i just joined a few days ago.
still in (physically, not mentally...) for family reasons... how many attendees at the kh in the same situation ?
currently living in france, wont say more on me for the moment.... .
Take the money and run seems to be what the Governing Body are planning if thier date making sceme hits rock bottom.
It's amusing to imagine the GB members stuffed into a van headed for the Mexican border, with a bag of cash on the floor in the back between the feet of the ones who forgot to call "shotgun".
pastor russell had 20 million readers of his newspaper columns worldwide and as many eager students of his topical bible study, studies in the scriptures.. he advertised for 1000 preachers to sell his books door to door!.
the photo drama of creation wowed 9 million people in the early 1914 synchronizing film, hand colored frames and phonograph recordings.. state of the art!.
judge rutherford availed himself of victrola recordings of "religion is a snare and a racket!
@redvip2000: Ever since I started placing literature in the '80s, I never bought or sold a publication. Get with the times
To give a more serious answer than my previous post, I think that, besides the reasons mentioned, a major reason why there is no TV program is that it's much more ignorable than people knocking on your doors. Love them or hate them, JWs interrupting people's lives are a large part of the reason why they are so much more well-known than, say, the (other!) splinter Bible Students groups. And as was mentioned by a couple people already, TV programs just can't convert people -- only one-on-one interactions can influence a person to change their beliefs. When was the last time an argument was settled on the Internet?
pastor russell had 20 million readers of his newspaper columns worldwide and as many eager students of his topical bible study, studies in the scriptures.. he advertised for 1000 preachers to sell his books door to door!.
the photo drama of creation wowed 9 million people in the early 1914 synchronizing film, hand colored frames and phonograph recordings.. state of the art!.
judge rutherford availed himself of victrola recordings of "religion is a snare and a racket!
A mainstream religion can go on TV because it doesn't have any crazy cult doctrines to be exposed and villified publicly and scare away new victims.
Ironically, the main difference between the JW's "crazy cult doctrines" and mainstream religion's doctrines is time and familiarity ;) Imagine if, as Witnesses, we had preached that back in the early 1900s, a man named C.T. Russell died and was brought back to life by God, but only a few of us saw him before he floated into the sky. We also asserted that Russell had done a lot of miraculous things that no non-Witnesses had bothered writing down. Speaking on a broad level, the claims made by new religions are no crazier than the original claims of Judeo-Christianity. Imagine if we had access to all the earlier versions of the Hebrew manuscripts that became the Bible. We'd be filling forum pages with criticisms of "old light" and flip-flops based on that instead!
"we should be mindful".
grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
I don't know exactly why, but I hate hearing "our rich spiritual heritage".
i was thinking about this the other day when doing a bit of tidying up of my wardrobe.
all the kh suits are now pushed to the back of the wardrobe and i am seriously thinking about a visit to the charity shop to get rid of most of them.. for me one of the (few) enjoyable aspects of being a jw was getting dressed up.
my secular work very rarely involves putting on a dress suit & tie so i miss getting dressed up - smart suit , tie , shiny shoes , slapping on the aftershave.
I still dress up for the meetings :-\ So I can't say I miss it. But I might some day; certainly it's never bothered me. Ties, collared shirts and jackets, heavy winter coats, suit pants, etc. are actually more comfortable for me than a loose-necked t-shirt and pair of blue jeans (or any other pants). The more clothes, the better. The snugger, the better.
i notice in ray's books he has a disdain for the more vocal dissidents of the watchtower organization.
with this being said, did ray franz go on shows like merv griffen, oprah and other "talk mediums" to attack the watchtower society?
i remember as a kid my mother running up and turning off shows apostates were to appear on, and i can't remember if ray was one of the 'bashers'?
I have nothing to add except to say that this is all interesting to me and I'm glad there are ones here who have history and personal knowledge of the facts, going back decades. As a lifelong Witness, I thought I knew all the teachings, but what I didn't know was what used to be taught before I was around. I am still learning new things about "old light" (I just recently saw those old illustrations of a beardless Jesus for the first time!). Until this past year, I was unwilling to read any apostate material because I was convinced it was slanderous and insidious lies. I still have not read anything beyond a few web sites, although it's been enough to help me see the light about the organization. Still, I am thinking I should get Ray Franz's book, just so I can know more of the facts and really make things hit home for me.
i had been a straight a student.
i had a prodigious memory for facts, dates, quotes.
i once recited the entire rime of the ancient mariner in english class.
That's a good way of putting it, Satanus. I was worried that I had gone too off-topic from Terry's point, but I think you brought it around by pointing out that, as we mature, we may leave behind a group for a bigger one.
Not to speak for you, Terry, but perhaps what happened is that you intellectually outgrew the JWs? You described it as an intellectual "death", but death precludes any further possibility of growth. So you didn't die; you were like a plant that goes dormant in the winter :-) Eventually you realized the change in environment that you needed to make so you could keep on growing or thriving. Does that sound halfway accurate?
i had been a straight a student.
i had a prodigious memory for facts, dates, quotes.
i once recited the entire rime of the ancient mariner in english class.
If I quit Jehovah's Organization where can I go?
Wt policy really is be less than you can be.
I once heard a brother say that if he wasn't a Witness, he would probably be in the army or something; that he needed a structured kind of environment. Isn't that true of all of us humans, but especially some of us? We want the security that comes from being a part of an organization, and we are willing to subsume our identity into the group in order to get the benefits that come from it.
Perhaps for some, like Terry, the reward was more of an intellectual one, but I personally didn't view the "truth" as intellectually exciting; rather, I treasured the security it gave me. I don't mean the fact that 'only Witnesses will survive Armageddon' -- as I mentioned in another thread, I never believed that all unbelievers would be destroyed. It wasn't specifically about the fear of Armageddon. Rather, the main draw for me was the security that came with having a moral code and a structure to my life that was handed to me, readymade. I also enjoyed the feelings of superiority and specialness that it gave me ("Wow, only one out of a thousand!").
When you think about our nature as social animals, it's not surprising that we are willing to attach ourselves to a group that harms us in some ways but brings other benefits (never mind whether they are benefits based in reality; this is not about reality but about perception). It would be remarkable if someone went through life and didn't partially subsume their identity into some group! This is how we learned to survive as a species. Unfortunately the instincts do work against us when we allow ourselves to be misled into joining, or scared out of leaving, a group that really isn't good for us.
i had been a straight a student.
i had a prodigious memory for facts, dates, quotes.
i once recited the entire rime of the ancient mariner in english class.
That's right! For me, a surprising change in my life took place just by looking up a word someone used online -- Jesusism. It wasn't used in reference to arguing against the Witnesses, or even as part of an argument at all, it was just the word by itself. You never know what will get someone thinking.
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So far I've just been cowardly and handled the assignments as they came. I find that it hasn't troubled my conscience too much, which is probably because I feel anger over the years I've wasted in the org. And anyway, it's not as if I can work some magic words into my talk to make the audience wake up, to counter their indoctrination and willful self-delusion. However, maybe I shouldn't be answering this question, as my plan is not to fade in the conventional sense, but to move some distance away and immediately break off contact.
