These are 7 of my experiences that were major catalysts which helped me decide to leave the Watchtower Society. 1. Two years after I became a Jehovahs Witness and because of WBTS teachings, whether in print or not, that 1975 was a “marked” year according to their version of bible chronology, many followers of the WBTS foolishly went deeply into debt in 1974, making expensive purchases that they believed they would not have to pay for, and by the end of 1975, there began a gradual “exodus” of those who had believed the WBTS false prophecy, one of many made by the Governing Body, which they would hurry to deny and would quickly hide the evidence (CYA) by issuing new publications, with disclaimers and refurbished false prophecies, to replace the old publications, containing old disclaimers and old false prophecies. Some of their members quit attending meetings and became inactive. Even up to the present, the WBTS discourages its followers from reading or researching material in their older publications. They steadily work to have the various congregations get rid of older books and publications, in which they’ve prophesied falsely, making false claims about past and future dates, etc., in order that no one can research and see clearly just what false prophets the WBTS heirarchy truly are. They claim the changes are due to their light getting brighter. But then....it is well-known by avid bible scholars that the antichrist appears as a messenger or angel of light. Im positive that an Etch-a-Sketch was not used to engrave ten commandments in stone, nor would a God find it necessary to keep changing light bulbs for a greater wattage. 2. In 1985, my unbaptized oldest son fell in with bad company and committed a crime. He was sentenced and sent away for approximately one year. I repeatedly begged the BOE to write to him or get some of the younger brothers in the congregation to write to him to encourage him. No one ever did. When he returned home, he was so remorseful and wanted to begin working towards baptism into the organization. But the BOE had notified me shortly before he was due back that they were announcing to the congregation that he was disfellowshipped, even though he had never been baptised. They also did not notify him of this decision, but ordered that I should be the one to tell him after he returned. It was with a very heavy heart that I told him their decision right after he told me what his feelings and plans were regarding the path he had decided to take. 3. In late 1989, a year after I had moved to California, I was injured in a car accident. By March, 1990, my money had run out, we were on public assistance, soon to be evicted from our apartment, since I could no longer afford the rent. My JW sister who’d invited me out there and lived in the same apartment complex had essentially turned her back on us. Another JW, who was my sisters friend and who also lived there and for whom I had found a good-paying job, refused to loan me either of her two cars (she lived alone) and refused to even drive us to the store or to medical appointments. My ankles were still bad because we had to walk everywhere we needed to go and they had no opportunity to heal properly and my head was still swollen and black and blue from the double concussion. I had asked for and received the funds from public assistance to move to another less expensive apartment, and had called the BOE for assistance to move, since I had absolutely no one around who would or could help me. I simply needed some strong backs and a pickup to move our belongings. When the day came that we were supposed to be moving out (re: being evicted), I had yet to hear from the BOE. I kept watch that last day to see if they would show up to help us. Neither had anyone else from the KH shown up at any time since the car accident to see if we were even still alive. Finally, late afternoon, there was a knock on my door. It was two elders from the KH, dressed in suits. They told me they’d been sent by the P.O. to let me know that there was no way they were going to provide me with the funds to move and that since I had gotten myself into that mess, I could just very well get myself out of it. I had wondered why they had suits on and why there were only two of them when they had arrived at my door. Now I knew. After they left, I realized we were now completely alone, having been deserted by everyone we knew and there would be no help forthcoming. I had already rented a studio apartment some distance away with the moving funds provided for us, but the Constable was scheduled to arrive the next day and throw our belongings into the street, because we had no way to move them by ourselves. I began praying. The next morning a young woman from another congregation came to check up on us, because her family had heard I was in a car accident. When I told her what had happened with my request for help from the BOE to move our belongings, she called her parents and they were there with a pickup truck within less than an hour. There are some good people in their organization, after all. 4. The BOE of the KH from which I moved wouldn’t accept my son’s efforts to qualify for baptism. They couldn’t convincingly say why, even though I showed them from the scriptures that their requirements for baptism were not scriptural. At one point the Circuit Overseer was visiting our KH and one of his speeches was about parents trying to help their children be baptized and he called it nepotism. I thought to myself, ‘Hmm, does that make Jehovah a nepotist, too, since he approved and supported his sons baptism?’ The COs speech was from the podium at a meeting in the KH in front of the whole congregation. His speech and what another elder did to my son one morning were the catalysts that moved me to change back to the congregation that had moved into the KH on Iris Lane, which also served as the new local Assembly Hall for all the congregations in the city. These catalysts became part of more than a few reasons why I deliberately forced them to disfellowship me two years later. 5. One morning, my youngest son, who had been promised by an elder that he would pick him up for field service, went out to the apartment complex parking lot in the freezing rain with nothing but his suit jacket to keep him warm and dry. He waited for an hour and forty-five minutes to be picked up. When he came back in crying his little heart out, I was shocked, because I thought he was already out in field service. Oh, the elder had finally shown up all right. He had left his showboat of a car in the KH parking lot and hitched a ride in a small to mid-sized car full of Pioneers (special title for those who devote full time to the preaching work) and when they drove up, the elder told my son they didn’t have room for him.... Sorry! After that, my son would never feel the same about wanting to get baptized or being a witness again. It broke his heart and mine, too. 6. While we waffled back and forth between two Kingdom Halls, an older sister in the congregation buddied up to us and began paying us regular visits at home and taking us out in field service and to the meetings. I vaguely wondered, ‘why?’ but dismissed my concerns as unimportant, even though her sudden attention made me uneasy. She would unexpectedly pop in for visits at our home. What was she trying to find and why? I was still trying to help my son get his wish to be baptized fulfilled, even though by now his heart was no longer in it. One night at a meeting, I noticed that both the Presiding Overseer’s wife and this older sister went to the restroom during the meeting, one following the other. I jumped up from my seat, because I suspected something was going on with their going to the bathroom almost at the same time, so I went to the bathroom, too. When I entered the door, there were the two of them, the older sister’s lips pressed up against the P.O.’s wife’s ear, whispering. She had such a wicked gleam in her eyes and they both jumped back from each other when I entered and each one gave me a big phony smile and quickly left the restroom. The next time that the older sister took us out in field service, I confronted her about the incident in the bathroom and she admitted that the P.O. had her befriend us in order to spy on us. I never could find out exactly why and I wasn’t doing anything but working and studying and going out in field service and attending meetings. At the next meeting we attended, the P.O. also turned my son down for baptism again. 7. During the same time period, the P.O. also gave a disfellowshipping talk that would have singed your ear hairs. He stood onstage at the podium and graphically described in a very denigrating, sneering manner....all the sights, sounds and smells of the acts of fornication that a young Pioneer sister had engaged in to get herself disfellowshipped.....as she sat there in the middle of the KH, and loudly sobbed her heart out, while the young Pioneer “brother” involved only received public reproof as his punishment. The Kingdom Hall was full of families with small children that were subjected to those descriptions. My son and I were totally disgusted with the P.O. to the point that we would have stood up in the middle of the his discourse and exited the KH if our butts hadn’t been plastered to our seats by the Societys deeply-ingrained teachings preventing us from making a scene. I knew that the elders on the committee reviewing the incident had intensely questioned that young woman for all the sordid details of the actions for which she had been disfellowshipped. Otherwise, how could they have known what to graphically describe in front of the whole congregation? Some elders are notorious for this. Some of them do not ever remain discreet about anything, unless it concerns their own ass (CYA). I know that not all elders are that way, but still..... if they stay silent for fear of bringing condemnation from the other elders down on their heads, they remain part of the problem. The good elders leave.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Mar 2014 21:29:18 +0000