For thirty-five years I was active as one of Jehovah's Witnesses. I was
an appointed
Elder
for over thirty years and a
Pioneer
for two years.
I spent seven years at the organization's world headquarters in Brooklyn,
New York — known as
Bethel
— where I was appointed a
Bethel Elder
and worked in the
Service Department
as secretary to Harley Miller, the Service Department
Overseer. I gave circuit- and district-convention talks to audiences as
large as forty thousand people in Tiger Stadium (Detroit, Michigan) and
the SilverDome (Pontiac, Michigan). I contributed to articles in
The Watchtower and Our Kingdom Ministry. After Bethel, I
served for years as Accounts Overseer for circuit assemblies and News
Service Overseer at district conventions. I even served on one occasion
as a temporary circuit overseer. All this simply to say that what
follows cannot be dismissed as the complaint of an outsider who never
understood the religion: my standing as one of Jehovah's Witnesses was,
by any internal measure, unimpeachable. What's more, neither I nor my
wife Suzanne were ever
disfellowshiped
even after ceasing association
with the religion in 2000. (We did, however, lose friends and family.)
We left because, after honestly and carefully analyzing the teachings
and practices of the Organization, we came to the conclusion that "the
Truth," as Witnesses call their faith, was neither the authentic
historic Christianity it claimed to be, nor, in fact, "the truth", but
simply a man-made
"restorationist"
sect, of a kind with the Latter Day
Saints (Mormons), the Seventh Day Adventists, the Worldwide Church of
God, and others born of the same era and the same impulse. Unlike the
Protestant Churches which departed from the Catholic Church over
presumed 'reforms', the various restorationist sects hold that Jesus
and the Holy Spirit did not protect the early Church from apostasy,
and consequently it was up to 19th and 20th century Bible readers to
restore what God had failed to protect. They used their human reasoning
to construct doctrines that then had to be revised again and again as
interpretations shifted with new human reasoning — and sometimes
of necessity, as a previous position became untenable.
I noticed, too, that the young people raised as Jehovah's Witnesses very
often
left the religion
as adults and became agnostics or atheists. Their faith had
been cultivated in an organization rather than in Jesus Christ, and
once they lost faith in the organization, they were left in effect,
"inoculated" against Christianity itself. And, worst of all, they
knew nothing about the
grace
of God that The Watchtower never revealed to them.
The purpose of this website is to point Witnesses and others to the
source of grace, Jesus Christ, offered in the Church He founded and
which He and the Holy Spirit have protected down through the centuries.
It is my particular hope to help those dear souls among Witnesses and
former Witnesses for whom the Watchtower "poisoned the well" with
respect to the Catholic Church and the Christian faith.
I invite your engagement with me on the questions below. Please bear in
mind that I do not have the perfect answer for every question —
in some cases I may have an answer but not the best wording for it. And
in some cases I may not have an answer at all; that does not mean none
exists, any more than a person's refusal to accept an answer makes the
answer inadequate. People are not always convinced by good arguments or
the truth — often our will overrides our reason, and we select
what we choose to believe ... not all the time, but sometimes. So I
realize that even the best arguments and facts may not convince one
of Jehovah's Witnesses or a skeptic to set aside their confirmation
bias or fear of change and give honest consideration to what follows
here. But I feel committed to present what years of honest and
prayerful investigation have proven to me.
You may leave comments or questions below, but be sure to read our
policy on commenting
before doing so.