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It's a well known fact that Jehovah's Witnesses are utterly black and white regarding anything paranormal, supernatural or demonic. I was raised by a devout baptized witness and for most of my childhood I lived in a very strict spiritual environment for which I have maintained into adulthood, however, my viewpoint on religion and spirituality has decidedly altered in the last decade.

Sadly, Witnesses have come under the impression that demons will only attack you if you are doing something wrong. Most literature gives clear warnings to be wary of entertainment and activities and that if you are in trouble, by amending your attitude, spirituality and destroying the object which it attached to, that you will be safe. This is not the case. I agree on staying away from spiritism by using demons/spirits or whatever else you want to call them, to gain information, contact the dead, look into the future etc, but simply accusing someone of being "involved in spiritism" does NOT cover everything. There are many reasons why an entity can be attached to a person's home, or be following/attacking an individual and simply renouncing immorality is not going to stop it.

Based on all of the above, I am very curious as to something...

Has anyone ever heard of a Witness who has crossed paths with a incorporeal spirit/demon that was not drawn to an individual based on their 'unholyness', but instead inhabiting an inanimate object such as a house, a painting or other antique, or where a person is the target, through no fault of their own? Did they ever tell you how they dealt with it? Yes, I know that Witnesses as a rule stay away from all things demonic, they don't fight, and most don't even believe in self defense due to the refusal to be involved in ANY form of violence, but were they willing to become involved and help remove the demon or did they cut contact? Were they scared for themselves or for the one it was attacking? What did they believe caused it, and what they do in reaction?

As a side note, as a Witness (on the off chance any should visit this site), have you ever come across such an occurrence? Moving into a property you didn't know was haunted? Met a spiritual individual facing demonic persecution for reasons OTHER than doing something they shouldn't?

--

Anyone commenting this, if you intend to b**** at Jehovah's Witnesses, move along. This isn't a thread to pick them apart, I want to know of their encounters, NOT your opinions of the religion. I'm not interested in a religious debate admonishing any branch or claim on true Christianity. I am not an active JW anymore for reasons I will not go into, but I will always respect and admire the organization along with the Watchtower Society. As a whole, they are some of the most warm hearted and peaceful people I have ever met in my life and I am truly thankful to have been raised within the Christian congregation. My life however, no longer fits that bill...

If upon reading this, you have anything important to speak to me about, message me directly. Threads are public. Remember it.

Edited by Aneksi
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The movement has obviously deteriorated since I had some contact with them when I was in college. Then they advised against dabbling in paranormal but there were no fear tactics that I recall and Satan and the demons were portrayed as heavily protected by the angelic host. The business of "disfellowshipping" anyone who strayed had I think just gotten started seriously, as I remember it happening to an alcoholic and it being threatened to those who smoked.

From what I read (there is no sign of them in Vietnam, not surprising considering the attitude here about such groups that use internal discipline to maintain membership), there has been quite a shake-up probably brought about by the continuing failure of Armageddon to happen. Although they make no specific predictions I sure had the notion that it was due in the 1970s. The teaching was there were adults alive in 1914 who would still be alive when the end came -- that's kinda hard to credit now so I figure that has probably been reinterpreted.

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I was raised a JW from childhood till age 21 when I was excommunicated, and while you are correct, JW's are kind and respecful, excommunication is harsh and hurts all sides involved, though they do not view it as such, my now adult children almost 30.. do not know any of my side of the family due to this, that is a sad sad thing. HOWever I will say this

I was taught that I was never to invite satan into my life by reading things of the paranormal, or seeking things of the paranormal, or doing things that was obviously wrong (such as what I did.. agreeing to give my newborn daughter a blood tranfusion due to complications from RH incompatability)..

In that sense, through intense love of my then unborn child (i signed the papers for a transfusion while in labor..).. I invited satan into my heart because I allowed love of my child to override what was commanded by Jehovah.

Perfect love would never ever override the commands of Jehovah.

Also.. though I do not consider this paranormal.. SOmetimes I could look at pple and 'know things'. I never once considered it paranormal nor do I now as an agnostic. I consider it just somehow 'knowing' things do to things my mind sees but i do not actively notice. A tone of skin, flinching of eyes.. attitude or way a person holds themselves. I can instinctly know when someone is ill even though no one else sees it. I will go up and say something like 'are you ok?' and they seem shocked I noticed they were no, when even their own spouse noticed nothing. As I child I could do this. I think some pple just seem to have this instinct.. some pple taste flavors others do not. .have better hearing.. sight.. I just seem to have a better intuition.

As a JW child I was taught to ignore this, push it aside.. do not use anything that may give off the appearance of supernatural even if it is not so.. because just by that, i could be lessening my will towards following only Jehovah...

I know this is not exactly what you were asking for, but it is the closest I have.

I thought I was going to be punished badly when I was young. My brother worked in the coal mines, I instinctly knew stuff was wrong, cuz my granddaddy seemed upset about where Guy was being assigned to work on strip mining, Guy seemed nervous too as he was new. SO I had a severe migraine over the stress and woke up screaming one night.. just screaming, and when everyone ran to me I kept screaming that Guy was dead, I saw him dead, he is dead. Guy hugged me and I could then see it was a dream.

The next day he was killed when a rock crashed down the mountain side and hit him on the head.

It was well over a week before I remember anyone talking ot me after that, and I knew I had to never ever speak such things again, but to pray and pray to jehovah,. I realized it would not be accepted.

I KNOW i did not have a premonition of his death, not really, nothing paranormal Coal mines for me as a child was something to fear, I had watched pple cry and scream as cave ins happened, and pple died, black lung from working in the mines. COal mines to me as a child meant illness and death and I just 'dreamed' of it at a horrible time.

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Well how long is it going to take before the world learns how we have just got to stop mining and using coal!

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Where does the policy of being against blood transfusions come from?

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I don't know about JW except from the few I've met and discussed paranormal things with.

One was a really strange, obnoxiously cheery, devout type that also had a psuedo or at least "funneled" appreciation for intellectual curiosity, but would always try to point it toward reading various JW material, though he had his share of interesting paranormal experiences to tell from his childhood - which of course he associated with demonic activity. Overall he was a nice, if kinda pushy guy (but fairly reasonable if you made it clear he was going a bit overboard), but from my understanding, he had been excommunicated to some extent and was only allowed a sort of "more-than-a-visitor-but-not-quite-a-member" status in his kingdom hall. Still, he also seemed open to discussing paranormal stuff to a fairly broad degree without trying to take everything into a purely religious conversation.

The other was someone from here, and really enjoyed the site and had their own pictures of orbs they took and was just one of the nicest people you could possibly meet, and not all hardcore and such, so she wasnt I think a "typical" kind of JW, more a "personal practice" type. But she enjoyed talking about paranormal things including ghosts and UFOs and all kinds of things, and though sometimes she indicated a possible leaning to demonic causes of things, I didn't get the impression this was a 100% across the board explanation, which surprised me.

I know this is offtopic, but these two people, the second more so, really helped me get an early, much more friendly and reasonable image, than I fear I would have developed in-absentia as people do with only hearing stories and having their doors pounded on, or just listening to the tales of the more extreme acts or beliefs attributes to some JW. So as a closing note, I'd just like to say it was my good fortune to meet both these people and I feel in their own ways, they represented for JW well.

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Yea, I have to say I was at first attracted to them by the sensibleness of their approach to the Bible, once you accept their premise that the Bible is infallible. They would take a passage and compare it to another passage and try to work out why they seemed to conflict and then find a way around it all. Their meetings are quiet and intellectual and studious and not emotional hardly at all, although they do use testimonials a lot, which I consider under the belt.

Of course their utter inability and unwillingness to recognize modern biology soon soured me, and the falseness of their attacks on evolution (taken I'm sure from other fundamentalist groups). That and the fact that a lot of their ways of dealing with passages in the Bible that didn't fit their message struck me as stretching things way too far.

I must say I am curious how the group has evolved: my last contact was back in the 1960s.

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Where does the policy of being against blood transfusions come from?

quoting from an online artical


  • Genesis 9:4. God allowed Noah and his family to add animal flesh to their diet after the Flood but commanded them not to eat the blood. God told Noah: “Only flesh with its soul—its blood—you must not eat.” This command applies to all mankind from that time on because all are descendants of Noah.

  • Leviticus 17:14. “You must not eat the blood of any sort of flesh, because the soul of every sort of flesh is its blood. Anyone eating it will be cut off.” God viewed the soul, or life, as being in the blood and belonging to him. Although this law was given only to the nation of Israel, it shows how seriously God viewed the law against eating blood.

  • Acts 15:20. “Abstain . . . from blood.” God gave Christians the same command that he had given to Noah. History shows that early Christians refused to consume whole blood or even to use it for medical reasons.

http://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/questions/bible-about-blood-transfusion/

easier to do this, then try to explain it myself :) Blood is where the soul is.

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Wasn't sure how many people would reply to this, in my experience usually when the gap between Witnesses and the Supernatural is bridged, people only ever side with one and refuse to become in any way involved with the other. To explain more where I'm coming from, I was raised as a Witness myself. Right until I was in my late teens. I always loved the purity of their teachings, but (and sorry to quote a movie here, but as Tris mentioned in Divergent, from the outside the lifestyle was beautiful, but to try and attempt it herself, it was impossible. It felt fake.) That is very much how I've felt.

I understand what you mean WillowDreams, that there are things that drew you away. At a convention several years ago (my last attended was 2011) a brother asked if The Watchtower Society was gone, would the congregation members cease their studies and lose faith, or would they go straight to Jehovah? This shocked a lot of people. But not me, cos I've always gone straight to Jehovah even when outwardly I appeared to be a regular Witness.

It is the human organization that I have fault with for their ignorance over the supernatural, not the Creator. Hell, even demons believe in God. The entire bible was created as a testament to Satan, A FALLEN ANGEL... Why is it so difficult for God's people to believe in demons, that they would be attacked more than any other just as Jesus was? I honestly have never understood this. Whether it's their fear of appearing to be involved or simply fear of the unknown if they don't understand the logic of being so important to Satan I have no clue.

I've spent most of my life studying the bible and over half my life studying the supernatural. The JW bible is so vague on the details of most paranormal and demonic encounters, take possessions for example, or the identity of demons. Some instances have one sentence that usually calls a demon an unclean spirit with no explanation as to what it is, what causes it, or how to deal with it. I can't imagine what it's like to be so innocent as to not even be aware of the evil that's out there, and never cross it's path and so never believe that they have to for they don't even believe it's there... anyone that is this fortunate really does have a damned niiiice life. -huffs- But I honestly don't think it is possible anymore. I think this is why the congregation has changed. I stopped going in 2010, so I can't say what's happened since aside from reading news off jw.org. But even before I left, I was barely there as it was for several years. They (as you know) are very closed minded and are quick to judge. I just couldn't be as unemotional and uninterested in what was going on in MY mind as they expected.

A lot of what used to be interpreted as literal (Eden, Moses staff turning into a snake, Revelation etc), is now seen as metaphorical, and undetermined. The Revelation book (the publication) even states that of the four horsemen, Death is followed by Hades in some unexplained manner. Where other Christian bibles have used specific names and explanations. I don't think that it's bad that its been left vague if the ones that translated the bible from the original scrolls didn't want to give an explanation they weren't sure of. Better to leave it open than misinterpret it and accidentally lead people to believe something false, but when detailed explanations require you to research texts which are considered apocryphal... I admit I do see myself apart from the JW congregation for this reason.

As for the predictions, I realized that myself. I think it's down to human error, misunderstanding timing. It COULD also be down to the importance of no one knowing when Armageddon is.

Edited by Aneksi
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quoting from an online artical

  • Genesis 9:4. God allowed Noah and his family to add animal flesh to their diet after the Flood but commanded them not to eat the blood. God told Noah: “Only flesh with its soul—its blood—you must not eat.” This command applies to all mankind from that time on because all are descendants of Noah.
  • Leviticus 17:14. “You must not eat the blood of any sort of flesh, because the soul of every sort of flesh is its blood. Anyone eating it will be cut off.” God viewed the soul, or life, as being in the blood and belonging to him. Although this law was given only to the nation of Israel, it shows how seriously God viewed the law against eating blood.
  • Acts 15:20. “Abstain . . . from blood.” God gave Christians the same command that he had given to Noah. History shows that early Christians refused to consume whole blood or even to use it for medical reasons.

http://www.jw.org/en...od-transfusion/

easier to do this, then try to explain it myself :) Blood is where the soul is.

A lot of old jewish law was woven into the bible as "the word of God". A lot of it had to do with health and dietary practices which could be deadly. The blood of cows and pigs can contain pathogens that people can get. Pigs have trichinosis in their muscle tissue which if not properly cooked [cooking wood was often hard to come by] can infect the person eating the tissue. Hence all the jewish laws forbidding eating pork.

Cattle carry brucelosis in their blood. Most of the time if blood was consumed, it was consumed raw. Also, as a deterrent to paganism blood may also have been forbidden as taboo. Not because eating cooked blood products was bad but because often in those practices blood was consumed raw in rituals; a thing the new religion of judaism [relative to the much much older pagan practices] wanted to stamp out. So the prohibition might have actually been political.

With modern medicine the directives change. If a person allowed the death of an infant simply because they refused a transfusion because some dudes way back when wanted to discourage paganism and couched it in "thou shalt not" as a directive "from God", then I'd think allowing that child to die would by far be the worse spiritual practice. IMHO.

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You've forgotten that blood is sacred. Each living soul is sacred, and to consume it, is taking and of the lifeblood of another you do not have the right to. All life belongs to God, so to take blood is to take a life from God. i know people view this in may different ways, but life IS sacred. Without blood, the body would die. it is not just a liquid. No matter the faith, or culture, it is to be respected.

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A lot of old jewish law was woven into the bible as "the word of God". A lot of it had to do with health and dietary practices which could be deadly. The blood of cows and pigs can contain pathogens that people can get. Pigs have trichinosis in their muscle tissue which if not properly cooked [cooking wood was often hard to come by] can infect the person eating the tissue. Hence all the jewish laws forbidding eating pork.

Cattle carry brucelosis in their blood. Most of the time if blood was consumed, it was consumed raw. Also, as a deterrent to paganism blood may also have been forbidden as taboo. Not because eating cooked blood products was bad but because often in those practices blood was consumed raw in rituals; a thing the new religion of judaism [relative to the much much older pagan practices] wanted to stamp out. So the prohibition might have actually been political.

With modern medicine the directives change. If a person allowed the death of an infant simply because they refused a transfusion because some dudes way back when wanted to discourage paganism and couched it in "thou shalt not" as a directive "from God", then I'd think allowing that child to die would by far be the worse spiritual practice. IMHO.

I agree. I am agnostic, and so I reckon you could say I threw away the shackles that religion uses to bind your mind *my way of seeing it*..

If there is such a thing as god, I seriously doubt we evolved into thinking creatures to NOT use our brains to make life easier and better for ourselves and our future selves and preserving life. Science has allowed this.

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You've forgotten that blood is sacred. Each living soul is sacred, and to consume it, is taking and of the lifeblood of another you do not have the right to. All life belongs to God, so to take blood is to take a life from God. i know people view this in may different ways, but life IS sacred. Without blood, the body would die. it is not just a liquid. No matter the faith, or culture, it is to be respected.

Culture can be respected but that does not mean it is the end all be all. And not all should be practiced when we realize it is harmful.

If an adult wishes to not have specific medical treatments to save ones life, then that is fine. As an adult you have that choice.

A child should have every chance possible to grow up to be an independent thinking individual capable of making their own choices pertaining to their health and future.

I gave birth to my daughter, she deserved/deserves every chance possible to grow into a productive thinking individual capable of deciding what she wants in life and striving for it. MY job as a parent is to give her that chance. As a parent I had no right to use MY religious belief to shorten her life.

IF I had agreed to not give her a blood transfusion based on religion and she needed it, her life depended on it.. then I am in the wrong. It is MY faith, not hers.

I was lucky, she lived without the transfusion she came periously close to needing.

I was still excommunicated, but she was well worth it.

Now, if we steer this to the origional topic on JW's and use it to the paranormal. I had it right then and there.

(speaking as a JW not who I am today)

I allowed satans/demonic influence. I permitted satan to influence my thinking on my childs life. I permitted demonic forces to allow me to think it was ok to go against Jehovahs rule of blood and sign papers allowing my child to get a blood transfusion.

Due to the influence of demonic forces within my 'thoughts', I needed to repent, pray to Jehovah, and I needed to 'pay restitution' and put my life back on the path of the truth.

Since I did not do this, and I said no.. I needed the loving discipline of silent rebuke of the other members. Only to have the elders periodically come to me to see if I was understanding what I haD DONE wrong and ready to pray, beg forgiveness.. pay restitution.

this is not going to happen.

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You have completely misunderstood my meaning for this thread an my last comment over the sanctity of blood. You save life, any way you can. Just because you wished to save your child, does not mean that you were at fault. I would not blame demonic influence on you deciding for your child to save them. That's a load of crap. You're the parent. YOU HAVE the right to decide for that child everything on this earth. Just because you chose something that you were reprimanded for did not mean that Satan inspired you to do it. YOU chose. There is a difference. I do not see the rule over blood as a religious sacrament, but as a respect to nature, and to the Creator. Call him what you want. He made the earth and all life on it, so he owns all life on it. There is no religious dictatorship over that with me. Yes, save a life, but there are many different ways to do this. Taking the blood from another is one of them. I don't condone the treatment of those being reinstated. If you chose to return, it is purely between you, and Jehovah that you should answer to. I don't understand why they go to extra measures to be cautious over attitude and keep individuals separate. That caution should be displayed to all members, who are no doubt going the exact same struggles internally and have not publicly shown it.

What I mean by demons, is hauntings. Not influence. Not sadistic thoughts from Satan's spirits that simply sway your heart away from Jehovah. I mean stuff flying across a room, being ill, hearing phantom voices, apparitions... possession... things which it would seem I am more correct than ever in my belief that Witnesses have no clue over. They are worlds apart, and no doubt for a reason.

I thank you for your honesty, and I assure you that no offense was meant in any of the discussion.

Edited by Aneksi
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Why is it that when I read this thread I'm reminded of the old Star Destroyer vs Enterprise debates that would rage on and on for hundreds of pages.

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Because Star Wars and Star Trek are more alike than anyone is willing to admit. -coughs-

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Yea, I have to say I was at first attracted to them by the sensibleness of their approach to the Bible, once you accept their premise that the Bible is infallible. They would take a passage and compare it to another passage and try to work out why they seemed to conflict and then find a way around it all. Their meetings are quiet and intellectual and studious and not emotional hardly at all, although they do use testimonials a lot, which I consider under the belt.

Of course their utter inability and unwillingness to recognize modern biology soon soured me, and the falseness of their attacks on evolution (taken I'm sure from other fundamentalist groups). That and the fact that a lot of their ways of dealing with passages in the Bible that didn't fit their message struck me as stretching things way too far.

I must say I am curious how the group has evolved: my last contact was back in the 1960s.

It was 1975 but they kept changing the date after that. How do I know? My father's 2 sisters were devout Jehovah's Witnesses and the elder one wanted to know why my parents were moving us to the other end of the globe when the apocalypse was only 5 years away (we immigrated to Australia in 1970 when I was just 3 years old).

When that date came and went and we subsequently visited in later years there was always another apocalypse date due, my dad, not surprisingly developed a very dim view of religion in general as a result of all these goings on. :P

However, I still adore my aunts and just see their views as, well, "eccentric".

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You've forgotten that blood is sacred. Each living soul is sacred, and to consume it, is taking and of the lifeblood of another you do not have the right to. All life belongs to God, so to take blood is to take a life from God. i know people view this in may different ways, but life IS sacred. Without blood, the body would die. it is not just a liquid. No matter the faith, or culture, it is to be respected.

Blood offered in hospital to the sick is provided by willing donors. If blood is sacred, then the donor is offering an intimate and sacred gift to the receiver - sharing their very soul according to some. I think that is absolutely beautiful and at the root of true sacrifice. I absolutely respect and praise blood donors every time I hear of how someone was saved by their precious gift.

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Reading the Bible passages quoted in a much earlier message, I see nothing there that tells me the soul is the blood. I really don't think that is the JW view either, since I clearly remember them quoting Genesis, "and the man became a living soul." In other words the deny the actual existence of a separate soul and instead identify it with the living being.

I think the JW result is indeed sad, and has no doubt led to the premature death of some people, and to the division of some families. The NT command to "abstain from blood" seems in the context of not participating in blood rituals. The authors of Acts would have had utterly no conception of blood being used to save lives medically. This then is an example of stretching a passage to include meanings not really there. If one is to take the Bible literally, then one does not do that.

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No holy text on earth can be taken infallibly. This is where all religions go wrong. People live their lives on EVERY word as utter gospel. No prophecy has a black and white interpretation. Yes, dates have been altered. Unexpected, but we can not expect to understand the real reasons why, that's why faith comes into it. Did people really think that through reading the bible they'd be all knowing? The whole point of the bible is to SHOW that only God is all knowing. To claim a prophecy is false just because it didn't happen at the stroke of midnight like expected based on ONE rendition of the interpretation, does not mean it is a false prophecy. No matter how precise Heaven is, the knowledge has still been left in the hands of imperfect humans. The Watchtower Society are run by people. It is inspired by God, but inspiration is not absolute. They make rules and behave according to how they believe works best. You can't expect it to always be right in this system. I feel the same for all branches of Christianity, and in turn other religions that believe themselves to be the only correct religion.

Also, I have researched the definition of soul, life, blood and all manner of things in the bible. The soul is not JUST blood, it is more complicated than that. Without blood, the living human soul would be dead. Blood gives life. But it also begs the question. Who deserves to live? And who deserves to die? It is not in our right to decide that. Hospitals try to heal people, but they can not stop death. All it really is, is trying to cheat death, which will happen no matter what. At the core of Jehovah's Witnesses belief system, is Armageddon, and the Resurrection. They do not view death as a permanent stasis. Only God can GIVE life, because humans have forfeited the right to hold power over life and death following Eden. The Crucifixion was to pay for the sins of all humans.,. he paid with blood, and so the symbolism of blood, that Jesus claimed the lives of all righteous people back from Satan, means that to give blood to someone, is saying "I believe this person should live" no matter what God says. We don't know who is deemed righteous in God's eyes, any more than what happens after we die, when prophecies are meant to be fulfilled or when Armageddon is to come. It isn't easy to understand or accept, but for JWs, it is just.

Edited by Aneksi
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