My wife and I left together January 2004. I had known nothing else but this religion since I was 5 yrs old. My wife was born into it. Combined, we represented perhaps 90 years of active acceptance of the beliefs and lifestyle of Jehovah's Witnesses. I served in many capacities within the organization, and I pioneered for several years just before we left.
We built our entire life and goals around this religion, raised our daughter within it, rejected all other religion and social aspects of life whilst we waited patiently on the "New System", and for Jehovah to fix the glaring wrongs that we saw within the organization.
In 1995 they dashed what we had preached about the '1914 Generation' to bits in 20 paragraphs in a single issue of the magazine. It took many years later before we dared confirm our doubts by reading Raymond Franz' books. Our eyes opened and the scales of indoctrination slowly fell away. Discovery of the unholy alliance between the United Nations and the Watchtower Society was the final straw that showed them to be what they are. We had to go.
This month I will be treated to a Judicial meeting in which I will surely be expelled for 'knowing what I know', and daring to speak of it to others.
I do not regret the years we spent there - but what is the point in staying within a religion that I have now fully acknowledged as having no claim to it's assertion of Divine Selection, having fully disproved the doctrine of 607/1914 by evidence that overwhelms.
I do hope you will read the book - objectively - and make a decision based on facts, not on assertions.
May God bless your efforts to do so.
Jeff