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Jesus Knocking at the Door

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

Matthew 11:28

If you are one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, this page was written for you — and I know something about what it may have cost you to open it. You have been taught that a site like this is “apostate,” that reading it is disloyalty to Jehovah, and that nothing on it could be worth the risk. I was taught the same, and I taught it to others. For thirty-five years I was a Witness: an elder for more than thirty of them, a pioneer, and for seven years a member of the headquarters staff at Brooklyn Bethel.

So let me make you three promises before you read a word further. First, every Watchtower quotation on this site can be checked against the Society’s own publications — and I ask you to check them. Second, nothing here mocks you or the people you love. The argument is always with the organization’s handling of evidence, never with the character of its members, who are in the main devout, moral, and courageous. Third, nothing here asks you to decide anything today. You may read quietly, take all the time you need, and leave whenever you wish.

Below is a path through this site: where to start, what order to read in, and where to go depending on where you find yourself. If you would rather first know who is making this case, my story is told in the About pages.

I invite your engagement with me at every step. You may leave comments at the bottom of any page — anonymously, if that is safer for you — but please read our policy on commenting first. It explains, among other things, how to comment without using your name.

A Path Through This Site

If You Are Still In, and Have Questions

Read in this order. Every page states the Watchtower’s teaching first — fairly, from its own publications, with references you can check — before the Catholic answer is given. Take one page at a time; there is no hurry.

  1. By What Authority? — the foundation of everything: who has the right to teach, and where the Governing Body’s authority came from.
  2. The New World Translation — whether the Bible in your hands can be trusted to settle the rest.
  3. Memorial or Eucharist? — the one observance you keep each year, and how the first Christians kept it.
  4. One Flock or Two? — the two-class system on which so much else rests.
  5. Was There a Great Apostasy? — the claim that makes every other church wrong.
  6. Is God a Triune Being? — the deepest doctrinal divide, argued from Scripture on both sides.
  7. What Happens When a Christian Sins? — how sin and discipline work there, compared with the confessional; and why the questions on this list are so hard to ask out loud.
  8. Blood and the Sanctity of Life — the teaching with lives at stake.
  9. When Are The Last Days? — 1914, 1925, 1975, and what became of each date.
If You Have Already Left, and Wonder Whether God Went Too

Many who leave the organization conclude that the whole thing was false — God included. I understand the feeling, but that conclusion deserves better evidence than a bad experience with one organization. Losing the Watchtower is not losing Christ; it may be your first real chance to meet Him. The Atheism vs Christianity section takes the hardest skeptical questions seriously — suffering, miracles, science, whether Jesus rose at all — and argues them fairly. If you read only two pages there, read Would a Good God Permit Evil and Suffering? and Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?

If You Believe, but Rome Seems a Bridge Too Far

You were taught that the Catholic Church is the archetype of false religion — Babylon the Great, pagan to the bone. I believed that too. I only ask that you test the claim the way you have learned to test the Watchtower’s: against the evidence. Start with Was There a Great Apostasy? and Pagan Origins?, then work through the Others vs the Catholic Church section, where the Protestant objections get the same fair hearing the Watchtower’s do. And when you find yourself curious what a Catholic Mass actually is, Your First Mass will walk you in and back out again, with no obligation to anyone.

Two More Pages Before You Go

Counting the Cost is about the fear of what leaving might cost you. The fear is real, and that page does not pretend otherwise. And the About pages tell you who I am: what I did for the organization for thirty-five years, why my wife and I walked away in 2000, and how the road out led somewhere neither of us expected.

Summary

This site makes one case, in three parts, and you can enter it wherever you stand. If you are a Witness with questions, the reading path above starts at the foundation — authority — and works outward, one checkable claim at a time. If you have left and wonder whether God was part of the wreckage, the Atheism vs Christianity section argues that losing the Watchtower is not losing Christ. And if you believe but were taught to fear Rome, the Others vs the Catholic Church section asks only that the Catholic claims be tested against evidence, the same standard applied everywhere else here.

Three promises hold on every page: the Watchtower is quoted accurately from its own publications; no one is mocked; and nothing asks you to decide anything today. Check everything. “Test everything; hold fast what is good” (1 Thess. 5:21) is not apostate advice. It is Scripture’s.