Reunited With My Brother

by pale.emperor in

my little brother on the left exited the cult after 29 years.. me in the middle.. my older brother on the right stopped his bible study after discovering ttatton youtube videos.. never lose hope guys!.

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mentalclarity

Nice pic! Thanks for posting

11

Ever heard of a brother being DFD and just walking away from family support?

by Crazyguy in

just wondering if there ever been a brother that got dfd and then was shunned by his wife and his at home kids and he's just said , if your going to treat me like this screw it and walked away from all his responsibilities as a provider etc?

it must be hard for those that are dfd to continue to support those that shun him?

again anyone hear of such a case?.

mentalclarity

thanks for posting the info @jp1692 - I think I've read something on this forum about adding something to the divorce agreement that restricts attendance to all meetings or conventions and going door to door. I would definitely be looking into some sort of legal means of limiting the indoctrination. There must be such a sense of powerlessness for df'd parents who have to share custody.

11

Ever heard of a brother being DFD and just walking away from family support?

by Crazyguy in

just wondering if there ever been a brother that got dfd and then was shunned by his wife and his at home kids and he's just said , if your going to treat me like this screw it and walked away from all his responsibilities as a provider etc?

it must be hard for those that are dfd to continue to support those that shun him?

again anyone hear of such a case?.

mentalclarity

This sounds like a terrible idea- depending on the age of the children the parent would be legally responsible and could even face jail time if they don't comply with child support,etc.

I was actually wondering if anyone has heard of a df'd parent bringing accusations of "parent alienation" against their JW ex spouse because it sounds to me if you are telling your kid their dad is going to die in armageddon and to shun him you might have a strong case.

65

My Younger Brother Has Left The Witnesses!! :-D

by pale.emperor in

absolutely thrilled to give you the news that my younger brother, a zealous full-time pioneer has left the witnesses!!.

i haven't seen or spoke to him in a year.

i'd lost all contact with him, no facebook, no mobile number, i didn't even know his address because he'd moved house.

mentalclarity

This is such great news! Thanks for posting. Keeps me hopeful that some of my family will leave some day.

Interesting about the depression- I noticed this before I left. All JWs always say how everyone is so happy inside the org but the more I looked around my congregation...seemed like everyone was on antidepressants or something.

So happy you got your brother back!

21

Going "Hollywood" not helping!

by eyeuse2badub in

going “hollywood” hasn’t seemed to help build any enthusiasm for the wtbts.

think about it, jw’s now have their own studio to make videos and cartoons.

the ‘kingdom’ dirges (songs) have received a makeover to a bit more modern tunes.

mentalclarity

Those videos will be their downfall- that bunker video was just nuts! I mean it seriously looked like the beginning of an SNL skit. Reminded me of those modern day dramas in the 80's. They were so "out there".

I say keep 'em coming and people will start waking up real fast.

14

A request to our members living in the USA - Time Magazine

by pale.emperor in

i have a request to our friends living in the usa.

im trying to track down an article printed by time magazine in which they interviewed fred franz.

in my local library here in liverpool they have a massive bound volume collection of time going back to the 1930s.

mentalclarity

Thanks! @ScenicViewer

14

A request to our members living in the USA - Time Magazine

by pale.emperor in

i have a request to our friends living in the usa.

im trying to track down an article printed by time magazine in which they interviewed fred franz.

in my local library here in liverpool they have a massive bound volume collection of time going back to the 1930s.

mentalclarity

The perks of higher education - you have access to online library/digital journal database

14

A request to our members living in the USA - Time Magazine

by pale.emperor in

i have a request to our friends living in the usa.

im trying to track down an article printed by time magazine in which they interviewed fred franz.

in my local library here in liverpool they have a massive bound volume collection of time going back to the 1930s.

mentalclarity

Was that what you were looking for @pale.emperor?

14

A request to our members living in the USA - Time Magazine

by pale.emperor in

i have a request to our friends living in the usa.

im trying to track down an article printed by time magazine in which they interviewed fred franz.

in my local library here in liverpool they have a massive bound volume collection of time going back to the 1930s.

mentalclarity

The End Is Near (Contd.)

His plain, ninth-floor Brooklyn office is painted in institutional green and has no air conditioning to reduce the summer heat. He gets a free one-room apartment and meals in the huge dining hall downstairs, plus the same $20 monthly stipend that the janitors get. He has been his religion's most important theologian for decades, but no one is allowed to know just which books or articles he has worked on. Though few people know his name, he has acquired more-than-papal power over 2.2 million souls around the world.

He is Frederick Franz, a short and spry 83, who on June 22 quietly succeeded the late Nathan Knorr to become the fourth leader of the Jehovah's Witnesses. For a century now, this most contentious of faiths has pressed upon an unwilling audience the message that mankind is nearing the End. Franz, a bachelor who has labored in the sect's headquarters since 1920, will not be surprised if he lives to see the destruction of the world's political order in the Battle of Armageddon, which will usher in Christ's 1,000-year reign.

Franz was planning on a career as a Presbyterian minister in 1913 when his brother sent him some tracts from the Watch Tower Society. He soon decided that the Watch Tower offered the one true interpretation of the Bible. The next year he dropped out of the University of Cincinnati without completing his junior year; he saw no sense in remaining because the movement's founder, Charles Taze Russell, had announced Oct. 1, 1914, as the date for Christ's Second Coming. Franz recalls with a wisp of a smile: "We expected the end of this system of things, that God's kingdom would take over the earth and that we would be glorified in heaven."

Russell's successor, Lawyer Joseph Rutherford, later explained that the "last days" had indeed begun in 1914, but that Christ's rule had been established only in heaven, and that his Second Coming had occurred, but as a spiritual event. Because Satan still runs the earth, the Witnesses persistently refuse to serve in any army or to salute any flag —even if they must go to jail.

Rutherford's rallying cry became "Millions now living will never die!" By 1968, the sect's magazine, Awake!, was proclaiming a new date for Armageddon: "Today we have the evidence required, all of it. And it is overwhelming! All the many, many parts of the great sign of the 'last days' are here, together with verifying Bible chronology." That complex chronology ran like this: Adam was created in the autumn of 4026 B.C., which meant that 6,000 years of human existence would end in late 1975. The 6,000 years would be followed by the Millennium, 1,000 years of "Sabbathlike rest," just as God rested after six days of Creation and established the Sabbath.

Asked about 1975, Franz now says that the 6,000-year chronology is correct, but the seventh day of Creation did not begin until Eve was created. Thus the date for the End has to be extended by the amount of time between the advent of Adam and of Eve—an interval not yet revealed (previous Witness publications had stated that Adam and Eve were created in the same year).

Publicity about the Witnesses usually emphasizes their phenomenal success at recruiting. Most of the movement's energies are poured into proselytizing. For each of the 196,656 people baptized last year, the Witnesses conducted 740 visits to people's homes and distributed 1,650 copies of their various books and magazines. The other side of the story is that the Witnesses suffer more back-door losses than other groups. Analysis of the sect's own reports indicates that 335,000 people have left the Witnesses since 1972. And since the End mysteriously failed to materialize in 1975, the number of new Witnesses being baptized has suddenly dropped by a third.

70

What made you stay "in" even when you knew it wasn't the "truth"?

by mentalclarity in

so i've been thinking a lot about why i stayed a jw for so long even though i had always had doubts about the doctrines.

i was born into the religion, left and came back as an adult for another decade.

some of the things that come to mind (besides the threat of shunning-and this isn't to minimize that very real threat) was:.

mentalclarity

@Rainbow_Troll that's terrible...my elder brother would love for me to study relentlessly until I "get it" but since I won't he has minimum contact with me.

mentalclarity

Posts by mentalclarity

The End Is Near (Contd.)