Posts by Brock Talon

18

PLACE OF PILGRIMAGE

by Hairtrigger in

it just struck me while reading another post on the forum.

the catholics have numerous shrines all over the world and places of pilgrimage and the mother of them all ... rome.

the muslims have mecca and medina.

Brock Talon

Excerpt from Journey to God's House, page 9.

"We Witnesses named our headquarters Bethel, which translates in Hebrew to 'House of God.' Being asked to work there was the ultimate privilege a young Witness could aspire to. There simply was no higher calling for anybody raised in the Jehovah's Witness faith. Every religion has a special holy place which is revered and where its believers plan to make the occasional pilgrimage: Islam has its Mecca, Judaism its Wailing Wall, Catholicism its Vatican, and hedonists the Playboy Mansion.

We Witnesses had Bethel."

18

Santa Ana, Calif. News Report: Jehovah's Witness molested 4-5 girls

by AndersonsInfo in

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ag6ftvig9b8.

kacey montoya for channel 5.

Brock Talon

Hey darkspilver - Why not try for 150% accuracy? I mean, what a slouch to only go for 110%. Or maybe you should try for 1,000% accuracy? What about 1 billion % accuracy?

I always find it amusing when someone like you tries to sound smart, but then offers that there is the possibility of having more than one hundred out of one hundred - which is what 100 per cent means.

If you cannot get a grasp on that simple axiomatic concept, the rest of your reasoning will be just as faulty.

30

Is it morally wrong to put Watchtower behind?

by Darkknight757 in

with our latest and final run in with the elders, the wife and i had a very long talk about what's next in our life.

do we try to help others see the light as it were concerning watchtower or do we just let it go and move on with our life?

we have made it perfectly clear that we will never go back to watchtower and we are finally happy.

Brock Talon

Is it morally wrong to put on your own oxygen mask first before helping others with theirs during an airplane depressurization emergency?

Is it morally wrong to keep get your loved ones and yourself on a lifeboat on a sinking ship, especially when everyone else is ignoring the ship taking on water?

Is it morally wrong to sweet talk a rabid dog by offering it a treat so it doesn't bite you, so you can get away from it, and then maybe call animal control later?

Take care of yourself and your own first. Worry about everyone else once your head is clear.

33

Disassociation revealed what type of man my father really is.

by Paul Mooney in

i began my exit from the jehovah’s witness organization about 5 years.

i was a 4th generation born-in, with all the baggage that comes with having the “spiritual heritage” attached to the group.

i was an elder/bethelite/pioneer/whatever other useless privilege there was, i had no family or friends outside of the organization… my entire life was that org.

Brock Talon

Loved this post Paul. Good for you brother. I believe more people are out there like your father, only they don't have the guts to say it. Glad you got some sort of closure and/or relief. I'm going to live vicariously through you for the next few minutes now, wishing one of my parents said something like that to me.

41

I don't think I will be able to escape the JWs ...

by nevaagain in

jw
friends

i know i will get a lot of backslash on this forum for saying this, but as it looks like, i won't ever be able to escape the jws.

i have been a born in, third generation jw and awoken in one way or another (i joined this forum 15 years ago) for a very long time.

but i have adapted to the jw lifestyle to a point where it does not bother me anymore.

Brock Talon

This is the saddest post I have read in a very long time. I won't give you "backlash" about it because it's your life and you should live it how you want to.

Still, maybe you should think of renaming your avatar to something like "foreva again"...

27

My sources say Jr brown has died

by poopie in

jw
friends

end of era.

Brock Talon

My favorite JR Brown story happened while I was at Bethel in the early 1980's. He was giving a talk that was railing against "Music that debases" and told how "vulgar today's music is" and used a song by Donna Summer as an example. It was a relatively older song by that time called "Love to Love you Baby", but he used it anyway as an example.

He went on to say about it: "With all that oohing and aahing, moaning and groaning, brothers and sisters that song is actually simulated orgasm!"

When the crowd erupted from his statement, he added to a bigger eruption: "Children, if you don't know what that means, ask your parents!"

--

Man - I wish I had remembered that story when I wrote my book on Bethel... I would have put it in there somewhere.

-Brock Talon

25

Did Crisis of Conscience find a market or did it lumber along until the copies ran out?

by TerryWalstrom in

jw
friends

curiosity.i would think c of c was the grand-daddy of all the ex-jw books.is there any way to know for sure how many copies sold?

over what span of time before the 1st edition ended?

why did it peter out of print if it was a perennial seller?today, every tom, dick, and jasper has self-published the bleeding wound, 1st person singular, true confessional version of their own fall from grace.

Brock Talon

Nathan Natas,

For paperbacks, the royalties vary by country, but in the U.S. it's a little over $3. For Kindle, it's about $3.50.

And by the way, the numbers I gave you earlier are for both books together, not just one.

I use the Amazon tool that estimates what price is best for selling a book. Pricing is an interesting thing: if you are too low or too high, your sales are affected. Too high and of course you discourage people, but too low and the perception can be it has little value and thus ignored. For Kindle unlimited, since people can read unlimited books for one price, they often skip cheap or free books because they want to get a "value" for their monthly subscription. So, you have to find the right prices for both printed and digital book formats in order to get the most sales.

For me, sales means eyes, ears and ultimately, hearts.

137

Mouthy has Passed Away

by Simon in

jw
friends

update on mouthy (grace gough)this is graces granddaughter.

i wanted to send an update that today my beautiful grandmother passed away - surrounded by friends and family.

- may 22 1927 - sept 2nd 2016. mouthys_granddaughter.

Brock Talon

I am very sad to hear about this. Mouthy was a very nice person who was one of the ones that welcomed me and treated me properly when I first started posting. She was a class act all the way.

25

Did Crisis of Conscience find a market or did it lumber along until the copies ran out?

by TerryWalstrom in

jw
friends

curiosity.i would think c of c was the grand-daddy of all the ex-jw books.is there any way to know for sure how many copies sold?

over what span of time before the 1st edition ended?

why did it peter out of print if it was a perennial seller?today, every tom, dick, and jasper has self-published the bleeding wound, 1st person singular, true confessional version of their own fall from grace.

Brock Talon

CreateSpace reports I've sold 498 paperbacks since my first book was published, so that's about 180 a year or about 15 a month. Regarding Kindle, that is more difficult to estimate because of the sales and the unlimited being separate, but I'd say I sold about 50 books a month this last quarter. My books actually sell less over time however, they sold more when they were new and #1 in the JW genre.

For those not acquainted, these are my two books:

Journey to God's House: www.amazon.com/Journey-Gods-House-Headquarters-Witnesses-ebook/dp/B00EEIWUFW

Escape from Paradise: www.amazon.com/Escape-Paradise-Jehovahs-Witnesses-thirty-five-ebook/dp/B00S292JS2/

That said, those reading this should know I wrote my books to help people, not to make money. One woman recently wrote that she quit her free home Bible study because of my book, so that is very satisfying. While I'm no Ray Franz, I've tried to do my part.

Also, it should be said that I could have spent all that time writing, publishing, etc. making money at my job where one good sale would make as much as years worth of selling books. I figured this would be the case up front and wrote as a labor of love. Finally, I have given all of the money I've made so far on those books to charity.

However, I am now writing my first novel (fiction) tentatively entitled "The Redemption Sect". If I ever can finish it, and if it every makes any money, I'm keeping it!

Brock Talon

18

Moral indignation against "faders" shows JW apologists are morally bankrupt

by slimboyfat in

i came across this weird blog that castigates fading jws for their "cowardice" and "hypocrisy" for not making themselves vulnerable to shunning.

apparently in the view of this blogger jws who discover it's not the truth are morally obliged to play by the watchtower rules and face the consequences of shunning.. http://jwresearchblog.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/fading-faking-and-lying-as-unbelieving.html#comment-form.

what is absent from the blog post is any discussion of the statement in the july 2009 awake!, that no one should be made to choose between their beliefs and their family.

Brock Talon

This is an interesting subject to me. I can totally understand why current JWs hate faders: it takes away their power because faders don't play into the Watchtower rules.

But what I never understood was why some EX JWs are so hard-nosed against faders. Let me tell you my run-in with one:

A woman who goes by the name Sue Taylor on Facebook (AKA littlegirlietaylor) read my first book Journey to God's House and friended me to talk about my book She went on and on about how brilliant the writing was, how I had a "gift" and so on. She gave the book 5 stars on Amazon.com with a wonderful review added and took to championing my book on social media as an ex-JW who thought my book should be read by everyone. Of course, that was all very flattering, so I engaged her in small talk using Facebook messaging thanking her. All was good.

Fast forward about 6 months and I released my second book, Escape from Paradise. One chapter in it explains how I faded from the JWs. Well, this woman went beserk about that. She Facebook messaged me a long rambling message of how I was a fake, that I needed therapy, that I wasn't "true to self" and bunches of other insults about me and my family. She Facebook unfriended me and then wrote a 1 star review on the book. She even changed the previous 5 star review for the first book to a 1 star review and changed the review itself slamming the book she had previously praised.

To top it all off, she went on a rampage of down-voting every good review both of my books had, adding in snide comments on other reviews and so on. She even wrote "The Society" about me and then called the Police on me when I responded to her abuse telling her she was out of line. She was so nuts I had to report her to Amazon and they eventually took down everything she did because they could see she was abusing the review policy.

But what set her off was the one paragraph in my second book where I simply stated I chose to fade rather than disassociate myself, explaining why I did it. That simply infuriated her.

Since then, I've watched out for other ex-JWs who resent faders. It's not a lot, but there are some.

To me they seem to resent it that they disassociated themselves or got disfellowshipped and suffered over it and they feel that faders "cheat" the system and don't have to pay the price they paid.

Well, I want to say to any potential fader-haters out there who might be reading this that EVERYONE pays a price for leaving the JWs. Some pull the band aid off quickly, others slowly, but it hurts either way. Faders have many reasons for fading, but don't think they don't suffer. It's just done in a different way. It may be that some faders may suffer even worse than many non-faders.

So if this is you (an ex-JW fader-hater) please, ease up. Just be happy you're out and stop resenting others who may have got out differently than you.

Brock Talon