i'm not proud of the fact that it took me over 50 years to realized what the organization really was and to finally leave it.
not proud at all, i feel pretty stupid.
however i didn't lose my children.
Time?
My children and I have been out for 17 years...
Even my grand children are dealing with the effects of how my children (their parents) have been raised.
The sad true is, it will take a couple of generations to get this nasty shit completely out of our lives.
i'm not proud of the fact that it took me over 50 years to realized what the organization really was and to finally leave it.
not proud at all, i feel pretty stupid.
however i didn't lose my children.
No after leaving Bethel, I decided I would never be in a position of oversight because I saw what power did to people. I probably hold the record for being MS for the longest period in the society's history... lol
i have been out a good 10+ years and until recently didnt pay much attention to what the jehovahs are up to.. why have they taken this turn with the bunker videos and making all the brainwashed people like my parents pack a go bag.
now let me just clarify.
im a military man i believe everyone should have an element of preparedness canned goods,bottled water and a bug out bag is a great addition ( ill stop waffling on about that now).. but what concerns me is the fact they are advising elderly people to bug out.
Go bags?
I guess Jehovah doesn't have the ability to save people where ever they happen to be. They must get a bag and move to a new location...and that is the spot Jehovah can save you at.
cool aid anyone?
i'm not proud of the fact that it took me over 50 years to realized what the organization really was and to finally leave it.
not proud at all, i feel pretty stupid.
however i didn't lose my children.
I'm not proud of the fact that it took me over 50 years to realized what the organization really was and to finally leave it. Not proud at all, I feel pretty stupid.
I started to realize that the organization was bull shit about four to five years before I actually made the brake.
I like so many others here, was hesitant and not ready to lose everything I had....to lose the only world I had ever known. My wife, friends and family and even my two children. In my heart I felt my children would make the brake too back then, but there was no guarantees for sure and it could have gone either way.
This is an old story that has been played out many times. Half the kids stay in the "Borg" while the other half leave and make their break to freedom.
When the brake came, when the spinning plates came crashing down I did lose all those things, a 27 marriage, all my "friends" and most my family. No regrets... It was the best move of my life.
However I didn't lose my children. They were adults at the time. Me leaving confirmed the doubts they too were having about the Watchtower Bible and Truck Society. So they too have left with no regrets. So happy ending right....not quite.
Last October my son confronted me. He was very angry about how his life had gone.
Like many here he wasn't angry about leaving the Jehovah's Witnesses. He was angry about having been one for 21 years. He was totally pissed off about all the things he had to give up being raised as a Jehovah's Witness, school sports, friends, dating, etc etc ...you know a normal life. I can't say I blame him, because I had lost the same things too.
However, I was surprised when he turned this rage towards me. Since he knew I hadn't agreed with their program many years before I left. Evidently by me not leaving years earlier I had screwed up his life.
I guess he is right. I should have stood up and called bull shit years before I did. I guess I caused just as much damage staying in as I did by leaving.
However if I had left years earlier he and his sister would have been in their earlier teens. Their JW mother would have got custody of them. In which case they still would have been raised as a JW anyway. I feel there would be a higher possiblity their staunch JW mother could have now fully brain wash them further.
Would they still would leave the organization years later....who knows.
Whats the point of all this... I don't know.
Maybe the point is that there is going to be damage anytime you are leaving an occult.
Pay the doctor now or pay the doctor later...but you will be paying the doctor!
There is no easy out.
New Boy
i've been meaning to join an online ex-jw community for quite some time, and finally have made the effort to do so.
i was raised in a small/mid size city in the northeast united states.
i am currently 27 years old, just about five years fully out of the organization (after about two years of "fading" away).
It sounds like you are a thoughtful and intelligent person. So of course after taking the "red pill" your choice was clear. It took me over 50 years to finally make it out. You have a long life ahead of you. Help who you can and leave the rest behind.
Namaste
New Boy
one of the things that i read way back in 1973 that change my thoughts about the question of whether we earn our way into the new system (as the society would like you believe) or is it a free give.
the answer the society gave was quit surprising.
when i was still a jw and went back to the world headquarters in 1996 it was the first thing i asked cerio allisino who is the writing department.
One of the things that I read way back in 1973 that change my thoughts about the question of whether we earn our way into the new system (as the society would like you believe) or is it a free give. The answer the society gave was quit surprising. When I was still a JW and went back to the world headquarters in 1996 it was the first thing I asked Cerio Allisino who is the writing department. He informed me the information was correct. The statement was in the "God's reign of a thousand years is now approaching" book. Page 129 paragraph 32. It said this. It was very surprising what the society had to say.
"Because of being born sinful and condemned to death mankind never had "a chance" It could never justify itself before the God of absolute perfection by doing perfect works of righteousness and ridding itself of sinfulness."
So get this.... it goes on to say.
"So Judgement Day does not offer mankind what is called "a second chance" Rather, it affords to mankind ts first opportunity to gain eternal life in human perfection and absolute innocence in an earthly Paradise!"
Of course to me back then this would make more sense. How could any man be judged with all that sin an imperfection? So how could any man.... Jehovah's Witness or not even a Jehovah's Witness, be judged? After all THEY said we "never had a first chance "
So what is all this "working hard" and "exerting vigorously" thing about? Which is it? Is it a free gift as they even claim it is....or are your working your way there, as the as they would have you believe from their many remarks from their pulpit?
How can you believe in any organization that can't even keep their own stories straight?
Also I guess this another reason you can't research any of their publications older than 1980 on their web site!
cool aid anyone?
since i woke up and left i've been contacted by others i knew from my youth who've also left the cult.
also people around the world on facebook adding me out of the blue because we have mutual friends and they occasionally ask me stuff or share their story.. what i've noticed in the vast majority of cases, is that people are waking up not because of the arc or doctrine but apathy.
active jws are becoming less and less interested, less and less bothered.
"That when Armageddon comes Jehovah will look at their hands and see blood on them?"
Yeah you stupid idiots! because you guys didn't get off your fat asses and knock on doors, I now have to kill all these people but their blood is on YOUR hands not mine.....thus saith the lord god Jehovah.
cool aid anyone?
for many years i hosted the ex-jehovah’s witness meet up group in portland oregon.
i heard a lot of sad stories about what people had lost trying to get away from the jehovah’s witnesses.
there were whole families that were wiped out.
I hope to have it out by Oct. 1 on my 69th birthday
for many years i hosted the ex-jehovah’s witness meet up group in portland oregon.
i heard a lot of sad stories about what people had lost trying to get away from the jehovah’s witnesses.
there were whole families that were wiped out.
Who knows maybe that is why he gave up the fight.
The book will be in soft cover and on Ebooks. The book will be on Amazon. It will be my whole strange story of my 50 year saga of being a JW
for many years i hosted the ex-jehovah’s witness meet up group in portland oregon.
i heard a lot of sad stories about what people had lost trying to get away from the jehovah’s witnesses.
there were whole families that were wiped out.
For many years I hosted the ex-Jehovah’s Witness meet up group in Portland Oregon. I heard a lot of sad stories about what people had lost trying to get away from the Jehovah’s Witnesses. There were whole families that were wiped out. Not usually by shot guns but by but by the devastation of shunning and the lack of real love.
One night, a gentleman showed up to one of the meetups I was hosting. He had a very interesting story to relate.
Bob had been happy married for many years. He and his wife and children had never had been Jehovah’s Witnesses. His wife ended up having an affair at work with a married Jehovah’s Witness elder.
She divorced Bob and started studying with the Jehovah’s Witnesses. The Elder divorced his wife and married Bob’s ex-wife. Because the adulterous elder was well like in his Kingdom Hall he was reinstated in just a few months. Bob’s ex-wife gets custody of their two children, who were twelve and fourteen years old at the time she left Bob. The children of course start studying with Jehovah’s Witnesses and get baptized. Now they are one big happy Jehovah’s Witness family.
Bob is now at the meetup group looking for advice. He tells all of us there, that now when his Jehovah’s Witness children visit him they tell him how he will soon be dead if he doesn’t join the Jehovah’s Witness organization. They tell him will that he will be killed by Jehovah god in the coming war of Armageddon.
So now Bob is asking all of us what he should say to his two daughters when they visit him with their message of doom.
Oh, by the way for some odd reason Bob doesn’t want to be a Jehovah’s Witness. I guess because in essence the Witnesses tore his family away from him. Go figure.
Because of hosting the meetup group I got another story of how Jehovah’s Witnesses have effected even non-members. I got a very sad and interesting phone call from a woman one afternoon.
Beth called me to ask if there was anything she could do to stop her husband from getting re-baptized this coming Saturday. It was just a few days away.
I said. “Probably not, why?”
She had told me how she had fell in love with a man who was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness. He had been out of the organization for many years. They had many happy years together and were now married and were expecting their first child. She did have a daughter from a previous marriage. She told me how everything was wonderful, until his parents started pressuring him to going back to all the meetings.
She also told me how his parents had hated her from the beginning of their marriage, because she was a “worldly” person. His parents even went so far to encourage him to leave her, even though she was pregnant, so he could eventually get with a good Jehovah’s Witness girl. Of course, there would be no repercussions to him, since he had already been dis-fellowshipped!
She was desperate and wanted to know what she could do to stop him from rejoining this group of nasty people and their religion.
I told her it was probably too late, since he was getting baptized in just a few days. I told her this was something that had to be in the making for many months if not years.
I felt I had to tell her what she could expect now he was going back in. It was not going to be easy for her, because she had no desire to become a Jehovah’s Witness.
I had mentioned to her of possible problems and difficulties she might have to endure, now that her husband was rejoining his old church. Little did I know at the time, that she would soon be going through something that would be ten times worse than anything I could have ever imagined.
Soon Beth and her husband would be in Jehovah’s Witness Hell.
If she ever had any desire to join this church it would soon be gone forever!
Beth called me a few months later and was crying, I could barely understand her. I really didn’t know what she needed or wanted. Maybe she needed a shoulder to cry on. I told her we could meet her for a cup of coffee. What she told me that day, I had no words for.
We met a few hours later at a busy restaurant. I wish you could have seen the look of bewilderment on this poor woman’s face.
As we set there she told me about what had transpired over the last few months since we talked earlier on the phone.
She had told me that her husband had got baptized as he promised. Being re-baptized he became a Zealot once again in his old faith. He didn’t seem to be as interested her now, that he had rejoined his old family and friends. He was now spending less and less time with her, his pregnant wife.
Finally the baby came. However there was a big problem and complications at birth. It would be life or death, for the child unless the baby got a blood transfusion. She was of course in favor of this life saving option. He was definitely opposed to it.
There was many heated arguments about this. The elders and his parents got involved. His family informed her husband that he could not waver. There was no way he could give in on this matter. It was more than just a matter of life and death it was a matter of faith and service to god.
Beth and her family fought her husband to the bitter end. She said he hated her and her stance against him and his faith. This drove the wedge between them even farther.
There was no time left and a decision had to be made. For whatever reason, he hung his head in shame and told the doctors to go ahead and give the child a blood transfusion.
The elders found out who gave the order for the blood transfusion and they were furious with him. They told him there would be grave repercussions from this decision.
Two days later the child died.
The elders actually told her husband they were not surprised about the child’s death. In a sense implying this was a punishment directly from god himself. This was because he had actually disobeyed god’s commandments on this issue.
He told the elders he was wrong and blamed his “worldly wife” for the pressure she had put one him. He begged the elders, for their forgiveness.
There was nothing I could say to comfort her after that story.
Are they still together? I would doubt it.
Both these stories and more will be in my book "New Boy"
