So what do you know about Jehovah’s Witnesses and what they believe? The first thing that usually comes to mind is that they seem weird because they don’t celebrate anything. And obviously you’re correct. We’ve already discussed that. Or maybe you know that they believe only 144,000 of them are going to go to heaven. So what does that mean for everybody else? If only 144,000 go to heaven, where is everybody else going to go? That kind of limits the playing field if you have the dichotomy of an afterlife that consists of either heaven or hell. Maybe the only thing that you know is that Jehovah’s Witnesses are those nice people that come to your door and wake you up on Saturday morning, and again you’d be right in that knowledge. However, you likely know so little about what Jehovah’s Witnesses really teach. Most people really have no clue. There’s a lot of information online and on different podcasts and programs about Scientology or Mormons and other groups. But there’s really not a lot about what Jehovah’s Witnesses are really teaching and the culture that results. I have a feeling that you’re going to learn some things here that you never knew unless you were one of Jehovah’s Witnesses yourself. I’m going to try to approach all of this through the lens of my personal life experience.
Now let’s talk about life as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses a bit. Let me first give you some idea of what our schedule was. I think I’ve touched on this a little bit before, but remember that this is a very performance based cult. So there were things to do and my family did them all. I want you to understand the basic setup of the congregation, the meetings, and what we did when we were knocking on doors. This is effectively what my new life as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses at the age of eight or nine began to revolve around.
The Meetings
On Tuesday night there was the Congregation Book Study that was typically held at an individual’s private home. People would volunteer their homes for these Book Studies. These studies were one hour long in duration and they would alternate what books we would go through. We would go through a book about Revelation, and then we would go through the a book about Jesus and his life, or the Biblical prophecies in Daniel. It was a question and answer session, as a lot of these meetings are. These were small groups, usually 10 to 20 people. In some congregations they didn’t have enough private homes that were volunteered, so they would do these books studies at the Kingdom Hall.
Thursday night was the Theocratic Ministry School and the Service Meeting. This was a two hour meeting. The Theocratic Ministry School was a program designed to help Jehovah’s Witnesses be more effective preachers when they were going out door to door. It never really made sense to me how some of this was supposed to translate for brothers. Brothers had talks such as the bible reading where they would get up for five minutes and read a portion of the Bible. Going up to somebody’s door and reading for five minutes would be incredibly awkward. But this is what they did and I understand that they just wanted us to be effective readers. I think we were really just being groomed to be effective public speakers for the cult at meetings more than out in public preaching. And if you ask a lot of ex Jehovah’s Witnesses to name something good that they took away from that time, the one thing that we got from this cult that we could take with us after leaving was the ability to do some measure of public speaking.
For sisters in the congregation, they were to get up and give demonstrations as their talks. They were given a subject and some sort of a setting like going door to door or on a Bible study with a single mom or something along those lines. They would sit up on the stage with another sister who would be their householder. So one sister would be basically preaching to the other sister in a scenario that might happen out in the public ministry. And of course in these scenarios the outcome was always the best case scenario. If there was a magazine or any literature being presented, nobody ever said “get off my porch before I call the police!”, and everyone was always receptive to the message. I always found that funny because they were so over the top and unrealistic. But this is how they were to be given, and it was supposed to be encouraging to the congregation so sisters would get up and give these parts with one another.
Then there was the Service Meeting on Thursday night. It was about an hour long. In total, this was a two hour meeting – the Theocratic Ministry School was an hour and the Service Meeting was an hour. The Service Meeting was taken from the Kingdom Ministry. That is a pamphlet that baptized members of Jehovah’s Witnesses receive and it has announcements from the headquarters of Jehovah’s Witnesses as well as specific articles on various subject matters. If, for instance, it was the end of the year, we might have articles encouraging us to preach to people around the holidays, or if there was a need for Kingdom Halls to be built in certain areas, there would be a call to help with that. Whatever seemed relevant at the time. The Kingdom Ministry would also have parts called the Local Needs. This was an opportunity for the local brothers in your congregation to decide what it was that everyone needed to work on and to give a talk about it. Or maybe there was an issue that was presenting itself in the area in which you preached and so the elders would get up and give a talk about that. There was also a section of local Announcements, where you would learn about whose turn it was to clean the Kingdom Hall that week, or to mow the grass, or who the speaker was going to be Sunday and where they were visting from, or of course, who messed up in their eyes and was to be disfellowshipped and shunned. They would announce that during the announcements as well or sometimes they would save that until the end of the meeting. It just depended on how it works at that particular congregation that particular night.
On Sunday there was another two hour meeting. It was the Public Talk which was typically a 45 minute sermon given by one of the elders on a general topic supported by chosen scriptures to meet the narrative at hand. My dad got to give plenty of those on how to have a happy family life. So whatever the subject matter, that’s what a talk would be given on and then the Watchtower Study followed. It was a question and answer part going over the Watchtower lesson that had been assigned for that week. Each Watchtower had two or three lessons in it to be studied at the congregation. Someone would read the paragraph up on the stage, and then the brother conducting that part of the meeting would ask questions. We, the audience, would answer them and he was to lead us down the path that the Watchtower lesson wanted us to understand.
There were some unique features to the meetings, or maybe a lack thereof. There was absolutely nothing for children. There is no Sunday school, no daycare, nothing. Children were expected to sit and pay attention just like the adults, for hours at a time on subject matters they likely didn’t understand. There was a mother’s room at the congregation that I went to. I don’t think that they all had them. The mother’s room was almost a soundproof room with black tinted glass. Mothers would take their children back there to breastfeed or change diapers, or of course to beat them if the children weren’t behaving during the meetings. In other congregations that I was a part of, we didn’t have the dedicated mother’s room, but there was always a room in the back where people could take their kids if their kids were acting out or to have a little privacy if they needed it. There was no collection plate. There were just these boxes in the back for private donations and you could walk by and put money in. This is a big selling point of the meetings. Jehovah’s Witnesses like to brag about how there’s no collection plate. You’ll see it on their signs sometimes and they like to talk about those other awful religions that pass the collection plate. Of course in years since, they have resorted to passing out slips of paper around something that they want the congregation to participate in and making people pledge to donate X amount per month. So yes, mayhbe they don’t pass around a collection plate, but they’re passing around slips of paper for people to pledge monthly donations to. And although no one is technically going to know if they don’t follow through with that donation, the individual knows and they’re going to feel shame if they can’t keep up. So bragging about a lack of collection plates doesn’t mean that there’s a lack of pressure to give money to the congregation and larger organization.
The question and answer parts that were at these meetings were so dumbed down that virtually anyone could participate. It was always encouraged to answer the questions in your own words and to not just read the answer from the paragraph word for word, but there were so many people who did. It was a mind numbing call and response session. Kingdom Halls themselves are also very drab and boring. There are rarely windows. I joke that it’s probably so you wouldn’t look outside at the colors and beauty while we sat inside in this completely sterile environment. The chairs are boring. The decor is boring, I will say now that the parts on the meeting are boring, though when I was a fully indoctrinated Jehovah’s Witness I wouldn’t say that. I actually enjoyed it when I thought it was true and had meaning.
The meetings were laid out ahead of time with many different reference materials to go over at each one. We were supposed to study before every meeting so that we knew the material and could participate in this call and response session, answering questions aloud at the meetings. There were no rituals or anything that you could connect to emotionally. There was nothing that most people would refer to as “spiritual”, in the sense of truly connecting to something on another plane, at least not in a very positive or uplifting way.
We were also supposed to do Bible reading every day. At least, that was the encouragement from the organization. I’m not going to say that everyone did it. In addition to that there was a daily text that we could study. It was a little booklet that each witness had so that we could start every day with a verse and an explanation of that verse with whatever point they wanted to tie it into from some Watchtower publication of the past. If you haven’t noticed already through the call and response, through the study before, through the meetings, through the daily Bible reading, through the daily text, through the personal study or family studies that were encouraged to have, the indoctrination is very strong here. You really never got away from the messages that were being pounded into your mind and heart. They were ever present and dominated your life.
And then you had assemblies and conventions. I think I mentioned them briefly before now, but these were either one, two, or three day events. There was one of each throughout the year and during these there would be much larger crowds. So instead of at a book study where you’d have ten to twenty people, or at a Kingdom Hall where you might have eighty to a hundred and twenty for Sunday meetings, sa assemblies you might have anywhere from a couple thousand to eight to ten thousand people, depending on how it was broken up in that particular area. While the conventions themselves weren’t that enjoyable, it was one time where you could get dressed up and go to another place where you could see people that you hadn’t seen in a long time or meet new people. As a young person you would see your friends that went to other congregations and you could hang out after the sessions. That was cool, but the actual indoctrination sessions were basically a full time job. The program would start at 9:30 in the morning and it would be over at 5:00 p.m. and there might be an hour lunch. These were heavy indoctrination sessions to further their narrative.
The Hierarchy
There is a hierarchy in the congregation. Jehovah’s Witnesses will claim that their elders are just there to serve the congregation, as if they’re the lowest among the brothers, but that’s completely untrue. The elders have the ability to decide whether or not you get shunned. So there are power dynamics that are going on here, with the role of elder being just one. I just thought I’d lay out briefly who these people are and what the labels are for the different types of people that make up your average congregation.
First, you have the rare person that is just a Study. That’s what they call someone that they met knocking on doors or at work or whatever they preached who is interested in coming to the meetings. Technically your own children can be studies as well, but usually if someone brings their Study to the Hall they are bringing in an outsider that showed interest and is willing to attend meetings with them.
Then you have what are called Unbaptized Publishers. A person that starts studying with the Witnesses is expected at some point to start participating in the field ministry work. That person is not baptized, so they’re not a full fledged Witness, but they can still be an unbaptized publisher and witness about what they’re learning to others. The publisher name is a throwback to the fact that this is or was the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York. They were essentially a publishing house for all these magazines and books, and historically those magazines and books were actually sold door to door and there were people who took commissions on them. That’s not how it happens anymore but there were people who supported themselves doing that back many years ago. And so the term publishers is still used.
You also have the baptized Publishers. These are full fledged Jehovah’s Witnesses who are regular in going out and knocking on doors or engaging in other forms of ministry.
Beyond that you have the Auxiliary Pioneers. These are people who have devoted, on a month to month basis,fifty hours that month to their public ministry, and they’re announced from the platform as such so as to feel special. “Brother so-and-so or Sister so-and-so is an Auxiliary Pioneer this month”. They get some accolades for that and get to feel good about themselves for doing something extra.
Regular Pioneers are people who basically sign a contract to devote even more time. They required one thousand hours when I was doing it. I think it’s eight hundred and forty now, and it breaks down to seventy hours each month.
And then there are ministerial servants who are brothers in the congregation (women aren’t allowed to do much) who handle various responsibilities around the Kingdom Hall. It could be handing out literature to be placed in the door to door ministry, handling microphones for the call and response sessions, running a yard crew for the Kingdom Hall maintenance, giving territories out to brothers and sisters to work out in the field ministry, just any number of tasks that need to be done for the running of the congregation.
Beyond that you have the elders. That’s what ministerial servants are essentially aspiring to become. They’re working their way up. Elders are, of course, all brothers or men in the congregation and they give the public talks on Sundays. They oversee all the important congregation manners matters like the accounts and they handle the direction of all of the meetings. They are the ones who would lead the Watchtower study call and response sessions, they are to shepherd the flock by making calls on people that they think are struggling, and they make all of the judicial decisions. Yes I know that the last few words sounded weird, but that’s because Jehovah’s Witnesses have their own judicial system, whereby three men sit in a room with an accused sinner and determine if they are fit to remain in the congregation or be formally shunned. So elders wield a great deal of authority over the daily lives of members of the congregation, holding the power to remove them from it.
Beyond that you have the circuit overseers. They visit congregations on a six month rotation and just make sure everything’s in order. They check in on everybody and give special encouraging talks during which the congregation members fall all over themselves and laugh at every dumb joke they make and think that they are the most awesome person in the world. The acting can be quite something to watch. All of the brothers wear full suits instead of dress pants and sport coats so that they can present themselves at their best. When a circuit overseer comes it is a big deal for a week. All of the sudden the attendance spikes at the congregation and there are so many more people there than on any normal week and everybody loves everybody and everything is great. But then he leaves and the next week the attendance at the meetings drops, along with the masks that everyone puts on when he arrives. It is very put on and fake.
Beyond that there were district overseers, then they changed to regions instead of districts. They essentially managed the circuits and the circuit overseers. Occasionally they would visit the congregations. When they do it results in the same festivities and fakery as when the circuit overseer would visit.
And now we’re going to talk about the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses that reside in New York state. At one time the Watchtower headquarters was located at the end of the Brooklyn Bridge. There was a big Watchtower sign. Since then they have moved to Warwick, New York. These eight men (the number can fluctuate over time) are responsible for the organization. They have recently labeled themselves the “guardians of doctrine”. What’s that spell? G O D. I kid you not. This is from their own mouths during the Australian Royal Commission investigation into their poor response to child sexual abuse. They are the self-titled guardians of doctrine. So these men are responsible for essentially everything that goes on in the organization today. They direct it all.
Originally the organization started with one man, Charles Taze Russell. Eventually he died and then Joseph Rutherford took over. It was a seemingly hostile takeover. He wasn’t supposed to be next in line. As you go down through the religion’s history, eventually they decided that rather than just one person they would have a body that governs everything. Much the same way as the congregation has a body of elders that runs it, this group of men would lead the organization. Individuals can be appointed to it. There is a whole political thing there and it’s all decided internally up in New York so it’s not like members of the congregations vote on it. It just happens. Suddenly there’s a new Governing Body member and they have power.
When I was growing up people could find out who the governing body was, but you really didn’t ever see them. We were told that it was an indication that we had “The Truth” and that we weren’t a cult because we didn’t follow any man. These men weren’t seeking glory, the average JW didn’t even know who they were. However, in recent years they have become extremely public. They go to conventions and people flock to them as though they were talking to a G.O.D. (or guardian of doctrine) themselves and get their pictures taken with them. Songs are sung for them, parties are thrown, people dance for them at times, and it can be quite the spectacle. They’ve really put themselves at the forefront of the organization. It’s a very interesting change from when I was young and they were in the background and nobody really knew who wrote what or who said what. Now they have really come to the forefront and they are almost deified by the individuals in the organization.
Now let’s talk about Field Service as one of the primary activities of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Again, that’s when we went out and knocked on people’s doors. There were meetings at the Kingdom Hall every day during the week; Monday through Friday, usually at 9:00am. On Saturdays we would meet for field service at 9:30am. That way you could sleep in for an extra half hour. And then on Sundays, the meeting usually ended around noon so then around 1:00pm we would go out for an hour or so. The field service meeting was a 15 minute meeting conducted by a brother who would give some sort of bible topic that was relevant to one of the magazines or books they were offering to people that week. Then they would organize people into car groups, find out who had plans with whom, and then divvy up territory and send everybody on their way. The best thing about field service was that there was a break, usually around 11:00am or 11:30am where people would go to a previously agreed upon restaurant. For years it was McDonald’s at my home congregation. Everybody would meet there and take over the restaurant while drinking coffee, sitting around and swapping war stories from that morning. Always in entirely too loud of a tone for people who were sitting around and just taking it over with no thought about anyone else. It could be very awkward.
“The Truth” – The Doctrine
Let me tell you briefly what they believe. First let me say that Jehovah’s Witnesses have a term for their system of beliefs, “THE TRUTH” in all caps, perhaps envision it with a little trademark sign behind it. THE TRUTH. Kind of like THE Ohio State University if you’re a sports fan. This is the one, the only TRUTH from God’s one and only true book the Bible. If you believe anything other than this you are wrong. There is true religion. Jehovah’s Witnesses have it. There is false religion, and that’s what everybody else has. Not only are you wrong but you are blinded by Satan the Devil himself if you don’t accept THE TRUTH when we come to your door and present it to you. Witnesses will ask one another “when did you learn THE TRUTH”, “how did you come into THE TRUTH” and so on. People struggle after leaving Jehovah’s Witnesses sometimes years or decades after to not refer to it as THE TRUTH.. They don’t even believe it anymore, but the labeling still sticks around. I believe this is one of the most simple and ingenious methods ever thought of for indoctrinating someone. Once you have that truth do you really need to even consider anything else. Why would you? You are locked down by this one little name…THE TRUTH.
So are you ready? Are you ready to learn THE TRUTH? I’m about to break it down for you. All of the years of human existence that have ever been or ever will be on into infinity is about to be revealed to you. Here we go.
Jehovah is God’s name, and Jehovah alone is the almighty. Jesus is his son sent to Earth by him to die for our sins. The Holy Spirit is God’s active force that he uses to accomplish things here on earth. We are all pawns in a wager between Jehovah and Satan (who was once an angel but wanted all the glory for himself so he rebelled against Jehovah). Satan wagered that man was best off managing himself and didn’t need Jehovah’s input. Jehovah set out to prove that man apart from him was incapable of ruling himself and needed Jehovah’s guidance. Satan has been trying to pull man away from Jehovah to serve him or anyone but Jehovah ever since. This wager between the two of them impacts all of us. We have lived in sin and imperfection ever since perfect lives were lost in sin through Adam and Eve and their original sin. Jesus Christ could somehow die for us as just one person and balance the scales of justice. This means that perfection is only 33% effective at battling sin. And sure, only one perfect life was given to balance the scales of what was lost by two perfect people. And it took a special person and God’s only begotten son to come down from heaven to do this, not just a regular perfect human, which seems like cheating to me. But maybe there was a half price sale on perfect justice that day, so we’ll call it even with a swap of one perfect person to buy back what two perfect people lost, even though that perfect person was a god himself.
So, ever since then, the world has struggled under Satan’s control as God has backed away in order to prove that Jehovah has a right to rule and that we need him. God’s plan to right this world starts with Jesus’ death and then the year 1914. Through some very creative prophetic math involving the book of Daniel and several completely incorrect predictions that nobody wants to talk about, Jehovah’s Witnesses arrive at 1914 as the beginning of the last days of this wicked system of things. Since World War 2 happened to start that year, they really think they’ve landed on the correct year, this time. Originally they thought that the world was actually going to end in 1914, but when that didn’t happen the organization decided that it must be the beginning of the end. That’s just as good right? So in 1914 Jesus supposedly began reigning in heaven over the earth, but it is an invisible reign for now, because they had to make it fit and something invisible can’t be argued against as easily. In 1919, Jesus chose the International Bible Students, as Jehovah’s Witnesses were called back then, as his only people to dispense TRUTH to this world. Of course back then they smoked and celebrated holidays and did all kinds of things they would never do today as Jehovah’s Witnesses, but I digress. The changes thereafter have been seen as a refining work as the light gets brighter. THE TRUTH just gets truthier over time because it wasn’t true earlier, but now it definitely is, this time.
At some point imminently (and by imminently, apparently they mean any day now for well over the past century) something called the Great Tribulation will break out. It will start with the destruction of Babylon the Great, taken from Revelation, the world empire of false religion. Jehovah will put it into the thoughts of world leaders to eradicate all religion from the earth. The United Nations will be involved in executing this.
Now,because that will eliminate things like holidays, the merchants will beat their chests in horror and frustration as they can no longer sell things like they once did. Money will become worthless. People will be throwing it in the streets at that point. The world will descend into chaos. All religions will cease except one. Can you guess which one? Of course, Jehovah’s Witnesses will stand alone continuing to do what they do despite any persecution because of this. The nations are going to turn on them and when they do it will be like touching God’s eyeball and he will immediately react with the Day of His Fury called Armageddon, in which billions of people will be slaughtered mercilessly because they didn’t listen to the warnings given by Jehovah’s Witnesses. Listen or die, you were warned, and you had your chance.
Once everyone is dead, the world will start to grow back to perfection as will the members of Jehovah’s Witnesses left over on it. They will spend the next thousand years growing back to perfection and cleaning up this earth. Don’t worry, the birds are going to pick apart all of the billions of dead bodies so they won’t have to handle the bodies of all their dead loved ones. It would be kind of rough stepping over grandpa to get to one of your kids who was killed by your God. But you weren’t supposed to care about those people anyway. They were “Worldly”, as I explained previously.
Jehovah’s Witnesses will all live in a beautiful paradise as the earth goes back to the state of the Garden of Eden. Everyone gets a panda and a lion! In all of their artistic depictions of this paradise, people are playing with lions and pandas. Animals will no longer be dangerous and there is no fear because of that. I guess the animals are going to be perfect, though they never sinned that I know of so I don’t know how they were imperfect to begin with. So there will be no fear, no pain, no tears, just pure bliss and lots and lots of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
The dead will be raised from the memorial tombs and a great resurrection will take place during these thousand years. It will be a resurrection of the righteous and the unrighteous. They will look the same as they did before so that we can recognize them. Otherwise we’re just talking creepy zombies, and we can’t have that. A scripture says that, “the wages of sin pays is death” so death is therefore the equalization of their sins. They get a do over, so to speak, and if in that second chance they listen to Jehovah’s Witnesses and study with them, they can possibly live forever. If they don’t, well unfortunately, Jehovah is going to have to kill them again. That happens a lot with Jehovah. He seems to kill a lot people.
After that thousand years, humans on earth will be perfect. Now at that point you would think that everyone could breathe a sigh of relief and maybe, you know, be happy? Nope. During that one thousand years Satan and his demons were bound up in an abyss. But at the end they are going to be let loose to try to tempt humankind one more time. Humans still will not have proven themselves worthy. Jehovah is pretty insecure like that. So he will unleash the devil and his hordes once again to wreak havoc. They will tempt mankind and the carnage and fallout from that will be “as the sands of the sea”. Innumerable deaths will occur as mankind falters once again.
Now in the end, whoever is left over gets to live forever…this time. For real. No take backs this time, I guess. Unless of course they turn on God like Satan did. He was perfect and he turned on God, but Jehovah did give his creation free will, after all. He just doesn’t really like them using it. So if they were at that point to exercise free will and do something that Jehovah doesn’t like, he can kill them once again. So that’s the story in a nutshell. That’s what they believe and what I believed for so many years.
But these are just some of the core beliefs that they have doctrinally. There is a culture that is borne out of their doctrines, and that is the most damaging part of the organization psychologically. Next I’m going to introduce two methods of control that are used by cults to keep people in line. It is observed in what has been termed religious abuse, but it’s also seen in other forms of abuse and it’s a very important subject to consider. Whether you’ve ever been in a cult or not, you’ve likely seen how people control other people and get them to do things that they otherwise probably would not do if left to their own base humanity. Let’s talk about that.