The short answer to this is "yes," there were some sincere (if not flawed) Governing Body members and other "heavies" I knew during my time at Bethel.
The long answer can be found in a few posts I wrote years ago on this forum...
Brock Talon
JoinedPosts by Brock Talon
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9
Fruits of the spirit
by asp59 into all that been in betel service.
as 1440.000 are suppose to rule like kings they must also be an example of putting the fruits of the spirit in there daily life(charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity (kindness), goodness, longanimity (forbearance), mildness (gentleness), faith, modesty, continency (self-control), and chastity.).
have you meet a gb member or other from the 144.000 in betel when you were there that you could easy see that this person wakes up in the morning and is determined to apply fruits of the spirit in there life?
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Brock Talon
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Elon Musk, And The CyberTruck That Homer Built
by Simon ini think tesla and musk have officially jumped the shark.. did you see the "cybertruck" they released?
it's like the car that homer built!.
it has to be the ugliest vehicle ever built.
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Brock Talon
I'm getting one with the trailer!
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The Day I Met a Midnight Cowboy
by Terry in“the day i met a midnight cowboy”a hollywood memory .
he approached me at the service counter.
clutched in his hand : something in a small paper bag.
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Brock Talon
This was an interesting story, Terry. It has life lessons in it that are worth sharing. Thanks for doing so.
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"Gem from the November 2019 WT. Reject apostate material because JWs trust in "their brothers."
by Daniel1555 indear friends.
i didn't post for a while, but i still enjoy the great jwn community.. just wanted to share a "gem" from the november 2019 study watchtower.. paragraph 8 from the article "are you maintaining your large shield of faith?".
satan, “the father of the lie,” uses those under his control to spread lies about jehovah and about our brothers and sisters.
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Brock Talon
I have been labeled an apostate because I wrote a book that tells my own personal experiences that occurred at Bethel in the 1980s exactly as they happened to me.
I told of conversations and discussions of doctrine exactly as they occurred, including the 1975 fiasco I lived through, the generations discussion we had at Bethel back then and how it doesn't measure up to what they say now.
I explained how I was told as a child that I would never graduate high school, let alone college, yet here I am 30 years into my career that was enabled by a college education, one they tried to prevent me from having.
I explained that they claimed that all the Governing Body members I knew at Bethel (and other "Anointed") would not die out before the big "A" would come (they even published a Watchtower about it with pictures of the GB on the cover that I knew personally) yet ironically every single one of them has now been dead for decades.
I explained my feelings about all of this, how the lack of love was repeatedly shown to me for over 35 years in one congregation after another, and how it all adversely affected my life, and why I could no longer bear being a Jehovah's Witness any longer.
For that, I am called a liar and a tool of Satan for writing "apostate" material.
They got a lot of nerve.
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Revealed: Inside the 'creepy' Jehovah's Witnesses tunnels
by Brock Talon ini wanted to share this recent article by the dailymail.com which gave me a smile.
my wife actually found it first and told me "hey hon, i found this interesting article by the jws.
they talk about the things in your books about the bethel dungeon-like tunnels, you know, the old people bending hangers, commissaries and dinning rooms connected and all that...".
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Brock Talon
I wanted to share this recent article by the DailyMail.com which gave me a smile. My wife actually found it first and told me "Hey hon, I found this interesting article by the JWs. They talk about the things in your books about the Bethel dungeon-like tunnels, you know, the old people bending hangers, commissaries and dinning rooms connected and all that..."
Revealed: Inside the 'creepy' Jehovah's Witnesses tunnels under the religion's former headquarters in Brooklyn Heights which were once used by thousands of worshipers to secretly get around
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I Am Still Here! Another Birthday look back at one helluva lifetime
by TerryWalstrom inwhen the doctor pulled my screaming body out of mom all those 7 decades ago, i landed in a post-wwii world.the world of 1947--compared to today's world--an alien planet.. the world i live in today has nothing in common with the world in which i grew up.. there were no cell phones back then--there were black telephones with a dial-tone and an operator who placed your call.
everywhere you found telephone booths!
a call was a nickel.where did all those telephone booths go?i dunno.where did my whole world go?i dunno.. tv sets were huge boxes with tubes and small screens.
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Brock Talon
Glad you are here, Terry. You make the world a bit more interesting.
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Name of the fictional "Novel" published by jf Rutherford
by NikL inwell i consider all of his books fictional but that's another story :-).
a while back i read about a novel that i understood was published by wt and there was some sort of connection with da judge.. i remember i found it online and was going to look through it but never got the chance.. now i can't find it and for the life of me i can't remember the name of it or the author.. unfortunately, google isn't helping.. it was about life before the flood.. anyone able to help?.
thanks in advance.
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Brock Talon
The book is called "Angels and Women" and I wrote about my experience when first running into this book in the Bethel library in this posting:
https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/205039/bethel-memory-14-angels-women-kinda-like-playboy
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Famous last words spoken by every jdub at one time or another
by nowwhat? in"oh i'm not going to worry about it, armageddon will be here by then!".
-including me.
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Brock Talon
"I live in a SPIRITUAL paradise."
... spoken by the person just before everyone he's ever known as a Jehovah's Witness shuns or marks him for some self-righteous, petty reason that would make no sense to anyone else on planet earth who had an ounce of fairness in their heart.
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"What do you need a college education for? What good will it do you in the new system of things, if you get there at all chasing material riches?"
... spoken by the guy who has now broken his back working as a janitor for 40 years living in a one room apartment with no medical or dental health care whatsoever and no money in the bank for retirement.
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"I married a SPIRITUAL MAN / WOMAN and not for superficial reasons."
... spoken by the person just before marrying into a loveless, sexless, joyless endurance test of a marriage.
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The older I get the more angry I become!
by Sour Grapes ini did some self-reflection today trying to determine why, with every passing day, i become angrier against the watchtower company.
i am in my 70's and my health is failing.
at first, i thought it was because "worldly" people couldn't care less about jdubs and the little world they live in even though the witlesses think that the earth revolves around them and their desert god who was originally worshipped by the cainites.
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Brock Talon
Sour Grapes
When I started to wake up, I was angry at first too. But I soon realized I was only hurting myself. After all, the people I was most angry with were not even in my life any more, including my parents who got me into the mess in the first place. All those people would never feel my anger, so what good was it doing me?
Once I fully woke up, I also came to the realization that I was angry with myself as well. That anger lingered somewhat because the person it was directed at looked at me every day in the mirror.
Eventually, I had to learn to let it go and forgive myself for all the wasted time and opportunities. I forgave myself for trying to build relationships and attempting to please people that didn’t really care about me.
Once I did that, I was able to move on and build a happy life. I don’t think I could have done that successfully if I was eaten up with anger. Now, I will admit that from time to time I feel a slow, dull, ache of regret. But that comes less frequently and with less intensity all the time. I don't feel anger any more.
The only way I am reminded of any of these kinds of feelings is when I peruse social media sites like this one. I come here from time to time in order to remind myself of where I came from, and also to see what is going on in the ex-JW community because I still care about it. But I limit it because it can bring back negative feelings I don't want to have.
My suggestion is to try to limit your thinking about all this stuff and concentrate on something you really want to do that you never would have before. The Watch Tower already took many years from you; why give them any more?
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God wipes out humans/wickedness in Noah's Flood but somehow wickedness returns
by RULES & REGULATIONS ingenesis 6: 9-139 this is the account of noah and his family.noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with god.
10 noah had three sons: shem, ham and japheth.11 now the earth was corrupt in god’s sight and was full of violence.12 god saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways.
13 so god said to noah, “i am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them.
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Brock Talon
Just playing devil’s advocate here folks…
Here are my thoughts as to how this could all be explained that the flood was needed. I thought of all of this as a young man after reading “Angels and Women” (which I wrote about in my first book I found in the Bethel library.)
This was my thinking on why the flood had to happen:
First, the Nephilim blood line needed to be taken out of the human gene pool.
Satan did his level best to completely “ruin” God’s creation by introducing an abomination of Angel/Women hybrids. This “ruined” the Earth, not just with violence itself, but with violent beings who were part of the gene pool. Getting rid of this gene pool could not be done in one fell swoop however. At least one of Noah’s son’s wives could have had some of that nasty blood-line in her, so it persisted even after the flood. It persisted to a lesser degree however, but showed up later in the “sons of Anakin” you know, Goliath like people. But God wiped them all out as because He insisted that the Isrealites never intermarry with these folks. This drastic measure wasn’t just for religious purity, it was for the genetic elimination of the Nephilim once and for all. Thus, the genocide of many peoples written about in the books of Moses were spelled out specifically. With the last of those people gone, the last of the Nephilim bloodline was gone too. Gene pool ruination score: God 1, Satan 0.
Second, the Earth itself needed to be changed.
I never could figure out exactly why God didn’t make the Earth the way it is now right from the start, but it seems that the old Earth, one with a water canopy above and a fountain of water below had to change. What God would have done to cause this change should Adam NOT have sinned, I haven’t the foggiest idea. Maybe he would have had them build a TON of arks to save themselves. Or maybe God just knew ahead of time Adam would sin and the Earth would have to change in this way anyway… unknown answer… It is a very philosophical question actually, did God KNOW Adam would sin? Of course! He’s omniscient. But knowing something would happen and being responsible for it are two different things. He gave men free will to screw up in lieu of creating robots who did as they were programmed. But He knew which route they would take too.
Anyway, the Earth changed, continents moved, polar ice caps formed, mountains formed, deserts formed, the Grand Canyon formed, Wooly Mammoths are trapped in ice with buttercups in their mouths, etc. Without the flood, the Earth wouldn’t look like it does now. Which is freaking beautiful. Anyway, that was my theory as a child.
Third, to show God’s power
The flood is used in the Bible as a cautionary tale and an indicator of how God can and will step in on a worldwide scale when He decides to. Yes wickedness returned after the flood, but that was because it was still baked into us. Yes, He could use Angels to do his work again (and has, example 185,000 Assyrian soldiers killed by one Angel in one night), but he also can use nature itself. The Red Sea, the giant hailstones, serpents, earthquakes opening up and swallowing, etc. All of this is to be a precursor of even an even greater display of God’s wrath on the entire Earth during judgement day. I had always imagined that God would use every kind of destructive force when he decided to… floods, earthquakes, angels, animals, pestilence, fire, brimstone, hailstones, Donald Trump tweets…
Again, Devil’s advocate…
Now, go ahead and tear this apart… :)