Then the letter itself; I doubt the formatting is perfect -
Is
YourReligiontheTrueOne?“It is natural that you should desire not to be misled. But how can you avoid it? How can you know for sure that your religion is the true one? It can be done by finding out whether its teachings are supported by God’s Word…. Also by determining the kind of fruitage the religion produces”
Watchtower - July 1, 1968
“Be on the watch for the false prophets that come to you in sheep’s covering, but inside they are ravenous wolves. By their fruits you will recognize them… every good tree produces fine fruit, but every rotten tree produces worthless fruit; a good tree cannot bear worthless fruit, neither can a rotten tree produce fine fruit… Really, then, by their fruits you will recognize those [men].”
The Words of Jesus @ Matthew 7:15-20 NWT
“Beloved ones, do not believe every inspired expression, but test the inspired expressions to see whether
they originate with God, because many false prophets have gone forth into the world.”
Apostle John @ 1 John 4:1 NWT
Scandalous Actions That I Can Not Ignore
In
1992
Jehovah’s Witnesses became an NGO member of the United Nations. In 2001, just one day after exposure in a British newspaper, they withdrew membership. Though the UN states that access to it’s library was not restricted or enhanced by such membership, this is the story that the Watchtower continues to use in it’s defense. The Watchtower does not deny it’s membership.
1988
United States Supreme Court Docket # 88-1374 - The Watchtower Society files a Brief of Amicus Curiae (friend of the court),
joining ranks with Jimmy Swaggart Ministries in California to resist taxation of religious literature. Seeing that the decision is going to go against them, they initiate the ‘voluntary donation’ arrangement in the United States before the ruling. Witnesses were never told the real reasons.
In
1992, CBS News, Dateline, BBC, CNN, and other international media organizations revealed that hundreds of Jehovah’s Witnesses elders and supporters have been disfellowshipped for revealing the depth of
pedophilia that exists within the organization. Many ‘victims’ have been disfellowshipped for ‘blowing the whistle’ on the perpetrators, for slander. Some have committed suicide. Those who have resigned from the organization in disgust number now into the tens or hundreds of thousands.
While
Jehovah’s Witnesses in Malawi in the 1970’s were being tortured and killed for refusal to buy a political card,
the Watchtower ‘winked’ with tacit approval at the standard bribery tactics that occur in Mexico to produce fraudulent documentation that the young brothers there have attended state ordered military training, when they haven‘t. This practice may continue there today.
On
March 9, 1998 the Watchtower society and the European Commission of Human Rights brokered an agreement with the government of Bulgaria. That agreement stipulated that Bulgaria recognize Jehovah’s Witnesses as a religious organization.
Jehovah’s witnesses compromised regarding blood transfusions, allowing that “members should have free choice in the matter for themselves and their children, without any control or sanction on the part of the association.” Of course, anyone who takes blood continues to be expelled in spite of this legally binding international agreement.
Dear Brothers;
Awareness of these matters created in me a Crisis of Conscience that I could not ignore. Far more than ‘human imperfection’ is here indicated. The organization that has claimed to have an exclusive relationship with God and His Son, have demonstrated, with actions originating from the very top of the organization, that she is no less culpable in the eyes of God than the balance of religion that the Watchtower organization calls Babylon the Great.
I have spent three tedious years investigating these matters in depth. Every one of them can be proven to be absolutely true as I state them. I have reduced this document to a mere three pages, from what had begun as 55 pages of proofs, documentations, emails to the United Nations, newspaper articles from England and Europe, records of personal contact with the Watchtower society, scans of legal briefs and court filings, and testimony of various elders, circuit overseers, district overseers, Bethel elders, and even a Member of the Governing Body, who all left the organization over the same ethical issues.
If any individual Jehovah’s Witness had joined any organization, in any capacity, that the Watchtower condemns to the level that it condemns the United Nations, they would be expelled immediately. If any individual were to file legal briefs supporting the activities of any interfaith institution, or any religion outside of the Watchtower religion, he would be expelled immediately, as having tossed in his lot with the wicked one. If any individual were to ignore bribery, child molestation, or were to lie in government court cases, they would be expelled as sinners of high order. This is a fact that all of you know to be true.
Yet, not only did the Watchtower organization participate in these deep sinful actions [from their own doctrinal positions], but they elected to never tell us about them at all. In the matter of the United Nations debacle, they sent a letter to some congregations [I have a copy in my files], and to all branches, with the ‘official story’ being that such was done to access the United Nation’s library. In my personal contact with the Library Coordinator himself, it was established that neither in 1992, nor ever, was it needed or even beneficial to become a part of the NGO membership to the UN to access the library. So what little information was given to the congregations was a lie, an effort at ‘damage control’. How sad for the organization that prides itself as the only clean and unblemished religion on earth today.
In the course of investigation into those scandalous situations, I became aware of serious doctrinal, prophetic, and additional ethical issues that ripped to the core of the Society‘s claim to exclusive selection by Christ Jesus in 1919. Once I concluded my investigation, I then spent months ‘grieving’; denial, obsession, withdrawal, anger, disbelief, depression, suppression, then finally acceptance.
Like those who heard Jesus condemn the Jewish system, the reaction of Jehovah’s Witnesses to anything negative about the organization is denial, followed by a desire to ‘kill the messenger‘. Most likely all of you will go quickly into defense mode, ignoring any and all facts presented here. That is precisely why I have condensed this to a simple three-page letter. I do not view myself as some special messenger. I am but a simple Christian, trying to serve the Father and His Son, plagued by a pained conscience over what I have discovered about the religion I had accepted as ‘Truth‘ all my life.
In much the same way as Queen Athaliah cried ‘Conspiracy! Conspiracy!’ when confronted with the facts of her falsehood, the Governing Body has educated the Witness mentality to cry out ‘Apostasy! Apostasy!’ when anyone dares challenge it‘s authority. [2 Kings 11] It is a diversionary tactic, intended to make all who dare to challenge them as evil, and irretrievably compromised in one‘s faith. On the heals of this letter, and your announcement, will come the inevitable slander and gossip that will judge me as unworthy of life. Yet, I stand on the facts; if any one of you can prove me a liar in these matters, I will issue appropriate apologies. You will most likely never look into any of these matters, just preferring to assume I am the evil perpetrator of lies. And yet what motive would I have to create such elaborate fabrications, destroying my confidence in the religion that I practiced, believed and preached for 43 years? It would be absurd to do such a thing.
Good things can come from understanding of bad things. My spirituality was awakened as a result. I spend much time now with the Bible alone as my guide. I have worked to secure a personal relationship with the Father and with My Savior Jesus. Such was not possible while immersed in a religion that superimposed itself between my and my Mediator. I will be forever grateful to you men, for it was your failure to act as shepherds, or to display love as Jesus said would characterize his people, that initially moved me to doubt.
Indeed, the Bible testifies in powerful repetition that the hallmark of Christianity is not organization, but Jesus;
Jesus said to him: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you men had known me, you would have known my Father also; from this moment on you know him and have seen him.” Words of Jesus @ John 14:6,7 New World Translation
And the warnings are clear regarding Christian’s association with defiled religion.
Do not come into close association with unbelievers, like oxen yoked with asses. For what is there in common between righteousness and lawlessness? Or what partnership has light with darkness? Where can harmony between Christ and Belial be found? Or what participation has a believer with an unbeliever? And what compact has the Temple of God with idols? For we are the Temple of the ever-living God; as God has said, "I will dwell among them, and walk about among them; and will be their God, and it is they who shall be My people." Therefore, "`Come out from among them and separate yourselves,' says the Lord, `and touch nothing impure; and I will receive you, and will be a Father to you, Having therefore these promises, beloved friends, let us purify ourselves from all defilement of body and of spirit, and secure perfect holiness through the fear of God.
2 Corinthians 6:14 -7:1 Weymouth
“Get out of her, my people, if you do not want to share with her in her sins, and if you do not want to receive part of her plagues. For her sins have massed together clear up to heaven, and God has called her acts of injustice to mind.”
Words of Jesus @ Revelation 18:4,5 New World Translation
Let it be noted, that I love Jehovah’s Witnesses, that is, on a personal level. The people of that religion
shaped my life for nearly 5 decades. I love them, in spite of their view of me now, accurate or not. Many of greater influence than I ever had or wished to have, have made their way out of your religion. I am proud to claim some of them as my personal friends, though they are interspersed among various churches and faiths. I know that what Jesus stated was the real Truth, when He said;
“Most truly I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All those that have come in place of me are thieves and plunderers; but the sheep have not listened to them. I am the door; whoever enters through me will be saved, and he will go in and out and find pasturage. The thief does not come unless it is to steal and slay and destroy. I have come that they might have life and might have it in abundance. I am the fine shepherd; the fine shepherd surrenders his soul in behalf of the sheep. The hired man, who is no shepherd and to whom the sheep do not belong as his own, beholds the wolf coming and abandons the sheep and flees—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them— because he is a hired man and does not care for the sheep. I am the fine shepherd, and I know my sheep and my sheep know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I surrender my soul in behalf of the sheep.” Words of Jesus @ John 10:7-15 New World Translation
“The kingdom of the heavens has become like a man that sowed fine seed in his field. While men were sleeping, his enemy came and over-sowed weeds in among the wheat, and left…So the slaves of the householder came up and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow fine seed in your field? How, then, does it come to have weeds?’…‘Do you want us, then, to go out and collect them?’ He said, ‘No; that by no chance, while collecting the weeds, you uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest; and in the harvest season I will tell the reapers, First collect the weeds and bind them in bundles to burn them up, then go to gathering the wheat into my storehouse.’”
Words of Jesus @ Matthew 10:24-30 New World Translation
No organization needed. Jesus knows his sheep, and they would be scattered among the wheat when He arrives, just as they have been for centuries, not already gathered into a ’protective Ark’ such as the Society claims to be. I will await his harkening call, as I am Christian, a follower of our Lord and Savior Jesus, not a follower of any interloping religion claiming to be mediator between man and the Father. Such is not Biblical.
The reaction of high control religious groups is similar throughout. They derive power, not from the claimed relationship with God and Christ - but from membership that never questions their authority. Those who do dare are often expelled, threatened and accused of religious treason. In his book entitled The Myth of Certainty, scholar Daniel Taylor, a dissident Catholic priest, makes this comment, not referring to Jehovah’s Witnesses specifically, but much of it applies;
The primary goal of all institutions and subcultures is self-preservation. Preserving the faith is central to God’s plan for human history; preserving particular religious institutions is not. Do not expect those that run the institutions to be sensitive to the difference. God needs no particular person, church, denomination, creed, or organization to accomplish his purpose. He will make use of those in all their diversity, who are ready to be used, but will leave to themselves those who labor for their own ends.
Nonetheless, questioning the institution is synonymous, for many with attacking God - something not to be tolerated….. Actually they are protecting themselves, their view of the world, and their sense of security. The religious institution has given them meaning, a sense of purpose, and, in some cases, careers. Anyone perceived as a threat to these things is a threat indeed.
This threat is often met, or suppressed even before it arises, with power… Institutions express their power most clearly by enunciating, interpreting, and enforcing the rules of the subculture. Every institution has its rules and ways of enforcing them, some clearly stated, others unstated but no less real.
My conscientious stand against that which is out of harmony with the Bible is summed well by Martin Luther when facing trial for his life at the Diet of Worms, Germany, in 1521;
“Unless I am convicted by the testimonies of the Scriptures or by evident reason [for I believe neither pope nor councils alone, since it is manifest they have often erred and contradicted themselves], I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted, and my conscience is held captive by the Word of God; and it is neither safe nor right to act against conscience, I cannot and will not retract anything. Here I stand;
I cannot otherwise; God help me. Amen.”
My final statement then;
Having become aware of doctrine and ethics that violate Christianity as a whole, and that makes such religion a sham before God and man, and due to a conscience that is sensitive to the Bible, I, xxxxxx, have no alternative in the sight of my Lord and King Jesus, but to denounce that which I have found to be unholy before Him. I am then, henceforth, no longer to ever be considered as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Respectfully yours;
As an Aside: I truly hope that among you there will be found some of significant enough integrity to investigate the facts as I here present them. I truly leave with a sense of profound loss, leaving behind many whom I cherish and love deeply. But I must be true to God, no matter the price. I pray that some who read this will be of the same mind and spirit, willing to know and examine the teachings that will determine your life or death in the eyes of the only One of significance in this matter, Jesus Christ our Lord, Savior, and King.
