A POLL! How long did your "re-evaluation" take?

From beginning to end, how long did it take you, when you first started your personal questioning and re-evaluating the Watchtower organization and concluding that the WTS was definitely not true? 

My sister is asking this.  Some of us (who left a couple decades ago - pre-Internet) are saying it took about 10 years on average.   I hope nowadays it is taking less for individuals because of so much literature and Internet available.   

It took me about two months to reach the conclusion that it DEFINITELY was not "The Truth". However, I continued my research for many more months.

One of the first stages that a cult member must go through is: "Perhaps this anti-JW material I'm reading is a ploy from the Devil."

All JWs have been conditioned to EXPECT critical information. They've been trained to dismiss critical information as LIES, without even examining it.

What was helpful to me was to put the information through an "Outsider Test for Faith".Look at it from the perspective of a non-JW who is interested in joining. The Bible study conductor should be able and willing to answer all objections to the JW faith. An interested person cannot be an apostate and asking tough questions does not make one an "opposer".

It's painfully obvious that Watchtower has NEVER refuted the eye-witness testimony of Ray Franz and others. Why?

About 4 months.  I did a LOT of reading.

I never doubted for a moment, I always knew it was the truth.

Over several years i became increasingly inactive, but I still believed.

At one point I decided to stop attending completely because i could no longer stand the dysfunction in the ranks, but I still believed.

Then one day i was cleaning my house, thinking of nothing in particular, and a little voice in my head said,

"What if none of it is true?"

And in that instant I knew none of it was true ......... I fell to my knees and let go of a scream that came from the depths of my being.

And I was out.

About six months, but I didn't even think of the internet as a resource until after I left...probably never would have even showed up except someone told me about a website for ex-jw's...I remember thinking, "They can do that?" lol.

In three days, (the time it took to read CoC), but...

After 10 years of stuggling with doubts and concerns, I had a moment of clarity about a year before I read it, where I knew it was in all likelihood not the truth. I tried to "hang on", but just couldn't do it for long. I stopped attending meetings within 5 months.

CoC, (or any other other material, no matter how convincing), will not work unless someone is ready for the truth beforehand.

j

I would say it took a month or two.

Ten seconds.

I first started to have my doubts as a child, but would never have aired them. I could see pockets of hypocrisy within the congregation, but felt that I was too young to question 'the truth'. I lost my beautiful Witness mum to cancer aged 13 and that's when the hypocrisy from congregation members really kicked in. (Abusive Witness step-father. Another thread!)

It was in my early teens that I jealously watched older teens leave, knowing that I would leave one day. I did, 2 days after my 18 birthday, 17th July 1986. Hard to say how long the re-evaluation took, because it was such a gradual process.

The guilt lingered though and I often wonder if I would have been able to leave so easily if I still had Mum. (I have come to the point where I think that she would have left by now too, as her best friend (an elder) has seen the light).

Welcome to the forum, boopoopidoo!

It only took abut 3 months to see it was mostly BS. And even after that I would second guess myself for about the next year. But it still took me another 5 years to quit altogether and another 2 years after that to move on.

It took me 6 months to confirm it for myself but the fear remained.  That has diminished a lot over the past 12 months.

It took me about a month to realize it wasn't the Truth.

I guess in my case you would say a year, I stopped Field Service as I could not in all conscience place the "Bible Teach" book, as it contained much that was NOT taught in the Bible, i.e 1914.

When an Uber society type Uber witness Elder came to shepherd me for not Witnessing I told him 1914 was just not in the Bible. he never came back to me with a defense of 1914.

This started my on-line research and I found many on line who agreed with me, what a relief !!!

Eventually I came to realise that the GB were putting themselves in the place of Jesus, and I actually became afraid to associate with such a blasphemous organization, so I walked away, and then discovered JWD/N  .... say no more !

But from my youth in the 1950's I had not swallowed all the crap, I did not believe 1975 either, but in a childlike way I believed that as God's Name was on the Org. he must sort it out, so I stuck with it untill the above events.

Oh how I wish my eyes had been opened many years ago !!!!

Never mind, I am now FREE !!!

Love

Wobble

WELCOME Booboodiboo!

  It hit me while I was at Bethel, when they started talking about the Great spirtual Bird Catcher, I thought that sounded way to crazy I asked another Bethelite if he wanted to have a session where we examined our beliefs, he did not.  I tried to talk to an Elder he was to busy, later he said ah are you still having that problem like it was a silly joke?  I decided to leave Bethel and stay in a year or so to see if I could resolve the nagging doubts, I even temporary pioneered hoping I could jump start my beliefs and overcome my growing doubts. I could not. The Elders didn't show up for years and not until I wrote a letter asking to be removed.

It took me about 10 years of relative inactivity and curiousity about non-JW sources of information. At some point, I remember going to meetings and every time something was said that made no sense, I'd mentally refute it under my breath or in my mind to resist it undoing the things I'd learned.

Then I finally thought. Why am I sitting here listening to stuff I can refute? I still liked some of the people and the loves and hugs I'd get for showing up, but would sit there almost rolling my eyes at the dumb I was listening too, and wondering why everyone else was eating it up like it was ice cream.

It's rather embarrassing in retrospect how an intelligent person can listen to such drivel for years and never really question it, think it's utterly brilliant theology.I did that for nearly 20 years.

I actually have a fairly high IQ (134), but that's not really what it takes to get past the WTS teachings, its very much based on emotional manipulation, although there is sort of a pseudo intellectualism to the theology (like "see how we know Greek and Hebrew" and "look at these big words we use that you  need to get a dictionary to understand") just enough to make you believe that they're the pre-eminent Biblical scholars of the world. Until you read some real ones, people who have actually devoted most of their lives to religious and related historical studies.

But, don't you try to be. You mustn't research anything except throught WTS publications. It's when I started breaking that rule that I began to question a lot of things. Then the internet came and I started nosing around it too. But, the good old public library was where it started for me. There's all kinds of free information there you can utterly deconstruct JW teachings with, especially when you lose that superstitious fear that everything not written by the WTS is the work of demons and apostates and the Antichrist, all determined to undermine your faith in Jehovah.

I soon found out 607 BCE and 1914 were utter crap, pulled out of someone's gin soaked dreams, no doubt. Without that in place, the whole thing is a house of cards, really. Pull one out and down it goes.

It took a couple of months.  I mean I always had my doubts but then I met someone who actually was pretty intelligent and I found it was really hard to "preach to him".  Mainly because most of the things that came out of my mouth sounded weak and ridiculous......once I actually looked into the internet, it just confirmed a lot of stuff  I already doubted...In a few days there was no doubt in my mind I would NEVER go back...And that was that!

I was never actually a Jehovah's Witness but I was 'around the truth' long enough for it to impact my thinking.  I'd say it took me all of Summer 2009 to get over the 6 years of off and on "Bible Studying" with my wife (who's been indoctrinated from birth).  What pretty much convinces me that something wasn't right was one basis for 1914 used by Pastor Russell (the pyramid of Giza).  That and the unscriptural baptism questions and the fact that they cannot quote adequate scripture references to support Jesus being Michael the Archangel.

To all Jehovah's Witnesses who are lurking on this message board, I invite you to go to Google maps and key in 226 Cemetery Lane, Pittsburgh, PA.  Click and drag the little man on the map to the other side of East-West Drive where it intersects cemetery lane (not the intersection marked at by Google).  Have the little man face into the cemetery between cemetery lane and east-west drive and behold the pyramid memorial at Pastor Russell's gravesite.  Zoom in for a closer look and check out the user photos in the upper right corner of the map.

Behold the occultic roots of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society.  Then take a look at this video that illustrates the hypocrisy of the Society.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_tuJkPvE38

It took me about 3 years of 'fading' and 'sitting on the fence' (essentually not going to meetings anymore, and not really thinking about it much), followed by 1 year of actual study into the bible and evolution.

I wish I had done the research a lot sooner, becuase those 4 years 'pretending' to be loosely affiliated so as not to lose my family were hell.

- Lime