Posts by hillfy333

45

Lets hear what your local needs was about this week

by dbq407 in

ours started out with matt.

25:23. he brought out that "good and faithful slave" was talking about the anointed but wait for it.........yes the principle can be applied to our cong.

well tonight it was about getting all the territories worked once a year.

hillfy333

To my knowledge she has never started a bible study this way. Why are preaching methods that are clearly ineffective still being encouraged? Personally i don't think conversion is the priority. I think the witness mind is obsessed with spreading the seed, and God will take care of the rest. So whether they are effective or not, the most important thing is to get the message out there. Sadly for them their message is false.

28

So who attended the memorial and why?

by atomant in

this should be interesting.

hillfy333

No i did not attend, this is the fifth time i have missed in a row. So glad i stood my ground as my still in wife, though inactive, also stayed home for the first time.

4

Intro final

by hillfy333 in

intro final.

my journey from being a born in witness to an agnostic was now complete.

in my humble opinion, based on research done by ehrman and others, it left me feeling satisfied with the thought that belief in the unerring word of god was founded on shaky ground.

hillfy333

Intro final

My journey from being a born in witness to an agnostic was now complete. In my humble opinion, based on research done by Ehrman and others, it left me feeling satisfied with the thought that belief in the unerring word of God was founded on shaky ground. If we don’t have the original manuscripts, and only possess copies of copies, how could i possibly place full confidence in what our current manuscripts say about Jesus and the early Christians?

So much doctrine has been formulated over words and phrases in the bible, which may or may not have originally existed in the first draft. How much extrapolation occurred decade after decade, generation after generation, as each new batch of Christian convert, read and reread the bible, adding their own understanding, to shape future converts. If we can’t see the original words, then why ascribe divine inspiration on copies of copies, which have already demonstrated under scrutiny having multiple differences from each other.

So as of this writing i find myself in the camp of the agnostic. Is there a God? I simply do not know, but I’m okay with that, I’ve arrived at a point in my life where i do not need all my answers answered.

Since moving to our new home, I’ve had two elders individually call on me several times. One elder is half awake to ttatt, the other a fully indoctrinated follower, who when asked by me whether he thought this is the same organization he and i grew up in? He replied candidly yes. As far as he was concerned it is all about the kingdom, all the changes were just simply window dressing. The other elder is fully aware of the many inconstancies in the organization , he even watched all the ARC hearings, and was dismayed with the proceedings. However he feels the jdubs are the best of a bad bunch, and that some time in the near future Jesus will step in and correct the organization.

I’ve made it clear to both elders i have grave doubts about the bible being infallibly God’s word. I have also made it clear i will not be going back to any meetings. I made it clear i don’t want to associate with the organization, but I’m not disassociating myself either. So far so good.

My wife remains a witness for her family’s sake, but she has not been to a meeting for around eight months now. Gladly she is not showing any signs of missing the meetings or the fellowship. I’m now in the autumn of my life. Many years have been wasted on a false belief, and many decisions regretted because of it. As so many witnesses before me, i have not fully prepared for my retirement, which is only a few years away. But I’ve implemented strategies to at least partially alleviate my retirement concerns. I have wished many times that i had been born to normal parents, with clear objectives about future preparedness, instead of leaving everything in Jehovah’s hands. Thanks for taking the time to read my journey, may all of us continue to deprogram and learn to love ourselves and the precious life we have in common, freed from the cult of fear and repression.

Intro 4

by hillfy333 in

intro 4.

after the funeral my life descended into a black despair, i really wished i had died instead of my sister.

but of course these were only wishes; reality is totally oblivious to our human desires..

hillfy333

Intro 4

After the funeral my life descended into a black despair, i really wished i had died instead of my sister. But of course these were only wishes; reality is totally oblivious to our human desires.

Much soul searching followed. What would i believe in now that i had exposed the Watchtower ideology, and found it wanting? Would i ever see my sister again, was there an afterlife? Since i had Christian precepts drummed into me since childhood, i turned to the ideology that sounded familiar to me. I began finding and listening to ex jdubs of the past, who turned to evangelical beliefs. People like Bill and Joan Cetnar, David Reed, and many others. I listened to their testimonies and began to have feelings of following in their footsteps, and becoming born again. I uttered the sinner’s prayer, and began praying to Jesus, something i would never have done as a witness. And for a few months i actually began to believe this new paradigm.

However deep inside i did not want to tie myself to another belief system without doing further research. It would have been so easy to jump from one ideology to another, like getting out of one comfortable chair, walking across the room and getting into another equally comfortable one. Time was on my side, why rush things.

So i gave myself permission to peel the onion, one layer at the time. In my mind i could see the Watchtower was false in so many ways, but what about Christianity, could i trust it to provide the answers. As witnesses we always prided ourselves as being great scholars of the bible, our GB and the writing department were streets ahead of everybody else when it came to bible knowledge, or so we thought. So why not go to an actual scholar of the New Testament and see what he had to say. Thus i found Dr Bart Ehrman, a professor of early Christianity. He had authored many books including, “Misquoting Jesus”, “Forged”, and “How Jesus became God”.

I found his writings fascinating and very revealing about early Christianity, filling in the many gapes i had when it came to actual history, in comparison with the rose coloured glasses of the Watchtower writing department. I also watched his debates with noted evangelical fundamentalist Christians, and enjoyed his learned explanations and refutations. Then i found his “Great courses”, series dealing with the historical Jesus, and how the Christian canon came to be, and also the many forms of early Christian beliefs, like the Ebionites, The Marcionites, the Gnostics, and the proto- orthodox.

With this new insight i could see how having total belief in the infallibility of scripture just didn’t stand up to the evidence. Ehrman explained that of the over five thousand couples of the New Testament, all had differences in them; in fact so many that they exceeded the actual word count in the New Testament. As i researched i could sense my viewpoint changing, and like Ehrman who had been a born again Christian, i also was moving into agnosticism like him.

To be continued............

4

Intro 3

by hillfy333 in

intro 3.

before i continue chronologically i will need to back track a bit..

when people ask me what caused me to wake up, i find it hard to pinpoint the exact moment..

hillfy333

Thanks Simon, that pretty much is how i feel now.

4

Intro 3

by hillfy333 in

intro 3.

before i continue chronologically i will need to back track a bit..

when people ask me what caused me to wake up, i find it hard to pinpoint the exact moment..

hillfy333

Intro 3

Before i continue chronologically i will need to back track a bit.

When people ask me what caused me to wake up, i find it hard to pinpoint the exact moment.

The reason is because i’ve been waking up for quite a long time now. Obviously the lack of love in the org was a big stumbling block, along with the blatant hypocrisy, coupled with the we’re better than everybody else viewpoint. But to refine the exact moment, i need to go back to my birth.

I was born to German parents, in a small village in southern Germany, in 1953. About four years earlier my mother was converted to the Watchtower faith by an angel, according to her reminiscences. She happened to be out when an Anointed member of the Watchtower witnessed her village. Upon returning home her relatives told her an angel had visited with an amazing message. My mother wanted to hear what he had to say, so she searched the village, and found him.

Soon she was having a study, and the rest is history. My mother took to the delusion, like a duck to water. Soon she was baptized and pestered my father till he reluctantly followed suit. She would walk from the village she lived in to the neighbouring one, four kilometers away in all kinds of weather, with my five year old sister in tow. When i came along four and a half years later, my mother simply added a pram to her meeting ritual. She was completely obsessed with the Watchtower version of the “truth”, and nothing would stand in her way to actively practice her religion.

She did have to work many hours supporting the family as a telephone operator, which meant my sister had to step in and take care of me while my mother worked away. Thus a strong attachment developed between my sister and me. In fact i practically idolized her. My mother knew which buttons to press when she wanted me to behave, she always held my sister up as a shining light.

“Why can’t you be like your sister, so obedient and compliant”, she would taunt, and it always worked. Yet i loved my sister so much that i never felt jealous of her, i simply agreed in my juvenile mind that that was exactly how i should obey, just like my sister did.

It is now time to jump forward to the latter part of 2007. We no longer lived in Germany, but we were now in Australia. We had left Germany in 1956. Both my sister and i were married, her with four children, and me on to my second wife, but no children from the first marriage. Both our parents were deceased, it was just us two. And now i found out my sister was diagnosed with cancer. It was a huge shock for me. She spent many weeks in hospital, recovering from chemo, as her blood count tried desperately to recover to an acceptable level. Finally she was released from hospital, with the knowledge she was in remission. We all heaved a sigh of relief as she was now on the road to recovery. My sister and i lived about seven hours apart by car travel , and seeing as how she was improving, i stopped worrying and went on a week’s holiday out of the country with my wife.

Upon arriving back by plane, and disembarking at our international airport, i found i had a number of phone messages. While i was out of the country i could not be contacted by phone, but now here was a message from my nephew telling me my sister was back in hospital, the cancer was back.

My wife and i raced to the hospital she was in, and i spent a few hours with her, she appeared reasonably okay, but quiet. I kissed her good night, and promised to see her in the afternoon.

As i was preparing for the Sunday morning meeting, i received a phone call from my niece telling me my sister had passed during the night. As you can imagine i was devastated, and although i travelled to the hall that morning i could not go inside. Instead i walked the streets crying, not knowing what to think. The devastating news that morning had knocked me for a six; i could not understand why God could have let my beloved sister die. This moment in 2008 was the catalyst for me beginning my journey out of the Watchtower. Finally i had a reason to question, and research a religion that had been force feeding me from my earliest waking moments, no longer would i simply accept everything this organization was forcing down my throat.

To be continued.......

7

Intro 2

by hillfy333 in

part 2. my wife and i were at a point where we wanted to move closer to our daughter as she was about to have a child.. so we put our house up for sale, and after a few weeks we had a buyer.

as we previously had purchased a block of land in the town we had planned to live in, we needed to rent for about a year till our new house was built.

during that time only one witness family showed any kindness to us.

hillfy333

Part 2

My wife and I were at a point where we wanted to move closer to our daughter as she was about to have a child.

So we put our house up for sale, and after a few weeks we had a buyer. As we previously had purchased a block of land in the town we had planned to live in, we needed to rent for about a year till our new house was built. During that time only one witness family showed any kindness to us. The elders did not contact me to see if anything was wrong, though they did sent a couple of messages via my wife, who was still going to Sunday meetings, to see whether I was ready to come back to The meetings. Then around three weeks before we moved into our new home, while I was mowing the lawn, an elder and his ms friend showed up in the witnessing work with some magazines for me. I declined the offer, explaining I no longer read them.

The elder asked if there were any issues I might need discussing, I simply said I didn't want to discuss them then and there, actually I thought it was rude that he would come along now, and want to talk things through, when so much time had passed with no spiritual help being given to my wife or me, it was a little to late for that. He had told me that exciting things were happening in the org, which I already knew about. He seemed to think with all the exciting changes happening that I should race back to mothers waiting arms. I looked him in the eye and simply stated that since I had left, I was a lot less stressful and did not miss the org at all, with or without the new changes. So ended our short conversation, pretty much the sum of his shepherding call, five minutes, just three weeks before leaving his congregation.

No one in the congregation wished me the best, or offered to help with our move. Three sisters in the congregation invited my wife to a coffee shop for a goodbye coffee and cake, and that was it, after sixteen and a half years, it makes you feel warm inside doesn't it.

Once we had moved and settled in to our new home, I wondered how long it would be before the witnesses came a calling? Seeing as my wife still wanted to attend the Sunday meeting, I presumed it would not be too long before an elder would show and see if he could not reclaim a lost sheep. I also wondered exactly what had my previous body of elders written in the introduction letter, and how would the new body of elders respond to it's message?

To be continued........

14

Life After Disassociation (or really leaving by any means)

by dubstepped in

i just wanted to take a minute to encourage any that are leaving that the world outside isn't as scary as it was made out to be.

my wife and i officially da'd at the beginning of last september.

i've battled social anxiety, depression, etc.

hillfy333

Hi Dudstepped, glad to hear you are out. Yes the org really fed us a lot of horse manure. I always felt that if i stopped going to meetings, the Devil would instantly dive into my brain and corrupt it. Strangely once i completely stopped going to meetings or out in field service, nothing changed, i was still the same guy, with the same flaws, the same good points to my personality. Nothing changed except now instead of having Watchtower doctrine demonizing my every thought, i was able to listen to my own thoughts without constantly adjusting them back to Watchtower points of view

Glad to see another victorious escapee from Watchtower mind control..

17

Intro

by hillfy333 in

hi, although i signed up two years ago, and filled out the "interview with an apostate" as hillfy54321, i have since only read various posts.

then purchased a new computer and lost my password, thus no new posts.

i have since reapplied, and now go under the handle of hillfy 333.. a little about myself.

hillfy333

1) Since you've been around JWdom for a while, I'd like to know whether you feel that JWdom has changed significantly since the Fred Franz days (60's, 70's, 80's), and if so, how?

Most definitely, i believe we actually were bible students, even if it was coloured by Watchtower glasses.

Though i think Freddy was a bit of a loon, he did seem to want to get deeper into bible research than the current bunch seem to. Actually they are pretty well spoon feeding their current flock.

I think as witnesses back then we had a little more pride in ourselves. I think the current jdubs are suffering an identity crisis.

I was very much an indoctrinated follower, but from time to time i would allow nagging doubts to surface.

I had trouble reconciling the flood account with reality. I also could not see how a loving God could not come up with a better solution.

Also when they originally changed the generation teaching of 1995, i must admit i became somewhat skeptical about their latest new light, and i think early thoughts of disbelief were beginning to form.

Sadly it still took another 13 years to finally research our history objectively, and then giving myself permission to question everything.

Thanks again everyone for your responses, i truly appreciate them.

17

Intro

by hillfy333 in

hi, although i signed up two years ago, and filled out the "interview with an apostate" as hillfy54321, i have since only read various posts.

then purchased a new computer and lost my password, thus no new posts.

i have since reapplied, and now go under the handle of hillfy 333.. a little about myself.

hillfy333

Hi Magnum, and James

As i'm just preparing to go to work, I will answer your questions later Magnum,when I have more time.

In reply to James, I was an ms for a couple of years, being groomed for eldership, but I had a few issues I was dealing with that hindered me. My biggest concern was knowing other people's business, and having to judge them, it so went against my personality.