Ex JWs Meetup in San Diego

Posted on August 10, 2010 by The Webmaster

Carol Hartman of Ex JWs San DiegoBy Carol Hartman, Support Group Facilitator

The San Diego area Ex JW Support Group meets in a friendly, non-threatening atmosphere. This monthly meeting is coordinated with “Meetup.com” and you can sign up for information there if you want to be notified when we have our meetings.

Please see the group’s meetup website at:
San Diego Ex JW Meetup.

I was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness from the time I was 8 years old, when my parents became JWs in 1945. I was a loyal, fanatic Witness for 36 years. In 1981, I decided that the Watchtower could not be Jehovah’s organization because they kept changing what the “truth” was, and I knew that God would not be changing His mind about what was “THE TRUTH.”

Like many ex-JWs, I was very disillusioned, and had no interest in religion for the next seven years. Then I learned who Jesus really was, and realized how much I wanted to have my sins forgiven. What I found was not the “one true religion,” but a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I have been a Christian since 1988.

Because of my own experience with the Watchtower, I have a strong desire to reach out to Jehovah’s Witnesses who are willing to listen, and especially to ex-JWs. Since I am aware that many ex-JWs are very disillusioned and are not ready to think about God or the Bible, there is absolutely no pressure to talk about this at our meeting. I believe that people first need healing from their wounds after leaving the WT. If someone does want to talk about the Bible or religion, we can arrange another time for this.

For further information, please contact Carol at: c.hartman@att.net

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A new website!

Posted on August 9, 2010 by The Webmaster

Please bear with us for the next few days. We’ve moved our website to a new server and to a new webmaster. We are still working on all the bells and whistles and still testing our format, so please don’t be too critical.

Fond memories. Our old HTML based website...

We’ll soon have a new organized directory of helpful and educational links. We’ll also have all of the testimonies and articles from the old site moved over, updated and re-edited, and hopefully with some more recent photos as well.

Please note that I have a new email address for contacts to this website: Cynthia@exjwslosangeles.org.

If you see any problems with the website and would like to contact the webmaster, please email: webmaster@exjwslosangeles.org.

The webmaster has promised that when everything is done, we’ll have a nice new, easy to read, and easy to update website. There will be an upgraded comment system and email notification whenever a new article goes up. That’s what the webmaster guarantees – so we’ll hold him to it!

Let us know how you like it. Send us your testimonies, meeting experiences, photos and videos relating to our group activities, our members, or other subjects of interest to the Ex Jehovah’s Witness community.

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Why you shouldn’t fear Armageddon

Posted on August 8, 2010 by Cynthia Hampton

The picture below seems to depict some Hollywood stars being killed in Armageddon. The one on the lower right appears to be actor Will Smith, and on the lower left, John Lithgow. The man in the upper right with the gun looks like Dan Aykroyd, while the one in the middle appears to be Sylvester Stallone. This is from the 9/1/97 Watchtower magazine.

Actors dying at Armageddon

Does the above picture frighten you? If you are a member of the Watchtower organization, also known as Jehovah’s Witnesses, this probably will put some fear inside of you. The Watchtower has purposely instilled phobias in their member’s minds in order to create fear in them. Think about it – this is a control mechanism designed so that their members will be too afraid to leave the Watchtower Society. The leaders of the Watchtower are very adept at manipulation.

While I was a Jehovah’s Witness and growing up as a teenager, my mother would always tell me that I wasn’t going to make it to the “New System,” the paradise earth that was supposed to be after the horrific battle of Armageddon happened. She told me that since I hadn’t changed my personality enough, Jehovah God would allow me to die in this situation, never to be resurrected or heard from again. I was supposed to put on the Watchtower version of a “new personality.” If I didn’t change enough, then I would be destroyed at Armageddon.

For some reason, I never quite believed that the God I believed in was such a mean and horrible Being. I couldn’t see why God had created me the way I am, but did not accept me the way I was born. How could that be? Was this God, the one I’d been told was a “God of Love” according to the Watchtower, really a vindictive god who just wanted to get even with everyone. The fears and phobias I had about Armageddon were really irrational – if He truly is a God of Love.

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Witnesses at my door

Posted on August 7, 2010 by Cynthia Hampton

I hadn’t seen Jehovah’s Witnesses in my neighborhood for the longest time. Usually I only see the ones from the JW couple in field serviceSpanish-speaking Kingdom Halls. They come to my door and just ask if I speak Spanish, which I really can’t carry on a very good conversation.  So they always go away, since their first language is Spanish, and mine is English.  So needless to say, I was quite surprised to get a knock on my door and find some English-speaking JWs!

They seemed to be a nice couple in their early to mid 30s.  Their names are Kim and Ken.  Anyway, when I opened the door to them, since I don’t have a screen door, I invited them to come in.  I told them I couldn’t stand there with the door open since I had pet cats and didn’t want them to escape outside.  So they came in.   Yes – I do have cats and I really didn’t want them to get out of the house.

Ken presented the January 1st Watchtower and the January Awake! magazines to me.  (Remember the Awake! is only published once a month now.)  He talked about a time that there would be no sickness and death and asked me if I believed in that.  I said, “Well of course. I believe in a time that there will be no sickness or death and I believe in the promises from the Bible that Jesus Christ gave to us, by the sacrifice of His own life.”

They looked at me with a surprised look and said, “Do you read the Bible?”  I replied, “Well, I’ve been reading the Bible a very long time and I believe in reading it chapter by chapter, verse by verse.”  Ken replied that the Watchtower magazine has scripture referenced so that one can understand the Bible completely without having to read the whole thing – “because the Bible is so hard to read.”

I told him that I had no trouble reading the Bible and that I believed in reading it independently without the help of commentaries or other types of books.  I told him that I believed that it’s very dangerous to read scripture out of context because you can get an incorrect meaning from just doing a “hodge podge” of scripture. I told him that I was involved in a Bible study where I was going over the book of John with another lady who is a new Christian.  We just sit there and read the text and discuss what Jesus meant when he said various things about Himself.

I was referring to Jesus and every time He said “I am.” (There are 7 “I AMs” in the book of John.)  I mentioned how Jesus said “I am the bread of life” and “DID YOU KNOW THAT BETHLEHEM MEANS HOUSE OF BREAD?”  (I knew that they didn’t know that!)

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