Posts by truthseeker1

14

My story

by truthseeker1 in

b-jw: (hyphen so it dont look too nasty).

i grew up catholic (sorta).

i have two older sisters and a younger brother.

truthseeker1

I'll back up a bit and tell you of my relationship with my GF.

Nobody wanted us to be together at first. When her parents found out about me they took away her phone privilages (she was 16 and I was 19). Cell phones wern't that big yet so we would send pages to each other all day, voicemail style. Phone calls were still 20 cents so I could check it thoughout the day w/out going broke. We would leave about 20 messages a day. We would do anything we could to communicate with each other. When she would work when I didn't, I would go and talk to her her whole shift. I think this made our relationship grow. The more her parents held us apart, the stronger we fought. Things changed with her mother once i 'progressed' in my studies as mentioned earlier. This all changed when I got dunked.
I got baptized in Dec of 97 and got engaged in march of 98, then married later that year, 2 weeks after she turned 18. The wedding was a huge headache. My wife wanted to elope because we secretly slipped up (more than once) and she felt guilty having a wedding in the KH. Her dad insisted we have a large wedding and invite as many people we could, because 'it just didn't look right' to not invite people we knew. Now we needed to pick the people in our wedding. An elder she knew her whole life was going to give the talk. Her sisters were to be her maids of honor, but I was stuck trying to find people in my side. I gave up all my 'worldly' friends when i 'came to realize it was the right thing to do.' I havent' met anyone in a KH yet I would want as my friend. (still to this day) I was going to have my brother as my best man, but the elders said 'it just didn't look right' to have a worldly person as the best man. They didn't object to him being up there, just as long as he wasn't the best man. I ended up picking the guy I studied with first to be my best man.
As we approached the wedding things started to fall apart. My wife got into an arguement with her sister so she wasn't going to be the maid of honor anymore. She started to go down the list of friends and nobody wanted to do it. Her current best friend was a guy so that wouldn't do, or would it??? She asked him and he said yes. He was going to be her maid of honor( in a tux of course) No big deal to me, but to the elder giving our talk it was. He refused to be a part of the fiasco and backed out of giving it. He said it wasn't a traditional wedding. We argued that we shouldn't follow the traditions of man, and thats all that was but he said it would cause a scene and didn't want people to talk bad about the witnesses, saying they have weird weddings.
So now we had a wedding party but no speaker. BAH! The 'Maid' of honor and best man were brothers (physicaly) and their dad was an elder so we asked him to give it, because he didn't have a problem with two guys being our witnesses. Another problem creaped up. My brother had the nerve to start growing a horrible, disrespectful, aweful shameless....beard. Obviously God gave s facial hair, but it looks too worldly to wear so anyone on stage must be free from beards. My brother was proud of his beard(stubble) and didn't want to shave it. He didn't understand how evil it really was, but we coulnd't budge. We had to have the wedding in the KH and I really wanted him to be in it. So he ended up shaving it the day of the wedding(wheh!). The cerimony was long and repetitive. Same three-fold cord crap, and adam/eve story over and over...They forgot to mention the all encompasing rubber insulator tube (WTBTS) that protects and keeps us together. After all that, we were married and things could finally settle down.

We decided to go to my hall. I was being used in the hall quite a bit, running mics and vacuuming(woohoo!). When we both started going there she needed more and more attention so i started to pass on privilages so she didn't have to sit alone. They stopped using me shortly after.
We started to slip spiritually, so we decided to try a new hall. We didn't really know too many people there, so nobody made us come. We would go weeks between meetings. We only went to sunday meetings if any. My wife started to get depressed that she was going to die if armageddon came so we went back to my hall, where people could keep an eye on us and we would feel too guilty if we missed a meeting.
At this point, I started to look at apostate material on the internet. I was reading stories of husbands in families of JW who hate being JW's. They were trapped because they didn't want to split up their family by leaving the org. They just sat in the back of the hall, doing nothing. Wasting their life away. I got scared that was going to be me. I knew I had to tell my wife I didn't want to be a JW anymore, before we started having kids. It was only fair to her. I called some old friends from seattle to ask their advice. They all said I needed to talk to her soon. I also told them I would be coming up for our 2 year anniversary to visit and show her around where I grew up. They were all excited.
Things went on this way until our anniversary trip to Seattle. We drove up there and stayed with my 'wordly' sister. Things were going fine till one night. I wanted to get away with my friends and talk to them alone, but didn't know how to go w/out her. They said I should say we are all going to 'Hollow Man' because it was rated R and they knew she wouldn't go see it. It worked(despite an arguement). Me and my 2 closest friends went to a pub and discussed my problem over a few drinks. I decided to tell her when we got home from our vacation. When we left, i checked my cell phone and it said I had 6 missed calls. ACK! I called my wife back and she was pissed and told me to get to my sister's house. When I got home she asked what we did. She bugged me so bad I just told her then. She freaked out on me and left. I was 2 a.m. in a different city mind you, so I followed her. She just ran down the street until she collapsed, crying and asking how could I be so stupid. I got her back to the house and we went to bed. The next day she wouldn't talk to me, but she called her dad and told him what happend. He told her its just because I was spending time with my old friends and slipped back into my 'old personality'. I talked to him and told him why I didn't believe JWs anymore, but he just said we will discuss it when we got back. My wife wanted to go home so we finished up the weekend and headed home. The whole way back it was only mentioned once. I said i'm sorry I felt that way, but thats just the way I feel. I never talked to anyone about it again. Kinda strange. I just kept going to meetings because to me it was easier than dealing with the situation.

Gotta get back to work, more later...

20

Big Ray in trouble with Watchtower Society ?

by jwsons in

jw
friends

dear everyone,.

you may known that previously, this discussion forum owned by big ray, he is a faithful witness to watchtower, he sold his forum then formed some other similar forums for others, who faithful to the society.

however, he now seems has a problem with society.

truthseeker1

What they will do is shut all the pro JW sites down and then they can say the only stuff on the internet isn't JW related, so poof, No more internet. People will do whatever the WTS says, even if they think it was proposterous. My father-in-law once told me that he hopes the society doesn't make a rule against caffeen, cuz he wouldn't know what to do if he couldn't have it. That really made me think, if its ok to have now...the only reason you would stop is because the society says not to...boggle. We all know it isn't the healthiest thing out there. Him especially. but thats another thread.

8

HOW GOD GETS MESSAGE TO WATCHTOWER LEADERSHIP

by Liberty in

jw
friends

just how do the 144,000 co-rule the earthly organization with christ?

i started thinking about this subject again after seeing the post on the watchtower as a false prophet.

do any of you remember how this was explained in the old days (i've been out so long i don't know if this is now "old light")?

truthseeker1

We have an 'annointed' person in our hall. She is the nicest woman you can meet, but do the elders take anything she says seriously? Nahh, they just patronize her and follow whatever the WTBTS says. The only difference is she drinks and eats 1 more time a year then we do.

19

The most boring book in the Bible.

by sleepy in

jw
friends

what did you find the most boring book to read in the bible?.

its a hard choice as there's so many to choose from but i have to go with psalms.flipping nora it take for ever to read, is written in some incomprehensible way, and is about nothing!

truthseeker1

Most are boring. Chronicles' son of son of son of son of son of son of son of son of crap can get kinda old. The only fun part in that is seeing all the brothers doing the #2 and Bible Highlights talks, trying to make it interesting. I swear, all they talked about is how Jehovah likes organization, so thats why we report our time.
Proverbs is cool cuz you can sprout off proverbs and sound smart;)

17

Is Death the End?

by gilwarrior in

for once i will try to post a serious topic so here goes.... most of us here have rejected most if not all of the jw teachings.

i (as well as most of you) certainly do not believe that armaggedon will arrive someday in the future and everybody who is not a jw will die and the witnesses that are left will rebuild the earth.. so, the question i have is this: what do you think happens when you die?.

do you go to heaven or hell?

truthseeker1

I feel that when we die, we die. I havent seen any evidence of anything otherwise. I guess thats why I was able to swallow the JW theories, because SOME of them were simple and strait forward.

If something happens to me after I die, great I can live on. But if this is my only life, I want to live it in a way I will enjoy it. Its hard to imagine a god that will destroy me forever if I didn't believe in some obscure belief that is taught by less the 1/1000 of the population. I guess I mostly believe that dust I was, and dust I will return to. I'd like to think there is more beyond this, but I won't know till I experience that, and I'm in no rush to find out.

7

been out for a bit.....

by butterfly2002 in

well....i was raised in the truth....pioneered....and did all the right stuff.....married an "unbeliever"...have been married for more than 10 yrs...(great marriage even though i was warned it would be horrible)...so now i have not gone for 5 months now...and well..... not one person has called...come by....just to see whats up... so just curious to see if anyone else has had this happen to them... thanks for any response...

truthseeker1

I get it on a lesser scale. If I miss a meeting or don't go out in field service, I don't get a call from my inlaws for about a week. My wife is married to an unbeliever (she just doesn't know it yet) and our marriage is great too. Congrats on the marriage!

14

My story

by truthseeker1 in

b-jw: (hyphen so it dont look too nasty).

i grew up catholic (sorta).

i have two older sisters and a younger brother.

truthseeker1

B-JW: (hyphen so it don’t look too nasty)

I grew up Catholic (sorta). I have two older sisters and a younger brother. My parents went to church usually every Sunday. I got pulled out of Sunday school because I threw a fit every time I had to go. I didn’t really pay attention at church. When I was old enough to make my decision, I saw no reason to believe in god. Everything was answered by science to me. I didn’t worry about how and why we are here. We just were and that was fine by me. I mocked organized religion with my friends in high school, thinking they were all fools for believing in such fairy tails. Then I moved to Fresno.
I moved because my father passed away from a heart attack. We used to live in seattle and he was an engineer for Boeing, designing the 777. When he died we couldn’t afford to pay off the house with the insurance money, so we needed to find another place to live. My oldest sister had moved to Fresno with her husband and we saw how cheep the housing was. We could buy a house outright, so we did. We planned to move to Fresno. I was still in High School at the time, a senior. I decided I didn’t want to leave all my friends and start anew my last year in HS so I begged my mom to stay with friends up there. She said OK so I moved down here after I graduated.
I bummed around for a year before starting school at the local community college. I didn’t work either. I found a job at a restaurant as a bus boy when I started school. That’s where I met the first witness of my life. She was intrigued at my beliefs and how I thought the bible was a good ‘story book’ with good moral backbone. I said there were people who needed religion for their purpose in life, and that was great for them. I said I was happy the way I am. I was taking a philosophy course at the time, so I was loaded with arguments for/against god. We talked for hours during/after work. ( little did I know she was counting time). I really started to like this brainwashed girl, and she started to like me.
I thought I’d take a look at their literature, just to see if it was interesting. I always wanted to read the bible, just so I can say I did. She gave me a whole bag of books she thought I could use, Knowledge book, Bible, Gods word or mans, Mankind’s search for God, and some other ones. I read the orange one first (Bible, Gods word or man’s). I read it all one night. When I called her to talk about it she was shocked that I read it that fast. I didn’t realize it takes them 6 months to finish a book. She wondered if I got anything out of it. I said it had a lot of good points and I’ll start looking into it further. I started to study with one of her friends. I mostly did it to please her, and it was the only way I could spend time with her.
When I studied, I told them I wasn’t going to change huge aspects of my life or cut out my family ( my mom’s biggest concern). The guy I studied with said I’ll make the changes when I see fit. Studying with him was a joke. He was hardly there when it was time to study, and he wouldn’t really answer my questions. I knew I needed to hear the other side of witnesses, so I looked up some books on witnesses in the library of my college. The only books there were ones with a negative viewpoint, so I read them. I became disgusted with JWs and I cancelled my study and told my girlfriend (secretly because I wasn’t baptized) I wasn’t going to study and we should break up so she can be with a JW like she wanted. That was a horrible weekend.
She called the guy I was studying with and told him what happened so he called me to bring the book and answer my questions. I said fine. When I arrived all he said was that the book was written by apostates and was just slanderous lies. He said that stuff doesn’t happen. (I don’t remember the title of the book but it was a large white book with ‘Shining light’ or ‘Shining truth” somewhere in the title. It was a life story of an ex-bethelite woman) I started my study up again (mostly for my GF) with him for a couple of weeks and then he turned me over to an older brother who could better ask my never-ending why questions.
This older brother was actually a lot better than I thought. He was the nicest old man I have ever met. I never had Grandparents, and he became one to me. He was pretty knowledgeable and well read. He used to tell me that the organization isn’t perfect, and if things are wrong in them they will change for the better, so just put up with it for a little bit and wait it out. My studies progressed until I was ready for baptism.
I’m not really sure why I believed all these preposterous doctrines being taught to me. I guess I wanted to believe them so I can be with my GF. We were getting pretty serious now, but were still weren’t allowed to be with each other. Mostly her father was keeping us away. Her mom loved me and would sneak me over in the morning before my classes would start and after her father left for work. That went on until I got baptized (ack). Now her father accepted me as a son. I thought that was so horrible of him. I wasn’t good enough until I went under water. But now I’m good as gold.

Well, gotta go, If you want the rest of my story, let me know

41

How often did you comment at meetings?

by LDH in

jw
friends

i have a theory and i'd like to put it to the test here.. i would be willing to bet that the posters who post a great deal probably commented more than the average publisher at the meetings.. i know it's true in my case.. on simon's forum we have the whole range of 'publishers-' from those that comment a lot ---down to those that are just there.

the lurkers.. what about you?.

lisa

truthseeker1

Issiah book is the current book study, and its a load of crap.

I used to comment 2-3 times a meeting, except during the school/service meeting. I would usually comment when nobody else would raise their hands, when you couldn't read the answer right out of the book. I hate that, when somebody reads the whole damn paragraph back as the answer but interchanges jehovah/god so it wasn't a direct quote...BAH Just showes me these people don't think for themselves. I stopped commenting at WT study because i can get away with it. My father in law is the PO and the guy who was formally known as the book study conductor, now book study overseer. I get the guilty look after meeting and don't hear from him for a week or so if i don't comment a lot. And now that we have to turn in time to the men formally known as book study conductors, ie my father in law, he gets to directly see my 3 hrs (cough cough, i can count this time here, right) per month. Oh well, at least it won't shock him when i get the guts to bail.

12

Asking Questions At Meetings!

by SYN in

reading the other thread about answering at meetings gave me the cold shivers.

there is a fundamental part of being a witness that i've never understood, that just seems so at odds with the philosophy outlined by jesus and the apostles in the new testament - why weren't we allowed to ask questions at the meetings?

hmm???.

truthseeker1

There was a question asked just a few weeks ago in our book study. There is this guy who’s family are Mormons going to our hall. He is trying to convert his kids from Mormon to JW so he brings them to the hall. His wife doesn’t like this so she had her son (10 years or so) ask questions in the book study, like ‘how come you people don’t have modern day prophets’ and ‘how come you people don’t call your kingdom halls temples’ Our book study conductor just said those are excellent questions and he would be happy to answer them after the meeting. The boy ran home before anyone got a chance to talk to him. His father got a pretty stern lecture about not having control of his family. I wanted to laugh so hard when I heard these questions. Oh yeah, he also read his scriptures from the KJ version, which made everyone feel kinda weird. The conductor made it a point to let everyone know it wasn’t from their bible.

24

Telephone call with elder today

by simplesally in

i got a call today on my cell phone today from an elder (i am disfellowshipped)... said i hadn't been seen in a while at the kh.

i said yes, thats true, that the most recent incident regarding his daughter's treatment of my daughter has caused me to not come.

it was the last straw.. "are you going to take it out on jehovah?

truthseeker1

Its disturbing how Elders can wash over everything bad that goes on in the congregation saying that we are all imperfect and we must keep putting up with one another...then turn around and give a public talk about all the wrong doings of other religions. My mom is not a witness and when I did believe it was the truth I was always afraid of bringing her to meetings because of all the slanderous remarks from so-called 'rightous individuals'. Boy am I glad I didn't convert anybody. Talk about bloodguilt.