Conversion from Mormon to Jehovah's Witness, or from Jehovah's Witness to Mormon

  • Thread starter Thread starter GoLatin
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
G

GoLatin

Guest
I am wondering if there are many people who either convert from the Mormons to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, or from the Jehovah’s Witnesses to the Mormons.

Does anybody have any info on such people?

Also, is it more likely that somebody will convert from the Mormons to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, or from the Jehovah’s Witnesses to the Mormons?

Please give me some info on this.

Thanks.
 
I don’t have any documentation, but I can give you my own personal opinion and experiences!

I grew up Mormon and for a time studied with the JWs in my attempt to “find” God. I found many similarities in the two religions, the first being that Jesus isn’t considered God. The lack of a trinity doctrine was what initially drew me to study with them in the first place as I thought it made more sense.

Praise God that I didn’t join them, as I would have to weed out more theology from my brain. 😉

I became Catholic 7 years ago and am so grateful that I did!

in Christ
Steph
 
Is it possible that more people might convert from Jehovah’s Witnesses to the Mormons, than the other way around?

My thinking is that the Mormons seem to be less depressing.

Does anybody have any thoughts on this?
 
As I former JW I will speak only for myself. After leaving the JW’s, it was very difficult to consider any other religion. It was so drilled into my head that the JW’s were the only true religion, I felt that if they were wrong, nobody was right.

After a time, I learned that everything I was taught was wrong (most specifically the Trinity) so I would never have been drawn to another religion that believed that Jesus was not divine.

In my experience with counter cult JW ministries, most who leave the organization become born again Christians - so on fire for Jesus.

Also, although the JW’s & Mormons are similar in that both don’t believe in the trinity, JW’s have all those other rules (no holidays, no flag, no voting, no military, no blood) which is not compatable with the Mormon Church.

JW’s for years did not believe in higher education so as a group, I believe they are less financially well off as Mormons. I personally never knew an even slightly wealthy JW… so never having any money is sort of depressing - especially when you tell yourself that soon you will have your pick of the houses when Armageddon comes and Jehovah destroys all the wicked (everyone who isn’t a faithful JW). But Armageddon doesn’t come… so that is depressing as well. And the no holiday thing is depressing also. Yes, I agree… in general, being a JW does not make for a happy life.

I never heard of a JW who was a former Mormon. Never. The converts were almost always former Catholics. We would look for Catholics because most didn’t know the Bible well enough to fend off our attacks.
 
I dont know the stats but it would be an easier switch to make for a non trinity person to go to another non trinity thing.

I ask- why not Islam? If they are so anti-trinity, why dont they go Islam?

Who knows. Its a theology (anti- trinity) made for people who dont think to much about the ramifications of their theology. They look for negatives - so they shall reap.
 
carol_marie said:
As I former JW I will speak only for myself. After leaving the JW’s, it was very difficult to consider any other religion. It was so drilled into my head that the JW’s were the only true religion, I felt that if they were wrong, nobody was right.

After a time, I learned that everything I was taught was wrong (most specifically the Trinity) so I would never have been drawn to another religion that believed that Jesus was not divine.

In my experience with counter cult JW ministries, most who leave the organization become born again Christians - so on fire for Jesus.

Also, although the JW’s & Mormons are similar in that both don’t believe in the trinity, JW’s have all those other rules (no holidays, no flag, no voting, no military, no blood) which is not compatable with the Mormon Church.

JW’s for years did not believe in higher education so as a group, I believe they are less financially well off as Mormons. I personally never knew an even slightly wealthy JW… so never having any money is sort of depressing - especially when you tell yourself that soon you will have your pick of the houses when Armageddon comes and Jehovah destroys all the wicked (everyone who isn’t a faithful JW). But Armageddon doesn’t come… so that is depressing as well. And the no holiday thing is depressing also. Yes, I agree… in general, being a JW does not make for a happy life.

I never heard of a JW who was a former Mormon. Never. The converts were almost always former Catholics. We would look for Catholics because most didn’t know the Bible well enough to fend off our attacks.
Click to expand...
Thank you Carol for your personal and sincere statement. I found it very interesting.

zerinus
 
Carol, I too found your remarks very interesting. My wife is devout LDS(Mormon) and I am devout Catholic. If we had not married late in life after children were grown, I think there would be a problem, but we have no problems at all in each accepting the other’s religion and respecting our right to believe what we want to believe.
I have studied the LDS religion, read the Book of Mormon and had the missionary lessons. There is a little difference in their belief of the Trinity, from Catholic, in that they beleive in God as the Father of us all, and the creator of the Universe. Jesus, God’s son, helped in all creations, and is creator of this earth and therefore the God of this earth. The Holy Spirit is the mediator between God, Jesus Christ and us. He is the small voice inside that tells us right from wrong. The God of the Universe and the literal Father of our spirits, is the God that we pray to in the name of His Son Jesus Christ. All three are considered God’s and Jesus sits on the right hand of God as His only begotten Son in the flesh.
I know to we Catholics this is all gobbledy gook, but I have listened to find an understanding and there seems to be some common sense in the belief. As far as JW’s or Mormons joining each others religion. I doubt there has ever or ever will be a Mormon who joins the JW, unless they were very young and fell madly in love with a JW boy. Mormons are very patriotic and would never go for not saluting the Flag, or not celebrating holidays, Mormons believe in free agency and would never tell their members to do or not do anything by force or coercion. They follow the “Word of Wisdom” which I have come to follow because of very serious health problems the last almost four years, had to give up the wine and caffiene because of reaction with my various medications. As for JWs joining the LDS church it would be much more plauseable. Grandpa D
 
I too am a former jw. I agree with Carol Marie, that jw’s who leave the belief are more inclined to become born again Christians. Usually when one leaves the falsetower, religion is not on their priority of things to believe. Usually a newly ex jw will take a long time off before he/she embraces another belief. Most of them will embrace a belief sooner or later, but not usually right away.

I didn’t. It took me years to fully come back to the Catholic Church after I got out of the falsetower, and even then, some of the old issues remained as the indoctrination is very heavy. I do not think that former witnesses are likely to become mormon because of the mormons belief system, more inclined as Carol Marie said, the born again Christian.
 
I don’t know exactly what Born Again Christian means to you, but to me it means hallelujah and lots of falling on the floor and being possessed by spirits, and violent knock down healing like on TV. LDS don’t do any of that, they are very reverent and quiet in their worship. If it means being baptized by immersion in water then yes they are born again, sort of???. GrampaD
 
GrandpaD said:
I don’t know exactly what Born Again Christian means to you, but to me it means hallelujah and lots of falling on the floor and being possessed by spirits, and violent knock down healing like on TV. LDS don’t do any of that, they are very reverent and quiet in their worship. If it means being baptized by immersion in water then yes they are born again, sort of???. GrampaD
Click to expand...
Born Again means the same thing to me… (well, except for the violent knock down healing thing… not sure I’ve ever seen that except on TV) … but certainly believing in the gifts of the spirit… speaking in tongues… that sort of thing. When I attended an
ex-JW support group, most people became very Charismatic type Christians. I think that’s because as a JW, they never really knew Jesus - or worship of any kind - so when they are introduced to the Living Christ, they just fall head over heels in love with Him and want to express their worship of Him in a LARGE way. I don’t know how long they stay in that sort of Church - but intitally, I think they find that dramatic sort of worship very appealing.

I’ve not been to a Mormon Church service but I imagine it’s much more mainstream Protestant in it’s style of worship?

Also, I want to add Grandpa D… I was so touched by your post where you said that you and your wife respect each other’s religious differences. That is very admirable… may you be blessed with many happy years together. 🙂
 
It’s a real long story I won’t go into here but I went straight from the JWs to the Mormons. I was lonely and desperate for human contact through fellowship. Something I never have been able to find within the Catholic Church by the way. I left the JWs before actually joining them. I couldn’t seem to quit smoking. I finally just quit out of shame. The Mormons took me in and were friendly. I really looked forward to those weekly visits from the missionaries to my home. I went to Sunday meetings regularly and they were always really good about providing rides for us to and from church. I couldn’t find a Catholic parish willing to give us that sort of help (we don’t have a car). The breaking point for me with the Mormons were the covenants or solemn promises you were required to make before the “bishop” to God the Father. One of which was the promise to faithfully give up 10% of your GROSS income to the church. It didn’t matter where the income came from (employment, gifts, disability, whatever) you were making this promise to give no matter what your circumstances. The bishop told me that if it came down to buying food for the week or making your tithe, always make the tithe. If it came down to paying rent or the tithe, we would be required to pay the tithe. I just couldn’t make that sort of promise. Took me a while but I eventually dropped out and am struggling to find my way back to the catholic church.
Johannah
 
It is too bad that the tithing frightened you, because the Catholic Church believes the same thing, but goes about it differently. I have been asked to pledge thousands of dollars to the Catholic Church besides what I put in the collection plate. My wife pays tithing and we usually end up paying about the same amount per year to each church. You have to think about the fact that God gives us everything we have and He only asks for 1/10th back. It is in the Bible, so everyone should be giving 10% no matter what church they belong to. Everytime we pay our obligation to the church we receive the same or more back within a few days in some way or another. The Lord says if you pay Him 1/10 heaven will pour out blessings so great you will not be able to count them.
It takes faith that God will keep His promise and that is something you do not have yet. It is important to read your scriptures and get to really know Jesus Christ as your saviour and then you will develop the faith to know that if you pay your obligations to the Church He will take care of the rest. I have put my faith in God and it works.🙂
 
GrandpaD said:
It is too bad that the tithing frightened you, because the Catholic Church believes the same thing, but goes about it differently. I have been asked to pledge thousands of dollars to the Catholic Church besides what I put in the collection plate. My wife pays tithing and we usually end up paying about the same amount per year to each church.
Click to expand...
The HUGE difference is that in the Catholic Church there is no coercion to contribute (as is evidenced by the majority of Catholics who put one dollar or nothing in the basket every Sunday).

I was an active Mormon for 11 years. In Mormonism, the bishop audits what you give, and if it is not 10% of your gross income, they withhold things from you. You can’t go to the temple, hold most callings, speak in a sacrament meeting, or participate in many other ways. They have tithing settlement at the end of every year where you have to go into the bishop’s office and testify to him that you’ve paid a full tithe. The bishop can even ask to see your last pay stub of the year so that he can move the decimal point on your YTD gross income to see if it matches your tithing records for the year.

As a Catholic, you have the freedom to remain quietly anonymous and no one will ever know what you give or don’t give. In Catholicism it is a matter of conscience, not coercion. The bible says that we are to give as we are moved upon by the Spirit, not the bishop.

God bless,
Paul
 
Sorry Paul, but you are wrong about the coercian thing. My wife is free to pay her tithing on her own if and when she chooses. She also chooses to go to tithing settlement with the Bishop and chooses to partake in the blessings that come with being a full tithe payer and following the commandments of God. I on the other hand receive a statement every month with an envelope to send in my donation to the Catholic Church, they inform me if I fall behind in my donations and send me new envelopes every few months. I am committed to pay at least $5000.00 - $6000.00 per year and have been since they came to my home requesting this amount yearly. Since I am a good Catholic I committed myself to pay, thinking it was a one time thing, but it turned out to be a yearly commitment and has been going on for 4 years now. They still do not allow me to go to confession or partake of the Eucharist because I am divorced. So I pay and do not even receive the blessings that my wife receives for paying her tithing.
I am feeling quite defensive of the LDS now after being treated this way by the Catholics, and you have nothing to defend about the Catholic Church in regards to donations. The Mormons also have many who do not pay tithing and are still good members. They are not forced, but voluntarily pay their share if they want to. No one knows which ones are full tithe payers and which ones aren’t except the person themselves. It is their free choice to pay or not. I don’t feel it is my free choice with the Catholic Church at all, they actually come to my home and coerce me to pay along with the bills they send me. I ask for an accounting and they have no accounting, but eventually send me a hand written note of what I have paid(usually wrong) and they deduct the accounting fees from the amount I have pledged.
Talk about unfair.
 
GrandpaD,
The Catholic Church has never used extortion to get money out of either myself or my husband. The LDS church wanted us to make a COVENANT with God that we would faithfully pay. I know for a fact that if you do not pay your tithe honestly, you will lose your temple privileges.
Obviously, you don’t know the teachings of your own church very well or you’d know very well that the reason the church doesn’t recognize your present marriage is because in the eyes of God and the Church you are still sacramentally married to your former wife. By remarrying you are committing adultery.
I’m glad you can afford to give as much as you do. That must be a true blessing in and of itself. My husband takes home just a little over $300 a week. We struggle to survive and can’t even afford a car. We can afford to give but when we do give it is always from the heart even though it is not much. If you really want to know the Old Testament Law of Tithing stop reading Malachi 3 and start reading Deut. 14 (entire chapter) for God’s take on tithing. When I brought this scripture up to the missionaries, they didn’t answer me. They just gave me a blank stare. I doubt they looked up the scripture. Besides. I thought we were no longer under the Law.
I have done a lot of looking in the New Testament to find out where tithing was so ordered by the early church and nowhere is tithing mentioned as a practice for believers. We are expected to help support our church leaders financially. Tithing in my opinion has gotten way out of hand. Even in theProtestant churches Malachi 3 is drummed into people’s heads without mercy. My husband and did one time pay a full tithe to the LDS church. We ran out of food before his next check was due. I finally called a place of business on an outstanding check I was hoping they still had. They still had the check. I asked them if they could please hold the check for another 4 days. They agreed and we used some of that to buy enough food to last us a few days.
I don’t recall any blessings coming out of that. Just terror that we weren’t going to make it.
I’m sorry but I have to just disagree with everything in your post.
Sincerely,
Johannah
 
GrandpaD said:
It is too bad that the tithing frightened you, because the Catholic Church believes the same thing, but goes about it differently. I have been asked to pledge thousands of dollars to the Catholic Church besides what I put in the collection plate. My wife pays tithing and we usually end up paying about the same amount per year to each church. You have to think about the fact that God gives us everything we have and He only asks for 1/10th back. It is in the Bible, so everyone should be giving 10% no matter what church they belong to. Everytime we pay our obligation to the church we receive the same or more back within a few days in some way or another. The Lord says if you pay Him 1/10 heaven will pour out blessings so great you will not be able to count them.
It takes faith that God will keep His promise and that is something you do not have yet. It is important to read your scriptures and get to really know Jesus Christ as your saviour and then you will develop the faith to know that if you pay your obligations to the Church He will take care of the rest. I have put my faith in God and it works.🙂
Click to expand...
this does not represent Catholic teaching on tithing or sacrificial giving, it represents one families decision on this matter. It is also off-topic
 
I know of two who converted from Catholic, to Mormon, to JW. One of them is my MIL. Baptized and confirmed, became a Mormon for a few years, finally becoming a jw in 1985. She no longer speaks to my wife, blaming me at the same, because the wife wants to return to the Catholic church.
 
GrandpaD said:
It is too bad that the tithing frightened you, because the Catholic Church believes the same thing, but goes about it differently. I have been asked to pledge thousands of dollars to the Catholic Church besides what I put in the collection plate.
Click to expand...
I know this is off-topic, but man, that is such a strange thing, being “asked to pledge thousands of dollars to the Catholic Church besides what I put in the collection plate.”

Does this seem odd to anyone else here?

I have never heard of such a thing. Unless he’s talking about special collections for things like Catholic Charities, and whatnot. And for sure, there is never any compulsion in those cases; one can give as much or as little as one chooses, or nothing at all. GrandpaD makes this sound like there is almost a Mormonish type of pressure being put on him to give money to the Catholic Church. Wow.
 
I am not as well off as you think, and the reason I am divorced from my Catholic wife is she left me for another man in 1978 and took our 4 children. She also joined the Seventh Day Adventist Church, so there was no way to save our marriage and the Catholic Church would not grant an annulment unless I told them there was a problem with the marriage to begin with, which there wasn’t, we were in love and all was well until she started going out. I am retired military and am on a very fixed income, which my first wife still gets a third of. I have retirement and social security, and my wife works part time. I am partially paralyzed from brain surgery and have many medical bills for health problems. The Catholic Church still sees fit to commit me to a pledge every year for one thing or another. I don’t see it as a blessing it is a great hardship for my wife and I and they won’t listen. My wife has never had to make any pledges to any bishop, it is between her and God what she donates and it is always in private. If I don’t put money in the plate at the Catholic Church everyone in the row knows and would look at me with judgement. Then when I put my money in they have a second collection and I am out of money and am embarrassed by not having the money for the second collection. Sorry, I love the Cathlic Church, but this part is just wrong and I can see it because I am living it. You misunderstood the LDS Church and they would have given you food from their welfare system and paid your rent if you needed it. I know the Catholic Church won’t do that for you.
But, never mind, I am Catholic and I am glad you have found your way to the Church, just don’t unfairly accuse the Mormons when you only know from your brief experience, and it sounds like you misinterpreted the things you were told. I kno;w both sides from living with my wife for 8 years now. I would not be here if it weren’t for the help of the LDS Church when I was hospitalized for 3 months and my dear wife’s care through it all and continuing now. I can’t believe that the Catholic Church considers my marriage adultery and it is too bad they do not forgive under certain cercumstances. Jesus said I the Lord will forgive whom I will, but it is up to you to forgive all men their sins.
Good luck to you and please don’t judge others so harshly when it is really you who need to change your heart, and become more in tune with God. He will help you if you ask with faith.
 
GrandpaD, sorry about your misfortune. I am in a similar position regards marriage. However, I have not remarried, and will not until the Church establishes that I am free to marry, and that my fiance is also free. In the meantime, we live as brother and sister, that is, celibate, and therefore are able to have the Sacraments. In case you didn’t know about this option, you might give it some thought. Believe me, I love this woman with all my heart, but I love the Lord even more, and I will not give up the Eucharist or Reconciliation merely for the sake of having sex.

I am extremely puzzled by what you say regarding the “Catholic Church” squeezing you for thousands of dollars each year. I am also a military retiree, enlisted, and have belonged to several parishes in various parts of the country (U.S.). The closest I have EVER EVER come to anything similar to what you’re describing is when our children were in Catholic elementary school in New York. The parish required that parents of students give a minimum level of financial support to the parish apart from collections on Sunday. This of course was monitored. Failure to meet the minimum would cause the school tuition to rise dramatically. And understand that NO student was ever forced out. If parents could not pay, all they had to do was explain this to father and the principal, and it was taken care of by the parish.

I have never heard of anyone coming to a home and demanding money. This is so far outside my experience of Catholicism, I can’t relate to it, and I’m sure others here are having the same reaction to your story.

In any case, you’re in my prayers for your situation with your marriage and your health. BTW I agree with you for the most part about tithing. When I was a fundamentalist I was a tither, and I still give a large amount of money, but I no longer keep track of it the way I once did, making sure I met that magic 10% figure no more no less. I came to see it as legalism. Now, I give what I am led to give. When the Lord leads, I try to follow, and I have been so blessed!

U.S. Army 1968-1989
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top