Oh, yeah.
I was 29 and a hot shot young, up and coming elder.
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Seeker4
JoinedPosts by Seeker4
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Strange Phenomenom's? How do we explain them if one is agnostic?
by QuestioningEverything inthis has me very confused.
if someone is agnostic or leaning strongly that way, how can the fact that people claim to be haunted by ghosts, spirits, say they can talk to the dead, are possessed by evil spirits, etc be reconciled to make sense?
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Seeker4
I'm with Ip Sec on this one. Atheists simply assert that there is no evidence for gods or demons and therefore we don't believe in them. I'm sure if there was evidence, we'd believe. JBass is "off base" with this! (Obviously atheists also have outstanding senses of humor!!)
We had a sister in our congregation who lived alone and claimed to have demons trying to have sex with her, getting on the bed at night, holding her down, etc.
A couple of weeks ago I had an experience that was similar. Lori, my girlfriend, works the 3 to 11 at night shift, so gets home late and will at times watch TV before coming to bed. I get up early, so I might be asleep by the time she gets home, but she always comes in, wakes me and we talk a bit.
This one night I was lying in bed sort of half asleep and I heard Lori come into the bedroom, felt her climb on the bed and get under the covers. I opened my eyes, and there was no one there. She wasn't even home yet.
But I absolutely would have sworn someone got on the bed with me. Didn't happen. Just my mind in that half conscious state making me imagine things that weren't real. I've had several similar experiences. If I was ignorant or superstitious, I would have thought it was a demon.
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Strange Phenomenom's? How do we explain them if one is agnostic?
by QuestioningEverything inthis has me very confused.
if someone is agnostic or leaning strongly that way, how can the fact that people claim to be haunted by ghosts, spirits, say they can talk to the dead, are possessed by evil spirits, etc be reconciled to make sense?
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Seeker4
Most of these are mental disorders and self-induced hallucinations. The lack of proof for these "strange phenomenons" is one of the reasons I'm an atheist.
Take some time and actually look into this stuff. A lot of people are just scaring themselves.
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Have you made arrangements for your civil funeral?
by digderidoo init may sound morbid, but have you?.
it appears that the funeral of a disfellowshipped person would be, that an elder if he feels that there may be some repentence on the behalf of the person that they would give a funeral, but not at the kingdom hall.. this leads me to think what would i want?
i certainly wouldn't want an elder to give a talk at my funeral.
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Seeker4
I've already written my obit, and I update it regularly as my list of life accomplishments grows!
Want a completely secular service. I'll be cremated and my ashes dumped in the Connecticut River. I want a celebration, not a funeral.
Two weeks ago I did a feature article about funerals based on a discussion with a local funeral director. He really made some very negative comments about religious funerals. In the article, without mentioning the JWs I talked about once belonging to a religion where the funeral services were essentially recruitment talks for the religion. I've had people ask me about that since the article came out.
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Do we have any elders on here? "secret letter"
by Muney inrecently my wife (pioneer) told me her friends father (who is an elder) told her about a "secret letter" that wont be read to the congregation and to be kept just to elders was sent out.
apparently it had to do with the changes in the org and the "closeness of the end".
anyone else hear of this letter?
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Seeker4
Actually, the BOE get letters just for them ALL THE TIME. They are all very secret, except that about 20 years worth are available on the Internet and you can download them to your computer.
I'm an apostate, and haven't been a JW elder for 15 years or more - but I've got all the BOE elders up til a year or two ago. The next crop of JW elders to go apostate will keep us updated with the news ones, so we ought to have a copy of this super important BOE letter that the "end is really, really near now!" in the next few months.
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Holidays-nervous about celebrating them but don't understand why.
by QuestioningEverything ini have came to the conclusion that all i learned while growing up as a witness is not the "truth'.
i believe i have become agnostic in a short period of time.
so, this year i decided that we are going to celebrate some holidays.
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Seeker4
I'm now an atheist, but I still enjoy the holidays in my own way. I go trick or treating with some of my grandkids. I don't worry about demons or devils cause they don't exist.
I've come to peace with all this because I think it's just great to have an excuse to dress up or get together or to party. Lori and I don't do much with decorations, no Xmas tree or anything, and we're more likely to celebrate a solstice than other holidays.
It's just a matter of having fun, wishing people a happy holiday and generally feeling good. I do very limited gift giving, having watched tons of gifts turned to trash in a matter of hours.
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Why hasn't there ever been or ever be a mass exodus from the WTS?
by RULES & REGULATIONS inthe wts have a history of false prophecies, including teachings that armageddon and the end of the world would occur in 1914, 1918, 1925, and 1975. .
most of us didn't see that the true point of authority was not the bible, but the watchtower magazine, awake magazine,ministry school and the ever-changing views of the governing body.
the word of god in the bible does not change and a prophecy that does not come true is not of god's doing.
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Seeker4
Blondie, an interesting link. Thanks.
I liked this"
"As the years went by, more and more of the brethren seeing a change of direction and attitude within the Society soon departed and thus the exodus started. By 1930 the majority of the brethren who worked closely with Pastor Russell had left the Society—many had been forced out. By this time, all of Pastor Russell’s writings were discarded in favor of the writings of Rutherford, writings that contradicted each other. By 1929 over a hundred changes in doctrines had been made; the Society no longer resembled that which was established by Pastor Russell and his early associates."
Quite a different take on it than the WTS. The link notes that Rutherford essentially took a publishing company, which is what Russell started, and turned it into a religion.
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Why hasn't there ever been or ever be a mass exodus from the WTS?
by RULES & REGULATIONS inthe wts have a history of false prophecies, including teachings that armageddon and the end of the world would occur in 1914, 1918, 1925, and 1975. .
most of us didn't see that the true point of authority was not the bible, but the watchtower magazine, awake magazine,ministry school and the ever-changing views of the governing body.
the word of god in the bible does not change and a prophecy that does not come true is not of god's doing.
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Seeker4
Wasn't there a major exodus at the time of the death of Russell and Rutherford's coup of the organization in the 1915-1916 period?
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the WTS and the internet
by still wondering inhow is it that when searching for jehovahs witnesses or watchtower in google their official websites always comes first?.
do they have to pay to get these results?
if they are paying then is this not another example of hypocrisy after telling the "sheep" not to use the internet but then spending the "sheeps" donations on maintaining an internet presence?.
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Seeker4
I agree with you Baba.
Also, I'm sure traffic here has fallen off with the announcement of the site closing.
But, several new sites were opened. \
So, WTS has an official site or two, a few JWs have sites, and then there are the 1000s of ex-JW and anti-JW sites!
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Did you ever go in field service after realizing it was not the truth?
by Samuel Thorsen ini did not, but i did fs when i had seriuos doubts and i thougt some householders had pretty good arguments some times, but i could not admit it of course.. and i did fs for a long time after i realized the magazines was very very poor.
i still remember my very last hour from door to door.
geee that was torture, i hatet myself and hoped no one was at home.. do you remember your last fs hour?
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Seeker4
I can't remember my last time out.
I do remember that I had driven to a county jail in New Hampshire where I studied with an inmate.
When I left the prison, I was driving along and had this tremendous epiphany about field service. I pulled off to the side of the road and just thought it through.
I realized that if you were the most powerful being in the universe, and the lives of all the self-aware creatures on a planet were at stake depending on whether or not they obeyed me, that the WORST POSSIBLE thing to do would be to send people door to door to try to convince them to change.
If you're god, just perform a couple of spectacular feats, tell people what they need to do now that you have their attention, and that would be it, for Christ's sake! But this sending of for the most part pretty pathetic, under-educated folks to knock on doors and mainly just piss people off was just the stupidest thing I could imagine.
I very likely didn't go out in field service after that. I know I stopped going out shortly after the 1914 Generation change Watchtower came out, in 1995 I think. An elder invited me out with him a few months later, and I told him we should be going out an apologizing to people. I never offered any WTS literature after that, those few times I may have actually gone out.
NOT going out in field service is one of the greatest joys of leaving the WTS!
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