Why would anyone want to be a Mormon or Jehovah Witnesses?

  • Thread starter Thread starter TheSufi
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
CHRISTINE77 said:
This is interesting. I can see how a teenager, or someone who was searching for answers without having a solid religious foundation could be attracted to it - it seems so straightforward and full of answers. The Watchtower magazines are like that too, very colorful, full of interesting articles on science and religion.

How were you able to extracate yourself from them? It sounds like they get a pretty strong hold on people, once you are in their church.
Click to expand...
I had to face some pretty cold-hard facts about myself, and that was the real key.

While I was inspired to leave the Witnesses due to experiencing God directly acting among non-JWs in a manner that I was taught was impossible and could not possibly occur, leaving the Witnesses was about leaving something about myself that was not good: my pride that “I” had “the Truth” (and pride that you didn’t have it).

People are often attracted to religions because the people in a group may appear to live good, clean lives, or perhaps family groups seem strong, or the religion promises some type of security and brotherhood you don’t find in the outside world or in other faiths. None of this is a good reason to join a religion.

Like the LDS and other faiths of the evangelistic fundamentalist type, the Jehovah’s Witnesses held out such “benefits” along with a “key,” namely the “secret” that ‘only they had’ because they were “the only mouthpiece of God.”

Their “key” was the claim that only they had the “chosen few” who could decipher the written Word of God. And like the LDS, JWs belong to that family of denominations that believe Holy Writ—and not Christ—is the ultimate and final revelation from God and that only their particular group has chosen ones—like the Gnostics—that can interpret the meaning of these inspired texts.

I had to tell myself that I was being foolish believing that I was so special that I had something others just didn’t have. I also had to reject the JW belief that only they truly worship God (they officially believe and teach that everyone else, including the LDS, worship and are servants/agents of Satan). The fact that they pride themselves in being included in the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC alongside the Jews who they teach deserved to suffer in concentration camps because, as their Governing Body preaches, they were ‘blood-guilty for having rejected Jesus as the Messiah’—well things like that just didn’t add up and seemed very, very evil in themselves.

People should join the Church not because of what “benefits” they can get out of it, but because they love God and want to be obedient to him out of love. There is no “secret” that only a “chosen few” have that others cannot have access to. The truth is there for everyone who wishes, not for a select group but for all. (Isaiah 55:1)

And while there is only one Church that has the fullness of truth, God is not bound by denominational lines in regards to who gets saved and who doesn’t.

Most important and most effective to leaving was coming to the realization that a Person—Jesus Christ—is the ultimate and final revelation of God. People were finding salvation in Christ before a single word of the New Testament was written because the Church was preaching this salvation via its oral Tradition. The gospel and testament of Christ is more than a book, it is found in the testimony of his Church, the Tradition that inspired the written words, the words which say: “Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book.” —John 20:30.

The only place to get the full witness to Christ that is “not written in this book” could only be the one Church that started everything in the first place among those first witnesses that Christ lived among.

Of course, I believe that without God’s grace and mercy I would not have realized how wrong I was in the first place. The human ego is so very hard a whirlpool of pride that I doubt any man can swim against its prideful current without the help of God and his Church.
 
delson jacobs,

your humility is edifying. to add further to your affirmation of the importance of Sacred Tradition alongside of Sacred Scripture is that in at least one of the Gospels, the author says that Jesus gave His apostles teachings that He did not share with the masses of people to whom He preached, primarily because they (the masses) would not have been able to understand them. the Lord’s three years of public ministry was designed to give Him time to adequately train the apostles as much as it was designed to do other things.
 
DelsonJacobs said:
I had to face some pretty cold-hard facts about myself, and that was the real key.

While I was inspired to leave the Witnesses due to experiencing God directly acting among non-JWs in a manner that I was taught was impossible and could not possibly occur, leaving the Witnesses was about leaving something about myself that was not good: my pride that “I” had “the Truth” (and pride that you didn’t have it).

People are often attracted to religions because the people in a group may appear to live good, clean lives, or perhaps family groups seem strong, or the religion promises some type of security and brotherhood you don’t find in the outside world or in other faiths. None of this is a good reason to join a religion.

Like the LDS and other faiths of the evangelistic fundamentalist type, the Jehovah’s Witnesses held out such “benefits” along with a “key,” namely the “secret” that ‘only they had’ because they were “the only mouthpiece of God.”

Their “key” was the claim that only they had the “chosen few” who could decipher the written Word of God. And like the LDS, JWs belong to that family of denominations that believe Holy Writ—and not Christ—is the ultimate and final revelation from God and that only their particular group has chosen ones—like the Gnostics—that can interpret the meaning of these inspired texts.

I had to tell myself that I was being foolish believing that I was so special that I had something others just didn’t have. I also had to reject the JW belief that only they truly worship God (they officially believe and teach that everyone else, including the LDS, worship and are servants/agents of Satan). The fact that they pride themselves in being included in the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC alongside the Jews who they teach deserved to suffer in concentration camps because, as their Governing Body preaches, they were ‘blood-guilty for having rejected Jesus as the Messiah’—well things like that just didn’t add up and seemed very, very evil in themselves.

People should join the Church not because of what “benefits” they can get out of it, but because they love God and want to be obedient to him out of love. There is no “secret” that only a “chosen few” have that others cannot have access to. The truth is there for everyone who wishes, not for a select group but for all. (Isaiah 55:1)

And while there is only one Church that has the fullness of truth, God is not bound by denominational lines in regards to who gets saved and who doesn’t.

Most important and most effective to leaving was coming to the realization that a Person—Jesus Christ—is the ultimate and final revelation of God. People were finding salvation in Christ before a single word of the New Testament was written because the Church was preaching this salvation via its oral Tradition. The gospel and testament of Christ is more than a book, it is found in the testimony of his Church, the Tradition that inspired the written words, the words which say: “Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book.” —John 20:30.

The only place to get the full witness to Christ that is “not written in this book” could only be the one Church that started everything in the first place among those first witnesses that Christ lived among.

Of course, I believe that without God’s grace and mercy I would not have realized how wrong I was in the first place. The human ego is so very hard a whirlpool of pride that I doubt any man can swim against its prideful current without the help of God and his Church.
Click to expand...
amen - thank you
 
twopekinguys said:
Because he announced he was leaving his computer. He hasn’t done that over the past few days he has posted. He simply logged off.

Why announce it?
Click to expand...
I have to say that you guys are very good at driving off Mormons. You remind me of a bunch of crows attacking a hawk. But have you really helped other Non-ex-Mormons understand where the Mormons are so wrong in their thinking? Isn’t this a little egotistical on your part?
 
CHRISTINE77 said:
I have to say that you guys are very good at driving off Mormons. You remind me of a bunch of crows attacking a hawk. But have you really helped other Non-ex-Mormons understand where the Mormons are so wrong in their thinking? Isn’t this a little egotistical on your part?
Click to expand...
If truth drives people away, then so be it
 
TexanKnight said:
If truth drives people away, then so be it
Click to expand...
Ditto.

I wonder if anyone has stopped to think that in fact a seed has been planted, and these people actually start researching some of the things that have been presented.

The number one reason for people leaving mormonism is they “Study their way out”.

Reason kicks in, and they finally start to realize things don’t add up.

Jesus didn’t mince words, why should we?
 
twopekinguys said:
Ditto.

I wonder if anyone has stopped to think that in fact a seed has been planted, and these people actually start researching some of the things that have been presented.

The number one reason for people leaving mormonism is they “Study their way out”.

Reason kicks in, and they finally start to realize things don’t add up.

Jesus didn’t mince words, why should we?
Click to expand...
and, as my new sig says, our New Pope says the same thing…
 
Ill be leaving my CPU on also, but wont be online guys and gals 😉 Going shooting with my wife and kids!!!
 
twopekinguys said:
Ditto.

I wonder if anyone has stopped to think that in fact a seed has been planted, and these people actually start researching some of the things that have been presented.

The number one reason for people leaving mormonism is they “Study their way out”.

Reason kicks in, and they finally start to realize things don’t add up.

Jesus didn’t mince words, why should we?
Click to expand...
While I cannot speak for those LDS people who engage others on this forum and don’t return (though I have been informed by former Mormons that it is often similar), I can offer what was happening from the Jehovah’s Witness perspective when similar things happen to them—and it is not favorable for anyone involved.

Generally a seed is not planted in cases like this. Religions like the LDS and JW teach that one sign that they are in the true religion is that people on the outside are argumentative, cynical, or will otherwise reject them and their beliefs.

In other words they interpret disagreement with them as a reinforcement.

They view such encounters as fulfillment of these words of Jesus to themselves (and thus proof that they have the “true religion”): “If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you. Remember the word I spoke to you,‘No slave is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.”–John 15:18-20a.

Another (and more likely) scenario is that the person is going to a church elder or minister for help in this discussion or debate. They will show what they did (and usually engaging others on a site like this is a no-no), often get “disciplined” for participating in a forum with Catholics, and then instructed never to return under penalty of further discipline. Remember, religions like the LDS and Jehovah’s Witnesses teach that sites like this are literal playgrounds of Satanic thinking, evil spirits, and demons. At least to the JW we are all influenced by demons.

While it is not impossible that a seed could have been planted, from ex-JWs and other ex-cult members I have spoken with, these types of encounters did little but impress upon themselves that they had the truth because they saw this as affirming persecution. People generally leave these groups due to a major failure of someone in power in their group that cannot be dealt with by cognitive dissonance. Doctrine discussions have far less effect than those on the outside think because doctrine is usually not the reason these people are in these groups in the first place.

But I hope for this LDS person’s sake that I am very wrong in this case and all this was beneficial.
 
DelsonJacobs said:
While I cannot speak for those LDS people who engage others on this forum and don’t return (though I have been informed by former Mormons that it is often similar), I can offer what was happening from the Jehovah’s Witness perspective when similar things happen to them—and it is not favorable for anyone involved.

Generally a seed is not planted in cases like this. Religions like the LDS and JW teach that one sign that they are in the true religion is that people on the outside are argumentative, cynical, or will otherwise reject them and their beliefs.

In other words they interpret disagreement with them as a reinforcement.

They view such encounters as fulfillment of these words of Jesus to themselves (and thus proof that they have the “true religion”): “If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you. Remember the word I spoke to you,‘No slave is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.”–John 15:18-20a.
Click to expand...
You are correct in your views on this from the LDS perspective. For them, disagreement = evidence that they are right in their views.

That is why, when dealing with LDS, engaging in debate and discussion, is more often than not, fruitless.

The adversary is very good in what he does and how he does it. He is, indeed, an expert, in deception
 
I’ve been here long enough to have seen some better Mormon apologeticists than the recent ones. I’m not against you giving them good arguements against their religion, but it seem like you are cherry picking certain issues, and not letting them develop an arguement. I mean, I love hearing Mormon apologetics, and it just ain’t happenin’ anymore!!;):mad:😃
 
Marie5890 said:
You are correct in your views on this from the LDS perspective. For them, disagreement = evidence that they are right in their views.

That is why, when dealing with LDS, engaging in debate and discussion, is more often than not, fruitless.

The adversary is very good in what he does and how he does it. He is, indeed, an expert, in deception
Click to expand...
The funny thing is, most of us do not post to be in disagreement with them. We post to correct what they say so people know the truth. If we do not correct false doctrine, we are just as guilty as those who espouse it.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top