The Ever-Changing Watch Tower Doctrines Betray Its Corruption
by Randall Watters
"New Light from Jehovah's Organization!"
How often those who call themselves Jehovah's Witnesses get excited when they hear of changes in certain teachings that they believe the "faithful and discreet slave" (aka the "Governing Body") are announced. Since it's inception in 1879, the organization has claimed that Jehovah speaks through a few select men; chosen by God himself to be his prophet to the peoples of the earth. Among all the churches at that time, they proclaimed themselves as the most honest and faithful of all religions claiming to be Christian; and that is why Jesus supposedly chose them out of all the others to be the only true Christians on the earth. This was especially preached after the release of the officers of the corporation from prison in 1919.
Being am member was essential for life, and it was relatively easy to "lose" your standing before God if you disobeyed their ever-changing doctrines. Thus, fear and guilt became major factors in keeping them in line. Any deviation of belief was termed as "apostasy" and the Witness was to be completely shunned by all other Witnesses unless they crawled back to the elders in repentance and accepted a year or more of punishment and humiliation; still completely ignored by the rest of the congregation.
The Carrot on a Stick
"This generation [we live in] will by no means pass away until all [of these judgments by the vengeful God Jehovah] of these things occur," and so forth. One Circuit Overseer had a favorite catch phrase in the late 60s and early 70s, Charles Sunutko, saying "Stay Alive Til 75!" and he had full Society approval, along with other carnival hawkers like Floyd Kite warning of the imminent end of the world. In early 1975 the Vice-President of the Society, Frederick W. Franz, said to 1800 members of the Bethel family, "We don't know now if it's going to be weeks or months" [before Armageddon]. (Links to these original lectures are highlighted here.) 1975 was the last of a long line of new dates for Armageddon, including 1914, 1915, 1918, 1925, 1941 or thereabout, and then 1975. With each new date, the fear of the masses brought them in as new converts to the Watch Tower organization, to over 7 million today.
From Sound Cars to Door-to-Door
In previous years they used sandwich signs and sound cars blasting the churches, but the sales of literature proved to be a more lucrative idea, and was thus touted as "new light" by Jehovah himself. Higher education was shunned and health insurance plans and medical treatment was cancelled, and even couples refrained from having children because the end was so near. All the books and magazines had to go out across the earth before Jehovah came to destroy his enemies, making ANY OTHER PURSUITS in this "time of the end" to be of secondary value. During the hysteria souurounding 1975, thousands of Witnesses sold their homes to go out and sell books to support the Watch Tower, goaded on by the Society itself.
Food at the Proper Time
A motivationally-mixed diet of excitement, exclusivity, fear, guilt, anticipation, anxiety and other powerful mind drugs are used on a regular basis to keep Witnesses active in making money and converts to this religion of 7 million followers. When I was working in the Pressroom at Bethel from 1974 to 1980 as a floor overseer, mechanic, R&D research, and cost accounting, this was easily spotted. Magazines were printed by workers who received $14 a month for pay, and we regularly printed over 100,000 books a day (enough to make a stack twice as tall as the Empire State Building). The brightly-colored little books were printed for a cost of 5 cents each and sold for 25 cents. Magazines made the same profits. One book alone, "The Truth That Leads to Eternal Life," was eventually printed in over 110 million copies in over 100 languages. Several of their books were listed in the Guiness Book of Records as the largest printings in history, behind the Bible and Mao's "Little Red Book" of Communist Chinese indoctrination. I was proud to be a small part of such a massive, forward-looking organization, and I was determined to go out and convert as many people as I could before Armageddon, which was at that point expected to arrive in 1975.
If I had never gone to work at Bethel, their worldwide headquarters in Brooklyn, I might never have met the powers that be that control the operations of this religion, and the sly tricks they used to deceive their own followers. Even more so, I would not have watched them in action as they mistreated their volunteer workers; sometimes to the point of suicide.
The Forked Tongue of "Truth"
If you have ever lived and worked at Bethel for awhile, or been in circuit work, or served as an elder, you learn the Great Secret of speaking two languages. They are "What we want you to tell others," and the unspoken "Pure Language of the Truth," another phrase ironic in that it was only information known and carefully controlled by the leaders in the organization. "New Light" really was used as a way to hide secrets of indoctrination and control over the rest of the Witnesses; even unbeknownst to all but the seasoned workers.
Man is basically a predatory creature, and predatory creatures use obfuscation and deception to get what they want, in disguise of "spirituality," whether it be subservience, money or power.
Let's examine the "healthful sayings" of the popes of the Watchtower [Oh, excuse ME, I MEANT to say the "Faithful and Discreet Slave."] Now that's a pretty cheeky self-description! It is the prime deception that leads into all the others. You can be sure that practically everything that comes off their printing presses as "truth" is going to be just as cheeky and self-congratulatory.
Rather than taking the "Way-Back Machine," I will start from the period of time I entered this Watch Tower carnival back in the early 70s. I learned how to interpret both languages pretty well by the time I reached Bethel, because you actually can watch these lying fools in action. I got to the point where I could be proofreading an article or Kingdom Ministry (insider publication) as it was churning out of my printing press, and I could pretty much tell you WHO wrote the article and WHY. The jigsaw puzzle was never hard, as the writers had small vocabularies and even smaller brains.
Some sly tactics have been known for a few years already. I'll give you a quarter for every one you can figure out.
The Kingdom Hall "Quick-Build"
Witnesses build new Kingdom Halls themselves, usually announced with big fanfare in local newspapers about their so-called “quick-build” method and how the Witnesses are so happy to donate their time, effort, and money. What is not discussed in the newspapers is how the congregation is almost always required to take out a loan from the Watch Tower Society, almost always with interest, and when it is paid off it almost always belongs, not to the local congregation, but to the Watch Tower Society! Hence, Watch Tower owns almost all the Kingdom Halls in the world. This prevents breakaway groups from forming and competing with Jehovah’s Witnesses. It is just another scheme to protect the organization from schisms. This was clearly made known in the Bonham, Texas, trial in the 1980s:
What happened in Bonham, Texas? The body of elders and the majority of the congregation decided to leave the Watch Tower organization. And with that, they took the Kingdom Hall. The remaining Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Society sued in court to recover the Kingdom Hall. For the first time in its history the Watch Tower Society made two important arguments: 1. The structure of the organization was hierarchical like the Catholic Church, with the Governing Body, Branch Overseers, District Overseers, Circuit Overseers, and Elders appointed by the Society. 2. The Society as a hierarchy, therefore, had the rightful title to the Kingdom Hall.
This was a serious departure from all their previous claims, and is among the many issues that impressed upon me that the Society was not what it claimed to be.
The result? The Society lost the lawsuit because the Bonham Congregation was able to prove that the Society was historically a 'congregational' organization, and as such had no legal title or interest recorded on the deed. The Society was unable to establish legal interest.
Subsequent Changes: Among the changes to establish legal control was to have recorded on deeds the Watch Tower as the first position lien holder when getting remodeling and quick-build loans. (I can recall the days when we would get remodeling loans from the Society, but nothing was ever recorded on the deeds.) The Society started a group insurance scheme (KHAA) for all Kingdom Halls, ostensibly to provide lower premiums, but also this showed an interest in each property. And, while I did not follow the corporate changes after this, I understand that the Society started to hold the deeds to local Kingdom Halls or at least guaranteeing that each congregation’s corporate by-laws would preclude losing the property if the congregation opted out of its Watch Tower affiliation.
(source: http://governingbodyletters.blogspot.com/2008/04/who-owns-kingdom-halls.html )
Other Scams Unknown to Rank and File Witnesses
Money is often collected for parking at the larger conventions even when it is stated in the stadium agreement that parking is to be free! If you have Internet access, read this news article from a Tacoma, Washington reporter: http://www.watchtowernews.org/tacomapark.htm.
This is a typical practice and we will bring out more of such scams in the near future.
One of the saddest of arrangements used for years by the Watch Tower is to NOT SPECIFY what donations are to be used for, even at times when the Watch Tower sets up a natural disaster relief fund to be donated to. Witnesses are told that they should not write that their contribution is for a specific purpose, but to leave that decision to the Watch Tower! The question many have is, how much money reaches the cause it is intended for? The Watch Tower's financial books are sealed to the enquirer, thanks to the U.S. Government's privileges granted to religions.
Witnesses brag about helping non-Witnesses in disasters, but this is extremely rare and if it happens, it’s a pittance. After the destruction of the Twin Towers on 9/11, the Watch Tower assigned some Bethelites to hand out water bottles to people escaping the collapse of the Twin Towers and who were crossing the Brooklyn Bridge over into Brooklyn. The rest of the Bethelites locked their gates and closed the curtains so no one would be gawking out the windows as the people fled the city, and no one could get inside.
The True Primal Personality of This Jehovah
Yet, Witnesses can hardly wait until all these buildings are
destroyed by Jehovah at Armageddon, as depicted in From Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained (p. 208, 209). This was a study book for CHILDREN and the frightening illustrations were in Chapter 25, “How the World Comes To Its End.” These illustrations are ever-present in Watch Tower publications and used to scare children and adult Witnesses into submission.
The illustration to the left was used in their 1988 book, Revelation—It’s Grand Climax At Hand! to accomplish the same purpose, carefully adding the thought that a Witness could lose out at any time and must remain faithful to the Governing Body to the end.
Treatment of Their Own Slaves
While Watch Tower leaders keep aid from the poor and needy, they build big corporate complexes in upstate New York for themselves even as their religious coffers decline. They also ask volunteer workers to leave Bethel, including couples who have been at headquarters for decades and are getting older and becoming a financial liability to the Watch Tower. These workers are encouraged to go out and PIONEER and “build up the congregations” in obedience to Jehovah! Yet most of them are broke from years of poverty after receiving no real wages, property, or health insurance. Just "trust in Jehovah," for he will provide!
Like Father, Like Son
Not much has changed since the days of the presidency of Nathan Knorr, who claimed to be so proud of the Gilead Missionary School he started in the 1940s, where Witnesses were trained to be missionaries and sent out all over the world. Knorr was like a father, modeled much as Jehovah's personality as practiced in the Watch Tower. If missionaries became ill and had to come home, they were sometimes told to buy their own plane or boat ticket back home. It is well-known that at least one missionary jumped from the ship out of despair from such foul treatment. Knorr was known to hold young Bethelites in contempt, and he delighted in punishing them for small offenses and then announcing it to the whole Bethel family at breakfast, no matter how embarrassing the “crime.” Some Bethelites, who signed up to work for four years for $14 a month, were told that “they could be replaced for a quarter.” But at the new-boy Entrants School, Bethel was touted as a "spiritual paradise."
The Beginning of the End of Watch Tower Power
N. H. Knorr was so angry at the new idea of a “Governing Body,” where several men shared power and authority rather than just he and his cohort, Freddy Franz (who was the ghost-writer for many of the Society’s books), he often railed at the idea publicly at Bethel. However, Knorr was dying of cancer so had little choice but to give in to the demands of the new men brought in to be a “Governing Body.” He was so vengeful that he took the Gestapo-like Ted Jaracz out of the District Overseer work in the United States, although Knorr had previously removed him from his high position at the Australian Branch because of wrongdoing, and made him head of the Watch Tower’s main police force—the dreaded Service Department, just to get revenge for this act of “treason.” As events testify, Jaracz would put them all in their place, and did, and nearly destroyed the organization doing so. He was likely the most hated man by fellow Bethelites ever to set foot in the Brooklyn office. (It’s a close call as to whether the vote of “most-hated” should go to Knorr, Joseph Rutherford (second president), or Jaracz. I only knew Knorr personally, and the old-timers at Bethel did not speak well of him.
Jaracz Complicit in Hiding Child Molesters
Ted Jaracz was the one that was behind the drafting of policies that were clever instruments to hide child molesters in the congregations; especially the rule that required that there must be TWO EYEWITNESSES for every act of accused molestation or child rape. In the event that you made an accusation without two witnesses for the one crime, you risked being disfellowshipped and destroyed at Armageddon for disrupting the peace of the congregation and bringing “reproach on Jehovah’s Name.” That is why so few cases of molestation were ever reported, and, dear Ted, who has been worm food for over a year now, did the exact same thing Cardinal Mahoney of the Los Angeles Diocese of the Catholic Church was accused of for years — he shuffled around deviant elders and kept the sordid secret from all but the local Circuit and District Overseers. "Jehovah" must be made to look good!
And thank you, Nathan Knorr, for your part in perpetuating pedophilia in all the congregations of Jehovah’s Witnesses by giving power to Ted Jaracz! How much we have appreciated having Ted Jaracz “continue on to protect the name of the mighty Watch Tower” by keeping the pedophiles hidden. Often, the perpetrators were elders, who freely went door-to-door, and some, perhaps quite a few, still do! How flattering to Jehovah! Of course, He would fix things in the New System - After all we are imperfect!
DAMN YOU both as you rot in your graves, Nathan Knorr and Ted Jaracz. You were more despicable than the pedophiles you protected.
The Same “two witness” Policy Still in Effect!
We know the Watch Tower paid out nearly 13 million dollars in 2007 to settle just a few child abuse cases in the U.S. We don’t know how much they secretly paid over the years to settle many other lawsuits we know were filed but never became public. And we are sure that they are settling lawsuits as I write this with more likely to come. One thing for sure, Watch Tower will pay any amount of money asked by attorneys for victims so that these cases will never come to court. Usually, a gag order is put on the monetary settlement, so details are never revealed to the public. However, just recently, a 664-page legal “Brief of Evidence” was submitted to the Victoria, Australia government to Charge, Indict and Prosecute the Watchtower of Australia AND the United States Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania Corporation for failing to comply with a State law that went into effect in 2005 to protect children from sexual abuse. We will address this in a future issue if and when more information becomes available.
Child Murderers Will Be Called to Account
For decades, arguments within the inner sanctum of Watch Tower headquarters have continued over how to handle the blood transfusion issue. Especially between the Most Powerful Gene Smalley (largely responsible for establishing rules regarding what molecules of blood can be transfused and which ones can’t), and the Watch Tower attorneys who want to end the madness and continual deaths from lack of blood in emergencies. Yet the leadership often puts the onus on individual elders, making them vulnerable to lawsuits which, they are warned by the Society, they will not support unless all internal organizational instructions are followed! No wonder this religion is experiencing a shortage of elders and ministerial servants.
Rumors have it that many Witnesses, who DO break-down in their last moment of despair in the hospital, end up NOT being disfellowshipped after all, while many others, thinking this is Jehovah’s requirement to refuse blood, lose their lives on the operating table while the doctor’s hands are tied by family and elder’s insistence that adult Witnesses have the right to do what they want with their own bodies. In the meantime, the Watch Tower’s Hospital Liaison Committees intrude into hospitals to make sure Witnesses don’t give in.
The Society is hinting that a new policy on blood will come out soon. To shield themselves from legal problems, Watch Tower leaders have subtly let it be known that it is the individual Witness’ OWN CHOICE in the matter, and that “the Society does not disfellowship or shun anyone” who in a moment of weakness breaks Jehovah’s law on blood. So no official action is taken against the person. Watch Tower leaders have been building up to this kind of rhetoric for several years now that they do not disfellowship anyone, but by their “unbiblical actions” the Witnesses DISASSOCIATES THEMSELVES (thereby avoiding any legal implications and bad public relations). This practice pertaining to the issues of blood and voting, began as certain governments (such as Bulgaria) were opening up their doors to other religions, as long as they didn’t fit the definition of cults, with their inherent social ostracism and punishment.
Watch Tower leaders actually said in Watch Tower literature that Jehovah’s Witnesses are NOT BANNED if they voted or took blood, as it was an individual decision! Yet they were disfellowshipped (er, ahhh) by disassociating themselves if they did so. For instance, Witnesses were privately instructed to go into voting booths but not mark voting cards or make any choices. This would give the appearance of voting that would satisfy the authorities, but it would be “theocratic war strategy” [aka “fooling the enemy”].
More to come.
Edward Dunlap, former Watchtower Gilead Instructor on the Franz Incident (mp3 format, 28 meg)
Cris and Norma Sanchez, former Bethel Spanish translators testimony of how they were treated at Watchtower headquarters in 1979. part 1 part 2 (RealMedia format, free player)
Randall Watters and Robert Sullivan, What Happened at the Watchtower Headquarters in the Spring of 1980? part 1 part 2 (RealMedia format, free player)
Sam Herd, Governing Body member, gives Sunutko - type talk in 2005! (audio only, mp3 format, 9 minute CLIP from talk)
Listen to 2 short RealAudios by Fred Franz (4th WT pres.) in 1975 about the '75 predictions!
Fred Franz (4th WT president) stirs up the crowd re: 1975 in 1975! (RealAudio) part 1 part 2 Charles Sunutko's full message on 1975! Get your popcorn ready! (RealAudio) Sam Herd, Governing Body member, gives Sunutko - type talk in 2005! 40 years later they just don't get it.(mp3 format, 9 minute CLIP from talk)