Posts by Perry

19

Back again to say hi! Life update after walking away from the cult.

by Darkknight757 in

i hope all is well.

my last post over a month ago was going to be the last considering i wanted to get away from all things jw but this place is much harder to ignore than previously thought.

life has taken some very interesting turns since late last year.

In Your Opinion Do Today's Elders Recognize That The Religion Is BS?

by minimus in

jw
friends

i always wondered that while i was in especially when i was an elder.

i recognize that some people,elders included are brain-dead.

but do you think that the average older today knows it's all nonsense?

I once shared some information with an elder and his wife (both who happened to work for me) of a pretty benign nature illustrating how the WT counseling methods might not be the best. I presented some Awake articles and quotes to illustrate my points. The response?

I was told to be careful, because they once knew of a person who started questioning small things and now they are out of the "truth". They even agreed with my assessment, but that was irrelevant !

For life-long elders, "the club" is all that matters. The club is their idol, their object of worship, and they are its priests.

Knowing TTATT isn't nearly as important as protecting their idol. They don't want to to see their idol fall. So, most will go along with just about anything.

That is what I saw. They are having their reward in full. Judgement is coming. They need a Savior like everyone else.

26

Does Paul preach a fundamentally different religion than Jesus?

by Yesu Kristo Bwana Wangu in

controversy has arisen regarding jesus versus paul as scholars debate the different emphases and messages of jesus and paul.1 jesus preached the kingdom of heaven.

paul did not.

paul preached justification by faith alone.

Perry

Jesus also warns His disciples, “Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves”

In Luke 6: 37; Jesus obviously wasn't stating that we throw out discernment along with hyper-judgementalism.

12

I was manning a cart

by closed in

i was manning a cart not long ago.

o, aye:) .

a man, who i suspect is familiar with this site comes to me.

Perry

Yes, the pattern is overlapping circularity, but it is still bovine excrement, a whole heap of it.

It stinks the same no matter how you arrange it.

26

I feel like I'm losing my religion/faith

by christina1111 in

i'm a baptized jw...been baptized for 8 years...and throughout the years i've been baptized i see "hypocrisy" so to speak in the religion...when you're new and not baptized that's when the jws want to invite you to every gathering they have, they want to appear like they're your best friend...they want to help you out when needed and so forth...however, once you're baptized you go to the elders for help they don't help you....all they do is gather you around the office...have bibles in hand and so forth...they give you articles as well, instead of physically helping you out....but yet when you weren't baptized they would physically help you out and not throw scriptures and articles in your face.

also when you ask for help and so forth with the bros/sisters they want to throw the "each one must carry his/her own load" scripture at you.....but yet what happened to the scripture of taking care of widows and people who are orphans?.

it's not just one congregation...throughout the 8 years i've been baptized i've been through many kingdom halls...many towns...many states...when i was inactive for awhile i even pretended to not be baptized and just play dumb when the witnesses came to my door...they're much nicer to you when you're not baptized then when you are baptized...why is that?.

Perry

He said "If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters--yes, even their own life--such a person cannot be my disciple".

Jesus also demonstrated things like, that there were in reality only two laws: Love God and Love your Neighbor as Yourself. He also said his yoke was easy and his load was light - unlike other pursuits.

Man-Centered religion & ideologies on the other hand, (including and maybe especially bible cults) are deeply works based. They bind up heavy loads on adherents that they themselves are unwilling to bear.

The scripture you cited has special meaning for me. I left the Watchtower willingly, but I was unwilling for years to stand up to my family and state to them my desire to be a Christian apart from the Watchtower.

Until I did that, they just viewed me as "weak". The funny thing is, they were right. Jesus words, are incredibly liberating.

26

I feel like I'm losing my religion/faith

by christina1111 in

i'm a baptized jw...been baptized for 8 years...and throughout the years i've been baptized i see "hypocrisy" so to speak in the religion...when you're new and not baptized that's when the jws want to invite you to every gathering they have, they want to appear like they're your best friend...they want to help you out when needed and so forth...however, once you're baptized you go to the elders for help they don't help you....all they do is gather you around the office...have bibles in hand and so forth...they give you articles as well, instead of physically helping you out....but yet when you weren't baptized they would physically help you out and not throw scriptures and articles in your face.

also when you ask for help and so forth with the bros/sisters they want to throw the "each one must carry his/her own load" scripture at you.....but yet what happened to the scripture of taking care of widows and people who are orphans?.

it's not just one congregation...throughout the 8 years i've been baptized i've been through many kingdom halls...many towns...many states...when i was inactive for awhile i even pretended to not be baptized and just play dumb when the witnesses came to my door...they're much nicer to you when you're not baptized then when you are baptized...why is that?.

Perry

Now I see why people say they don't want to be a part of an organized religion.

I think vast numbers of Christians today get this.

Jesus had little good to say about most of religious people he met. He emphasized relationship over religion.

26

Does Paul preach a fundamentally different religion than Jesus?

by Yesu Kristo Bwana Wangu in

controversy has arisen regarding jesus versus paul as scholars debate the different emphases and messages of jesus and paul.1 jesus preached the kingdom of heaven.

paul did not.

paul preached justification by faith alone.

Perry

Understanding Dispensations (God's progressive modes of relating to man) clears up any seeming difference between Jesus & Paul. Jesus was sent to the lost sheep of Israel, but Paul was an Apostle to the gentiles.

Israel got to keep their beloved LAW (as they wished), and believing Gentiles were grafted into the family of God and inherited the gift of GRACE.

The appearance of Jesus, the long promised Messiah represented a major transitional event from one dispensation to another. Each dispensation (mode in which God deals with man), always ends with 1. The Failure of Man 2. Judgement & 3. A New Beginning.

Using a dispensational template, to "rightly divide the word of God", it becomes apparent that many of Jesus words were spoken to the Jews that were living then (before the age of Grace) AND to the Jews that will be alive during the Great Tribulation (after the age of Grace but before the Millennium). Whereas Paul's message was mainly directed to those living during the age of Grace.

12

I was manning a cart

by closed in

i was manning a cart not long ago.

o, aye:) .

a man, who i suspect is familiar with this site comes to me.

Perry

I believe that if a person studies this image closely enough, they will be able to come to a true understanding of the overlapping generation doctrine:

10

Finding Peace in Older Age

by compound complex in

jw
friends

a cool sense of tranquility overtakes my troubled spirit.. i emerge slowly from a deeply entrenched, lifelong nightmare and proceed into gentle reverie, into quiet wakefulness.

youthful ideals, embodied in vaporous form before me, are a black reminiscence, threatening to return as an untold want having neither name nor substance, only a niggling dig that skewers my soul.. i shut it out, shut out all the noise in the head: irrational thought, excessive thinking that leads to depression, to insanity.

yet, i am hopeful that devils of the past are blocked approach to me by a portcullis that guards both heart and mind.. i see but darkly my amorphous reflection and sense it is a phantom, not the real me.

Perry

I suffered a turbulent youth and truly do welcome the slow and spiraling descent into older age; I am not afraid . .

Ditto that

80

The Fundamental difference between Islam and Christianity

by ILoveTTATT2 in

jw
friends

ever since i came out of the witnesses, i've become very political.. i've heard lots of arguments back and forth for many things.. in the u.s. there is the argument that it is "racist" to want to deny entry to muslims.

while there is freedom of religion, there is also the very valid concern of maintaining democracy and a justice system that is based on modern values.we as exjw's constantly quote the pew center for statistics on jw's such as: they are last place in the us for members of a religion that go to university, and second-last for poverty levels of members of a religion.

we accept those statistics and mention them as proof of how damaging the jw's are.now, let's use the same center for some very scary statistics on islam:http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/22/muslims-and-islam-key-findings-in-the-u-s-and-around-the-world/.

Perry

Christianity has moved on from being horrible, as in the Middle Ages.

Yes, of course... I get your point.

Jesus readjusted people's thinking regarding Law. The problem was on the inside according to Jesus, not on the outside.... a sin nature that operates alongside of our own will, and many times foreign and antagonistic to it.

The apostate Catholic Church jettisoned the idea of being born again (which is the Christian solution to the problem) once Rome's City Overseer filled the power vacuum when the Capitol was moved away from Rome to Constantinople.

This consolidated power, both religious and secular into one super state. It produced a thousand years of unbelievable persecution against bible believers. (Biblical Christians as opposed to cultural Christians)

The founders of the USA, fresh out of a thousand years of persecution from religious super-states, wanted nothing more than to create a safe place to live according to Christian ideas, free from the heavy hands of consolidated religious and secular authority.

The idea that the government would now allow millions of people to quickly migrate here who aren't even cultural Christians, and would probably like nothing more than to create another religious super state to enslave its opponents, is antithetical to every single founding father of this nation I'm sure.