Jehovah’s Witnesses: I’ve Got Some “New Light” For You!

Mar 31, 2015 by Doug Shields

First of all, let me just say that I don’t endorse homosexuality, nor am I against it. I tolerate it just as I tolerate plaid shirts, women wearing sweat pants in Walmart, sleeved tattoos, purple hair, and nose rings. It doesn’t affect me and therefore I choose to live and let live. I’m not for or against gay marriage. I believe that everyone has the right to be who they are without any interference from me. What people choose to do with other consenting adults without violating anyone’s human rights is absolutely NONE of my business.

That out of the way, let’s move forward.

I’m always looking down the road a bit to try to figure out what might happen with our friends at the Watchtower.

Because of current trends and events, I’m going to make a shocking statement.

Within the next ten years the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society will come out with “new light” about homosexuality and declare that it is a “conscience matter”.

The alternative is a total public relations nightmare. As gays and lesbians become more widely accepted by the mainstream, the Watchtower’s strict rules and attacks on homosexuality will isolate them even more than their archaic views regarding blood transfusions.

This will open them up to severe criticism, much like the State of Indiana recently, and create a media circus that their leaders simply won’t be able to handle.

Gays and lesbians are already a protected class in twenty-two states plus D.C. and Puerto Rico. If the Watchtower continues it’s bias against the people of this class by shunning or openly disfellowshipping, they very well could be sued for human rights violations in civil court and possibly brought up on criminal charges.

As we’ve already seen, there are a host of lawsuits, many that have already been settled, against the Watchtower for pedophilia, negligence and human rights abuses.

Other countries are even more openly accepting of the LGBT community which would indicate, at least to me, that the Watchtower is in for some major trouble in its attempt to operate in more liberal countries that recognize and aggressively protect the rights of gays and lesbians.

What lies down the road is utter financial ruin unless the “boys in Brooklyn” change their stance.

Many other previously closed minded and bigoted religions have opened their doors to the LGBT community. Even Pope Francis has made some headlines with his shocking statements about gays and lesbians and recently lunched with gay and transgender inmates indicating that he and the Catholic church are slowly but surely becoming more accepting of the LGBT community. I believe this is a direct result of the power of public opinion.

Things will eventually get to a point where the Watchtower’s policy of shunning and behavior modification will be completely unenforceable and their manipulation of their members will be subject to monetary damages in the millions of dollars as well as criminal prosecution at the highest level.

When the seven old men get hit with these new lawsuits and a few large payouts are ordered, it will result in a lot of “new light” flashing forth in a very short period of time.

I’ll bring the popcorn!

Doug Shields

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Jehovah’s Witnesses Gone Wild!

Mar 22, 2015 by Doug Shields

What happens when a Jehovah’s Witness experiences a psychotic break?

Many go on a drug, alcohol or sex filled binge and completely ruin their lives in the process. Some even go so far as committing suicide.

Some…take it even further.

Most of us are aware of the recent attack at a New Orleans airport where Richard White chased a TSA officer armed with a machete, a barbecue lighter, and six Molotov cocktails.

What you may not know?

Richard White was one of Jehovah’s Witnesses and had “refused certain types of medical care.” One has to make the assumption that this would include psychiatric care. As most of us are painfully aware, psychiatry has always been pointed to as a “man-made solution to a spiritual problem” by the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society.

Could the Watchtower’s open condemnation and even ridicule of psychiatric treatment have contributed to this tragedy which, if not for the heroic actions of TSA officers, could have been much worse?

Note the following quotations:

Awake! 1960 March 8 p.27
“As a rule, for a Christian to go to a worldly psychiatrist is an admission of defeat, it amounts to ‘going down to Egypt for help.’ Isaiah 31:1. Often when a Witness of Jehovah goes to a psychiatrist, the psychiatrist will try to persuade him that his troubles are caused by his religion, entirely overlooking the fact that the Christian witnesses of Jehovah are the best-oriented, happiest and most contented group of people on the face of the earth. They have the least need for psychiatrists. Also, more and more psychiatrists are resorting to hypnosis, which is a demonic form of worldly wisdom.”

Awake! 1975 August 22 p.25
“Is the turning of people from the clergy to the psychiatrists a healthy phenomenon? No, for it really is a case of jumping from the frying pan into the fire. They are worse off than they were before… That they are not the ones to go to for help when one is depressed and beset with all manner of problems is to be seen from the fact that suicides among them are twice as frequent as among the population in general… what is needed at such times is not worldly psychiatrists who may wholly ignore the change that the truth and God’s holy spirit have made in one’s life and who know nothing of their power to help one put on a new Christian personality. Rather, what is needed at such times is a mature Christian in whom one has confidence and who is vitally interested in one’s welfare and who will not shrink back from administering needed reproof or counsel so that one may get healed.”

As has been seen in the thousands of cases of pedophilia committed by even high ranking members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the subsequent failure of the body of elders and their corporate headquarters to adequately (and legally) address these crimes, the body of elders simply aren’t equipped to help anyone with serious psychological issues. Yet they continue to insist that they are.

What could the Watchtower have done, if anything, to prevent Richard White, a member in good standing, of “Jehovah’s organization on earth”, from getting to this state of mind and committing such an act?

I’m asking all of our past contributors to weigh in with their thoughts on how and why this could happen and what part, if any, they feel the Watchtower’s negligence in condemning the science of psychiatry played in this tragedy.

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Our Blog: “The Little One Has Become Fifteen Thousand!”

Feb 1, 2015 by Doug Shields

That’s right folks! The blog now has over fifteen thousand members since we started offering free memberships in 2013.

Thank you all for making this blog a resounding success and a useful tool to help those who have been “skinned and thrown about like sheep without a shepherd” by the con men at the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society!

See the following excerpts from the 2014 annual report. You can access the full report by clicking here.

How many visitors?

We are most definitely making an impact and helping so many people from 175 countries around the world.

We couldn’t have done it without readers and posters  like you!

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Jehovah’s Witnesses: The Worst Thing

Dec 14, 2014 by Doug Shields

We’ve discussed many ways that the Watchtower leaders and their followers, the Jehovah’s Witnesses have hurt people. They disseminate misinformation. They mislead people. They teach falsehoods. They depart from the scriptures in just about everything they teach. They break up families. They’ve even produced their own flawed version of the Bible specifically designed to legitimize their false teachings.

However, there is one thing that they do that tops everything else. It is so damaging and so despicable that I can’t begin to describe the traumatic effects on their followers.

Jehovah’s Witnesses, as well as most organized religions, teach that their followers aren’t “good enough”.

I can’t think of anything that I was taught as a young person, that was as severely limiting, hurtful, and damaging as this falsehood.

A person’s beliefs about themselves determine almost all of their actions.

When a person is indoctrinated into the JW’s they are taught to believe that they don’t “deserve” to be loved, respected, or valued. They are taught to question everything except what the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society teaches. They are taught to even question themselves. They learn to believe that somehow they can’t “measure up” to Jehovah’s (read Watchtower’s) righteous standards without the help of the Watchtower.

What this does is to make them emotionally (psychologically) dependent on the Watchtower leadership to define their own self worth. Everything they believe about themselves is based, not on their own value as human beings created in the image of God, but by their own level of activity and social standing in the organization.

Then they get on the “Theocratic Treadmill” and start working to improve their “standing” in the group. This in turn improves their own self worth in their eyes and is reinforced by the “love bombing” given to those who take the lead in theocratic activity. In the case of “brothers” this becomes even more toxic as they seek to reinforce the mandate by the Watchtower on their poor families. Everyone is expected to “tow the line” and support him in his theocratic progression to eldership. This creates all sorts of unhealthy dynamics in the family unit.

The more a Jehovah’s Witness works the more they think they are worth to Jehovah (read organization).

I don’t think anyone who is or has been a Jehovah’s Witness would disagree with this statement.

Yet what did Paul say about this?

Romans 4:4-8

Now to the one who works, wages are not credited as a gift but as an obligation. However, to the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness. David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the one to whom God credits righteousness apart from works:

“Blessed are those
whose transgressions are forgiven,
whose sins are covered.
Blessed is the one
whose sin the Lord will never count against them.”

What Paul is saying is that we are all saved by faith in Christ apart from works. I’m not saying that works aren’t a part of the Christian life. They most certainly are. However the works are the result of our being saved by grace and not the other way around! They also aren’t defined by a strict set of activities but are part of the entire gamut of Christian life.

When was the last time you heard an elder say the following?

“Brothers and sisters instead of knocking doors today and hawking magazines we’re going down to the park to pick up litter.”

Or

“Brothers and sisters instead of knocking doors today and hawking magazines we’re going to volunteer at the local homeless shelter.”

Or

“Brothers and sisters instead of knocking doors today and hawking magazines we’re going to help raise money for a family who recently lost their father.”

All of these are truly Christian works as defined by the Bible (something about “love your neighbor as yourself”). Yet at no time was I ever asked to do any of these things at the Kingdom Hall.

The Watchtower has done a hatchet job on the Word of God and made it about their specific worldwide work instead of about faith in Christ. They teach the unsuspecting newly converted Jehovah’s Witness that knocking doors and attending meetings are what will save him when Armageddon comes. They do this by implying that if they aren’t “doing enough” to spread the message that they will be “blood guilty” (an old Jewish Law concept) and will die at the hands of Jehovah when Armageddon comes. How can you take a Jewish law and apply it to a Christian? You can’t! Yet Jehovah’s Witnesses apply the old Judaic Law to their own “Christian” teaching every day!

Anyone who has been involved with Jehovah’s Witnesses will have to admit that what I have said about their teaching is indeed the truth of the matter.

As a result, newly converted ones become zealous and almost fanatical in their pursuit of advancement in the organizational “pecking order”. They also begin to show judgmental attitudes toward those who don’t work “as much” or “as hard” in their mind. They start to find fault in others and develop a haughty attitude about their own self worth because they have become better in their own eyes. They begin to talk about other people to their peers in the group. They become cliquish and “holier than thou”.

We’ve all seen it. I don’t believe that any Jehovah’s Witness will deny that this happens constantly in the Kingdom Halls.

My exhortation today is simply this:

Learn to love yourself as God loves you and always has. Learn to embrace your own value as a child of God. Act as if God is working in your life every single moment because He can and will if you let Him. Learn to love others with the same love you receive from God, freely and without judgment. Learn to accept and forgive your own faults and those of others, just as God does.

If you do this, then you will be happy.

I guarantee it!

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Jehovah’s Witnesses: 1914-2014 RIP

Dec 12, 2014 by Doug Shields

Well folks we’re very close to turning another “tick” on the yearly calendar.

We’re almost to the end of 100 years of expectation of the coming of Armageddon and the ushering in of a “New System of Things” as prophesied repeatedly by the Watchtower leadership.

“It’s just around the corner.”

“The Time Is At Hand.”

“The World Has Ended.”

“Millions Now Living Will Never Die.”

“Oh dear, you’ll never graduate high school.”

“You won’t have time to get married until the New System.”

“You don’t need to have children. Wouldn’t you rather raise them in the New System?”

“The generation that saw these things occurring is rapidly dying out.”

Did any of these sound familiar to you?

Do you think we’ve given Jehovah’s Witnesses and their leaders enough time to show us something or should we give them another hundred years?

I believe that in the next twenty to thirty years the Watchtower will be just another interesting historic footnote of the Adventist movement started in the 1800’s.

You see time has always been supremely important to the members and leaders of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Time has always been the key to their “faith” in God. The promise of having more time, an eternity even, to live without dying has been the theocratic “hook” that draws in the gullible, the disenfranchised, the uneducated and the lost.

Unfortunately for the Watchtower leadership, the time they have left to prove their point to the world and to their rapidly shrinking group of followers is pretty much gone.

With the advent (excuse the pun) of the Internet, the amount of public information about the Watchtower’s history and failed prophecies has exploded. Anyone with an Internet connection and a little curiosity can read enough in an afternoon to equip themselves with sufficient information to make the wise decision not to pursue a “Bible Study” with Jehovah’s Witnesses or to read their propaganda or attend their meetings.

This hasn’t always been the case. Prior to the 1990’s one had to go to libraries or seminary book stores to get the real story on Jehovah’s Witnesses. Not many had the resources, determination, or time to do so. This gave the Jehovah’s Witness recruiters an edge and they fully exploited it as shown by their growth prior to the Internet Age.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses report a maximum of 7.96 million in followers as of the writing of this article.

So let me ask you something: How do you KNOW that is the number?

How do you KNOW that they aren’t just puffing their numbers to keep the rank and file from becoming disillusioned?

You don’t.

If they haven’t come clean on their deception in the past 100+ years then they aren’t coming clean about their own shrinking membership.

When you get to report the numbers, and nothing you say is ever questioned, you can make up pretty much anything you want to now can’t you?

Let me ask you this: “When was the last time a JW knocked on your door?”

I haven’t had one knock on my door in several years and I’ve moved around a bit so it isn’t like they have me on some “Theocratic Do Not Call” list.

The last time I saw JW’s was in front of a WalMart standing by a Watchtower kiosk and nobody was there but two old ladies who looked like they were in when Rutherford was alive.

The movement is dying folks. Their money supply has dried up. Their membership is rapidly deteriorating. Their recruiting efforts are losing momentum. The leaders are in “damage control” mode and are sucking in all of their resources back to the “mother ship”.

So where does that leave you?

Are you still waiting for their promises to come true? I sure hope not. Life is tragically short.

I implore you to take steps to really learn what the Bible teaches. Stop wasting your precious time, life and resources standing around waiting for the empty promises of a burned out cult to come true. They didn’t in 1914 and they won’t now. The Watchtower Bible & Tract Society is done! However, you still have a chance to make a change in your own life. You have the opportunity to learn what Christ really wanted you to know.

Do you have the guts to take a hard objective look at what the Bible really teaches? If you do then read Romans in any other version of the Bible than the New World Translation and think long and hard about what God is trying to say to you.

It will change your life!

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