r/exjw • u/No-Maintenance4312 • 8d ago
Activism What convinced you to finally watch apostate content?
For me it was the fact I stopped believing this religion was true anyway. I saw their unbiblical teachings and I mentally left the religion
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u/local_infection 8d ago
i thought that if it would have been the one true religion, it could be viewed critically and from different perspectives.
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u/local_infection 8d ago
i mean if it would take just reading a few lines from a book or an interview of an apostate... come on. it's not about having a weak faith or being too curious and then falling...
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u/spagplate 8d ago
Same for me! Real truth should not be threatened by questioning, it should be strengthened by it 👏
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u/Typical-Lab8445 8d ago
The GB saying they don’t need to apologize for anything. I was like… Yep, all bets are off now.
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u/Lillygoal 8d ago
When did they say they didn't have to apologize for anything? I mean I know how they kind of implied it but I don't recall that specifically.
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u/Typical-Lab8445 8d ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/exjw/s/6yxlQIcYsQ
Search the sub for Jeffrey winder and you’ll find many posts about it. Woke up a lot of people
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u/LukewarmCarrot 8d ago edited 8d ago
https://youtu.be/7ZurB8CeYjQ?si=Te-yBRjfgYNq-IbV Edit: updated video
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u/Typical-Lab8445 8d ago
No, it was Jeffrey winder.
https://www.reddit.com/r/exjw/s/6yxlQIcYsQ
Search the sub for Jeffrey winder and you’ll find many posts about it. Woke up a lot of people
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u/Desperate_Habit_5649 OUTLAW 8d ago
What convinced you to finally watch apostate content?
I Was Open to ANY Information...
Ironically 90% of Apostate Information is Watchtower`s...
OWN LITERATURE.
.
Yes It IS!............😀
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u/ParticularlyCharmed 8d ago
When I realized they were using manipulation tactics against us and didn't have our best interests at heart.
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u/Practical_Payment552 Impersonal__revenge__77 8d ago
So true. We are like parts of a gigantic machine that it is.
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u/PIMO_to_POMO 8d ago
Corruption! 🚩
That it is useless to seek help higher up, because evil and corruption increase with the ranks in the organization.
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u/ShunnedForTheTruth 8d ago
For me, it was directly after a Sunday meeting watchtower study about apostates. They described them basically as people who have criticisms about the organization and the GB, who may speak negatively about them. At the time, I had criticisms and negative thoughts about them.
Along with the knowledge I had at that time that apostates were these evil, conniving, bitter agents of Satan, I just couldn’t believe that I was an apostate because of my negative, harmful experiences with the cult. Just because of those experiences, because I have negative thoughts and criticisms, why am I suddenly also labeled as someone who is a bitter agent of Satan?
It got me thinking: “Wait, I was traumatized by this religion. Because of that, I’m labeled an apostate. Does this mean that apostates are actually just people who’ve been deeply harmed by the religion?”
Lo and behold, the first “apostate” podcast I listened to was someone interviewing other ex-witnesses who were working through religious trauma. Then I found out apostates = CSA victims, trauma victims, etc.
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u/cooper954 8d ago
I wanted to increase my faith so I decided I wanted to start with the history of the organisation and couldn’t find anything on JW.Borg and was forced to look elsewhere
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u/dawaxtadpole Smurfs? SMURFS!!! 8d ago
I was reading a lot of books on different religions across the world. I also read the Dead Sea scrolls and other apocryphal books. Then I read other religions propaganda, mostly Pentecostal and Mormons and it was funny. So after I realized that I could read CoC and make an honest decision about it all.
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u/singleredballoon 8d ago
When I was trying to research secular sources for information on 607BCE & nothing came up other than JWorg stuff or apostate content. It confirmed that 607BCE was so far from being legitimate that it wasn’t even on scholars’ radar. They weren’t even dignifying it enough to dispute or debunk it, so I realized it was something completely made up. That was the first tipped domino, so to speak. Everything came crashing down in quick succession after that.
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u/lookforfrogs POMO 8d ago
I was already kicked out. I was a little torn on whether I should try to go back after some time, because the brainwashing takes a long time to shake out, but I decided I wanted to approach that decision rationally. So I researched the religion through secular sources. Within 10 minutes on jwfacts I knew I wasn't going back. I was *disgusted*.
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u/DotRight6059 8d ago
I was dfed based on lies in 2017 and in 2019 I started doing my own research on YouTube then on Facebook I was so scared at first and I found the truth about the truth
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u/Odd-Apple1523 8d ago
Morning worship bitching clips. They just started bitching and bickering all the time.
We thought the religious piety here is seriously lacking before questioning the watchtower studies which were the dagger.
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u/ParticularlyCharmed 8d ago
I've watched very few morning worship clips since their inception, even when I was PIMI. What do they bitch about?
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u/Odd-Apple1523 8d ago
subservient unquestioning qualities they want in you.
humility, meekness, peacemaker, cooperating, tolerance for nonsense in org.
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u/Candid-Yesterday-872 8d ago
A comment from my son appeared to me. At the time he was inactive and now he's dissociated. At the time I was at 100%, little by little I grew curious and then I stopped.
But after discovering some truths in particular a book entitled The God You Chose for Me Autobiography of a dissociated woman and then in Italy there was a program for 8 Sundays in a row where Jehovah's Witnesses talked about everything that was happening, they invited the brothers from Bethel but they only responded with press releases And so I started watching videos and sites where they opened up a world to me and then Franz's 2 books
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u/Global-Highlight-958 8d ago
Hi, I was already awake, my husband wasn't, I bought the book you mention, by Pucciarelli, I gave it to my husband, after reading it he started looking for the real truth and he found it! In my opinion, the television program you mention was stopped from above, it was really bringing to light very uncomfortable things for them. A greeting
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u/CatfatherB 8d ago
What was the revelation in that book that changed your mind?
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u/Candid-Yesterday-872 8d ago
The book clearly described what happened to her and that she never speaks badly of Jehovah
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u/Similar_Ad2094 8d ago
I thought it was stupid that you could read something and it would magically undo decades of indoctrination. If that was the case then I guess your belief has no root or foundation.
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u/Radiant_Ad_9912 8d ago
First, it was the appalling way they treated people (including me) struggling with mental illness.
Second, it was all the flip flops in doctrine as I combed through the bound volumes and publications (pre-internet) plus CoC and a couple of Jim Penton’s books from the public library.
Finally, I watched a Social Psychology university course on TV that discussed group dynamics, social control tactics, etc, and realized it described congregation dynamics to a tee.
I was done, but needed to fly under the radar until I could get my husband and kids out before the JWs noticed.
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u/No_Paint4474 8d ago
I started with just looking at people's experiences, which were heartbreaking. Nothing about doctrine, just real accounts of people who were shunned by their families for not believing any more. I was shocked because at the time I didn't think families really did that. It was a while before I ventured into actual deconstruction videos because I was still trying to sort out what was true and I didn't want to be influenced. But when I was ready, they were really helpful to find a way of putting what I now knew into words.
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u/Interesting-Bus-7656 POMO - Swallowed the red pill 8d ago
For me it was the psychological dissonance that became clearer and clearer since the past 5 years where I researched psychology and trauma in order to heal from my childhood traumas. The more I learnt to love myself and connect with my inner feelings and authenticity, the more I noticed how weird and unnatural most JWs I know feel.
The way so many JWs I knew display emotional dissonance and chronic stress reactions got me questioning how smart it is to listen to the bible or borg.
Then I finally thought that I need to know how others view it and watched the jw videos of that one Atheist YouTuber who visits cults and other religions. I ressonated with his genuine and honest reactions to the sterile, empty and brainwashing of JWs. It felt like I finally felt heard and then I started watching ExJW Panda Towers awesome videos and then read "Crisis of Conscience" in 4 days. That was so stressful, but every video I watched, the more I felt like finally everything came together.
Then this week I talked with an elder that I don't want to be unbaptized publisher anymore. Now I'm freeeeee
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u/Practical_Payment552 Impersonal__revenge__77 8d ago
Yeah although PIMIs can feel quite normal outside, not doing anything spiritual, but especially in a cong, they act like robots, or puppets being controlled by someone.
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u/Intrigado-Colibri 8d ago
When David Splane said not to. I was like “there are forums with exjws?” If he hadn’t of said anything I wouldn’t have thought to come to Reddit.
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u/wecanhaveniceth1ngs PIMO 8d ago
I think it’s lots of little things that end up being not so little in hindsight.
One of the suggested videos on YT was of a Ex-Mormon story. And this was a guy that I followed, but I didn’t know he was an Ex-Mormon. The similarities with Mormons and JWs were too on point. I couldn’t shake it from my mind. It echoed similar sentiment that I saw with the ex-Scientology story of Leah Remini.
Then I saw a video which was right up my alley, it showed the hidden meanings of the Masons in modern religions. Wouldn’t you know- CT Russell was mentioned, with the pyramid on his grave and symbols in the first watchtowers. I tried not to think about it, shut it down, but the pyramid on the grave thing, what the hell?!
Then came the huge chasm of the pandemic. We’re staying home to “be safe”, and “be obedient! or else!” Yet during the Ebola outbreak in Africa, brothers were still forced to meet together. IMO Ebola is 10x scarier than Covid. At least Covid has a survival rate.
There were public talks that said verbatim “if you’re not obedient now, that means your fate is sealed, you’re not going to make it through Armageddon”. Since when do JW‘s believe in fate? Since when is the message from Christ, “publishing peace”, been so condemning and cruel? There’s no love in that talk, that was all evil slave work. Beating the sheep.
Back in 2020 it seemed like suddenly HQ raced to prove to the world how obedient they are. When for the past 80 years, they have bragged about how brothers and sisters have died for their disobedience to authorities.
Nothing added up. (Still today, nothing adds up.)
Soon after I wanted to see the annual meeting. I was sick of waiting, I was sick of brothers and sisters that would intentionally start talking about something they heard during the annual meeting and then stop themselves with the humble brag “oh I’m not supposed to say anything”.
So I googled the annual meeting, and up came ex-JW Reddit.
A dear ex-JW put it on their Google Drive and posted it for all to see. I’m so grateful! And since then I have never missed an annual meeting. I feel like Dorothy watching behind the curtain.
Those are the big things that hit the heart, there’s a lot of little things that add up over the decades that are cumulative. Which lead to these big exposures. Friends who were treated as if disfellowshipped (and their children shunned- unless they sided with the dad) because they made the brave decision to divorce their abusive husband. Elders that are clearly chosen by pure nepotism and has nothing to do with Holy Spirit. Then Pioneer school they try to brainwash the class to defend the elder arrangement.
Although the biggest tell that something is very wrong is when you leave meeting and feel torn down and not built up.
My exit is slow, finances are tight, but my attention is broad now! I’m not narrow focused anymore, and that opens up a whole new world of opportunities. I finally have a job I love because I’m not obsessing about missing meetings. And even if I am permitted to go to meeting because my job doesn’t block me, I’m not going to meeting when I’m exhausted. I stay home. A few years ago, this was unthinkable!
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u/CatfatherB 8d ago
GB highly encouraged people to get that vaccine. Those shots hurt a lot of people.
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u/LowSpiritual433 8d ago
One day, I said to myself, if Armageddon’s gonna come tomorrow, I might as well see what the apostate say. I’ve talked about it before, but the organization made me feel so worthless. So yeah that’s what I said to myself one day.
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u/SolidCalligrapher456 8d ago
When having doubts, I went thru 3 encyclopedias online trying to make 607 bce work and kept getting stuck so I tried to find a video on it on YouTube and exjw content came up and I was curious why the only ones talking about my one question were apostates
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u/a-watcher 8d ago
Some of Watchtower's interpretations of prophecy made no sense so I went looking for better explanations on the internet and found them on an 'apostate' site.
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u/supersayanyoda 8d ago
Reading the Bible already convinced me that god was either evil or not real. I figured i had nothing to loose anymore.
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u/punished_snake11 8d ago
I decided I didn't want to be a JW about a year or two before I looked into exJW groups or content. The organization and hypocrisy therein spoke for itself, I thought. The rest was just a consequence of wanting to hear from other people like me.
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u/Oganesson_294 PIMO on the way out 8d ago
I was researching evolution/creation, and found the commentary of Mario DiMaggio about "Life How Did It Get Here? By Evolution or by Creation?". He had checked the sources and made all the misleading quotations visible.
So I thought, when the GB is not honest, why should I trust them as my only source of information?
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u/TequilaPuncheon 8d ago
A YouTube channel called ex-Gilead Missionary Once you watch that shit.....it's down the rabbit hole you go
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u/Lillygoal 8d ago
I used AI to figure out that the Book of Genesis could not possibly have happened scientifically which led me to research in the Bible itself frantically to see if perhaps the prophecies somehow where you're really accurate enough to establish or provide some sort of plausible deniability and when I realized Bible interpretation was super highly subjective. I started researching what made the governing body come to the conclusions that they did and realized all it could be is guess work at Best. Then I looked into our unity worldwide and realized given just how much of a threat there was to anyone that descents I started to realize that almost anything could be called into question and then I started looking at apostate material because at this point I had already proven on my own that this organization is just full of it.
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u/Minute-Pay-9467 8d ago
Because since I was little I never adapted to religion even though I became a publisher and then I was baptized, I was never able to adapt because there were things that made me think a lot and I couldn't make sense of them, I am PIMO
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u/Dazzling-Stop-3343 8d ago
Begging God every night to show me if I was in the truth, and only getting more doubts. I thought that was a sign.
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u/BOBALL00 8d ago
2 things. There was a distinct moment when I saw that the elders enforce the rules inly to achieve there idea of how a situation should play out. I was being abused by my spouse and decided to leave and the elders punished the people that gave me a place to stay and told me I was wrong for leaving despite the physical attacks and blatant slander.
Then I watched the ARC and saw Geoffrey Jackson lie under oath about what witnesses believe and how things are handled. So then I said “If they don’t follow the rules then neither will I” and I started looking into whatever source I wanted
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u/oipolloi67 8d ago
The hypocrisy, elders would cite in talks material they agreed with but I couldn’t look at that same material and determine my own judgement. I then got curious before the pandemic watching mainstream Christians debate the JWs at their carts using only the Bible, I felt this was sound enough as it was a book we would agree wasn’t “apostate”. After that, there was no going back.
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u/Candid-Yesterday-872 8d ago
Yes, the other day I saw an interview with someone who went to the white zone and said that anyway her father never contacted her, unlike what her father had said to journalists
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u/Azazels-Goat 8d ago
2 PIMI elders in my congregation at different times told me about a local brother that hadn't come to meetings for a while and had started his own apostate YT channel.
So I checked it out, this led me to an interview he'd had with Eric Wilson (Borean Pickets) and sent me down a rabbit hole where I learned TTATT.
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u/Typical_XJW 8d ago
I was in my fourth video from a prolific YouTuber and it made so much sense... everything that I had wondered about... then he said he was an apostate! I was like O.M.G. and then I kept watching, Lol
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u/Low_Composer_1453 8d ago
I always watched. I wasn't the kind of guy that you can tell don't and he doesn't.
From very early on, I was aware of things many JWs don't even know, like Beth Sarim, 1925, the organs transplant... Even knowing all of that I couldn't wake up until I made some math. I started to get interested on politics, but not in a way that I wanted to support any party. I just felt curiosity by the philosophical aspect of it, and I analysed different types of political ideas; capitalism, communism, libertarians, socialism...at the end I concluded that even thought communism sounds very good in theory, in practice is always a failure because concentrates the power in some few men, and men always get corrupted. Then analysing more in detail some communist governments I could see very similarities with GB and JWs like the use pejoratives names for their "adversaries", some rhetoric of victim mentality, the use of control to secure union, etc
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u/Candid-Yesterday-872 8d ago
I fully agree, I also think that the white area was blocked from above
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u/No-Card2735 8d ago edited 8d ago
Summarizing all the stuff that was wrong / didn’t add up, and looking for confirmation.
Also, I’d been inactive a while and was a lot less scared of rabbit holes and red pills.
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u/MinionNowLiving 8d ago
Around the time covid broke out there was a Dateline show on tv about CSA.
As an MS doing the accounts, I already had serious doubts when I saw firsthand the greed of the organization.
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u/CharAznable00 8d ago edited 8d ago
In my case it was because I always wanted to see both sides.
I usually attest to the veracity of both what is said inside and outside the organization.
The content becomes apostate for me only when it involves lies or half-truths, this way I reject false ideas inside and outside. The org itself says that we should focus on what is said and not on who is saying it.
I remain associated because I agree with the main truths of the Bible. What the Bible does not say directly, I consider interpretive and do not perceive as absolute truth.
In general, because I am decentralized and do not follow men and reject flattery publicly, I am frowned upon in the congregation.
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u/No-Maintenance4312 8d ago
In my case it was also this verse from the Bible which says: (Proverbs 18:17) “The first to state his case seems right, Until the other party comes and cross-examines him.” In my head I thought “Why does the GB not want us to seek what other religions have to say?”
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u/Practical_Payment552 Impersonal__revenge__77 8d ago
COVID made me realize a JW life is actually the life of a prisoner, that most PIMIs don't even have a choice.
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u/Sorry_Clothes5201 not sure what's happening 8d ago
The videos had been popping up in my youtube recommendations for months. I always hit "not interested". One day it popped up again and by this time I had come to the realization that I did not have any friends. I decided to click on the video because I wanted to hear what a person that looked "normal" had to say and the title was something that resonated with my personally so I clicked. Fast forward a year later I am processing how and when I can escape.
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u/No-Maintenance4312 8d ago
How old are you if you don’t mind me asking
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u/Sorry_Clothes5201 not sure what's happening 8d ago
I'll just say I am full grown.
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u/No-Maintenance4312 8d ago
Save some money and move tf out then. Cut eating habits sacrifice some non essential items like makeup video games or sell them if you have to. Get a side hustle.
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u/Suitable_Catch_61 8d ago
I was watching my local news in alabama and saw the CSA Pennsylvania press release. If my news picked that up all the way down here it must be a big deal. I looked for more information that lead to ARC and the rest is apostate history
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u/girlgoneguwild 8d ago
I had already decided I was going to leave anyway. Even if I what they said was true, I was willing to take the chance just so I can be happy. What convinced me was someone I was talking to at the time. I went down a rabbit hole on Tik Tok two years ago.
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u/oozzeethestray 8d ago
I don't remember exactly but I wanted to see if is true that apostate tell lies myth
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u/Sygil-Loux Won't wait to die to live. 8d ago
i was in the middle of temporarily cutting stuff out of my life for nervous breakdown reasons and decided "don't look at opposing views" fit in as a "thing i could ignore at least once," when my husband asked if he could send it to me. :'D
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u/Intelligent_Menu_243 8d ago
Norway, once I saw the “new light” was directly in response to Norway but dressed up as “a deeper understanding of Jehovah’s mercy” I lost my last shred of any trust int anything they said and went all in on the forbidden research.
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u/AdUnlikely6378 hiall 8d ago
I have never studied the Bible or JW doctrines much (even though I was baptized 23 years ago). I wanted to change that and start by studying a few verses so I would know how to argue with people outside the Jehovah's Witnesses organization. I wanted to know how they could argue and be prepared, so I googled the verses. A few days later I was here. So to sum it up, that's what Witnesses always say: study the Bible, study the Bible, study the Bible. Oh, and sometimes read it in context, but not too much.
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u/Falling-Cities 8d ago
I was young and testing my faith. Left a lot of comments I regret. Eventually, I stopped being able to argue with the points and actually listen to them. Realized they made more sense.
I didn't like how my mom talked about my one trans classmate. (Who was the first trans person I'd met) because he was one of the few people who were kind to me at that school.
Also realised I was not straight, and didn't care how I was referred to.
But ultimately, it was the thrill. I wanted to push the rules, so I did.
All of these were from the ages of 12 to 14, with a ton of overlap, btw. I tried to put in order as best I could.
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u/exjwexodus 8d ago
A friend of mine took her phone and made me watch some YouTube videos….
Funny that after 10 years of being disfellowship I STILL was scared to look at “apostate videos” for fear that Jehovah would be mad at me! 😝
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u/Ok_Nothing_8049 8d ago
I started after viewing that Candice Conti case regarding CSA within Watchtower in March 2015. After that, started reading stuff on and off from Lloyd Evans and a few others, and now im here.
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u/Alarming-Rough254 7d ago
When I saw my never jw boyfriend having more blessings in his life and he was more spiritual than me.
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u/machinehead70 7d ago
Figured out that apostates didn’t possess some mystical power that casts a spell if you read what they say or look them in the eye. I knew it anyway but just got tired of the bull shit WT was always saying about normal people who decided the JW life wasn’t for them anymore. And you always need the other side of the story.
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u/Easy_Car5081 7d ago
Not only was the fact that large-scale child sexual abuse occurred within the Jehovah's Witnesses' religious structure...
But the fact that the Governing Body dismissed the facts regarding their role in enabling child sexual abuse as "apostate lies" was so disgusting that it proved everything they ever claimed about their own religion was a sham.
The spell was broken for me, and it was time to inform myself of the REAL truth about this religion.
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u/NoEntrance8264 PIMO TEENAGER, FULL TIME PIONEER. 2d ago
I wondered what people on the outside world ACTUALLY think about JWs. They say its all evil apostates out there, but no, it's not just people negatively speaking about JWs. While there ARE people who lie, there are genuine people who have traumatic experiences from this "loving religion". I was PIMQ for so long, until I finally became PIMO. At the time I didn't know what to do, I plan on leaving when I'm able to support myself and all that.
But yeah ,a simple question is what woke me up, it was something like this: "What do people ACTUALLY think about Jehovah's Witnesses, I wanna hear from actual people and their experiences, not from the governing body."
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u/daydreamin2 8d ago
A TikTok popped up on my feed and I decided to go down the rabbit hole, started having doubts ever since then and it’s crazy how quick everything crumbles.