ground.. one of the jws was seriously injured with head injuries.. what a freak accident this is.. .
Very sorry for the family and friends of those involved.
Our sympathies and thoughts shoud be with them.
please share your experiences..
They were generally polite; there were a few nasty messages early on, but that tended to happened before anyhow. There's little contact, but religion might not be the only reason for that. My school-age children haven’t even heard of JWs (so far as I know). My non-JW in-laws were relieved their sister/daughter's 'Christian Phase' was over.
(Edited to add that, in fact, I'm not sure that I've ever told my parents - although I've been out since 1998. They must have drawn an easy-to-make inference, or my wife told them. I know I've never had a conversation about why with my parents: I tried with my sister and that went badly, I did with my brother and he's out too).
states he is a jehovah's witness near the end of the article.. .. http://www.press-citizen.com/story/news/education/2014/12/02/green-helped-shape-ui-public-safety-police-force/19798329/?utm_source=jw+news+and+archive&utm_campaign=47e569bee3-rss_email_campaign&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5caf9e1836-47e569bee3-29185349&ct=t(rss_email_campaign ).
.. .. atlantis.
.
Congratulations to him on a fine career.
this is the letter i wrote back in '96 about the parousia.
following the '95 watchtower that disconnected the "generation" from 1914 i began to look carefully at end-time prophecy and soon discovered what i knew were basic errors in what i had been taught.. i was a loyal jw at the time and was still serving as an elder.
i used only watchtower publications in my research.
There was no sycophancy there, Cofty. It was the correct form of words for the context within which you were writing at the time.
