Growing up in NY our hall had an entire dream team of pushers. I can't tell you how many times I've seen someone keep trying to talk to a closing door, catching people in the yard and refusing to leave until they retreat inside, etc. For some reason Italian NY JW's seem to be the pushiest lol.
i_drank_the_wine
JoinedPosts by i_drank_the_wine
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Were YOU a Pushy JW?
by minimus ini hated jws that were pushy.
some tried to impose their "bible trained consciences" on everyone.
or the pushy ones would go from house to house and argue with the householder!
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Why Are So Many Witnesses So Weird?
by minimus ini believe that in every hall there are a number of weird jws.. we had some that were (and still are) 65 year old mama's boys.
they never got married, weren't gay, just weird.. we had old brother stevenson that used to yell at everyone if they didn't accept a book!.
we had our share of weird elders that were always looking into world events and saying this proves bible prophecy--when in fact, it had nothing to do with it!.
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i_drank_the_wine
I remember we had this one scraggly old sister that did too many drugs in the 70's and literally almost had a stubble mustache and goatee, give a comment stating how in paradise Jehovah is going to put the nitrogen back into the soil to make the earth perfect again.
Another guy that who was already weird got even weirder after being hit by a car walking to the kingdumb hall. He would do the microphones somehow, and frequently during the paragraph reading, not realizing he's holding the mic on his chest near his mouth, start mumbling his thoughts out loud to the congregation until the WT reader would stop reading and the conductor would have to call his first name out from the stage to get his attention.
Also had a kid at my cousin's hall who acted like a choir boy to everyone publicly, but would do pranks for his friends like accidentally clear his throat during a comment and try to say a curse word with his throat-clearing, sort of sneaking it in there, then continue his cherubic comment. He also used to brag about how he'd masturbated in the kingdom hall bathroom. Sadly I too considered doing the latter LOL.
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BORN-INS: If you could go back and Change this.
by hirotaka ina question primarily derected to born-ins....doesn't matter if you're still in or out.. if you could go back in time, let's say to the time you were a teenager, before being baptised.. do you regret not telling your jw parents that you just couldn't do the jw thing anymore and that you wanted out?
i think about this often that it may have worked out much better not to get baptized, married to a jw, and have to tow that line for decades, feaful to loose family and friends.. in the end that's what happened to me anyway, five years ago and now i have the life i should have had my whole life.. what are your thoughts and feelings on this?.
cheers.
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i_drank_the_wine
I was pressured to get baptized as a 13 year old by some uber-JW family members and by some of the other kids at the hall because I was like the oldest out of the kids that hadn't taken the plunge.
At 15 I was living with my newly reinstated mom at which point I told her that I didn't want to do meetings or service anymore. It became a bit of a warzone at times. Once she even woke up me on a Saturday and told me to get dressed, that an elder was coming to pick me up for service in 20 minutes. I basically did not have a choice. It was either live through hell routinely at home or comply.
There never seemed to be any other possible outcome.
I got into my fair share of trouble and racked up quite the list of reprovals before getting the boot, but I found that the kids who were getting into real world trouble at a younger age all left the JW's years sooner than me.
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Things that made you cringe at "the meetings"
by i_drank_the_wine ini always cringed so hard when a "brother" or "sister" would make some overly heartfelt comment about jehovah-something, usually related to a personal experience of theirs, and get all teared up and/or start crying.. once this fringe dude that's been df'd twice now was giving a talk and kept having these long awkward pauses where he looked like he was real stressed out, then he would start up again, stutter, slip up, and repeat the process until he looked down and went "i, i just can't do this" and walked off the stage and left the hall.. it also made my spchincter pucker when a young person would give some super devotional comment on how much they love big j and whatnot, which would make the congregation all smile in their hearts and wag their heads in approval..
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i_drank_the_wine
I always cringed so hard when a "brother" or "sister" would make some overly heartfelt comment about Jehovah-something, usually related to a personal experience of theirs, and get all teared up and/or start crying.
Once this fringe dude that's been DF'd twice now was giving a talk and kept having these long awkward pauses where he looked like he was real stressed out, then he would start up again, stutter, slip up, and repeat the process until he looked down and went "I, I just can't do this" and walked off the stage and left the hall.
It also made my spchincter pucker when a young person would give some super devotional comment on how much they love big J and whatnot, which would make the congregation all smile in their hearts and wag their heads in approval.
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Prediction: Expect a change in Study Edition distribution
by baltar447 inafter all the hoopla over the "mentally diseased" stuff, i'm making a prediction.
i expect that the borg will stop distributing the koolaid wt online, at least to where anyone can download it.
i expect that they will require the jws to create logins and passwords to access the study edition, somehow tying that that back to what congregataion you're in and maybe even an elder approving that you attend.
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i_drank_the_wine
leavintwt pretty much hit the nail on the head. I couldn't have come up with a better response if you'd paid me.
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If you were given $1M....
by mankkeli in...and the only stipulation for spending it was that you had to use it in some way against the wts, how would you use the money?
a tv campaign?
radio?
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i_drank_the_wine
What are the BoE letters? Clue me in homie.
I'd probably buy billboards on the property next to kingdom halls with simple messages "google 'Jehovah's Witness United Nations NGO'", "10 out of 10 historians agree 587 is the real 607", "strengthen your faith: read the entire Jehovah's Witness wikipedia section", etc.
Suing them won't do much. I recently found a NY newspaper source citing the WTBTS of NYC as earning $951,000,000 per anum. Combine that with all their holdings/savings/estates donated to them, billions in real estate, and the money they have going to their other dozen corporations and it seems like a drop in the bucket to get a few mill out of them.
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More apostate hating from the Watchtower
by Igot2bme ini ran across this post on fb-.
the november 15, 2011 study version of the watchtower, has this to say in an article praising jehu's actions against the family of ahab.
"the prophet elisha sent one of the sons of the prophets to anoint jehu as king and to instruct him to kill every male of the apostate house of ahab.2 ki.
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i_drank_the_wine
Basically they have their asses covered on this one. They don't directly incite any sort of violence to the JW's when you read the entire thing in context. The worst that this does is imply that apostates are worthy of death... but then again so is everyone in 3rd world countries that never had someone offer them a Washtowel and Asleep magazine and aren't worshipping jehover. Nothing to see here imo.
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GOD: An Imaginary friend?
by mankkeli inhave you ever had that you couldnt sleep at night and that your mind starts racing thoughts?
i had one of those nights and this is basically the fruit of it.. is god an imaginary friend?
when children feel very lonely or misunderstood it can happen that a psychological survival system kicks in: the imaginary friend.
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i_drank_the_wine
It's just that God's track record is so poor and confusing! Will the real Slim Shady please stand up! Zeus? Jehovah? Buddha? Alah? Shiva/Brahma/Vishnu? Molech? Ba'al of Peor? Satan? Waheguru? Natalie Portman's ass? Yawhweh? Jesus? Which one of you is god at the moment?
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Could the JW's survive another 1975?
by i_drank_the_wine inthe only years that i'm aware of in recent history that the jw's lost numbers was after the 1975 debacle.
someone posted on another thread about the damage control they're doing with the new "generation" nonsense with an assembly part where one person explains the "new light" to another that isn't too sure of it.. if they're having to do damage control like this over something relatively minor in comparison to 1975 (just some more "new light" as always), how do you think they would hold up under another 1975-level "oopsy"?
people seem to get less and less willing to be locked into religious systems that just don't conform with the modern world as it is.. if the internet was around, how many more people do you think would have google'd "jehovahs witnesses" at some point in 1976, perhaps while alone on the computer after the world didn't end?
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i_drank_the_wine
You guys make good points.
I just came accross this, which is another reason to believe they're not going anywhere:
http://www.watchtowernews.org/Top40NYCcorps.htm
3/4 of the way down the page the WTBTS is mentioned... raking in a cool $951,000,000 a year. I'm sure they have their other corporations making money as well, nevermind all their property and holdings. Billionaires don't usually go bankrupt so easily :-(
I guess it was just wishful thinking on my part.
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JW's? or GW's?
by i_drank_the_wine init seems quite obvious now that the governing body is really in the "god" position of the entire organization.
jw's claim to go only by the bible, however you cannot become a jw without using wt literature.
the governing body claims to be almighty g*d's sole mouthpiece (yet they deny being inspired like the prophets of the b*ble somehow).
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i_drank_the_wine
It seems quite obvious now that the Governing body is really in the "god" position of the entire organization. JW's claim to go only by the bible, however you cannot become a JW without using WT literature. The Governing body claims to be almighty G*d's sole mouthpiece (yet they deny being inspired like the prophets of the B*ble somehow). They tell the members what God is saying to do and think and everyone listens. No one makes any personal decisions on rules, standards, etc. There is no interaction between members and god or jesus, only the wall between, the self-dubbed "faithful and discrete slave". God magically implants thoughts and actions only into the minds of the governing body, and no one else - not even the rest of the anointed who also supposedly had god put something special in them. They are the closest thing to divine that a JW can meet or talk to.
Like many of us, I feel really silly in hindsight for not seeing lots of these things for what they were sooner. Really it seems more to me the Governing body's Witnesses than Jehovah's Witnesses, GW's not JW's, even though the former doesn't quite roll off the tongue like the latter.