Dear Brothers, July 27, 2020
In 1919, The President of the Watchtower Society made a bold prediction, “Millions Now Living Will Never Die”. That quotation was constantly repeated by the Organization till the year 2000 when they realized that everyone in attendance at that Assembly, who listened to J.R. Rutherford repeat those words, are dead.
That teaching has guided my life. Statements were repeatedly made at Assemblies, Conventions and in Print that there was no career in “This System of Things” so you don’t need a job with benefits or retirement, your fulltime job is to “Preach the Good News”! Although many of the Friends ignored or brushed aside such statements, my wife and I believed it, having a combined 38 years of Regular Pioneering.
Our Organization is against Higher Education, but many of the Teachers in our public schools, with this higher education are teaching our children. These educators have Bachelors, Masters and even Doctorate Degrees and we have no problem with that. And yet, from time to time, announcements are made that Bethel needs Doctors, Nurses, Lawyers and such, those with Higher Education. To me, this sends mix signals to the friends. I have come to the realization that our organization is run mostly by high school graduates, Needing assistance from experts(highly educated) in various fields, dealing with complex issues, continually changing doctrine, when the current doctrine becomes outdated and other problems.
I have no ax to grind. You Men, for the most part, have been kind, caring and loving to me. I am at a point in my life, tired and broke, that what little time I have left living, I need to explore other options to survive, that go contrary to current Watchtower teaching. After much prayer, I have decided, that I no longer view myself as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. I realize that there are consequences with disassociating oneself from the Organization, but I believe that this is the best path for me to explore now.