Those courageously leaving the religion certainly benefitted by having an insider, as a member of the Governing Body, writing about his experiences and their teachings.
rocketman
JoinedPosts by rocketman
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50
Ray Franz - is he REALLY a hero?
by baltar447 inon one hand, he's enlightnened many to the internal circle jerk that is the governing body (circa the 70s).. but if there's one reason that can be pointed to for the jws becoming full on cult, it's ray franz.
without him leaving in the manner he did, and stirring the pot, they might not have change the rule (retroatively i might add) on shunning of disassociated ones.
they specifically changed that so they could remove him and eliminate his influence.. his actions single handedly have created the situation where we have to fade, evade, leave marriages, say goodbye to family, just because we don't buy the jw bullsh!t anymore.
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CONGREGATION FLEECING RESULTS?
by The Searcher inhow much did your congregation and its bank account get taken for?
share your horror story!.
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rocketman
A couple of decades ago, we had a fund of a few thousand bucks in our KH bank account. We would use it to help out various members of the congregation in emergency situations and to cover some minor expenses that might crop up.. It was donated money, willed to the congregation, for use as it saw fit.
A C.O. came around and told the elders to send the money to the Society, and it was bye-bye fund.
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Would Your Family Stone You to Death?
by cofty inot law required jews to take the lead in stoning a family member who became apostate.. the watchtower has lamented the fact that the law of the land now forbids them from doing so.. if the law permitted it, as it does in some musim countries, and if the watchtower required it, would your family obey?.
my parents are good people and i believe their love for me is genuine, but i think they would follow orders.. what about yours?.
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rocketman
My parents are gone, but there is no way they would have obeyed any directive against me or any of their children. That's one of the many things I loved about them. They were JWs but never really toed the organizational line.
However, I do know at least one set of parents that I think would, because they currently treat their DF'd JW daughter (who is a member of this board) as if she is is dead. Once a person become dead to someone, they may not be such a far cry from actually killing them, given the directive to do so.
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You know, I recently believed that Jesus was a cool guy....
by Muddy Waters inafter leaving the jdub world, for awhile it still seemed like the bible was still a holy book, something valuable, worthy, etc., and that the jw religion had just corrupted it and used it to their own ends.. i thought that jesus was like a bhudda, a guy going around taking about peace and love and who exposed the hypocrisy of the religious leaders.. .
but he also said some hurtful things, harmful things, things like dividing up your family, things like whoever had more affection for their family than for him was not worthy of him, to not take time to bury your father but go preaching instead... to send out his followers without any food for the day but to rely on the kindness of others and believe that that kindness and charity expressed gods blessing and favour.... bah!.
i now believe jesus was just another man, saying both good things and stupid things.
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rocketman
The linked blog that Mad Giant provided the link to really got me thinking, though I should add that it also reinforced and confirmed some of the thinking I've done over the years about Jesus and his teachings.
One example is Jesus strict teaching on divorce. Even his disciples questioned marriage once Jesus basically told them that divorce in all cases except adultery was prohibited. This teaching has caused the Watchtower to come up with all kinds of odd procedures in cases of divorce.
For example, the unfaithfulness has to either be admitted to or proven.
When I was an elder, we had a sister who knew her husband was unfaithful. But he would not admit it, and we told her that someone had to witness him, say, coming out of his mistresses' residence at night.
So this unfortunate woman had to wait until someone saw her husband effectively commit adultery.
All because of Jesus teaching.
And I vividly remember sitting at that meeting with this sister and thinking 'this just isn't reasonable'.
And that's not even the worst it gets. How about women that are abused physically? Well, as long as he's not cheating on them, they can't divorce and remarry, all because of Jesus' teaching on divorce.
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Dinosaurs.
by bobert inas a jw i always believed that dinosaurs at one point existed.
my whole family did, almost all the jws i knew did.
one time i was out for dinner, and one of the people with us was convinced that they never existed.
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rocketman
The Society, as pointed out by fastJehu's research, has indeed acknowledged the existence of dinosaurs. However, they must realize that their timetable for their existence does not even come close to the accepted conclusion in paleontology that they existed for close to 230 million years and went extinct 65 million years ago.
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For All Of Us That Doubt 1914...
by pixel infor all of us that think the wt/gb/fds will fade away 1914, this is what they have to say on a news release from the website talking about the international convention: .
the program will highlight a central theme of the bible and two core beliefs of jehovahs witnesses: that gods kingdom was established in 1914 and that jesus christ is the king of that kingdom.
really, the convention marks the centennial of gods kingdom.. lol.
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rocketman
Happy Birthday God's Kingdom.
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30th Anniversary of THAT classic 1914 WT front cover
by wizzstick in.
please join with me, and celebrate the 30th anniversary of the classic wt with the front cover which boldly proclaimed that the generation of 1914 would never pass away.. the cover date of the that wt is infact this very day so let us raise a glass to this clear sign they have god's backing:.
in this the 100th anniversary of our lords return (invisibly of course brothers) it is a fine and appropriate thing to do..
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rocketman
Good catch in pointing this out, Wizzstick.
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rocketman
NewYork44M said: "I wish I had a pudding baptism".
And I wish I could watch your pudding baptism!
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What is spirit, exactly?
by Viviane ini've always wondered that.
recently i asked that question on another thread and didn't really get ananswer.
cofty made an excellent point that we often hear what it isn't, but that really isn't useful.. so, what is it?
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rocketman
Cofty wrote: "So still no answers to the question of what spirit actually IS."
I think Island provided an answer. He said it's breath, the act of breathing.
Best post to this thread so far.
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The Cat out of the Bag: the story of the release of the NEW WORLD TRANSLATION
by Terry inwhen jehovah's witnesses began distributing door to door the new world translation beginning in the early 1950's a firestorm of protest broke out in mainstream churches.
the alarm cry was "they've changed the bible to fit their own crooked teachings!".
you can imagine the discord as church members tried to figure out how jehovah's witnesses could prove by reading from the nwt the king james version was full of omissions and errors and outright fraud concerning, for instance, the trinity doctrine or the name of god!!.
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rocketman
I would not think of the NWT as causing such a religious ruckus.
I still have my doubts.
Wasn't it, like most things jw, simply ignored for the most part by the mainstream churches?
Maybe there was more to it than I was aware of at the time. Then again, I was a youngin' back in the 1960s and 70s, and was unaware of any defensive reaction to the NWT.