here's a question i always wanted answered during the years i was a witness.
what's the best way to stay awake during the watchtower study?
oh, furthermore, what's the best way to stay awake during any witness "snooze-a-thon" brainwashing session?
Truth be told. And I know many are going to hate this one. I always found them to be very interesting. Fell asleep when I was a kid, but not as an adult.
Heck, if I can read a boring techinical book and find it extremely interesting, then I can do anything, but then I can only do that at an hour at a time.
after i came home last night i sat down to have dinner when five minutes later i received a phone call.
i did not picked up the phone.
then it rang again and refuse to answer it so i let the answering machine handle it.
It appears that people here in all these forums just want to hear what pats them on the back. They have one goal hatred for the witnesses.
Sure, I'm angry at certain things the WTBS did to me. But just because I am angry doesn't mean I'm going to take the opposite view that the witnesses do in every case and Truth be damned!!!
Right now, I'm at a cross-roads I don't know what to do. But if ANYONE starts talking to me trying to convince me of something, I always evaluate the truthfulness of it.
Sure, I 've read Ray Franz's books as well as others. In my estimation, and correct me if I'm wrong, Ray Franz doesn't have one twentieth the hatred or anger for the WTBS as some of us do. Some of the things he says are very insightful. Do I believe everything he says, just because I have it in for the WTBS. -NO WAY.
I think he can get some people to worship a pile of shit as God if he wanted too. He still uses the charismatic thinking of the GB.
This guy who claims he is was a PO, how do you verify that he is telling the truth. These forums can be so impersonnel, a person can make up any identity. This can just be some wack job posting just to foment hatred for a certain group of people. Did you ever think it could all be made up?
If true, this person is just getting a taste of his own medicine. It'll stop and he knows it. To call it harassment in the tone he appears to be using, is way out there. His internal struggle will continue for some time, but the visits will stop.
My sister hates the witnesses so much, she just might take a pick ax to them. Well count me out. I'm not an accomplice to such behavior.
Isn't this an open forum? Or is it just a place where everybody says anything and everything they want to do is OK? Right and Worng go out the window.
Well there's still the law of gravity and there's still the laws of morals and ethics.
i just found out my best friend died this morning.
i'm not looking for sympathy, i just need some input.
we were very close and worked together volunteering for the aids foundation here in my hometown.
It weakens and distresses me to hear of someones death. I'm so sorry.
If you can't bring youself to go to the funeral, then while the funeral is going on, go and do something that you know that only your friend, something unique to him, would have done. -I'm sure you know what that is.
May you have peace
if the organization did not actually prophesy the end in 1925 and 1975, then how come so many witnesses left the faith immediately afterwards?
("they lost roughly three-quarters of the movement between 1925 and 1928, then suffered huge losses after 1975, when the end didn't come as they had implied over and over again," said jim penton, an ex-witness who writes entries on jehovah's witnesses for the encyclopedia americana.
if the watchtower organization rejects others calling them "inspired" yet the watchtower organization does call themselves "god's spirit-directed prophet" what is the difference?
Here's one of 3 or 4 questions I came up with for newly appointed elders. It's a joke but some didn't take it that way.
If Siamese twins are preached to and one decides to study, turn their life around and get baptized, but the other one smokes, can the one who doesn't smoke still get baptised?
Sorry guys but I can never accept the trinity. Jesus was clearly created (the first born of all creation, the beginning of God's creative works), and the creation can never be equal to the created.
Classic
Whose on first
Whats on second
Idon'tKnow is on third
Is Hank the catcher or the guy out in right field?
Alright, for some reason I'm impecable drawn to kiss it. But does this involve balls, later on in the sequel?
FYI - a comedy bit that Abbott and Costello did for many years.
hi i've just come home from cleaning windows.what an absolutely soul destroying job.. when i think of the things i could have done.. i remmember how my teachers in school used to tell me i would surely go to university and get a good job.i remmember the shock on one teachers face a few years after i left school when i told her i was a window cleaner.. i was also intrested in art and quite good at it.my grandfather who wasn't a witness offered to help me and my brother get good jobs in the art world.. we turned him down.. arrmegeddon was so soon.. anyone else like me ?.
what do you do and what could you have done?
Ya' know I feel like using a lot of 4 letter words right now, at you a holes who don't think the influence of the society (right now i won't call them the evil empire) had or continues to have a direct impact on peoples lives.
Of all the things I am most resentful, it is THIS one. Everything in the WTBS society discouraged education, investments, etc.
It was wrong to do this and that.
I was the best in ALL my courses in high school and later, much later in college in the IT profession, virtually no one topped me. A teacher would rattle off equations and/or geometry algebra, trig and sometime calculus and before he could say equals, i had the answer. I've been beat down so much, I can't can't get up anymore. I've got nothing to prove anymore. Suicide comes to mind often. A life long depression, that can only be relieved by the big sleep. IT's scares me to die, but once it happens, I know the torment will end.
A holes, nothing fills me with more anger and rage when I begin to think about this subject.
So, what I'm a big time f***** web/shit/developer/programmer/Administrator in everything form Perl, java, Apache, Netscape, linux you name it when I touch it, I learn fast. When it comes around to the brass tacks, do I really enjoy what I do? I can't even stand to be in front of a computer anymore when I get home.
Yeah, I am making the really big bucks too. Do I really care? am I some how better than the guy that scrubs the toilets? shit no.
I was full of promise, I was going to be a surgeon a heart surgeon, saving lives directly. It was an ability that came to be so naturally it was ridiculous. That's what I wanted to be. If you think I'm looking for anyones sympathy go screw yourselves.
My teachers were amazed that I would give up on my dreams so easily.
It's not that a person is a window washer. It's honorable. It's just that this person wanted something else and was crushed by forces this person could not control and continues to have problems dealing with.
It is rare, and everyone here knows it, that someone can get anywhere without a college ed.
If my kids go to college I want them to go for something that they LOVE, not with what they HAVE to do.
Tell me, how I'm going to be a surgeon, I guess going to school part time for the next 20+ years and when I'm 80 years old I'll get my degree, next day I pop off. Oh yeah my ed. really helped all those people dying. hip-hip hooray I got my degree. Oh I'm so self fulfilled. i did it for me. Tell that to all the children who died waiting for me to excel in the field I loved most.
One of the greateset sins, as I have heard and agree with, is When a person dies and goes before God and those big pearly gates, God is going to ask one question "Why didn't use the gift I gave you?"
I hate my job. I really do hate what I have to do. Nothing wrong with it, but what i wanted was rightfully taken from me by an outside force that told me that everything I really wanted was wrong.
I heard things from the platforms that Bethel needed IT people to go for a couple weeks, but you have to have a degree in IT. Well I HAD that degree, but let me tell you I was fuming.
They discouraged me from going to college and NOW they need my skills, I didn't take it as an affront to me nearly as much as the people I was surronded by, most who have no ed beyond HS. What, now they got to rub their faces in it?
Flame me all you want you do good aholes.
This doesn't appear to be a forum or support group to help people, it's just another place to blame the victim!
Well here goes, click that Reply To Topic button... NOW
i thought it might be interesting to see how many here remember where and when they were baptised into the borg.
for some the memory may be too painful, but i'm curious.. me.
it was 1966 in vancouver, bc.
I was baptized again out of complete guilt (for being a sinner). Also, I began to feel that the first time wasn't really genuine.
I forgot to mention I was dunked (twice) in Natick, MASS USA.
Maybe I should mention that I am still a JW, I have just been inactive and haven't read the mags for about 2 years. My broter-in-law is an Elder at Bethel. He paid a visit, he stayed for the week.
I still have contact with JWs in my area and still maintain friendship with many back up in RI. I guess I haven't "outed", in a spiritual sense, myself to my friends, for fear of losing them.
However, many of them know me to be a "trouble maker". And always asking or challenging different things.
I.e. They were having one of those "special" meetings by the CO on a Sat. night -be there.
I asked the CO later what it was about. He said it was It was about, how certain names, places, and things should be "correctly" pronounced.
I said, "you mean the correct pronounciation according to the way the society says things should be pronounced, don't you?"
He said "Yes."
I said "I've heard scholars, people who get right done to the nitty-gritty who understand the original bible languages thoroughly, and they clearly don't pronounce, many of the words the same. Who am I to believe, them or the WTBS?" I then said "I guess i won't be there."
personnally, i heard a lot of urban legends about the presence of a devil in a house.
it was always the same kind of story about a devil who lived in a house and then the jw arrive and they pray jehovah and suddendly, the demon go away...
In response to the John Denver story I figured I keep this as a seperate post.
When I went to Alaska for a quick-build (?1985?) I had mentioned to the bros I was staying with that I had gone to a John Denver Concert, and they proceeded to rant about the John Denver rumor. I let them have their fun.
Maybe a couple days later they were relating, if I remember correctly, the elder covering over his sons murder, the Smurfs thing, ya know, the whole list. So I decided to tel them one.
Just to teach them about listening and spreading rumors.
I said, "did you ever guys every hear about the two smurfs?"
They said, "what is it?"
I related...
"Well it seems these two smurfs were particularly 'bad' smurfs, kind of like how some demons are actually worse than others. "
"Yeah, go on," they said.
"OK. These two smurfs had grabbed this women and dragged her into a alley, and threatened to kill her if she didn't have sex with them. She let them have their way and proceeded to rape her."
"Well a couple weeks go by and on this particular day a sister was walking down the same street, and these two smurfs come dodging out of the alley and grabbed her."
"They threatened the same thing with her. She, however, said she would not allow them to have their way and it would be a violation of her conscience to consent to their demands, and that she would fight to the death if she had to. She then proceeded to give them a Witness."
"Because of this, they let her go. They were impressed by her stand and deep moral convistions."
Well, by now these guys are all sitting on the edge of their seats.
"Wow, that's some story." they collectively said.
I said, "but that's not all... Do you know because of that sister's stand, those two smurfs are in the truth today."
I got a big sigh of disgust from the whole group. I thought at least one of them was going to beat me up. -very true story.
personnally, i heard a lot of urban legends about the presence of a devil in a house.
it was always the same kind of story about a devil who lived in a house and then the jw arrive and they pray jehovah and suddendly, the demon go away...
I've got a few
Yes, I remember the Smurfs. The older "Sis" who told me said it was actually her son-in-law (an elder somewhere in New Hampshire, USA) that was bit in the leg by a runaway smurf -he must have been smurfa-licious.
Remember the subliminal images, supposedly hidden in certain pictures by artists. When I first heard it I immediately got a copy of a WT bound volume and looked at it. Sure enough there is the face of Jesus (the face of J in shroud of turin image) folded up in the angel's (he is watching over the door-to-door work) clothes. Also I think the Live Forever book is supposed to have has things in it most noteably the picture of the Zodiac Aries ram in a table side picture.
John Denver was another one. He supposedly hated witnesses so much because they do not vote, that at a certain point in the concert He would ask if the were any JWs present, he would ask them to stand, and then begin to play the National Anthem, whereupon he would ask them to leave. I replied everytime, when I heard those rumors, that I had been to 4 of his concerts and he never did that.
Glenn Campbell -I heard that one too. Ultimately, I believe it was just someone who was baptized that just happen to have the same name.
There was a rumor flying around in RI that hot dogs contained blood in the form of Sodium Eurthebate. My mother threw away several packs include the flat form of hot-dogs, bologna.
Ever here the Ambulance story in a talk, where supposed a guy refused to pull out of the way of an ambulance? Every turn he took the ambulance followed. He pulls in his mothers driveway, and it turns out that it was his mother who was in trouble -she died. I have to give 'em that one tho, even major newspapers fell for that one.
-classic Urban Legend
Oh yeah, the guy hiding in the back seat of a Pioneer? -classic UL
The elder who covered for his son who murdered his pregnant wife and left her in a ditch. And how Jehovah's spirit left the cong until the evil was finally routed out. -heard that one in Alaska, I think.
i thought it might be interesting to see how many here remember where and when they were baptised into the borg.
for some the memory may be too painful, but i'm curious.. me.
it was 1966 in vancouver, bc.
I got baptized twice
Once in Nov 1973 and then again in 1980 sometime.
