i dislike long topics......so here it is.. i suffered for my religion, now it's your turn.. when i first left the corporation my life exploded into a suicidal chaos.. my family broke up.
i lost my so called friends.. luckily, i had worldly friends from all walks of life that supported me, even though they had no idea why i was so suicidal.
in as much as they hadn't left cults.. i went from the corporation to a baptist church.
I agree with GreatTeacher it's liberating realising life is meaningless, I can make my own meaning, even if it's just having fun. I'm absolutely fine with that.
I do believe in altruism Punky, people who give to starving kids or victims in war zones do it anonymously because they care. I know people go on about middle-class guilt but I don't buy that. A lot of good people in the world.
I like the fact I don't have many Xmas presents to buy either Punky, silver linings eh?
if someone believes they're being plagued with demons or they have problems with hauntings, things moving by themselves or hearing voices or footsteps, who they gonna call?
i know they take demons very seriously, so who in the congregation do they go to when they need to bring out the big guns?
do they try to handle it themselves or is this a job for the elders?
Why not come across as non-threatening?
As Stephen Hawking keeps pointing out, why assume all alien life is friendly?
if someone believes they're being plagued with demons or they have problems with hauntings, things moving by themselves or hearing voices or footsteps, who they gonna call?
i know they take demons very seriously, so who in the congregation do they go to when they need to bring out the big guns?
do they try to handle it themselves or is this a job for the elders?
Belief in demons and angels cast out by God is just superstition but why is it impossible that there are life forms in the universe that are invisible to the human eye and made of substances not yet fully understood by the laws of physics. This may explain a lot of the spirit, ghost, demon stories. Not all particles or forms of electromagnetic energy are visible to the naked eye.
we supposedly had more than a few “demonized” people in our congregation.
they would hear voices or feel internal punishment within their souls.
the answer was always—-these people were affected by the demons and they needed counseling!.
My Mum threw so much stuff out because of 'demons'. Some lovely blue and white china I remember which might have been Spode, handed down from her family. Clothes people gave us, which we really needed! All thrown out when she got the idea they were demonised. She could have sold that china and bought badly needed food for goodness sake, but no you can't hand the demons on to someone else, that's not Christian. Sigh!
latest perspective of the san diego reader on wts loosing its $4000 per day sanction appeal.... https://m.sandiegoreader.com/news/2017/nov/10/ticker-jehovahs-witnesses-withheld-info-4000-day/?templates=mobile.
So have they been paying $4,000 per day for two years?
i'm tyoing this up on my phone, so forgive me if i don't give all i do or spell anything correctly.
today i saw in the local newspaper in skagit valley washington a local man was sentenced to prison for child pornography.
at firat i wasn't i terested in the article until i saw the defendants name.
Is it repressive rules that trigger abberent behaviour?
Diogenesister, the psychologist my husband and I went to see after we left the JWs listened to our description of the rules of this religion and said that kind of sexual repression often breeds child sexual abuse. We said not as far as we knew because in 1989 we didn't know what we know now!
it's bitter sweet to find a site like this..i was born in the truth.
when i was 16 i given the option to stop going.
father and mothers family are both witnesses.
Hi Jayk, welcome to the forum. Social anxiety is common after leaving that cult because we weren't allowed to talk about anything much except da troof. We were never properly socialised from childhood, never taught how to mix with other kids so we knew how to do it as adults. Hang in there, it gets better.
much as been revealed over the years to the date setting doctrines made by the wts.
such as ( 1874, 1914, 1925 , 1975 this generation, the last days, the end times etc.... which were not created by other christian based faiths.. as to critically examine why might reveal a hidden agenda to all these date setting proclamations.. the point in question is did the wts and its leaders intentionally manipulate or exploit the preaching of the gospel to enhance the proliferation of their own printed publications ?.
i would say convincingly yes, no question.
Did the Watchtower Corporation create false doctrines intentionally to enhance the proliferation of their own printed publications ?
No I think the WTS created false doctrines different to mainstream Christianity to give the impression they have a hotline to God.
The paradise earth hope, no cross, no holidays, no blood transfusions were all designed to create the idea that they'd ditched false Christianity and by searching the scriptures and asking for Holy Spirit that were now the chosen of God, the true religion.
The end of the system and the dates were all part of that because the mainstream churches weren't doing it. They were waiting to go to heaven.
it was the paragraph talking about people who don't want to be j.w's being executed, and it being an act of compassion from jehovah towards his witnesses..
That will not be the time for him to show compassion for those whom he has judged to be wicked
So how does this sit with congregation members now that they have almost no literature to preach with and the baptism numbers have dropped so drastically? If the preaching work has wound down and the end is imminent that's nearly everyone on earth that's going to die!
i think everything has to start somewhere, and you can see the passion and commitment from those loyal 50 that showed up in warwick yesterday.
the event was not very well organized but you could see the passion & dedication from most of them.
and i think they at least touched a couple of people at the kh yesterday.. having an annual day of action actually inspires me.
if there was a way to unite the ex JW factions and create a universal front, there could be hundreds of activists working in cities all over the world.
There are no JW factions. There are just individuals, some who do protests at KHs and some who do YouTubes or blogs. We don't want to unite or become activists.
Most of us just want to live a normal life after spending years in a crazy religious cult. It's destroying itself with its stubborn refusal to comply with governmental and legal regulations all over the world. Already it's a shrunken remnant of its former self with continual demands for money.
