i have been rereading a lot about rutherford lately; about his personality and the kind of person he was.
i have come to the conclusion that he was a lot like donald trump.. he was an accused womanizer.. he was a narcissist with a self inflated ego.
he claimed to be persecuted by the media all the time.
Other than the womanizer part, the list also applies to Hillary Clinton. And almost every politician in America, if not the world.
And really, almost every celebrity in the entire world.
Rich and powerful people tend to be a-holes. Not really a newsflash.
i left the wts in the early 1990's and i was baptised at the same assembly as this elder and his wife in the late 1980's they were probably in their early 50's back then, you know the kind; get called on, become a study and take to life as a jw like a duck takes to water, a dream call for all jw's and we went onto to be good friends with them over the years, the book study was held in their house also, he quietly progressed up the jw ladder became an ms then elder, a few months after i started my fade i saw him one day while i waited for a bus and he acknowledged me i said hi etc and he started a verbal tirade towards me about me knowing its the truth, how close we are living to the end, how stupid i was turning my back on it etc blah blah blah, i couldn't really get a word in edge ways, i bid him good day and that was that, he really was quite angry, i never saw him again until recently over 25 years later when him and his wife and their son were having a meal in my local pub, he was standing at the bar ordering, i saw him acknowledged him said hi and he looked straight through me, he said "do i know you ?
" i replied " hey eddie its jookbeard from the ********** congregation, surely you remember me?
" he said sorry i've never seen you before in my life, his wife came over to help him with his drinks and i said "hey pat, how are you?
Whether these two were faking it or not, I obviously cannot say.
What I can say, however, is that there are A LOT of things that happened and a lot of ridiculous stories told that my own mother and father have conveniently "forgotten" about.
2018-04-16-boebeards and special privilegeshttps://we.tl/qoxbkltp4latlantis!.
I can't tell you the number of times I have seen wearing a beard cause a "disturbance or distraction in {the} community" or my church.
Thank God for this timely, scriptural advice.
by the time i finish this post, i will have turned 50 years old.
i spent over 40 years of my life not celebrating my birthday, and it never seemed like a big deal to me.
three years ago, i received a cake and some friends sang "happy birthday" to me at a dinner party that was for a different event.
I had my first ever birthday party at 36 years old. It was a surprise occasion concocted by my wife and some friends.
I cried when it happened.
The Watchtower can kiss my ass. There's nothing wrong with friends and family showing love and appreciation for others.
hi - first some context - i have been pimo for about 20 years now and so have been to a lot of assemblies in that time.
last weekend i went to a circuit assembly and for the first time afterwards i was able to talk directly to someone who knows i'm out.
i realised then that although i didn't agree with any teachings (i sat picking holes in the arguements as usual) the experience of being there had affected me - the way of life started feeling normal as did the overall way of viewing the world.
The mind is an extremely influenceable device. It was figured out a long, long time ago that if you just keep repeating stuff, even stuff that is clearly ridiculous, eventually a good chunk of people will start to believe it.
Goebbels knew it, too.
The Watchtower is just using these techniques that were developed long before them. It's why they are so adamant that you come to every meeting. Because a person who isn't constantly exposed to the conditioning will start to notice all the fallacies and the illogic in the teachings.
i remember an elder questioning a woman who had admitted to giving and receiving oral sex from her unbelieving mate.
he asked her the most intimate questions which clearly flustered her.
interestingly, she “confessed “ to the elders because her conscience bothered her.
This thread is very therapeutic. Cathartic also.
With the way these things can stick with you into adulthood it's good to see others were fed the exact same BS and can understand.
i remember an elder questioning a woman who had admitted to giving and receiving oral sex from her unbelieving mate.
he asked her the most intimate questions which clearly flustered her.
interestingly, she “confessed “ to the elders because her conscience bothered her.
The big thing when I was growing up was all the demon stories. One I distinctly recall is my mother telling me how another couple at the hall had some items in their attic that had gotten demon possessed. So they took the aforementioned items outside to burn them, but the demons were preventing the items from burning (items made from wood, cardboard, paper, clothing, etc). They even doused all the items with gasoline and yet the demons prevented them all from ever catching flame. Eventually they hauled the items away to a dump since they were permanently demonically inflammable.
Of course, my mother conveniently remembers nothing of the story now and swears she never said it.
My grandmother told me a story as a kid about this doll she had bought at a garage sale. She noticed how the perfectly fixed eyes would follow her as she walked past it so she knew it was demon-possessed. The first night she took it out to the laundry room, but during the night it got up and walked into the dining room. The next day she took it out to the detached garage (being about 50 feet away from the house) but during the night it got up and came back in the house. Finally it was trash pick-up day so she put it out to the curb when the guys were picking up so it never came back.
I have no doubt that she would conveniently not remember, and deny, this story if she were alive today to ask.
This is but two of the many demon stories I heard as a kid. There were plenty more. Big shock that I was so terrified of demons getting me in bed when I was a kid. Nighttime uneasiness followed me well into my 30s and even to this day I sometimes find myself getting nervous just going downstairs to the living room in the dark as a grown man. It's embarrassing to say it, and I've actually never told anyone about it before, but this stuff from when you are a kid really can stick with you.
Side note: Reading that story about ET really brings back the memories of how badly I loathed this religion. I swear this stupid cult can take any teeny tiny bit of fun and crap all over it.
since leaving the jws i have become more interested in finding out about other faiths.
here are a few of my findings.. lds: i just couldnt get my head around the mental gymnastics i would have to do to understand their doctrines and theology.
i attended their services twice.
My unsolicited advice to you is to spend less time concerning yourself with the denomination name on the building and believing "this is how this denomination operates" and spend more time examining each individual church group.
There are two churches that have the same exact name as mine in my town. The other one should just change their name to "The Grumpy Old Pharisees Group".
i am an ex-jw and a member of this forum (not so active lately ;)).
in poland, we created a map of ex-jws (and their friends ;)) to find former friends from the organization or to contact someone living close to them.
many people found each other after many years outside of the organization thanks to this tool.
Brilliant.
I see there are quite a number in the USA on the map. I just might put myself on this thing. I'd hate to think someone near me needed an ear on their journey out of the Watchtower and I hadn't made myself available to talk.
i just saw zeb's ("i'm worldly") video entitled: "black mass mayhem" a few minutes ago.
no doubt this was what he experienced at a memorial he attended last night.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xz1eb63iry .
No idea who the guy is who made the video, but it wasn't a very bright thing to do.
All he did was reinforce all the crap that the Watchtower spews. If anything, he more firmly entrenched all those people into buying whatever the Watchtower says.
