@StarTrekAngel Wowww. What do you predict will happen if you call her bluff?
Wake Me Up Before You Jo-Ho
JoinedPosts by Wake Me Up Before You Jo-Ho
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23
The emotionally manipulative techniques JW families use.
by stuckinarut2 ini am really disturbed by some methods that jw family members try and use to emotionally manipulate us back into the organization.. one of our fellow posters here has had a family member send several photos of them as a child either out witnessing, and at an assembly.. no words - just those pictures.. it seems such an infantile and manipulative technique to employ?!.
do they think that we will all simply ignore the logical and factual reasons we no longer attend, just because we see some sentimental picture?
do they not see that this actually may reinforce our understanding that we were raised as children in a high-control religious group where we had to please our parents.
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52
144000 The numbers don't add up
by LevelThePlayingField inin 1935 there were 63,146 who attended the memorial and 52,465 partook.
(proclaimers book page 717).
according to the bible teach book on page 78, it says, “since the days of the apostles, god has been selecting faithful christians in order to complete the number 144,000”.
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Wake Me Up Before You Jo-Ho
When that desperate day finally does arrive and the cult is taking its last few breaths, and all the scams, cons, lies and deceit are inescapable for the few remaining JWs, I can imagine the future reigning Governing Body introducing New Light at the last convention.
"Just as Jesus took two fish and five loaves of bread and miraculously produced thousands... so he has done with the reserved seating arrangement in heaven."
Governing Body be like:
Boom. Mic drop. Governing Body tears off out of the stadium and flies their King Lear Jet into the sunset with brand new passports.
Meanwhile the last few dozen of JWs look around listlessly before finally asking one another if there's a Burger King still open.
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23
Banned words in the organization
by Addison0998 ini was talking to my sister in law the other day about death, and i mentioned something about the afterlife, i don’t remember what i said but it was nothing shocking .
but she squealed, “we don’t believe in the afterlife!
!” and i reasoned, well we kinda do...life after death is the after life..and she just insisted no no it’s not the same thing.
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Wake Me Up Before You Jo-Ho
@LoveUniHateExams Gosh - that is so true! They expect all these other folks from various other denominations to study Witness literature and have their own research groups outside of their regular religious protocol... but Witnesses are banned from doing the same.
An idea just occurred to me. The next time I see Witnesses at a cart or they call at my home, I'm going to get all paranoid and hush-hush. I'll tell them my church would punish me if they found me reading outside literature. And that I can't look at JW.org because it gives me total anxiety. "My pastor said that all outside research and books and Websites are written by people trying to lie about my church. I really want to investigate further... I just don't know why they'd be so against looking outside my church's approved literature?"
Hopefully, the Witnesses will talk about how maybe the pastor has something to hide... that maybe the church is doing bad things and the congregants are being held in darkness... that all things "come to light" before Jehovah and that we owe it to ourselves to prove that what we're being taught is accurate.
Once they comment on how deceitful this method of information control is, I'll just slowly parrot it back (but using Watchtower terms). "Sooo... if the men taking the lead in my religion are actively directing me away from any outside information that might be critical of my beliefs or denomination... you're saying that they're most likely being deceptive? That all of us congregants are having the wool pulled over our eyes? That this method of concealing information is an impingement on our thinking and decision-making abilities? That... that this whole thing my family and I have been raised with is not really... the truth?"
I don't know if the JW will wisen up at that point or not. If they do and I can see them ready to blow the apostate whistle, I'll just cheerily say, "Just messing. My pastor lets me examine and read all other literature outside of the church. But that would seriously raise some red flags if an organization really did that to its members. Hey, check out JWfacts.com. Have a great day."
Hmmm... Just thinking out loud here.
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The emotionally manipulative techniques JW families use.
by stuckinarut2 ini am really disturbed by some methods that jw family members try and use to emotionally manipulate us back into the organization.. one of our fellow posters here has had a family member send several photos of them as a child either out witnessing, and at an assembly.. no words - just those pictures.. it seems such an infantile and manipulative technique to employ?!.
do they think that we will all simply ignore the logical and factual reasons we no longer attend, just because we see some sentimental picture?
do they not see that this actually may reinforce our understanding that we were raised as children in a high-control religious group where we had to please our parents.
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Wake Me Up Before You Jo-Ho
@OneEyedJoe What you just wrote... please believe me when I say that this might be the single most important and helpful (and well articulated) things I've ever read on this forum - or in any book. I actually had to go into full screen mode to I got snapshot your comment to save forever. Thank you for taking the time out to share this fantastically well thought out, mind-expanding comment. I feel like a new person just taking in that information.
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The emotionally manipulative techniques JW families use.
by stuckinarut2 ini am really disturbed by some methods that jw family members try and use to emotionally manipulate us back into the organization.. one of our fellow posters here has had a family member send several photos of them as a child either out witnessing, and at an assembly.. no words - just those pictures.. it seems such an infantile and manipulative technique to employ?!.
do they think that we will all simply ignore the logical and factual reasons we no longer attend, just because we see some sentimental picture?
do they not see that this actually may reinforce our understanding that we were raised as children in a high-control religious group where we had to please our parents.
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Wake Me Up Before You Jo-Ho
It's no different to the emotionally deranged phone call @silentbuddha got from his mother, accusing him of breaking his promise to "one of Christ's brother's" back when he was a nervous teenager by Freddy Franz's deathbed.
"Do they not see that this actually may reinforce our understanding that we were raised as children in a high-control religious group where we had to please our parents"?
My parents successfully conquered my child brain. Bravo. That's all my mother has to be proud of. Consider the images below. The degree of pride one would feel for the youths depicted is purely based on what side of the propagandistic organization/regime we are on. There's nothing universally heart-warming or beneficial about what these youths have been honed into.
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Dawkins on Jehovah's Witnesses' "Creation" book
by slimboyfat inhas anyone read dawkins new book the god delusion yet?
he discusses the creation book on pages 119-121. he says that he discusses this particular tract only because it has had such a wide circulation - no fewer than 6 of which have been sent to him personally.
well i think he has at least 7 copies by now because i personally know one witness who sent him one following his recent the roof of all evil?
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Wake Me Up Before You Jo-Ho
@stuckinarut2: "I was struck with just how stupid the average JW would have come across in such a crowd."
Exhibit A:
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Another flip flop
by blownaway inhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8hzakyfazc this is a talk this year about how to stay loyal to the cult.
it talks about not blaming yourself when your child is dfed.
but wait, when i was in the cult the elders told the parents of dfed children that it was their fault.
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Wake Me Up Before You Jo-Ho
@smiddy3: "These ones that come back are not stupid they know they have been manipulated and they will never be loyal to the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses."
There are some victims of shunning who have learned to deal with their trauma of familial betrayal in precisely the opposite way. I know personally of a few who have returned to the Organization with a newfound sense of Stockholm Syndrome. These hostages have coped by idolizing the cold hand that beat them and severed them from the love of their family. The reality that their families may not sincerely love them in the truest sense of the word perhaps became too unbearable to confront. So, the victim sought refuge in the fantasy of those who wronged them being the most loving, caring, benevolent, life-saving connections they could ever have.
Alternatively, as you brought out, a similar opinion to yours is held by Harvard Professor of Psychology, Steven Pinker. He writes:
"If dissenters are punished, and can anticipate they're going to be punished, then you may have a situation where no one actually believes something, but everyone believes that everyone else believes it. Therefore, no one is willing to be the little boy that says the emperor is naked."
This explains the lagging financial support and lack of comradeship in the Organization. The amount of PIMO members silenced by the threat of shunning may be a number we'll never know.
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Bible Teach Book points the finger at JW's themselves!
by The Fall Guy inone of my all-time favourite illustrations:.
bible teach, chap.
16 p. 154 pars.
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Wake Me Up Before You Jo-Ho
@stuckinarut2: "...just 1% of deadly poison in a glass of water makes it dangerous".
The problem with Jehovah's Witnesses is, they never started off in a clear glass of water. They've been swimming around in the murky fluids of a cesspool since 1884. Henceforth, any proceeding drops of poison go by completely unnoticed. Vision clouded, members blindly drift along in that deleterious solvent known as the Watchtower.
@pale.emperor Exactly right. By their own illustration, Jehovah's Witnesses should eagerly hand the chalk over to us rebels, allowing us to prove what bumbling errors we've been exalting. The double standard of silencing apostates is firmly in place for one reason only:
"If it can be destroyed by the truth, it DESERVES to be destroyed by the truth." - Carl Sagan
The Watchtower leadership knows full well that the truthful information we possess is ultimately what can destroy such a poorly constructed religious ideology.
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Sometimes it's the little things....
by dubstepped ini'm listening to a podcast where a former elder describes how another elder conducted the watchtower study about hyperbole.
the elder called it hyper-bowl.
soon the whole congregation called it hyper-bowl.
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Wake Me Up Before You Jo-Ho
Haha, you just brought up a funny memory of mismatched music and lyrics, @dubstepped.
I distinctly remember a couple of years ago when the song we were to sing was Jehovah is our Refuge. The music was all wrong, but the enthusiastic brother a few rows ahead of me belted out (in perfect time with the beat):
"JE-HO-VAH... is our REF-U-GEE!"
Hey, a little ad-lib never hurt anyone.
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Material such as the film at the end of this years convention confirms that I was right to take my kids out the religion
by jambon1 init’s quite affirming to see the horrific material that they’re serving up at the convention this year.
aside from blatant homophobia, the scenes at the end of the convention that are discussed on another thread stoop to new levels of fear mongering.
it seems to occur to nobody inside the organisation that this kind of material could trigger fear, deprsssion, anxiety, stress.
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Wake Me Up Before You Jo-Ho
Not quite twenty years ago, there was a big stir when my father welded two pieces of steel together to make a pendant in the shape of a cross for a part he played in the meeting, acting like a priest. Everyone was so offended because he had the nerve to make an idol, even for illustration purposes. Now with these Touchstone Pictures-esque productions, there are machine guns being toted by the actor brothers as casually as briefcases on a Saturday morning. Clearly, my old man was way ahead of Jehovah's digital chariot.
As I once asked him last year: "Dad... be honest. Is this the same religion you remember from years ago?"
He paused while looking straight ahead. Finally, he said it. "No."
@stcukinarut2 Described the situation best by saying my father had been cooked like the frog in a pot of water. Slowly and slowly, the temperature got turned up. And now, it's too late to leap out of this cult which is so clearly bubbling over with scalding nonsense.