I stopped go 15 years ago. The only meeting I have attended was on a funeral 10 years ago. It was a close friend from many years back in time that had died. Wife still goes on every meeting. She know that even if she ask me to come with her on any I would refuse.
Bugbear
JoinedPosts by Bugbear
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Do you still go to meetings?
by NikL inas i was sitting in the meeting last night i thought about this question.. sometimes it feels really lonely because i don't connect with most others in the congregation and i have to be so careful with the ones with whom i do associate.. quick rundown on my life...got baptized at 17...married at 20...became inactive at 28 wife still active though...came back to meetings with her 20 years later just to keep her quiet and see if they had changed (for a while i actually thought they had)...now i am still inactive and haven't gone out in service or anything.
i just go to meetings with my wife who is happy as a lark to have me there with her...just go to meetings and think...and think...and think.... anyway, i just wondered if there are any out there like me who are going to meetings and nothing else?.
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"50 Years a Watchtower Slave" Chapter 6
by new boy inchapter 6. jesus and the flag.
my mother told me that “the end” was coming very soon.
so at the encouragement of mother and many others in the congregation i was baptized in january 1967 and started full time ministry as “pioneer” in may of 1968.. in fact she told me when i was younger that i would never even get out of high school before “the end” would come.
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Bugbear
New Boy!
You bring up many of the ideas that attracted me when I become a JW. I was only 25 at the time baptized at the year of 1974. I had already taken my High school degree and done my military service (16 month), when I met a girl that I fell in love with. A brother started a study with me and although, I could realize the reality problems with the teachings and contradictions in almost every core stone of this believes I became a Witness. What made me do such a stupid thing? Most probably my love to that girl. But also I did like the idea of worldwide brotherhood. I liked the idea of pacifism and the idea of total refusal of weapons. (remember I had done my military service and seen the capacity of those weapons we use in my country). However soon I became un elder and we were a well know family in our country, having six children!!! But the problems with my faith grow. There were so many questions the SOC. just ignored. So many contradictions in the teaching. Me being an elder could not explain the simplest of questions from my children….It all ended up in a very stressful situation, with o chronical fatigue and in the end a number of hart attacks. This made it possible for me to stop being an elder and start to fade…….. Today none of our family members are JW:s, except, the original, my wife. I have continued study on a University level. And today I think I at least, can give some satisfactory answers based on evidence (not faith) to my children and grandchildren.
Today I have no more hart attacks, no more stress or fatigue symptoms. I am just a happy grandpa trying to learn my grandchildren to read and think for themselves.
I know I am going to die, as all of us, But I don’t have to watch my children or grandchildren dying from the refusal of blood, or dying (in some countries) from persecution from other religious leaders.(Some Islamic and Asian counties) I don’t have to see my children suffer from the burden of being under educated. And I know that they will have a retirement found because they have a job that qualify them for these founds. I am happy that they do not contribute to the GB and their fake found rising to “worldwide preaching” and I am glad that none of them is working for free for one of the world’s most disgusting teachings that scares the hell out of people and children promising the big A if you don´t become “one of us”.
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Why is religion in general so obsessed with what people choose to do with their willies and vaginas?
by jambon1 inwhat was it in the evolution of religion that got them so hung up about what people do with their genitalia?.
i mean, the (mis)use of genitalia is up there with murdering another human being in terms of badness.. and in the 21st century, we have a situation where in the jw religion, it's deemed as acceptable for three middle aged/old men to sit a teenage girl down and ask her the details of her use of her genitals.
to any normal person this is intrusive, completely inappropriate and bordering on deviancy.. why they so obsessed?.
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Bugbear
Jambon
It´s an earlier conditional reflex from a male perspective. Girls females are owned by their male suppressors. No other man or male could have their offspring from their girls then the owner of the pack. Of course if it is possible make some money transaction the owner release some or a few of his property to another male. This behavior are developed not only amongst humans, it used in almost all animal species like Chimpanzees, gorillas and other predators. The habit is taken over by religions as a “cultural” habit to control all female….. I´m a man saying this having 4 daughters…!
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Is The Governing Body The Rulers Of A Criminal Organization? Wolves In Sheep's Clothing
by Brokeback Watchtower ini think we can see that the further we proceed into the future the more criminal this organization looks due to man's more evolved social understanding,, so since this thing is gradual i'm predicting that this evolution will exterminate this cult with a capital fuck you.. since this is a religion that has exported itself(criminal activity) all over the world from usa origins i would expect the usa court system not to come to their aid when reach lawsuits come reaching from all over the world to usa based headquarters living there situated on a contaminated chemical dump site (whether it is properly been clean up it is anybody's guess (i'm guessing not))..
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Bugbear
Brokebaks
Yeas I think you are right. But I´m not Shure if they are aware of it themselves. They are captured in their own mind boxes, and think they are right. But from the normal world and from a normal perspective they are only money-gathering and capitalist. Thinking they are doing humanity a good service, assembling money to get a huge sum of money that at will secure their own “eternal” life and some of their followers….????
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Something funny about Armageddon
by evilApostate inyears ago, when i was still a publisher, i had a very interesting conversation with a lady in the field service.
we were talking about punishment for sin and so on.
she believed in hellfire.
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Bugbear
evilApostate
15-20 years ago before I faded, I was proud telling those hell-scared people that my god, never ever would punish them and their children for eternity in hell with burning fire a.s.f. God was good caring humble and loving his children and wanted all of them to live. And then I realized that If they didn´t do what I was telling them, they were just about to be exposed another hell in Armageddon within short. So the Jwdubs are proud that their God didn´t make hell, but that he will fix it later….
The philosophical flows in the logic are catastrophic. And I wonder how any intelligent human can believe or even loving a God that shows this fallacy. The fact (according to the bible) is that I has already proven to be a mad God in drowning all humans and animals except for 8 persons in a flood about 4300 years ago……and other horrible thing…..
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Why blame the Watchtower?
by deegee inif god has a relationship with every christian and every christian is praying to him then wouldn't he tell every christian the same thing so that christians would agree on matters of doctrine and practice?.
it is certainly puzzling why sincere and devout people equally seek god's will and pray to him yet they all come up with different answers so that there are approximately 40,000 different christian denominations (center for the study of global christianity (csgc) at gordon-conwell theological seminary).. before his death, jesus called for agreement among his followers rather than division (john 17:20-21).
he declared that he would send the holy spirit to guide persons into all the truth (john 14:16 - 17, 26, john 15:26, john 16:7,13 - 15).. so shouldn't anyone who has a relationship with jesus, reads the bible, and listens to the holy spirit come to the same conclusions as others who are doing the same thing?.
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Bugbear
Deegee
I think you have nailed a quite interesting question but not really hit the very deep of the answers. You ask which of the 40.000 different “Christian” faiths are wrong and who is right, expand your questions to the millions of interpreter of Islamic, Buddhist, Hindus and other. Why not include the Greek God Zeus, or Oden Tor or the myriads of African different tribe “believes”. Are you sure that everyone else is wrong but the Christians?
True is that all these representations of “religion”,,,do pray to their God. Everyone claim that they have been heard….That God is with them.?? Everyone claim to have the answers on some wholly book, or some claims to have a deeper feeling, a closer contact with “the higher” spheres which only they can understand. With that claim goes also a responsibility to really take the consequence of their preaching. When they have found to be wrong, none of them step down and admit, that they have lead their people on the wrong track. Not one admits to be a liar, not one will step down and lose his position as a “father”, priest, pope, or Prophet. Human greed for power is immense. With the power also goes an economical factor. If they can control their followers mind, they also often can control their wallets.
It´s a self-spinning wheel. A perpetum Mobile…. And very few people have the guts or knowledge, or the strength to stop this wheel… and start to ask the right questions: where are your proof, where are your logics, where are the findings that can support your claim.
Interesting thread …..
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Shunning & separation from family
by CJxfarmx ini was raised in jw as a child.
my dad was a jw my mom was not, they are divorced now.
i was never baptized or anything but i stopped going once i had the choice at age 12. now i am 41 and my dad will not associate with me, my wife or my 3 kids.
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Bugbear
CJxfarmX
I´ m sorry for you. Not having a father and not been able to show your children their grandpa…must be painful and stressful. But there is a question that rose up.:? Did you ever do the preaching work? Were you ever recognized as a JW? Did your father ever cared for you before the separation. If your answer on these quest. are No…then your father has no scriptural reason to shun you. He is just another blatant idiot to men that doesn’t understand what he actually ought to do…… Taking care of his child. Many men just run away from their responsibility and try to hide behind a façade of working hard, doing the preaching work, don´t want their congregation to know “mistake” from earlier time…Meaning that you “father” is nothing but a real asshole. In fact he is not worth your or your children’s attention at all… These men frequently appears both inside the org and outside…. I must admit that I became a father at the age of 20…a boy…. I was not a good father always trying to avoid my duties as a father….this because my immaturity. Now at the age of 70 and my son at the 50, it has become much much better… We have both left the org and to day my son is my pride (I think he is a little bit proud over his father to)
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This should make most reasonable people stop believing in the Bible as infallible
by ILoveTTATT2 ini think that few parts of the bible can make you atheist or at least agnostic or at least kill your belief in the bible as infallible or the work of a loving god as comparing 2 samuel 24 with 1 chronicles 21. most people focus on the 1st verse, but there are at least 4 major and 1 minor contradiction in the chapter (they are parallel accounts).in the new world translation, 2 samuel 24 starts like this:.
24 and again the anger of jehovah came to be hot against israel, when one incited david against them, saying: “go, take a count of israel and judah.” .
notice that it is an impersonal "one" who incited david to do the census.
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Bugbear
ILoveTTATT 2
Interesting thread. I am very glad that some take up the subject of the parallel accounts. I think there are more of them than an average JW dubs know about. In fact I think 1/3 of the whole OT, its only copies of copies of copies… When the old Hebrews wrote these “scrolls” they used only what was available in the local synagogue. In fact many of these copiers were illiterate men that just copied what their eyes saw. They could not even read what they were copying. And another fact is that they were coping from SCROLLS….not codex format. Which made it almost impossible to check the other synagogue scrolls. The amount of wholly scrolls grew by the time, and nobody had access to the “original texts”. And the masses of text scrolls grow…. When Athanasious about 350 a.C. decided what was within Canonic scriptures….. He had no Idea that most of them were only copies and copies and copies (and in many cases wrong translations) from Hebrew, Aramaic and Coptic scriptures. It was impossible for him to read all the scrolls and find that they were exactly the same texts (but of course with all the misinterpreting’s and wrong spelling) the “copiers” made.
There are faculties’ in many universities that are trying (with modern computer technology) to find out exactly which texts are copied. And on most universities there are available computer solutions to find out if you are just coping another text when you are writing an Essay. Of course you are dismissed if you try.
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An old Kingdom hall now a church?
by HereIgo inhave any of you heard of anything like this.
i remember an ex jw from ohio taking video of a former kingdom hall that is now a church.
apparently the society sold it to the church.
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Bugbear
This thing selling KH, AH branch offices to the ”devil” is nothing new: here in Sweden I can recall at least about 4 selling of, to other “churches”
Ex. 1.: Branch office in Jakobsberg (Stockholm) sold to the Swedish State church (Lutheran) in the beginning of 1970. (motivation: they were the only one that had the money)..
Ex 2. Assembly Hall in Jakobsberg sold a few years later to a Muslim cong. (motivation: it was to costly to maintain.)
Ex.3 Orebro congregation KH…New build…sold to another congregation of Islam. (Motivation ( they wanted the money to establish a much larger KH hall in Orebro with a better location…)
Ex.4 Branch office in Arboga sold to the local community for about §7.000.000 , now a fugitive camp, with about 100 % Muslim population…
The examples could go on and on and on
The success work of preaching and the societies success is very well known over the world…
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Introduction
by robrog8999 inhello all.... i am new here so i figured i'd make a quick post introducing myself and giving a brief intro as to who i am and what i'm here for... as well as to hopefully meet others.. so, i made a profile and in it i gave a pretty detailed explanation as to my intent here and exactly why i decided to participate in the boards.
in case you don't read it, i'll give a brief summary.
the name is robert.
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Bugbear
Hello Robrog 8999..
Welcome to this forum. You are obviously a truth searcher. That is admirable and shows that you are an intelligent person. But if you really want to find the truth, I think the first task is to make an introspection of yourselves. This meaning that you´ll have to find out your motive and how your basic knowledge of moral, bible issues, understanding of philosophical ideas came about.
You are brought up in Columbus Ohio. What if you were born in Calcutta India? or Bangkok? Or South Africa? Would you have been a Christian then? Would you ever notice that 1 billion Christians believe (questionable), that some old rolls/codex written in ancient greek or Hebrew letters are THE WORD FROM GOD. (Or at least some of our interpretations)….
It looks like you think that the Bible itself….can deliver the water of truth, if it is only explained to you. So I suggest that you take up serious Bible studies and take a few courses with real Bible scholars. I can recommend Prof. Bart Ehrman, from Chapel Hill, N.Carolina. He can add a lot of knowledge to your Bible questions. He is specialist in “new testam” historical facts, and it astonishing that very few from those who think they have the “KNOWLEDGE” never refer to Bart…. Look him up in youtube…