Testimony From A Former Jehovah's Witness

I have 2 issues with the liars who call themselves the governing body, due to things that they led me to believe.

First, the idea that a 15 year old should get baptized. My father was a career Marine. There were a lot of things that he wanted to do with me/for me, but of course as soon as I got baptized I wanted to have nothing to do with any of it. My father and I reconnected about twenty years later and my father told me that my getting baptized was the only time in his life that he cried. My father had been through extremely trying circumstances in Vietnam, he did two tours there, lost his entire company on one tour. If I had taken a more balanced view of life there is no reason why I should have limited my involvement with my father at the age of 15, the way the WTBTS instructed (they deny this but they are liars) me to do. For example, I remember one year I refused to put up the Christmas tree because of the lies that the WTBTS teaches.

Second, the commandment from the WTBTS that we should not go to college. I love learning, I love reading, I can pick up new ideas and new skills pretty quickly. And I did manual labor most of my early adult life. AAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH And for what? Of course they claim in their literature that they never said this. LIARS. They said this at EVERY assembly. And anytime I asked an elder for advice on this, the advice was always the same.

I graduated from high school at the top of my class at the age of 16. I could have had a Ph. D. by the age of 19 or 20. I could have easily gotten scholarships.

Instead I spent all of my youth going to five meetings a week and putting in field service time and working 12 hours a day 6 days a week at construction work because I had no education.

Oh, and the worse part was whenever a "Brother" would hire me. No overtime, no benefits of any kind, lower wages than normal for the same job, the Brother constantly telling me how lucky I was to be working for a "Brother". Did you ever hear about that all Witness company named Trimline? Oh my goodness those liars were evil. I worked for a "brother" for that stupid company. They call you a "subcontractor" so they don't have to pay you any overtime, or any benefits, or matching social security, or unemployment. I worked for them for 3 years. Then I saw just how brotherly these liars are. I got very sick and almost died. I had acute pancreatitis and it was misdiagnosed for over one month. Pancreatitis makes you want to die the pain is so bad. I spent a little over 3 months either in bed or in the hospital. The "Brothers" never came to see me once. When I was well enough to go back to work I went to the Trimline office and the two "Brothers" that ran the place told me that no one had been calling on my accounts while I was ill. Which meant that I would have had to start over again. I was so upset because I knew that these two brothers spent all of their time fooling around and they could have easily covered my accounts while I was ill. And their attitude when I brought this up was "well, you should have thought about that before you took all that time off". I became so angry that I unloaded all of their Trimline crap out of my truck and I never spoke to either of these "Brothers" again. I also made up my mind that I would never work for a Jehovah's Witness again.

So, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society destroyed my relationship with my family and made it so that I had no education which forced me to work at manual labor for years, while I have a very acute mind and should be doing more intellectual work. I only started doing intellectual work at the age of 35.

I got to know some of those 'Christains' who keep to themselves and do home schooling, when I lived in rural Virginia. I think they were Mennonites. They all built their own homes, by hand. They were all self employed. I was talking to one family and I asked them how did they learn such useful skills since they don't go to public school or college. They looked at me very funny and said "the elders teach us". So, here are people who have the same "don't go to college" beliefs but they teach you very high paying trades that are in demand so that you can support yourself. Do you know ANYONE who is a JW elder who has high skills and who could teach someone else? Not that they would. I can't think of anyone like that.

So, if you are going to tell young people that they cannot learn a trade from "Satan's world", then I think that you take on the responsibility of teaching them several trades yourself. And the WTBTS feels ZERO obligation to do this. They want all their members to be janitors so that they can all pioneer.

I think the people who write the literature are either insane or pathological.