Jehovah'sWitnesses:This is not my letter, but I could have written it myself. Is thid Christian or Cultish?

Question

When I came to you, I was young and pretty and impressionable, looking for a
relationship with God, my Creator. But through slick words and empty
speeches you convinced me that I was not really a child of God, that my
duty was to the Organization ----- that THEY would tell me what to do and
how to think. Through years of domination and manipulation I began to
accept "the meagre food that was being offered to me, and became willing to
accept it as the true "spiritual" food from the Master, while all the time
feeling the gnawing pains of starvation which wracked at my body. Finally,
I discovered that I had been robbed of my joy, my love, my compassion, and
my mercy, and it was replaced with a legalistic, doctrinal formula which
provided me with fear, guilt, and anxiety to fill my hungry heart --------
and when I said, "I want more than this"...........you slapped me with your
soft little hand, which had now turned into an iron fist of oppression.

Yes, you fooled me all along, and the reason you were so good at your
deception was because you had been fooled too, a long time ago by others who
had taken you captive to their dictatorship, a reign of terror. You
convinced me that the words of men were the words of God because you really
thought it was true. I believed you because you were gentle, soft spoken,
and carried the Bible under your arm.


.....You may not remember me, but I know you very well. I met you a long time
ago when you came to my door with your smiling faces, your neat clothes, and
your soft voices, and a Bible tucked neatly under your arm. You told me
many beautiful stories of a "paradise earth" and a righteous new system
which would be established shortly. You beguiled me.....................I
listened and I let you teach me your form of Christianity.

I loved you. I devoted most of my life to you. I was loyal and obedient,
never realizing that one day I would come to disagree with everything you
had to say. When I first learned of you and the "paradise", little did I
know that I would be trained to believe that in order to get to that
paradise, I would have to walk over the dead bodies of beloved family,
cherished friends, and casual acquaintances, because they didn't want to be
JWs. With your soft, sweet voices, and gentle manner, you convinced me
that everything and everyone who did not agree with you was "evil". I came
to believe that other Churches were bad and of the Devil, and so were their
members. I became convinced that all the governments were wicked, including
my own, and that I was not to support the country in which I lived. I
believed you, I love you,

You told me that you had "freedom", and it was only later that I tried to
escape your brand of "freedom" that I discovered that the iron bars of the
gate had been shut and I was at your mercy because, by this time, you had
already gained control of my mind and my emotions. I cried and begged you
to please let me go, and you said with your firm, roaring voice, "not until
I have stripped you naked," and you did...............oh, yes, you did. You
stripped me of my dignity, my self respect, my honour, and my FAMILY. You
told all my friends and family that I was demonic, evil, an apostate, a
spiritual fornicator, and good for nothing better than total destruction by
your angry God, whom you had tried to pass off as a God of Love. They
believed you, and they still believe you, because their eyes are blinded by
the promise of "paradise" and they cannot see the "hell" that surrounds
them. The ever illusive "paradise" is held out to the gullible like a
carrot in front of the nose of a rabbit and causes them to sacrifice their
family, friends, careers, education, hopes and dreams on the altar of the
Watchtower Bible and Tract Society.

Answer 1

I've seen similar stuff from ex-Catholics, ex-military, etc.

Your health insurance might include counseling, its worth checking that out.

And how 'bout fixing the line breaks from your cut and paste?

Answer 2

Best line: "while all the time feeling the gnawing pains of starvation which wracked at my body"

That's about it in a nutshell, isn't it? Growing up in the cult, I could see many things that were wrong, even though I was only a child/teenager. Never felt spiritually fulfilled until I found the real Jesus of the true Gospel thru the King James Version.

Any JW who says they feel completely spiritually sated and joyful in their ministry and relationship with their creator, is in complete denial of reality or lying through their teeth.

Answer 3

You have to remember that despite denomination we serve one God! JW are a cult and anyone who says they are the only ones going to heaven and offer a life of hate and seclusion. We must remember to always check what we hear ourselves and line it up with the Word of God! God is Good and he is a loving father who is not a God of seperation but of unification. God wil judgeone day thoes who have not accepted him as thier Lord and saviour. I believe that we should spread teh Gospel to all we know and it says so in the Bible, but you do not bring people in like a cult and brainwash them, There are many religions that have thier own books sucha s the bookof Mormon and the Catholic Bible, but the only book that is the inherit Word of God is the Bible and always look there to see if what you are being told is there, never go by man alone.

Answer 4

What wonderful poetic, heart felt words; and how true. I identified so much with this that it made me cry. I cried mostly for all the lost souls trapped by the society, all those souls who believe themselves free and I pray that one, just one, might read these words and see themselves mirrored there. If only one does that, then the suffering this person felt will have been worth it, because by their suffering and eventual escape they might save one more person for the Lord. Bless You.

Answer 5

They must say that the Catholic Church is wrong or else why are they Protestants? Yet they must also admit that not one of their denominations has any right to declare itself to be the one True Church. And that, for the simple reason that Christ did not estab­lish any institution which could be known by men to be His Church.


They are all brought up with that impression and so they continue in religious matters to wander where they will, like people in a forest, who follow any line of tracks without bothering to ask where it leads. And they so love the risky adventure of experi­menting for themselves that they search Scripture for every possible text which they think will support them.


All Christians admit that Christ intended a unity of some kind to prevail amongst His followers. But we cannot deny for ourselves what type of unity must prevail. The "all going the one way" type of unity, whilst each goes his own way, is useless if it be quite foreign to the mind of Christ. Who can accept the in­vention of Protestants who, noting the numberless ways in which they are divided, define the unity re­quired to suit themselves in their present circumstances and in such a way that they may remain where they are.


Those who believed all that He had taught would at least be one in faith. Again, He demanded unity in worship. "One Lord, one faith, one baptism," was to be the rule and baptism belongs to worship. The early Christians were told distinctly by St. Paul that participation in the same Eucharistic worship probably was essential to the unity. "We, being many, are one bread, one body; all that partake of one bread".
In other words, "The one Christ is to be found in Holy Communion, and we, however numerous we may be, are one in Him if we partake of the same Holy Communion."

Protestantism cannot preserve Christian standards in­tact. Articles of faith have gone overboard. Mortifi­cation and fasting are not required. The evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience, with their consequent inspiration of monastic life are ig­nored. Protestant writings excuse, and even approve, laxity in moral practice. Protestantism has not pro­duced anything equivalent to the canonized Catholic Saint. Many of the Sacraments of Christ are not even acknowledged by Protestantism, whilst the heart has been torn out of its worship by the loss of Christ's presence in the Blessed Eucharist. Of spiritual author­ity there is scarcely a trace. The very clergy are not trained in moral law, and cannot advise the laity as they should, even were the laity willing to accept ad­vice. The prevalent notion, "Believe on Christ and be saved," tends of its very nature to lessen the sense of necessity of personal virtue.

Protestantism was a movement of heated dissent. Error and rebellion took the first Protestants from the Catholic Church, the various forms of error, or the various countries in which the rebellion occurred, giving rise to the various sects. But any goodness which the first Protestants took as doctrinal baggage with them was derived from the Church they left. And any apparent goodness in the teachings of Protestant­ism is still to be found in the Catholic Church. Where, in the Catholic Church, cockle sown by the enemy is found here and there amidst the wheat, Satan was wise enough to allow some wheat here and there to remain amidst the cockle of Protestantism. And it is the presence of this wheat which accounts for the con­tinued existence of Protestantism. But the wheat does not really belong to Protestantism. It is a relic of Catholicism growing in alien soil. A Catholic is good when he lives up to Catholic principles, refusing to depart from them. A Protestant is good when he unconsciously acts on Catholic principles, departing from those which are purely Protestant.

Answer 6

Wow - As a former Ministerial Servant and now (15 years inactive) I never let anyone or organization do that to me. I brought my Brain with me and questioned everything. Are they right, who knows, maybe, maybe not. But don't ever let anyone "Anyone" take away the one thing that God promises....LOVE

Answer 7

Didn't I answer this question already?! Yikes, I feel like I'm losing my mind...
That poem really captures what it means to be a jw - I wish everyone could read and understand it.

Answer 8

WOW! THAT'S DEEP!.....I feel for the author... may the Lord continue to lead you on the right path through His son Jesus Christ. It is not about denomination...it is about your relationship with God.

God bless...

Answer 9

I think you could apply that letter to Christianity as a whole just take out the watchtower references and add the NT.