i never really knew any until recently.
as a witness we all thought they were weird.
but the two faiths are a lot alike, except the mormons are really so much nicer than the jws!.
Hey guys, chill out. I'm not going to join! I just like the fact if you leave them, you are not cut off from your family.
Another way they beat the witnesses is they have always believed in higher education.
There are both stupid religions! JWs are just stupider!
i never really knew any until recently.
as a witness we all thought they were weird.
but the two faiths are a lot alike, except the mormons are really so much nicer than the jws!.
I never really knew any until recently. As a Witness we all thought they were weird. But the two faiths are a lot alike, except the Mormons are really so much nicer than the JWs!
My fiancée was raised Mormon. She stopped attending 20 years ago.
Here is why I think they are nicer then the Johos.
1. Mormons go door to door. So do the JWs. The difference is they only have to do it for two years. The witnesses their whole lives.
2. Mormons believe that god is coming back to rule in peace.The JWs believe god is coming to rule in peace too but he after he kills off 95% of the Earths population.
3. If you leave the Mormons (like my fiancée did many years ago) no big deal. They will still talk to you, still love you. She is very close with all her family. No Judgment! We moved her out of her house a year ago and they sent two brothers to help. They have given her tons of food for her and her three sons, over the years. She even knows nonmembers who have gotten food and support! Well, you know how the witnesses will treat you. Nothing even close!
4. Mormons love their families no matter what, with no judgment. JWs love their families as long as they are in good standing. Even then the will be judging you every minute!
So if the scriptures are true that "by their love you will recognize them" then who knows, the witnesses might be in for a big surprise one day.
NB
there are so many after after 52 years in the "borg".. my top two would have to be at my last hall tigard oregon.. one lady slept in her pickup truck with 30 parakeets, sometimes in the kh parking lot.
people tried to help her with accommodations but she like the truck.
she really dressed up for the meetings......feather boa's, big hats, looked like may west from the 30's.
a special message to her daughter, ann marie if you are watching this site.
your mother is eighty-eight now and her memory is going fast.
please call her, ann marie.
Since I haven't been here in years I wondered what happened to Grace, She is such wonderful person. Please pick up the phone Ann Marie!!!
Children that wont talk to their parents....
Parents that wont talk to their children....
What would Jesus do? I wonder.....
there are so many after after 52 years in the "borg".. my top two would have to be at my last hall tigard oregon.. one lady slept in her pickup truck with 30 parakeets, sometimes in the kh parking lot.
people tried to help her with accommodations but she like the truck.
she really dressed up for the meetings......feather boa's, big hats, looked like may west from the 30's.
i have had time to think about this........... i was an attendent for many years.......... and looking up and down the rows at every family that was seating there in the khs........... no one was happy!.
i think of my mother (who brought this religion into our house)......she was one of the most unhappy and miserable people you would ever meet!
she was a spiritual orphan with few friends and no real family to speak of.. she got the "good news" back in 1950, that "the world" was a bad place and god, would soon be killing most everyone......she was thrilled!...............
'with few friends and no real family to speak of.. ' and why might that be?
Her mother died trying to give herself an abortion with a coat hanger when she was only 8. My mother was then shipped to her grandfather's house were she was his servant/sex slave. She was just 17 when she moved to California during the war. She had only her sister out there. Of course she wasn't very trusting of people and thought the "world" was an evil place. A place that god should clean up.
i have had time to think about this........... i was an attendent for many years.......... and looking up and down the rows at every family that was seating there in the khs........... no one was happy!.
i think of my mother (who brought this religion into our house)......she was one of the most unhappy and miserable people you would ever meet!
she was a spiritual orphan with few friends and no real family to speak of.. she got the "good news" back in 1950, that "the world" was a bad place and god, would soon be killing most everyone......she was thrilled!...............
first off lets be clear i wouldn't call it "double life" but rather life here today.
that said i'll give a little experience for those younger ones that may be thinking they wish to leave the organization but are too young to do so as they are under age.. field service was quite the regular occurrence in my household.
we never missed.
Question how old are you? You sound like twenties or thirties. The reason I ask this question is.....are you going to keep this charade up for 30 to 40 years? It probably not going to happen. Sooner or later the wheels are going to fall off, no matter how clever you are.
Good luck!
most of us went back to bethel, thinking we wanted to make it our life long career, what better place to be right before 1975, when god was coming back to kick some ass?
that dream ended for the vast majority after just few months there, when they found out that something was very wrong.
otherwise why would anyone want to leave a spiritual paradise?
Most of us went back to Bethel, thinking we wanted to make it our life long career, what better place to be right before 1975, when god was coming back to kick some ass? That dream ended for the vast majority after just few months there, when they found out that something was very wrong. Otherwise why would anyone want to leave a spiritual paradise? With only 2-5% staying after their 4 year commitment, and a very big percentage leaving before their time was even up. The average stay there in 1974 was only about 5 months. It was not a happy place, they were leaving in droves.
Getting a girlfriend and having sex, was looking better all the time. Hey! The Governing Body were doing it, all the bethel, the "heavies" were doing it. ....we wanted it too. Just why do you think Knorr got married? Did he get married for companionship? NO! There are over 1,500 "brothers" back there he could have that with them. He could do things with them ,sit around and talk about the bible.......or go to a movie .......there were plenty of "brown noses" for that.............Did he get married to have children?.....NO!.........it is forbidden to have children at bethel .......................Did he get married to be with that one person forever? No! He was going to Heaven and she wasn't. So why did he get married? It sure looks like good old....... S.E.X.......to me. Hey, even Germans like sex too.
So he and his buddies were able to enjoy that privilege. I say privilege, because not everyone was permitted to have it. Knorr came up with the rule (After he got married) that if you want to get married and stay at Bethel, you needed a total of 14 YEARS of full time service. So you were forbidden to get married for any reason for 4 years period, NO matter what, add another 10 years if you wanted to stay..........I didn't say FORBIDDEN did I? Opppsss, I guess I did. But the BIBLE says that only those that have "fallen away from the faith, would be FORBIDDING others to marry!" 1 Timothy 4:1-3..............so that can't be right.......Oppppss...I forgot the old double standard rule kicks in again, at this time! Another bethel Catch 22
They would say....... well you signed an agreement! Yes you’re 19 years old and you should have known what you were signing, right? Some would say. Well, you could always leave before your time. Yes, if you didn't mind the reproach and the shame and the punishment. Punishment for getting married? YES, the punishment for leaving before your time was up was, you could not pioneer for 6 months. So if you couldn’t pioneer you would lose your 4-D classification. That’s means in 1970 you would go back to a 1-A classification! S0 if you got called up, (The draft) guess what? You were going to jail!
There was NO! “Thank you, brother for the two years you did spend here.” There was “Bend over and get your prison uniform ready.”
So just why am I so upset about all of this. For one reason it caused plenty of hardship and heart ache. Plus all the unhappy marriages and all the unnecessary trips some poor souls had to make to the hookers on 8th Ave............and even DEATH to some ...as I will tell you about in my last chapter..........Come on guys....... Wouldn't you think, a LOVING organization would have peoples best interest at heart?...................as in "OH......Brother we are sorry to hear you are having a hard time here at Bethel..........and so you would like to leave?......GO, my friend and be in peace and may God be with you, and thank you for the time, you did spend here with us and of course, you can pioneer if you like"
But that sounds like something Jesus would say.
Oppssss ...........Did I say loving organization............Let me think.........Yes! I think it says somewhere in the Bible......."By their LOVE you would be able to recognize them"......boy isn't that true? There was no real love there. It started at the very top and worked its way down to the local KHs.
All the double standards......unwritten laws.......and bull shit.....it was just too much for most of us. I say most of us because, there are some there that LOVE that kind of bull shit and fit right it In. Yossairan said it in Catch 22..."Let the Bastards thrive!”
So most of us, we just wanted to find a little love and leave after out "tour of duty" was up. As the "brother" said.........."Just keep your mouth shut and do your job".........then get the hell out!
So, back to girlfriends and Bethelites...............As I mention, there was only one guy I knew, who had a girlfriend before he went to Bethel and "made his time" there, that was Roy Baty. Part of the reason for that, was she was only 15 years old when he went there, in 1970............So she was waiting for him and he was waiting for her….to grow up.
That was tough for guys like Roy with girl friends back home, because........you only got 2 weeks’ vacation a year, (you got no vacation your first year)............so you got a total of 6 weeks in 4 years..........many guys like myself, only got 4 weeks in 4 years. The reason being, Instead of taking our last two weeks’ vacation, we would just shorten our 4 year stay by two weeks. So I came on March 21, 1970............now, I could leave on March 7, 1974........The thought being, that any day NOT at Bethel........... WAS a vacation!
So that leaves us with our next group...........Guys that got girlfriends while they were at bethel. There were so many Bethelites in the New York City area that by the time you got there, anything decent was already "snapped up" years ago. Since many of the halls 10-20 bethelites in them, the competition was tough! With 60-70% of the halls being Black and Latino.........and 80% of the bethelites were white, the saying was "The longer you’re there.... the whiter they look." So it was a 14 year old white girl, or a good looking black sister....If you had a car the selection got a little better with upstate New York, Jersey or even New England. But for the vast majority it was the women from good old N.Y.C.
We saw it all too, every possible combination...... The 19 year old white guy from Iowa, getting married to the 36 year old, 250 lb. black sister with 2 teenagers 13 & 16, his step daughter was just 3 years younger than him! There were guys who got "caught in closets" with bethel housekeepers........Which was unusual because most of the sisters that were called to bethel, were beat with an ugly stick.
We joked about it and said that Knorr, once a month, would get all the applications of sisters, who wanted to cum at bethel (sorry, I meant come to bethel) He would get all the bethelites in the upper dining room and have a slide show. He would show a slide of some good looking pioneer sister from California and ask? How many of you guys want this sister to come to Bethel? The place would go crazy with noise..........he would throw the application away..................Next slide up was of some "Dog" from Iowa.....how many want this sister? You could hear a pin drop ......He would say.....call her in now..............I tell you that man was a genius.....he knew, what we were all about. For him good looking sisters just meant more problems.
I’ll had many sisters (even special pioneers) come up to me and ask me why they haven’t been called to bethel. I’d tell them. “You’re too attractive.” They thought I was kidding….nope!
There was a guy in the service dept. who ran off with DO wife..........There were married sisters who left their husbands for some single young bethel boy. You know all the stuff you would see in any Kingdom Hall.
Bethel tours were nice..............But most of time they were very sad.........You would see these great looking sisters go through on tour...............They would give you "the eye"...........You would give them "the eye"..........Then they would get on the bus and leave............No way to meet them.......Sometimes you would see them later that day in the Bethel home, hanging around with some "Nerd" from their home town........They might have asking the nerd "Don't you know any other Bethelites?” Sure they did but they were geeks too.
Sometimes it worked out great. I saw the love of my life. The lady I would marry, standing in front of the "ink room" in the summer of 1972 on a bethel tour!
More about love and sex at the big house tomorrow.
they say love is what makes the world go around.
at bethel, we "new boys" had a saying.
"if god created anything better then sex, he kept it for himself!".
Sorry some of the tread got left out.
So ... that brings us to our Bethelities. Most of people that are called to Bethel, are single young men who are at their sexual peak. They signed a 4 year contract to stay at the house of god, no matter what. That means no sex, no matter what. So you can see we are going to have some very interesting things going on there.
Well were to start? We already talked about the gays and the NPGs.......plenty of those. The rest of the guys there, fall into different groups.
You had the guys who had girlfriends before they came. They asked the girls to wait for them. The odds of them making their time, were almost 0%. I knew of 1 guy that did that, in 4 years that way.
Guys that got girl friends in the New York area while they were there.
Guys that got together with a Bethel sister and married them.
Guys that got girl friends back home when they were on vacations.
Then of course there were some that just got a hooker on 8th Ave.
Guys that got no girlfriends but just masturbated a lot. Know it wasn’t legal.
We'll talk about them all on the next tread.
