Alan,
You noted:
Why then, did he lie on the witness stand in the Judge's behalf? He said that it was because he had no place outside of Bethel to go.
This scenario is so common now that it is a globally tragic issue. Few people who enter/entered Bethel ever expect/expected to be entrapped there for too long, as of course Armaggedon would soon come along to liberate them.
WTS beliefs are a cobbled together collection of band-aid theology. Held together with a mixture of wishful thinking and emotional laziness and designed just to pull the bleeding patient through the next few years until the real doctor comes along to operate. It has not stood the test of time but is being dragged by the scruff of the neck into the mainstream of Christianity. The 'glimpses of light' showered upon the Satanic forces of Christendom one thousand years ago, are finally being seen by 'Gods Channel' and presented to the minions as their own 'glimpse', of their own 'light', a fraudulent misrepresenation. The years go by, each year 'Waiting on Godot', then the decades, and the long-stay inmates peer out bleakly from their little lives, still hoping, still waiting. I spoke recently with a Bethel longtimer in a European Branch who admitted to me 20 years ago that he wanted to leave but felt there was no-where for him to go. Single, plain-looking, of average intellect, but with a wonderful heart, he had no escape. He is now a very sad old man, trying to make sense of the chronicle of a his wasted life. I shed tears for him on my rainy drive home and frankly hoped that death would visit him sooner rather than later. There are many like him.
HS