i request the first ones to read this post, to save this post on your hard drive.
i understand this forum is not moderated, and have carefully worded this post with the utmost consideration for simon.
however, in case gremlins cause it to mysteriously vanish, you can share this post with others who might want to know a little about me.
Rick,
Give up on this crowd. You can't reform it.
I don't mean this as an insult, but your efforts here are not worth a dime. Get away from this board, and don't worry too much if H2O bites the dust. It's in the nature of things to live, grow and die. Don't take what is happening to H2O as a personal failure.
pc
obviously a lot of you are no longer jws, for whatever reason, but surely you can find something better to do with your time.
you seem to spend a lot of your spare time slating the society or picking holes in your former beliefs.. if you've left and think what jws believe is a load of rubbish, thtat fine, you cn do what you want, but why you have to go on about it?
if being a jw means so little to you, why not just leave it behind and get on with your life?
Most of the responses have been kind indeed. For a few others who chose sarcasm ("why are you here when your religion says not to be"), remember that most of those who later turned "apostate" passed through the same path of defying the WT and its rules. Every Witness who comes to this and similar sites will have that initial reaction of disbelief and rage. How could any people villify the "one and only true religon"? Why can't they all see that they're wrong and we're right? The "mother" analogy has been used every so often, but it is still valid with the JW mindset. The Organization - as it is called - it every Witness' mother, perceived to be kind, all-knowing, never in the wrong. People don't take kindly to abuses rained at their mother. However, at some point, they start to realize that Mama isn't perfect, that as IANAO once suggested to me, the world - therefore life - is not all black and white but technocolor, that religion and God and life isn't suspended to what Brooklyn teaches. That is why, instead of mocking, hurling words at the "errant" Witness who comes to jw.com, the attitude of most in welcoming "such one" is likely to bear more fruit. It is such a supreme act of defiance for a Witness to get on the Internet and do a search on witnesses. In some way it shows he/she is not satisfied with what the Society dishes out weekly. He/she is ready to break ranks.
It will not take our friend here to learn the truth. Even if he chooses to remain a witness for whatever reason, he'll not be the same ever again.
zee tcharming prenze
has anyone on this board ever experienced contact with demons?.
i have heard demons talked about for years, however i have never known anyone that has had any real experiences with them, i have only heard storys.. .
(some quotes).
Mommie Dark,
Those are first hand experiences I lived. In the rurals of Africa unlike where you may be writing from, being tested "medically" is usually out of the way. I have seen vintroliquists before and even if it is possible to be fooled, here was no such case. Those voices not only spoke to everyone's hearing, but forced her to act beyond her frail frame. There were cases where four men could not keep her on her back because she had to obey her "orders". It is all too simple wanting emperical proof for such phenomena. The proof I ever needed were my eyes and ears.
has anyone on this board ever experienced contact with demons?.
i have heard demons talked about for years, however i have never known anyone that has had any real experiences with them, i have only heard storys.. .
(some quotes).
Fascinating subject, this.
This is from my youthful days. A woman lived next door to my grandmother. Remember this is a rural setting in tropical Africa; the two houses are separated by a live hedge; you could peer through to see the woman sitting on the veranda, a few metres away. That woman had voices speaking to her that we could all hear, voices telling her things audibly, comprehensible things (like "XXXX[woman's name]get up"). If she didn't obey the voices, she'd be hurled up brutally. She was a frail woman, she was no vintroloquist, she was visibly tortured because the voices spoke day and night and hardly gave her a respite. This is no heresay. I witnessed this with my own eyes. Everyone in that village knew and heard those voices. It was no collective dementia, it was as real as you breathing now.
There are intelligent beings out there my friends, but our eyes simply cannot see them. It makes me laugh when some people insist on catching those beings on film: how can you photograph what you can't see? You can see the manifestation of the being, what "it" does, but you can't see the being because it is invisible. Folks, there are far too many things in the world that we cannot rationalize.
the charming prince
being bought up in this sick twisted orginization for many years i sypmathize for all of you who are brainwashed into believing it is the truth.its not!
its an organization full of scared helpless people,social outcasts,freaks,weirdos,power seeking old men,hypocrites and desperate charmless middle aged men attracted purely by the women.
i hear also a large number of peaodaphiles and now murderers?
Natred,
Lettin' off steam, aren't you? Could you in all honesty qualify any set of people that way? If you stopped being a JW, wouldn't it make some sense to respect those who opt to remain?
I am a Witness, for how long I don't know. But I pray not to spew as much hatred against anyone or any group of people as your post has clearly demonstrated.
Or maybe you're just trying to provoke discussion. Maybe.
pc
a reliable source (other than the national enquirer, that is) has reported that jw venus williams has been spotted in public passionately kissing an older male called "frankie" outside a mall near palm beach gardens, florida, and then getting into a car with him.
the couple met at the art institute of fort lauderdale.... is this chaste behavior as required by the watchtower?.
how long before the 20-year old gets the chop?.
Jez,
She's my great grandmother who begat my mother by marriage to a not so honourable man who left her on the midnight train and was never heard of again. And my mother, stranded at midnight wandered into a bar and - shame on me - was assaulted by fifty cowboys but lived to tell the tale, but she parted with a tennis raquet as gift for not going to the police. But Venus, my greatgrandmother, lived to be two hundred and won a great number of hearts going out with older men who thought she was Mother Theresa or something close. So maybe I'm a bastard of sorts, but Granny Venus Williams says not to mind the rumour mill ....
(entire article).
questions from readers.
in view of jehovahs willingness to forgive sins by the merit of the ransom sacrifice, why is it necessary for christians to confess to the older men in the congregation?.
Confession should be to God through Christ. The Bible makes that obvious enough. However, the WT insists on elders hearing confessions because it gives the elders a good blackmailing tool and undue authority over the flock. If congregation members confessed to God through Christ, what would all those judicial committees do? Those elders ready to get the "juicy details", where else would they have their ears tickled?
When I served (oh yeah, I actually did), a colleague elder was so fond of asking for those very details, especially in sexually-related matters. I was often struck by his voyeurist bend. Two years later, he was in turn disfellowshipped for messing around with his fiancee (who turned both of them in).
that got you to read this!
what country are you from?.
i find it encouraging to see where different posters are from in the world, especially for me, if you are from the uk or europe.
Cote d'Ivoire, West Africa.
And for everyone's information, the news over here is not always famine, death, diseases, women giving birth in trees, AIDS. There are real people in these parts, a lot of human warmth, beautiful beaches, great cuisine et j'en passe.
Not much of a poster; the first I did drew a lot of fire. But I definitely love the company of you brothers, sisters, "apostates" and good-standing folk. Love to all.
PC
imagine that you had never heard of the watchtower.
imagine that your life and that of your families had never been influenced by wt teachings.. i know for a fact that the wt's philosophy on further education contributed to my not achieving what i should have at school.
this is not to shirk the responsibility for my grades; ultimately they were my responsibility.
LDH, with such elegance I understand why you couldn't be anything but what you are. Your mouth-foaming response simply underscores the fact that you've remained stunted since you "left" to the point that you never actually left. Whether you choose to adorn you status with the ex- prefix does not change the hard and cold reality that you remain enslaved to your past. Your crude language will not change that.
You are not the only one to have gone out peddling the Watchtower and Awake, nor are you singular in deciding that your kid(s) will not suffer that fate. Worldwide, thousands of parent, even those still in "their truth" have chosen to give their offspring something better than they received. But to be so marooned by your experience, to found your responses to life on it, to descend to the abyss where you are judging by your reaction is most tragic.
imagine that you had never heard of the watchtower.
imagine that your life and that of your families had never been influenced by wt teachings.. i know for a fact that the wt's philosophy on further education contributed to my not achieving what i should have at school.
this is not to shirk the responsibility for my grades; ultimately they were my responsibility.
We're what we are because of what we've done and where we've been. I don't intend to hurt anyone, but how could you ever know? In this hotch-potch gathering, most of us would have blamed anything and anyone for being who we are today anyway. And since most of us agree here that being a Witness was the worst thing that ever happened to us, why don't we give get over it and stop whining?
Because finally, the more I read this board, the more I see that ALL OF YOU ARE STILL JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES AND AT THE RATE YOU'RE GOING, YOU WILL REMAIN WITNESSES UNTIL YOU DRAW YOUR LAST BREATHE. You're struggling to exorcise yourselves, but you have failed so horribly.
OK, it's my first post, but I've been here for a while. Don't tell me about the other boards (H20, the defunct Witnet which this board incarnates so negatively to the point that I see Obed's "ghost" around it, etc.).
If you failed to be what you should have been, blame yourself first and the WT after.
