Why I Left Jehovah's Witnesses - Former Elder / Pioneer

well since you've clicked on this video whether you are one of jehovah's witnesses or not i'm sure that you're curious of how it can happen that someone who had a relatively high position within the organization being an elder what happens to them to make them decide to leave one day and to no longer be a part of the organization well that's my reason for making this video i need to give my experience to show just how it is that an elder and a pioneer can wake up and realize that this just might not be the truth and since waking up since leaving the organization i've also found out about a lot of lies that have been spread about me that i do need to clear up and to be able to speak for myself and give away so that family and friends who may watch this video at some point in the future may be able to do so secretly without getting into any trouble it's out of respect for my family and former friends who are jehovah's witnesses i won't detail out the conversations that i had with them nor what happened in my personal life this is purely about what happened to me and my experience and why my conscience would no longer allow me to remain as one of jehovah's witnesses so to all former friends family members that happen to watch this if you are active witnesses i will give you some time markers and i'll give you a warning to let you know when i'm going to bring up topics that you might not feel comfortable watching such as anything that might be information you haven't heard before so i will give that warning i'll include some time stamps below in the description so that you can be able to see and choose to stop watching whenever you see fit so to give you a quick background on my history with jehovah's witnesses i was born and raised in it like many people are i was a third generation witness i was a pioneer for about 11 years i was a ministerial servant for about 10 or so and then an elder for five years i've been in foreign language congregations i even lived out of the country for several years serving as a need grader both in english and in foreign language congregations i was used very heavily on rbc projects both from the construction and the design aspect of it and really all in all i've had a lot of great experiences being one of jehovah's witnesses uh and of course there are some negative ones that come along with that as well but for the most part i don't really have a lot of things to complain about not really too many horrible things i could say ever happened to me so you know i was pretty happy as one of jehovah's witnesses i thought it was the truth but growing up i always had nagging doubts about certain things that kind of bothered me in regards to being a part of the organization you know i had random experiences out in the field ministry of people asking me questions about things uh bringing up things that i would probably have considered at the time which it would be to be apostate information but during all of my teenage years and throughout my twenties all the little doubts and questions that i had had i basically did what every single one of jehovah's witnesses does when they have these doubts or these questions they push them aside and say you know we'll just figure all those things out a little bit later no need to worry about it right now and so that's what i did i figured i'll be able to find answers to those questions at some point when the time is right or perhaps when i have a little bit more time to be able to study these things so fast forward to reach the age of 35 which wasn't terribly long ago i was serving as an elder i've been an elder for like i said about five years and realized that as the organization had been changing it is becoming more digital so a lot more things that you would see on watchtower online a lot of the publications that we received were now all in a digital format be it in like an epub format pdf uh even doing research online now um and so everything was moving in that direction and so then when the jw library app came into existence that proved to be a pretty good tool you know it was a little bit basic in the beginning but as time went on you know they kept releasing more and more edits to it that gave it you know a few more capabilities especially when you were going to do research on certain topics so when i get to that time period i realized oh wait a minute you know as an elder i'm asked questions all the time about random subjects and a lot of times they might be things that i don't know just off the top of my head but i certainly don't mind going to researching them so how much nicer would it be at this point to be able to take the note-taking feature to be able to tag certain notes and categorize things within the app so that i could have when someone asked me a question about a particular subject i could just click on that little tag open up my research and i could just sit there immediately with someone and be able to answer their questions whether it was a publisher in the congregation or someone out in the field ministry asking a difficult question that i knew i was going to run across some day so it was really helpful so at that point i thought well maybe this is the time for me to take advantage of this start doing my research answer some of those questions doubts and issues that i had with things all throughout the years and see if i could find answers to them now because as an elder no doubt at some point in time someone is going to ask me questions about this so before i began doing the research i decided to go ahead and see if i could make a list of all of the issues that i had be they about doctrine the organization itself uh perhaps issues that i had come across in the ministry before see if i can start compiling them to find out and give me a starting point of what direction to go what kind of topics that i needed to look up so i spent a couple of months went through those topics and realized that what i thought in my head were just maybe a handful less than a dozen questions that i had the list started to grow and it got pretty big so within a few months i decided okay i have to go ahead and start i've got to start knocking some of these things out and and and getting some kind of resolution to them but quickly i realized i was running into the exact same problems every single time there either wasn't an answer to the question and the basic brick wall that you were hitting was well you just have to have faith or god hasn't answered that question yet so you're just gonna have to wait on him or well this just happened because it's imperfect men and all of those answers to those questions were unsatisfying to me when i was a teenager when i was in my 20s and they were just as unsatisfying now but i will say during that entire time of trying to find answers to these questions i completely avoided apostate material and for any one of you who are jehovah's witnesses you know exactly why i did that witnesses are taught that apostates people who leave the organization are among the most horrible people on the planet and so anything that they say is going to be twisted it is going to be a lie something taken out of context it is not going to be true they are not trustworthy so i didn't want to go down that road thinking that it wasn't going to uh it just it wasn't going to lead anywhere good and i could not trust that information so i stuck plainly and only to witness sources but i finally hit a barrier when i started researching one of the major topics that i had issues with for my entire life as a witness which was 1914 and 607 now even as a believing witness whenever i talked about these topics that jerusalem had been destroyed in 607 bce and that the calculation of dates taken from bible books led you to the year 1914 as when jesus was now invisibly ruling in heaven i was never comfortable with that particularly because you couldn't prove it at all for me standing in a door speaking with someone i have nothing other than just to say well it happened but it was invisible and i knew that if anyone else of some other religion came to me and told me something like that i wasn't going to that wasn't going to be convincing to me in any way whatsoever so i never liked it so like most witnesses i did start doing research on this using the publications that we had and there was a series of articles published in 2011 that went a little bit deeper into some of the reasons as to why jehovah's witnesses discredit the historians archaeologists and basically everyone else in the world who says that it was that jerusalem was destroyed by the babylonians at that time so i read through the articles and reading it i was like you know okay i guess that makes sense but why does everyone else say something different why are we the only ones who think this so that disturbed me this is the point where i'm going to begin to mention some of these specifics as to how my faith in the organization started to crumble so if you're watching this video as a jehovah's witness perhaps one of my former friends my family members if you don't feel that you're ready to find this information out yet this might be the time for you to pause and perhaps come back to this video at a later point when you feel more comfortable with it so at this point i decided just this one time i'm going to go outside of the research sources provided by the organization i'm going to go to google type in 607 and see what comes up so pretty much if you do that and you look up 607 on google they're really only going to be two things that pop up or at least two series of sources the first source is going to be the jehovah's witnesses website and of course i'd already read everything that was there but all of the other sources are what i would have considered to be apostate resources so i decided well let me just click on one of them and see what they say so by chance the website that i had selected as the first option was a site called jwfax.com and i still remember the feeling that i got when i was about to click on the website i remember as my hand was like kind of hovering over the mouse you got that feeling uh is super nervous that you were doing something wrong your heart started beating hard you could feel like a little bit of sweat kind of building up that you were just doing something wrong this was dangerous but i did it anyway i had to know so i did went into the website i read through an article or two and what i read made a lot of sense and in fact it answered a lot of questions as to why historians archaeologists scholars why they all say that jerusalem was destroyed in 586 587 or give or take around that time period i'm not my memory's not terribly great with that but i think that's what i what comes to mind but what was interesting about the site is as i'm scrolling through reading through that article i could see up on the sidebar that there was another series of you know headings articles that they had on the website and i noticed that a lot of the questions that i had were listed on their website but i was a good boy i decided to get out real quick because i didn't want to spend any more time there just in case everything was wrong but what started going through my mind is that everything that i saw there was backed up by references you weren't just taking that word for it you could go and look at what scholars and historians say about the matter but the seed had been planted at that point so within i'd say a week or two i ended up going back and i decided let me click on another topic and see if they have anything extra to say beyond the research that i've done already and sure enough they had done all the research that i had done and way way more and as i started reading i could tell after going through a couple of subjects that this was not going to end up in a good place that there was a lot of things that i did not know about the organization that i did not know the logical fallacies that they used the deception in order to make you believe something that might not be true and after going to jw facts and and going through some of the articles on that site i quickly found youtube and in doing so i found several channels that were extremely helpful to me and being able to find factual information among those was the john cedars channel which is now known as lloyd evans channel xjw5 and xjw critical thinker i binged through all of it and the thing that was most shocking to me was that these apostates were not at all what i had been taught they were the image that you have of what an apostate is as a witness is so completely twisted you think that they are people who are evil who uh have an axe to grind they're just angry they're upset they will say anything to be able to trick you to twist what the organization says they will straight up lie to you in order to take you away because they want followers after themselves but after watching these channels that was not what i was seeing so relatively quickly as i was going through youtube as i was going through jwfacts.com i realized what the end result of this was probably going to be because so far every single reference that i had looked up it was proving to be they were the ones that were right they were not misquoting things in fact i was trying so hard to test i was looking up every single reference that they had and in fact one time i thought i had found a mistake something that had been misquoted and so after like five minutes of scrolling and going nuts and thinking okay wait a minute i found something here where they're being untruthful i then realized that i was actually on the wrong page myself and sure enough when i went to the right page everything was there and it's one of the odd facts for me that i probably would not have realized the deception of the organization i would not have started this process had i not already been serving as an elder because so many of the things that you see are documents publications that the average publisher in the congregation has no idea exists because they do not have access to it there are letters that are given to elders there are books that are given to elders that the regular member of the congregation cannot see it is top secret in fact it's so secret that the elders manual that you have i know there are witnesses that don't even know that it exists so this went on for months while i was doing all of my research binging through youtube i wanted to be sure that i did my full research before i even got close to trying to make some kind of a call on this as to whether or not i thought this was true anymore i kind of figured where it was going but i didn't know for sure and throughout the research when i was doing all this i had pretty much avoided the child abuse issues not because i didn't believe it didn't exist but doctrinal things policies the history of the organization those are things that were very easy for me to verify i could go look up our publications and i could know for a fact what the situation was what was said what was written down because it was right there and i could find it directly you know in archives or just in the watchtower online library but one of the things that got me to start paying more attention to it was a video that was done on lloyd evans channel it's an ex-elder series again i knew some of the cases that had been brought against witnesses some of the court documents and things like that but i'd never really researched them but in this particular episode he was talking to someone who was mentioning their experience of what happened to them when they started investigating the arc which is the australian royal commission so this was a a commission by the government set up to be able to investigate child abuse within organized within an organized or among organizations so this wasn't just witnesses that were brought up in this investigation there were plenty of other groups religious political you know otherwise but in listening to the testimony of what had gone on in the arc the one elder started talking about how he was cleaning windows and when he listened to the testimony of a certain individual he said he just stopped and it just shocked him because of what he heard the the deception the lie and i didn't quite know exactly what he was talking about since i hadn't really delved too deeply into it so i decided you know what let me go do the same thing let me finally sit down and watch the arc which was quite a big task because it's hours upon hours upon hours of watching or listening to stuff on youtube so i started started listening and whenever anything odd was said that sounded deceptive or sounded weird to me as a witness that you know that doesn't sound right why would god's organization do this or say that i would go and look up the actual transcript because i wanted to be sure that there was no possible way that these videos could have been doctored and that you know someone had faked some bit of this testimony so when those bits came up i went online had my cop my pdf copy of the transcript read through it and sure enough every single time it was real there was nothing that was fake there and i basically had the exact same moment that that elder had regrettably i don't remember what the exact moment was because there were so many crazy things um that were said during uh during that investigation uh but i did the same thing i was shoveling snow i was just kind of going through shoveling and the moment it was said i stopped and that was the moment that i realized i could no longer continue as an elder i could not support this anymore my i knew that it was going in that direction but i kind of figured my fading process or whatever was going to happen was going to take a decent amount of time i didn't realize it was going to hit right there the arc broke me completely listening to watchtower's lawyers elders branch representatives and a governing body member mislead and lie on the stand was inexcusable to me so at that point i knew i was finished and i now had to start my fading process so i ended up talking to a family member to see what would happen if i brought up that i had some questions or issues about the organization and you know i won't go into that conversation but basically the end result of it was pretty much what i expected that well you just have to have faith or well these are imperfect men we don't know what's going on behind the scenes just have faith and i realized that doesn't work for me this is the exact same answer that has brought me to this entire situation to begin with so i knew i had to play the long game to try to fade but what was interesting is during this time period just shortly before listening to the arc i had an elders meeting and in that meeting one of the brothers i don't really remember how this topic came up but it was being discussed of what happens when someone chooses to not go to the meetings anymore and they just leave they stop going essentially ghost the the elders the congregation whatever what do you do again i don't remember the context of this but one of the elders said well if someone doesn't want to be a witness anymore and they just stop going well they can go live their own life there's nothing that we have to do and i remember sitting there thinking well i'm about to test this so obviously i wasn't going to go to anyone and start telling them everything that i knew and all of the issues that i had that i had now found out so i decided to just make kind of a short list of some basic things that i had issues with that wouldn't be too alarming but would at least make it to where they knew and could accept that i was going to resign as an elder so i scheduled a meeting with two of the elders had a a pretty easygoing discussion wasn't really anything that went anywhere there wasn't any kind of shocking revelation going on but basically let them know at that point that i needed to resign as an elder because someone who had issues with their faith i didn't feel comfortable my conscience did not feel right of being essentially in charge of helping other people to be able to build their faith and their spirituality so after speaking with the elders and with a few other people i basically made an agreement with them that i would drop the negative research or my research for a year i would focus only on the positive i would keep going to meetings keep going out in the ministry and keep praying to jehovah for help and helping me to be able to get over these things as though i hadn't been doing that hundreds or thousands of times in the preceding months leading up to that moment so i agreed knowing full well that nothing was going to change once you find out what i found out there is no going back now i just want to insert a little sidebar here just to note the kind of men that these elders were the congregation that i was in when i left that entire elder body is one of the nicest most loving group of men i have ever known in fact it was it was interesting when we were in elder school the circuit overseer was talking about a lot of the issues that elder bodies have with each other uh the infighting the pettiness all of those kind of things and i remember sitting there and looking around when the circuit overseer was talking about this and of course i knew it happened because i had other elder friends family members who are elders who you know you talk about this kind of stuff about what happens and you're always thankful that it doesn't happen to you but with these guys we looked at each other and kind of laughed because we were so fortunate that we all got along so well every single member of that body their main concern was helping people and their love for them really did show and in fact when the day finally came that it was time to make the announcement about me being deleted as an elder they were so nice about it that they actually had me say one of the prayers at the meeting so that the entire congregation would know that me being deleted or stepping down had nothing to do with wrongdoing so these group of guys were really really great group of guys i i love them dearly i do miss them and have no hard feelings against them whatsoever i know some of you will eventually see this at some point whether it's months or years from now and i just want you to know i love you guys i miss you and i know that you were just doing what you thought was right but no hard feelings on my part so at that point uh after leaving that meeting and i should mention they did tell me that uh you know going out in the ministry speaking with people i could completely avoid the topics that i didn't want to talk about such as 1914 which was one of the ones that i brought up because even as a full believing witness even as an elder i tried very hard to avoid ever saying anything definite about 1914. i always kind of worded it in such a way that it was not definite so basically saying like well the bible gives us evidence that this happened but i never i was very uncomfortable saying that jesus began ruling from heaven in 1914 invisibly it just it never sat well with me so topics like that the elders did mention to me that well you don't have to talk about those topics you can just avoid those in the ministry but just keep doing everything else and in fact even previous to that they did ask me if i wanted to keep serving or they wanted me to keep serving and just maybe take some down time to kind of fix myself up so another nod to how nice those guys are they they weren't out to get you so there was a measure of relief for family and friends basically thinking that we've dodged a bullet but even so it was still slightly awkward because your friends and some family members they knew that you had gotten pretty close to the edge now they didn't really know what was going on inside my head that i was basically knowingly planning a long fade but i was trying to make it as nice for them as possible so time goes by several months and it got to the point probably four months later that i had three field service experiences in a row so saturday after saturday after saturday where topics were being brought up which were the topics that i was not going to talk about and for the first two i was able to dodge around them be able to kind of word it in such a way that we didn't really have to talk about it but on the last one there was a guy who wanted to talk about a whole slew of things that i disagreed with that i did not necessarily believe and i knew there was no way to get around it because he basically set a set of a schedule of notes things for us to talk about the next time so i knew at that point there is no more avoiding it so i got home and realized i'm done i can't do field service anymore i cannot stomach going to someone's door and lying to them teaching them things that i don't believe how furious would i be if someone from any other religious group came to my door started teaching me things got me to believe it only to find out later that they actually didn't believe it and were just doing it going to the motions my conscience would not allow me to do that anymore so i had to stop so at that point i let some people know that i was no longer going out in the ministry and basically i was just told go ahead finish up your research then and make your decision so i picked up my research and finished probably what i would consider to be the last twenty percent of it now in that time period we also had a trip to bethel plant and a trip to the met museum in new york and kind of figured that well make a decision after that trip maybe god will do something let you see something hear something experience something that changes your mind and shows you that this is the truth well obviously that didn't work i had already been to bethel multiple times in my life so there really wasn't anything new that i was going to see there and actually i had been on a a bible tour at the met museum years previous and i remember when i finished that tour the first time i thought you know this is amazing all of the insight and things that we can get from this but the second time was different now that i knew about the deception the logical fallacies the misquoting that the organization did it didn't have the same impact i basically saw straight through it now and the visit to bethel was actually kind of has an interesting side note or story to it so i was going to warwick which is the first time that i had been to the new headquarters so doing a tour through warwick you know going around everything is you know essentially normal but i go in through one exhibit and then you know i come back out but i noticed that one of the sections that leads out onto the like deck area where you can get a nice look of the lake has now been roped off and i thought well that's kind of weird i wonder if someone like could they get sick here or are they doing some kind of uh you know cleaning something scheduled you know i don't know so i didn't really think that much about it and just kind of went on with the rest of the tour well that evening i get home and take a look at twitter and it turns out that lloyd evans fifth javier mark o'donnell all these guys were actually there and a couple of them out on the lake and i was just there you know hundreds of yards from these people that had helped to awaken me from this organization and then of course i started thinking man what would i have done if i had actually been you know walking down the hallway or driving up to the front gate and i saw fifth and javier standing there i don't know that i would have been able to contain my pimo self i might have outed myself there you know who knows but i just thought it was interesting that i had no idea that they were there um and it was just kind of a funny experience for me to think that i was there next to all those guys at the same time so once back home i made the call and knew that i was done i was already not going out with the meetings or out in the field ministry anymore and uh there's no way that i could continue to going meetings uh going to meetings i i didn't believe this anymore and i did not want to support it so i ended up being in contact with the two elders the same two that i had met with the first time and at this point i had a bit of a different tactic i actually in a way tried to get them to disfellowship me do something um so i said you know every shocking thing that you can think of from someone who went from being an elder and a witness to someone who isn't and the reason why i did that was because even at that point my friends had started the shunning process uh not speaking to me backing away um and the awkwardness was difficult for everyone around and i didn't want them to feel awkward about having to be around me particularly since there wasn't any kind of official marking or anything that had been done yet and i didn't like being around people you know making them feel that way so i preferred just well let there be a clean break of it so no one has to be uncomfortable or awkward everyone can just move on with their lives but i did not want to disassociate myself i basically wanted them to do the dirty work if they were going to do something or call into action a policy that results in shunning i wanted them to be able to do it to prove that they actually will do it without you ever having to say it so in that conversation i just came straight out and i used every trigger phrase that i could think of i said that i no longer consider it to be the truth that i do not think the governing body is being led by jehovah has holy spirit i am now an agnostic atheist until i come across some kind of an information or something that convinces me otherwise i told them that i had no intentions of speaking to anyone about why i left so if anyone did come up to me and ask me why i would just tell them i don't consider it to be the truth anymore which they were more or less you know fine with as fine as you can be with that scenario but i did tell them that if someone presses me and wants to know something beyond that and wants to know specific reasons as to why i don't believe it and why i left i will tell them the reasons and of course once i mentioned that they did you know confirm well if that happens and that turns us into a different scenario you know aka apostasy and i told them i understood that uh you know no problem at all they do what they've got to do but i did tell them that i had two family members who are not jehovah's witnesses or at least who were inactive for many years who once they found out that i wasn't going to meetings anymore they did request my research document that i prepared so i did give it to them but they're not witnesses and again they were basically fine with that as long as i wasn't having any conversations with people who were you know people in the congregation meaning you know active jehovah's witnesses so we ended that meeting basically with bro hugs saying you know i'm sorry i miss you i'm going to miss you guys hope the best for you since i knew that we wouldn't be really hanging out all that much anymore but when i got to the car i was shocked i thought man i had said every single trigger thing i could think of to get them to either say you know well you should be disfellowshipped for being an apostate or not being a witness anymore or why are you not disassociated since you obviously don't consider yourself to be a witness anymore well my shock didn't last long about three weeks later i get a phone call or a text message asking if they can have another meeting with me so i said well i have nothing further to add and you know nothing else has changed for me so what do you guys want to talk about and the only thing they would say is that some people in the congregation were talking about things they didn't tell me what and even to this day i still have no idea what they were talking about because they never elaborated beyond that but i was like look if you guys want to have a meeting i i'm not going to have a physical meeting with anyone this was pre-coded but i'm not going to have a meeting if you guys want to do a phone call or something that's fine and they acquiesced to that and they had had no problem with it so the evening comes had the phone call and i was informed that there were three elders on the phone call not judicial but basically just to have an extra witness there which is pretty much by the book if they choose to after the previous meeting that you know we just had i did have three people that contacted me either wanting to do something or asking why i had not been at meetings and i told them exactly what i told the elders i would say that you know i just didn't consider it to be the truth anymore and that was basically the end of the conversation we'd never elaborated on that it basically was a quick a quick fade out pretty much at that point so i don't really know what happened after that so we started the meeting and uh you know after the introductions and letting me know about you know having a third brother there uh they basically came out and asked me if i wanted to disassociate and i said look i no longer consider it to be the truth you guys can do what you want with that so they asked me if i would put that in writing i said i don't feel like doing that but if you guys want to write something to announce whatever you have my blessing you can do whatever you want and so that's what they chose to do in that week they announced me as being disassociated and i didn't have to ask for it i didn't write a letter they basically did it themselves now again don't get me wrong i actually did want to disassociate but it's just that i didn't want to be the one to write the letter myself because what you find out when you start researching what the organization tells to governments to courts they try to make it sound like it's easy for someone to be able to just stop going to the meetings to fade away to not do anything anymore there's no pressure no problem at all they're not going to go after you and hunt you down to disfellowship you for doing something wrong or to make you disassociate i wanted it to happen to where all i did literally was stop going to meetings and that was pretty much it and then peop they came to me several weeks later and actually asked me if i wanted to disassociate at the time i had no idea that all of the things that were happening to me that happened in my situation that i would then be lied about and people would come up with stories about the things that i did said or thought my intention was to fade away mind my own business not really talk to anyone about why i left and just restart my social life and i should have recorded that meeting but i just didn't think about it i literally had no idea that people were gonna start making up stories about what happened in that meeting now to clarify i do not believe any of the elders that were involved in that group were the ones who spread these things out i think it's actually just what happens in the jehovah's witness rumor mill about the excuses that someone has to make when something happens because it doesn't fit so obviously something else happened it couldn't be that the elders called you up asked you to disassociate and then decided to write your letter for you when you leave there are a lot of things that will get said about you that you are prideful you're arrogant that you want to go sin that you are now a horrible person essentially who just has this vendetta against the organization and i eventually became aware of like i said a lot of lies and things that had begun to spread about me and i feel like now's the time for me to maybe not necessarily clarify them but just to give you some examples of things that were said all of them are false but here are some examples of what you can expect when you go through this that i thought my family and friends were stupid for being jehovah's witnesses they're brainwashed that i was mistreating people and trying to change their beliefs that i had actually spread out my research to all of my jehovah's witness friends that i was rude and had a major attitude with the elders whenever i met with them that i was lying when i said that the elders contacted me and then asked me if i wanted to disassociate that i lied about the elders preparing their own disassociation letter slash announcement for me because the only way you can be disassociated is if you physically write a letter yourself that it was now no issue at all for me to have an affair and that i had now become an apostate which technically now i guess that i fulfill that label but even up until now never had a conversation with any about those things so i simply had left my religion which coincidentally is the dictionary definition but even up until that time i didn't actually fit the jehovah's witness definition of what an apostate is and the list gets longer but i'll just leave it there just to give you some examples of some of the things that were said about me by people who knew me pretty well and the crazy thing about this list other than how ludicrous it is is that not one single person ever came to me to ask me if any of these things were true or false and to tell them what had actually happened and why i left and for some of those things if any of them were elders or had access to an elder's book they would quickly find out of what elders are allowed to do when it comes to disassociations and that yes indeed they can do what happened in my situation and so that basically sums up what happened to me when i left the organization so not really too much of a crazy story but it just highlights the stages that a person can go through to be able to wake up and realize that it just isn't the truth and the funny thing to start it all off was the jw library app doing research in the organization's publications is what led me to wake up so at this point i figure i'll probably go ahead and list the 19 major issues that i had listed out at least at that time as to why i could no longer be a member of the organization and even if i were still a believer every single one of these items would have had to have been crossed off my list and dealt with before i would ever be a member of it again so i'll go ahead and start with the first one so the first one was the lying and the deception that i saw in the arc the australian royal commission that was like i said before that was what broke me so that would have to be something that would have needed to have been addressed and there would have to be apologies made and since that time period there have been other things that the organization has done in relation to the arc that i do not approve of and that witnesses will never know about because of the propaganda spin that gets put on it another thing that i do not like about what the organization has done is governing body members evading subpoenas to appear in court now this has happened at least twice that has been documented that i'm aware of the first one was with jeffrey jackson the lawyers for the watchtower claimed that the governing body members have nothing to do with making policy particularly jeffrey jackson in this case that the only thing that he deals with are matters of translation he doesn't deal with policy making that would involve the policies that go along with child abuse well obviously it turned out when the branch manual was leaked found out that yes indeed the governing body in fact does have an impact on doctrine they have committees that write the books such as the elders book the shepherd the flock of god of the ks10 sfl whatever version that you happen to be using so that was the first one to see them just straight up lie to be able to protect him so that he doesn't appear in court the other one was garrett losch there's actually a submitted document when he was [Music] asked to appear in court garrett losch got out of it by stating that he is not a member of the watchtower that he has no authority over the watchtower and that the watchtower has no authority over him now just imagine would the apostle paul do this what would happen to any regular jehovah's witness who showed such cowardice and not being able to stand up for the policies for the beliefs that they have another item on the list is watchtower lawyers lying in court particularly regarding disfellowshipping if this is a command from god and you are following his orders explicitly then why in the world are you afraid to stand up in front of a court and to tell them how you are following this biblical policy that jehovah god has commanded you to do again will the apostles lie and be cowards when it comes time to be able to defend their actions and their policies before a government official holy spirit is supposed to be able to help you to make a defense of the truth and in fact this entire topic is something that goes beyond watchtower's lawyers in fact if you go and look on the website at least as it sits right now and the frequently asked questions they are extremely deceptive when they talk about what happens to family relationships with someone who is disfellowshipped the next item is covering up child abuse and refusing to release the records of alleged abusers within the organization when they are demanded to do so by the courts even when they are fined for taking such a stand for years the organization has criticized the catholic church for their clergy system and for covering up child abuse so imagine me finding out after being raised as one of jehovah's witnesses being told that this organization does not have a clergy class criticizing the catholic church for having its clergy system having its confessional system only to find out that this organization does in fact when it gets into court say yes elders are clergy we have clergy penitent privilege therefore we do not have to report whenever we can take that as an option and not report it and so really to go along with that entire topic is their refusal to update their policies particularly the two witness rule and the fact that they don't just across the board go ahead and let the police know of every single allegation they have that way that would clear their name that would be so much better than finding out that they actually knew about an alleged abuser and did nothing about it to protect the community or those in the congregation the next point would be is that there is absolutely no proof that this organization is being used by god and has his holy spirit they you'll find a lot of times in the publications list made bullet pointed lists showing why this is the one true organization what they do that makes them the one channel of communication by god any religion can make this claim and come up with a similar list themselves and of course every witness would look at their list and be able to point out why they are wrong why something in there isn't good evidence for them having the truth but yet they do and the next point would be only being allowed to see positive information propaganda about jehovah's witnesses this one point makes it extremely difficult to be able to deny that that is a tactic used by colts or at least a bare minimum a high control group now imagine the reasoning with that that every witness use i remember growing up hearing stories of preachers that were telling their congregants to don't talk to jehovah's witnesses because they're going to destroy your faith and yet we as witnesses would hear those stories and just laugh it off because we know that the preacher the main reason he's saying that is because he doesn't want his flock to know the truth that we have well that's absolutely no different than what the organization itself is doing when it comes to looking up anything that might be negative about the organization if the organization were in fact involved with something that you disapproved of how would you ever find out about it the next point would be going back and forth on understanding of things so the new light teaching essentially as examples of that you have sodom and gomorrah superior authorities the elder arrangement things like that and so each time a new understanding is released it's presented as though god has motivated this change has increased the light the understanding on that particular topic well if that was the case why was the first instance of it wrong and why did it have to be revised again or why for the third time is it going back to what the original understanding was new light should never make old light become false as an example of this imagine if you were you know walking into a dark room and you're trying to figure out what's actually in that room so actually you might have a flashlight so if you walk in with your flashlight and you're looking around and perhaps you see something you can see that there's a car in the corner of the room you don't really have any details of you know what the car is but as you get a little bit closer you then get a little bit more information so instead you see oh wait a minute now i know it's a red car then as you swing it around you can see what to make what the model is you get more and more information progressive but each time you're only adding to the information that you already have you're never looking into it and suddenly swinging your flashlight back and forth and saying oh wait this is a car oh wait it's a bicycle oh wait now it's a airplane oh wait no it's back to a car again new light does not make old light become false it should always be a progression of clearer understanding the next point would be that jehovah's witnesses attack apostates for being deceptive for lying for twisting things or misquoting but at the same time these are things that they do themselves in fact you start doing research on what they say about certain scientific topics like evolution you then find out the level of deception that they have when it comes to misquoting in fact they've been called out on this several times and have been forced to protract those articles claims made about things during the time of the end are also extremely deceptive all you have to do is a little bit of research on these matters and you'll find out what i'm talking about there's also the whitewashing of their doctrine things that they've done such as 1914 using word games with authorities when it comes to matters like disfellowshipping disassociations voting blood matters if what you have is the truth you should be able to boldly stand up there speak the truth and trust that jehovah god is going to help you and you will come out better on the other side because of standing up for that truth and trusting that jehovah god is going to help you and you shouldn't have to resort to deception lies quote mining straw manning in order to make your point the next point would be non-verifiable or unfalsifiable claims that you have to believe in such as 1914 1919 the generation teaching the king of the north now granted there are witnesses will say well i don't believe everything that the organization teaches i think they might be wrong in a few things like that but ask yourself what would happen if you voiced that you don't believe those things that you think that the organization has that teaching wrong how well do you think that's gonna go for you the next point would be that you must be a jehovah's witness to be able to survive armageddon now this is a topic that many witness apologists will claim is not true that the organization does not say that well it is true they don't use those exact words but all you have to do do a quick search on jwfacts.com and very conveniently you will find a list of dozens of sentences paragraphs articles from the organization in its history basically stating that so whether or not you personally believe that that's fine that's up to you and in fact that's one thing that i applaud a lot of witnesses for and the fact that they don't necessarily believe that i was actually one of them i figured well when the time of the end comes jehovah's gonna look at people's hearts he's not necessarily going to destroy them just because they haven't talked to us when we got to their door people's conscience doesn't allow them to think that god would do that and the next point which is one of my larger ones was the fact that the watchtower organization was a non-governmental organization an ngo of the united for almost a decade and the excuse given for it is absolutely terrible and hypocritical i won't take the time to go into that now if you were one of jehovah's witnesses you know exactly what the organization says about the u.n and if you are an elder you should quickly be able to deduce why the excuse that they've given is terrible again like many of the things that you can research go to jwfacts.com and you can find out and in fact at least as at the time of recording this video the united nations has received so many inquiries about this issue they have decided to repost an article dealing with the membership of the watchtower with the united nations another point that i've always hated being one of jehovah's witnesses is the blanket statements that you would make about people who are not witnesses that they are not truly happy that only jehovah can help us to be able to overcome certain things which essentially ignores people that spend their entire adult lives researching things learning to become you know professional therapists professionals at whatever business to be able to help them to do something jehovah can empower you to do anything take on any assignment that he gives you and yet at the same time be modest and recognize your limitations that just never made sense to me is how you can push the one thing but then at the same time make a claim that oh no you've got to be modest at the same time the next point is regarding blood transfusions now this is a topic i'm not going to get into on this video but suffice to say there is a ton of information about why this is a horrible policy makes no sense and is based on arbitrary rules created by just a group of men so another point has to do with the new world translation now jehovah's witnesses will tell you that the new world translation has no bias in it they have not inserted their doctrine into the translation they let the bible speak for itself well when you do some research on that that isn't exactly true i don't have the time again here to be able to go into many examples of this but do some research on it and you'll be able to find out what i'm talking about and the next point is there should be no secrecy in the organization when you read the bible you look at the israelites the christians there was no secret set of rules and guidelines that were given to only one person that no one else was allowed to hear about and read the things that people were going to be judged upon the policies that were going to be followed and obeyed every single person had access to those things publishers today in the congregations of jehovah's witnesses in no way have all of the information that they will be judged by nor do they know that the rules for elders and servants are different and the reason being is because they do not have the elders book to be able to know what you can and can't do to be able to get away with certain things judicial hearings should not be secret this is something that only protects the organization that may tell you something different that it's for your protection too when you're on the receiving end of a judicial hearing but that simply is not true when you go back into the scriptures again and look at what happened in the nation of israel cases like this were heard at the city gates they were in public the reason being so that they would encourage the judges to make an impartial judgment the fact that judicial hearings today happen behind closed doors that in the cell should be a clue to you that something's not right my next point has to do with disfellowshipping now it is true that when you read the bible there is a certain form of disfellowshipping or limiting of association with the people that you can find but the version of it that is practiced by jehovah's witnesses is not biblical in any way and there's something that actually hints to that if excommunication or disfellowshipping is scriptural then why in 1947 did the awake say the following that it has no support in scripture and is altogether foreign to bible teachings has pagan influence and is a weapon by which the clergy attained power and tyranny that finds no parallel in history now magically about five years later they changed their stance and the very same scriptures that they were criticizing the catholic church for using for their excommunication practices they began music in themselves and lo and behold they gave absolutely no reason why somehow magically these things were no longer taken how they somehow now had a biblical origin and what they said five years previously was completely tossed out the window and all of this puts aside the point that shunning someone because of acting on their conscience that in itself is evil and immoral think of how backward it is to punish someone because they found out they were being lied to instead of actually punishing the person that was doing the lying my next point is on pressuring young ones to get baptized to join the organization young ones do not have objective information regarding their beliefs they are not fully informed and they would not be allowed to do such research well what happens when they get older and they find out that they no longer believe the same things that they did when they were a child they will then be shunned because of a decision that they made when they were a child there is a reason that minors are not allowed to enter into legal contracts to marry to drink or to smoke and my final point that i had on my list is in regards to the claims that the organization makes that it is different than the world around it that its morals its standards its way of thinking were higher than everyone else that was around it well if that was the case consider the following things if that were true why were they so afraid of women working outside of the home and no longer just being housewives why were black people called out as a race of servants find pleasure in serving other people and that their skin would be turned white in the new system so that pretty much sums up the basic list that i had of major issues uh and each one of them would in and of itself prevent me from ever being a witness again assuming that i still believed so really just kind of a final message for those of you who decided to watch this video for those of you who are jehovah's witnesses do not be afraid to question your beliefs think about what you expect of other people when you go out into the ministry you expect them to be open-minded to perhaps be able to hear something that they haven't heard before perhaps maybe there's a cherished teaching that they believe in that you know is false but you expect them to be able to put aside any negative feelings that they would have toward you for pointing that out or for any apprehension of changing their mind you expect them to be open-minded and you would criticize them for not being so what would you do if a group be it religious political or otherwise told you to trust them to not look at anything negative about their group anyone who says something negative about them is just lying don't speak to former members of our group because they're just disgruntled they're not going to tell you the truth well if you heard any group say that to you that prohibited you from speaking about those things to actually doing real research to hear both positive and negative things about them that would instantly be suspicious to you and there's one thing really important to keep in mind here when you do research about your beliefs about the organization that you are part of it is a win-win situation imagine let's say you do the research and you find out that hey everything that you believe is true all these negative things that you're hearing that are either not actually a big deal they've been twisted or perhaps they're just playing out lies there is no evidence it's all anecdotal things things people say people's experiences well you would come out the other side of that and your faith would be stronger than ever before stronger than anyone else's so that the next time when someone at the door or perhaps another member of the congregation had an issue with something asked you a question you could unequivocally say hey i've done the research on that i know exactly what they're talking about here and here's why that is wrong well you win your faith becomes even stronger but on the flip side let's say you do the research and you find out there actually is something very wrong going on here there are things that have been hidden from me there's been a lot of deception hypocrisy and lies well at that point you then get to start on another journey for yourself to be able to find out what is true what do you believe so that in itself is a win so either way whether your faith is stronger or perhaps you realize you might need to change your thinking on something you win either way but there is one thing that i should prepare you for once you start doing the research you will quickly find out that what you have been told for your entire life our apostate lies are actually not lies but a word of caution when you get your information do your due diligence don't just believe someone because they tell you something go do your research when someone quotes something go look up that quote when someone tells you that something happened well ask them for their evidence for that for those of you who aren't jehovah's witnesses i think one of the most important things that i can say is to keep in mind that jehovah's witnesses for the most part are wonderful kind loving people in fact there are people who care about you enough to be able to dedicate free time every single month because they want to go out and to help other people for most of them that's something that's pretty difficult to do so when they come to your door whenever you speak with them and whatever occasion you find yourself in please be kind to them don't be rude in fact you may not realize it but when people are rude mean to them it does nothing but further the persecution complex that they have and making the world seem to be like an evil place like they've always been told it is to those of you who are family and friends i do just want to again say i love you guys i miss you all i have no hard feelings whatsoever and wish the very best for you i know exactly why you do what you do why you felt the need to shun me because of not being a witness anymore i would have done basically the exact same thing if i were in your shoes and i didn't know what i know now i will always be there for you to help you win slash if you ever do realize what this organization is waking up is a terrifying experience and it really does help if you have someone there who's been through before who can help you through it i will keep my contact information the same for as long as i can but even if the worst happens and that happens to change you still know how to find me and i also want to reassure you that for those of you who have contacted me or who want to contact me i will keep that confidential so you don't have to worry about me telling anyone that you contacted me if you need to lay low for a while so i know this has been a long ramble but it feels like something that i've needed to do for a while because in all honesty i have to pay it forward i have benefited tremendously from the stories of others especially those who have been in situations similar to mine those who were elders pioneers circuit overseers bethlehem people who really were all in but as i said i do feel that i now have to pay that forward almost in a sense kind of a penance because i got myself to the position of being an elder in the congregation and is now my responsibility to be able to help other people out thankfully i never was part of a judicial committee that resulted in a disfellowshipping but even still as an elder there were occasions where i had to sit and listen to people's personal private business that was no business of mine at all and and it's something that still horrifies me to this day to even think about i do have a list of a couple dozen other topics that i would like to consider as time progresses and i'm sure i'll get there at some point and they definitely will not be as long as what this video was so if you'd like to see more videos please like subscribe i'll try to check in on the comments from time to time to see if perhaps are there any topics that come up that you'd like me to cover in the future but until then see you next time

Channel: The Falling Tower

Views: 1,120,160

Keywords: jw, exjw, jehovah's witnesses, elder, pioneer

Id: r7tNNo8EzfQ

Length: 74min 11sec (4451 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 05 2021