Anonymous

OK, I am not going to tell my name, because I have received so many threats from my "friends" that are still inside.

I grew up in Europe and I was dipped into a lot of Christian propaganda since my childhood. I never bought into any of that, but I was open to new ideas and I debated whenever the opportunity arose. It seemed that in the campus there were many groups racruiting pretty aggressively, but I stayed clear of those.

Anyhow, two young nice ladies came to my door one morning and I invited them in for a small discussion. They were pretty persistent, but very pleasing, Jehovah's Witnesses. I wanted to know what the Bible was all about, because I thought it was one of the great works of the antiquity. They visited me couple of times and I was like, "all right, I didn't know that you like discussing this much, but OK". I started seeing higher-ups in their hierarcy, because they were running out of knowledge. I got one of their Bibles and I read it through. They were soon coming to me very often and I thought I would tire them out. I did not. They asked me to one of their meetings and I went, just to be nice to their pleads.

I was soon suffering from a psychological trauma of trying to please them, because they wasted so much time with me. They also seemed to care about me sincerely. I had never been too popular and now I thought these people were overly friendly. I could see that the theology was full of holes, but I thought it would be explained at a time. I was also started to pressure towards baptism and towards changing my life-style. Most of my belongings went out as demonic. I was set out to advertise, advertise, advertise the message of the Watchtower. So I spent few years as a Watchtower salesperson and moved to the States and got married to another JW.

It started to suck. First of all, God should have taken care of things, if you just "trusted in Jehovah", he would take care of everything. Well, this was not the case, my marriage started collapsing, and we became so poor that I became malnourished. We could not afford heating, so the house was cold as a morgue in winter and hot as an oven in summers. I contracted tuberculosis and was bedridden for a while. It was obvious that there was no love or care, I was alone. As soon as a Jehovah's Witness is recruited, his only function is to serve as a slave to the organization. I sold magazines for three hours every day, for free, of course. The meetings were basically five hours a week and you were frowned upon if you did not arrive. I soon became disillusioned. My spouse committed adultery and my marriage was broken, I started drifting away. The elders could only say to me that I should "come back to the meeting" (to be indoctrinated).

I had a session with the elders where they pulled some ridiculous arguments against me. It was very insulting and they knew it. However they had prepared my "confession" before the meeting. They extorted me to vouch for it.

I started having doubts and I voiced them over the Usenet. I was stupid enough to include my name and email address. They started viciously persecuting me, they spammed my ISP to get me stop my postings, I received "recommendations" for suicide and veiled murder threats. Such threats were quickly drawn from the board, because they don't want the outsiders to know who Jehovah's Witnesses really are.

Then started the shunning: No Jehovah's Witness is allowed to talk with me. If a Jehovah's Witness even reads this post, his membership ceases and he becomes an outcast. This is to protect the secrets from becoming public.

What the secrets really are: A large scale tax fraud, subliminals, mind-control (the magazines are full of infuriating veiled threats), imposing guilt on people so they go and commit suicides, crime, quack medicine that has caused many deaths, collaboration with Nazis (while being persecuted by them!), unnecessary deaths, cover-ups, doctrinal shifting, child abuse... need I go further?

Anyhow, I came out and had a hateful Christian attitude. I started scrutinizing the Bible and the Biblical apologists and it all came apart, their evolution "science", Noah's teriyaki Ark hoax, the historical errors in the Bible, unfulfilled prophecies and so on. Personally, for "Jesus" to guide me to an oppressive cult was a cruel joke, so I don't want to know any of that. He had one chance in my life and he screwed it up. Fundies say that I should know "real" Jesus. Like "real" nonsense, huh?

Anyhow, here's how they poach on you: They want to create a murky picture of this world: Wars, unemployment, crime. then they pull a conclusion that we are in the last days and soon Armageddon is going to come [fear]. They impose guilt on you and they have easy solutions on complicated problems. They lead you to the solution so you feel that you came there all by yourself.

As an atheist I have started to find out what my real problems are and were. End. (but I'm still living :) )