Spanish JW’s Upset Over Bethel Move

On April 1, 2009 a let­ter was sent from the Gov­ern­ing Body of Jehovah’s Wit­nesses to con­gre­ga­tions in Spain inform­ing them that the print­ing, ship­ping, and stor­age of Watch­tower pub­li­ca­tions would be dis­con­tin­ued at the Madrid (Ajalvir) Branch office. The let­ter expressed con­fi­dence that the Span­ish Wit­nesses would, despite the move, continue to gen­er­ously sup­port the world wide work and ends with an appeal to remain united under the direc­tion of the Wit­ness leadership.

At a glance, this story may seem like a non-issue, perhaps, just another exam­ple of reor­ga­ni­za­tion and con­sol­i­da­tion within a multi­na­tional cor­po­ra­tion; how­ever, the dis­so­lu­tion of the print­ing branch has caused con­sid­er­able hard feel­ings among some of Jehovah’s Wit­nesses in Spain. To under­stand the rea­son we must first look at the his­tory behind the branch office and exter­nal fac­tors that some feel prompted this abrupt move.

Early in their history, Jehovah’s Wit­nesses began print­ing their trade­mark Watch­tower mag­a­zines and asso­ci­ated books and tracts in-house at their “Bethel” head­quar­ters in Brook­lyn, New York.  As the reli­gious orga­ni­za­tion grew and expanded over­seas, “branch offices” and print­ing facil­i­ties were estab­lished  in dif­fer­ent loca­tions across the globe to sup­port the preach­ing work in those ter­ri­to­ries.   Such was the case in Spain in 1980, where the need for a local print­ing facil­ity was explained at Span­ish dis­trict con­ven­tions of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

At the time, expansion at the head­quar­ters in New York left the Watch Tower cor­po­ra­tion with­out the finances to build offices and a print­ing facil­ity in Spain and so the Span­ish Wit­nesses were solicited to fol­low the exam­ple of the Israelites in bring­ing their gold, sil­ver, and valu­able items to Moses in order to build the Taber­na­cle. (Exo­dus 35:5–9) The 1983 Year­book of Jehovah’s Wit­nesses, reports the gen­er­ous way that the Span­ish Wit­nesses responded to this appeal.:

At the close of the con­ven­tions, peo­ple were lin­ing up to con­tribute their jew­els, gold and sil­ver rings and bracelets, so that these could be turned into cash to finance the new project. At the con­ven­tion in San Sebastián in the Basque coun­try, an elderly sis­ter handed over a heavy gold bracelet. When asked if she was sure that she wanted to donate such a valu­able item, she answered: “Brother, it is going to do far more good pay­ing for a new Bethel than it will on my wrist!”

With the unspar­ing finan­cial sup­port of the Span­ish Wit­nesses a new branch office and print­ing facil­ity was later con­structed in Madrid.   Being financed within the coun­try, this new Bethel was a source of pride for the Span­ish Wit­nesses.  Many would make spe­cial trips just to tour the facil­ity.  Now some are hurt to watch as the print­ing presses that they gave their pre­cious heir­looms to buy are shipped to Ger­many and the Bethel that they sac­ri­ficed their sav­ings to build is antic­i­pated to be sold, with the pro­ceeds of the sale return­ing back to the US Watch Tower cor­po­ra­tion that was orig­i­nally unable to finance its con­struc­tion.   This sit­u­a­tion might not be near as bit­ter if it were not for the events that tran­spired in Spain that some feel to be the impe­tus behind this relocation.

In Decem­ber 2007, after an inves­ti­ga­tion, the Social Secu­rity office of Spain issued a rul­ing that the Madrid Bethel was required to pro­vide a pen­sion for those who worked in its print­ing facil­i­ties.   His­tor­i­cally, Bethel work­ers receive no such ben­e­fits.   Upon join­ing the Bethel “fam­ily” they take a vow of poverty and are inducted into a reli­gious order, not unlike a Catholic monastery.  While at Bethel they  receive a small monthly stipend for per­sonal items in addi­tion to room and board.   Though they are work­ing in a mod­ern print­ing oper­a­tion, they are viewed as reli­gious vol­un­teers and have no work­ers’ com­pen­sa­tion ben­e­fits or pen­sion to sup­port them, if injury, health, age, or other cir­cum­stances should force them out of their Bethel “home”.

In recent years, the Watch Tower has seen a fair share of cor­po­rate down­siz­ing.   This has been par­tic­u­larly felt in the United States headquarters, which has expe­ri­enced sig­nif­i­cant cut­backs within the New York Bethel fam­ily.  Many men and women in their youth were encour­aged to make ser­vice at Bethel a “life career”, at the expense of fam­ily, edu­ca­tion, and a sec­u­lar career.  They entered Bethel with the idea that they would stay there for the rest of their life, mak­ing it their “home”.  Now as older adults they are  feel­ing the sting of cut­backs as they are asked to leave their Bethel home, start­ing all over again in the sec­u­lar world with­out pen­sions or with­out hav­ing con­tributed toward retire­ment or Social Secu­rity.   This is the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in Madrid, where it is esti­mated that up to 200 Bethel work­ers are being asked to leave with­out reassignment.

The Span­ish Social Secu­rity office’s deci­sion to hold the Madrid Bethel respon­si­ble for pro­vid­ing ben­e­fits for print­ing fac­tory work­ers and other mem­bers of the order presents a con­sid­er­able finan­cial hit in a reli­gious orga­ni­za­tion that has already expe­ri­enced hard­ships in tough eco­nomic times. This has caused some Span­ish Wit­nesses to believe that the deci­sion to relo­cate print­ing oper­a­tions to another coun­try is specif­i­cally moti­vated by the fis­cal impli­ca­tions of the Social Secu­rity office’s deci­sion, despite what the Branch Office claims about the reor­ga­ni­za­tion being moti­vated by other fac­tors such as simplification.

The Span­ish Wit­nesses who might nor­mally com­pletely trust the deci­sions made by the organization’s lead­er­ship have rea­son to be suspicious.  After los­ing their peti­tion against pro­vid­ing Social Secu­rity ben­e­fits to Bethel work­ers, the Span­ish Branch Office of Jehovah’s Wit­nesses sent a let­ter to the local con­gre­ga­tions announc­ing the new pro­vi­sion.  In the let­ter, Wit­ness lead­er­ship implies that it was they who peti­tioned Social Secu­rity for entry into the sys­tem in order to pro­vide ben­e­fits.  The con­gre­ga­tions were kept in the dark about the real rea­son that these con­tested ben­e­fits were being pro­vided to those in the reli­gious order.

A sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion occurred in the United States in 1990.  At the time, Jimmy Swag­gart Min­istries was in the US Supreme Court, chal­leng­ing taxes assessed on pub­li­ca­tions sold by the pop­u­lar tel­e­van­ge­list.   Unknown to US Wit­nesses, the Watch Tower, filed a “friend of the court” brief (ami­cus curiae) in the Swag­gart Tax­a­tion case, because the rul­ing would open the door for tax­ing the Watch Tower, as Jehovah’s Wit­nesses went door to door sell­ing their Watch­tower mag­a­zine and asso­ci­ated lit­er­a­ture.   When Swag­gart lost the case, the Watch Tower, quickly adopted a new “dona­tion arrange­ment”, where the magzines and lit­er­a­ture were offered with­out a spec­i­fied cost, and a dona­tion request was made.

In a let­ter sent to all US con­gre­ga­tions the Watch Tower explained the new arrange­ment saying,

“By adopt­ing a method of lit­er­a­ture dis­tri­b­u­tion based com­pletely on dona­tion, Jehovah’s peo­ple are able to greatly sim­plify our Bible edu­ca­tion work and sep­a­rate our­selves from those who com­mer­cial­ize religion.”

No men­tion was made of the con­nec­tion between the new “dona­tion arrange­ment” and the Jimmy Swag­gart case, and to this day, this is rel­a­tively unknown among Jehovah’s Wit­nesses.  Sim­i­lar to the way the Span­ish branch han­dled the Social Secu­rity rul­ing, the US branch office spun the “dona­tion arrange­ment” as a way of sim­pli­fi­ca­tion with­out reveal­ing the real reasons.

The Span­ish Wit­nesses feel slighted that the reli­gious orga­ni­za­tion they gave their life and finances to is now treat­ing them so carelessly. Equally they are  hurt by the lack of can­dor and hon­esty com­ing from head­quar­ters about the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion.  Cur­rently the dis­con­tent among the reli­gion are orga­niz­ing and mak­ing their case that any funds com­ing from the sale of the Bethel facil­ity should be go back to the ones that financed it the first place.   They sug­gest that such money could be used in a char­i­ta­ble way, such as pro­vid­ing a retire­ment facil­ity for those in their ranks that  are now aging, with­out pro­vi­sion, hav­ing giv­ing their life in ser­vice of the reli­gion.     Iron­i­cally, they are vying to pro­vide the very care that Wit­ness lead­er­ship itself is reluc­tant to give.

—

Source Doc­u­men­ta­tion

Min­istry of Labor and Social Affairs (Spain), Octo­ber 2, 2007 Inves­ti­ga­tion Report
Min­istry of Labor and Social Affairs (Spain), Decem­ber 22, 2007 Rul­ing
Chris­t­ian Jehovah’s Wit­nesses, Sep­tem­ber 7, 2008 Let­ter to Con­gre­ga­tions
Chris­t­ian Jehovah’s Wit­nesses, April 1, 2009 Let­ter to Congregations

May 17, 2009 – 8:21 pm | By Anthony | Posted in Jehovah's Witnesses | Tagged , , , , | Comments (47)

47 Comments

  • Sharon wrote:
    May 20, 2009 at 1:55 am

    Thanks for keep­ing the wider JW and exJW com­mu­mity abreast of what is hap­pen­ing in Spain. This is just another exam­ple of the duplic­i­tous nature of the Orga­ni­za­tion and the devi­ous spin it puts on its activ­i­ties to por­tray them­selves as godly. My heart goes out to the dis­missed bethe­lites and those that donated so much hard earned cash to this facil­ity, only to see the Cor­po­ra­tion attempt to swipe the liq­ui­dated funds back to Brook­lyn with very lit­tle regard for their respon­si­bil­i­ties to the broth­ers in Spain.
    Lets hope that the voices protest­ing this move will be heard across the globe, espe­cially by the information-starved congregations.

  • Brice R. wrote:
    May 20, 2009 at 8:29 pm

    Also lit­tle known to JW’s is the fact that when­ever a local Con­gre­ga­tion wishes to build a new King­dom Hall, and bor­rows the money from the Watch­tower, the Soci­ety retains own­er­ship of the prop­erty, in per­pe­tu­ity, even after the loan has been repaid “in full”.

    Imag­ine buy­ing a home or a car, faith­fully mak­ing the pay­ments over many years, and when finally the loan is “paid in full”, the bank or dealer which pro­vided the orig­i­nal loan, retains own­er­ship of the home or car. In other words, upon fully meet­ing the oblig­a­tions under the terms of the loan, own­er­ship of the prop­erty is not con­veyed to the “buyer”.

    This is pre­cisely the same sit­u­a­tion with the Span­ish Branch’s prop­er­ties though, in this par­tic­u­lar case, financ­ing was not pro­vided by the Soci­ety, but was wholly paid for by the Span­ish broth­ers & sis­ters. Nev­er­the­less, it remains prop­erty of the WTBTS.

    I would hope that the Span­ish broth­ers and sis­ters vig­or­ously com­plain but, that is not likely given the “herd men­tal­ity” preva­lent amongst JW’s. Sad indeed!

  • Anthony wrote:
    May 20, 2009 at 9:11 pm

    Sharon & Brice,

    Thank you for vis­it­ing my blog and sub­mit­ting your thoughts.

  • JHK wrote:
    May 22, 2009 at 1:14 am

    Thank you very much for your infor­ma­tion! It’s very exactly and well doc­u­mented. In Spain, to sell Bethel facil­i­ties will be a tragedy, not only bethe­lites, too: Dis­trict and Cir­cuit Over­seers and Spe­cial Pio­neers will be affected.

    We are mak­ing an spe­cial cam­paign sign­ing of peti­tions, to tray to stop the Gov­ern­ing Body objec­tive. Any­one is invited!

    http://www.efirmas.com/846244/index.html

  • betelitas ajalvir wrote:
    May 22, 2009 at 5:28 am

    Hi Friend.
    I write from Spain.

    Your infor­ma­tion is very good. It is really so.

    Thanks.

  • sajithra wrote:
    May 25, 2009 at 4:36 am

    WOW It’s great to see a reader from Spain com­ment­ing on this great write-up about Spain. the world is def­i­nitely get­ting smaller and closer!

  • Grateful wrote:
    May 27, 2009 at 2:05 pm

    Thank you Anthony for that infor­ma­tion, I wouldn’t have known about it oth­er­wise. They have gone in the way of all other reli­gions. They have become greedy, self serv­ing Phar­isees, and have for­got­ten the wight­ier mat­ters of the law. Woe to them when Christ arrives. I’m enjoy­ing your site very much, and can see you have been blessed.
    Agape to you and your fam­ily,
    Grateful

  • torre wrote:
    May 31, 2009 at 2:19 pm

    Hi all

    I,m as well from Spain. I’d like to add to all the above info which is very accu­rate, that two for­mer Bethe­lite were to the local author­i­ties. As a result, they imposed the tax­a­tion over social security.

  • Peter wrote:
    Jun 24, 2009 at 2:41 am

    Thank you for this use­ful arti­cle.
    More peo­ple need to see the deceit and lack of can­dor of the WTBTS and it’s sharp prac­tices. The holier than thou rea­sons given for var­i­ous WT actions are quite nau­si­at­ing when the real motives become appar­ent.
    Please post a link to this arti­cle on any pop­u­lar JW or ex JW forums that you might post to.

    From a soft pedel­ing JW in Greece

  • Jaun Millalonco wrote:
    Jul 1, 2009 at 2:20 pm

    My first visit here, found the blog acci­den­tally really, and I just wanted to say I’ve enjoyed my visit and had some good reads while here :)
    Juan

  • John wrote:
    Aug 9, 2009 at 5:22 pm

    There is a Bible Prin­ci­ple that states if one does not look after mem­bers of ones house­hold then they are worse than those with­out faith. When those of the house­hold have con­tibuted to the estab­lish­ment and run­ning costs of the household,they need to be con­sid­ered. Their per­sonal well being is important,be it a pen­sion or work­ers com­pen­sa­tion. A worker is wor­thy of his or her wages. If an orga­ni­za­tion is avoid­ing these prin­ci­ples then they may find they them­selves are pulling out an impor­tant foun­da­tion stone of their struc­ture and could con­tr­bute to its col­lapse find­ing it very dif­fi­cult to reestab­lish again.

  • Maggie wrote:
    Sep 23, 2009 at 2:46 pm

    Well researched and infor­ma­tive.
    Still cant fig­ure out how to get the tun­nel visioned JWs to read it though…as to them it is of course satanic and apos­tate mate­r­ial.
    But I guess if just one would take the blink­ers off it’s worth it.

  • Ed wrote:
    Oct 12, 2009 at 8:32 am

    A very infor­ma­tive arti­cle. thank you. Not enough fol­low the money inves­ti­ga­tion is done on the wit­nesses. Shame on them for the spin they try and put on everything!

  • stunned wrote:
    Nov 28, 2009 at 9:30 pm

    This brought tears to my eyes.
    I would love to share this with a few friends but the ques­tion always remain ( Can you prove it?)
    Oth­er­wise it’s just dis­missed as wicked spec­u­la­tion.
    Any sug­ges­tions for ver­i­fy­ing the arti­cle would be a great help.
    Any ideas on how to find the info?
    Anyone.…

  • Anthony wrote:
    Dec 7, 2009 at 8:31 am

    Stunned,

    I tried to doc­u­ment this to the best of my abil­ity which was lim­ited by the fact that I don’t under­stand Span­ish. Where pos­si­ble I included links to the actual doc­u­ments for review below the arti­cle. The com­men­tary is of course my own. I’m sorry that I can’t offer more.

    –Anthony

  • Heidi wrote:
    Feb 4, 2010 at 7:48 am

    This is so very sad and heartwrench­ingly typ­i­cal. The lead­er­ship doesn’t serve.

  • Trudy wrote:
    Feb 4, 2010 at 7:37 pm

    I teared up when I heard how many who had ded­i­cated their lives to work at Bethal for lit­tle if any wage, who were sent away to live with JW publishers.(strangers) No pen­sion, no money, no health insur­ance. Who is expected to pay their doc­tor bills? Those accept­ing the respon­si­bil­ity? It should be the respon­si­bil­ity of the WT orga­niz­ers!
    They were shipped away after see­ing that the ‘new Order’ has not arrived as proph­e­sied by the Gov. body. So sad, yes…so very sad.
    Thank you for the infor­ma­tion affect­ing Spain. It hurts me to hear of their dis­ap­point­ment. But, per­haps all this will help them see the impor­tance of not putting too much trust in men.
    God bless all believ­ers in Christ!

  • Edmund DeSoto wrote:
    Feb 5, 2010 at 7:44 am

    Thank you Tony for all the work you are doing. It is truly a plea­sure read­ing your information.

  • Victor Benitez wrote:
    Feb 5, 2010 at 12:35 pm

    Thank you, Anthony, for the infor­ma­tion doc­u­mented. A call for trans­parency is essen­tial to put Watch­tower GB oper­a­tives to shame, that is, if they have a con­science, on this, and other matters.

    From Los Ange­les, CA.

  • Helen L. Gauthier wrote:
    Feb 7, 2010 at 6:15 pm

    I finally received insight from all of these com­ments, in all mat­ters that have con­cerned me for years, those that were asked to leave their liv­ing and work­ing assign­ments at the WTS. That does not give a good witi­ness for them, because they shut the door on them and turned their backs on them. Judg­men­tal and self serv­ing orga­ni­za­tion. They also do that at local king­dom halls. Who then is the real beast?

  • David wrote:
    Feb 7, 2010 at 6:33 pm

    I don’t see why any­one should be sur­prised or shocked. The WBTS has been doing this sort of thing for decades. They are a par­a­site. They will suck all they can get out of you and then dis­card the car­cus. If you object or tell oth­ers of their abuse of you, you are threat­ened with or actu­ally dis­fel­low­shiped. There is no won­der, like the rest of Baby­lon the Great the waters are dry­ing up and there is so many “merg­ers” between con­gre­ga­tions. The truth is this evil is now suf­fer­ing from a lack of sup­port from those who have walked away from the abuse. The prob­lem is not we all just walked away. We took our wallets/purses/checkbooks/insurance policies/donations with us. So the soci­ety sim­ply can’t afford busi­ness as usual. I am sad this hap­pened. I had bethel aspi­ra­tions and worked for years to qual­ify and was denied because the Soci­ety had a ban on NYC broth­ers at the time and didn’t tell any­one. That was over 20 years ago. Why should they change their ways when their ways are prof­itable and work for them? What did Jesus say “you will know them by their works”. So I guess we all know the WTBS now.

  • Fred Hall wrote:
    Feb 12, 2010 at 2:26 pm

    Spain econ­omy has col­lapsed and most of Europe too. Maybe it was the right time for the branch to move somwhere else. Now they talk­ing about an upri­sisng in that region.

  • Hill Jab wrote:
    Feb 15, 2010 at 2:05 am

    Hey you for­got to men­tion who exactly is ben­e­fit­ting from what­ever you claim the Wit­nesses are doing. And make sure you pro­vide proof of your answer. Peo­ple will always look for flaws. The same thing was done in the first cen­tury. A spir­i­tual per­son who loves Jeho­vah can eas­ily see through this accu­sa­tion and slan­der. Now pay atten­tion and see Jah’s hand in matters.

  • Anthony wrote:
    Feb 15, 2010 at 9:17 am

    Hill,

    There is a 2003 doc­u­men­tary called “The Cor­po­ra­tion” which I found inter­est­ing. I can’t go in depth about the doc­u­men­tary but it showed how Cor­po­ra­tions by their nature seek to sur­vive and will take what­ever steps nec­es­sary to ensure sur­vival, often with human “casu­al­ties” along the way. You asked who exactly is ben­ef­fit­ing from the changes in Spain. I would answer the Cor­po­ra­tion com­monly known as the Watch­tower along with all her sis­ter cor­po­ra­tions. From a busi­ness stand­point the Watch­tower is doing what any num­ber of large multi-national enti­ties are doing in times of reces­sion to ensure sur­vival. One way this is done is by trim­ming their labor force and mov­ing oper­a­tions to other coun­tries where labor and other costs are lighter. Spain is not the only branch to see this. In the USA many long time Beth­lites have been down-sized and asked to leave Bethel. Sim­i­lar trends are hap­pen­ing in Mex­ico and Japan. So directly the Cor­po­ra­tion ben­e­fits as it is able to weather the finan­cial down­turn and con­tinue to survive.

    I can also say who is not ben­e­fit­ting — those indi­vid­u­als who gave their youth to King­dom Ser­vice by serv­ing at Bethel believ­ing they would live out their days there, only to be turned out when they are a finan­cial bur­den. How often were these young men told at Con­ven­tions or in the lit­er­a­ture to make bethel ser­vice their career. Did they expect to be cast off when they were no longer use­ful? Yes this is how worldy Cor­po­ra­tions rou­tinely treat their work­ers but it is not wrong to expect more from an orga­ni­za­tion that claims Jesus as their leader. Some of the broth­ers in Spain want noth­ing more than for the Span­ish money that was used to build the Bethel be used to pro­vide a retire­ment home to care for the needs of aging Span­ish former-bethelites and cir­cuit over­seers. Ask your­self why no such pro­vi­sion is in place to care for the needs of such ones are unable to con­tinue in the work.

    As for look­ing for flaws — there are going to be flaws in any orga­ni­za­tion. There were flaws in the first cen­tury as the Greek wid­ows were being neglected in the food dis­tri­b­u­tion in the Jerusalem con­gre­ga­tion. Adjust­ments were made and these wid­ows received their daily bread. I think the broth­ers in Spain would ask Watch­tower lead­er­ship sim­ply not to deny the needs of those who they have acted against and make a pro­vi­sion for them in a sim­i­lar fashion.

    You said that a “spir­i­tual per­son who loves Jeho­vah can eas­ily see through this accu­sa­tion and slan­der”. If any­one is slan­der­ing, it is those who would look at this sit­u­a­tion and claim that Almighty God is behind the cal­lous, wordly busi­ness deci­sions of Cor­po­rate man­age­ment. I researched and pre­pared this infor­ma­tion in sin­cer­ity. If it turns out to be slan­der then I would much rather be in a posi­tion of slan­der­ing a human orga­ni­za­tion than God him­self. Please give con­sid­er­a­tion to this yourself.

  • Rowland Nelken wrote:
    Feb 20, 2010 at 11:23 am

    I wel­come each and every attempt to expose the sin­gu­lar evils, finan­cial, per­sonal, fam­ily, doc­tri­nal and polit­i­cal of this fouls organ­i­sa­tion, whose ridicu­lous and cru­ell doc­trines over­shad­owed my child­hood and have wrecked thou­sands of lives. The Madrid Bethe­lites are just some of count­less vic­tims. Let us hope it opens their eyes to the fact that the WBTS is a foul and fraud­u­lent cult.

    The only heart­en­ing aspect of this tale is that it shows the WBTS is hav­ing severe finan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties. May it swiftly go the way of Lehman Bros.

  • ogaga wrote:
    Feb 22, 2010 at 4:49 am

    Thanks for throw­ing more light on the truth.I am an ex-jehovah’s wit­ness. The reli­gion is one of mis­ery and deceit. The WBTS uses the tech­nique of mind-control on the wit­nesses and this is why the aver­age wit­ness can­not find out for them­selves and see the truth about their religion.I hon­estly advice that peo­ple beware of the JWs.

  • Robert N wrote:
    Feb 27, 2010 at 3:23 pm

    Another day in paradise?

  • Pastor David wrote:
    Mar 18, 2010 at 5:05 pm

    Typ­i­cal of an Organ­i­sa­tion that was founded on Freema­sonry and decep­tion. The organ­i­sa­tion is actu­ally a form of Witch­craft as they mis-represent our Lord Jesus Christ and pass the Bread & Wine around the con­gre­ga­tions for­bid­ding any ‘other sheep’ to par­take. This is exactly what Witches do, when they do the Witch­craft ver­sion of communion.

    The reli­gion are thieves as they steal peo­ples time and lives, like they did with my dear Mum & Dad. They Pio­neered for 30 years believ­ing the LIE. I wasted 49 years in it and my wife wasted 52 years in it.

    Thank the Lord he has now released us into his love and blessings.

    Love David

  • Anthony wrote:
    Mar 18, 2010 at 5:35 pm

    I have heard alle­ga­tions before that the Wit­ness memo­r­ial is a form of a “black mass”. I have never been able to sub­stan­ti­ate that claim. Regard­less, any reli­gion that teaches indi­vid­u­als to reject what Jesus freely offers is from the evil one.

    They are thieves who break in and steal and plun­der. Praise God that Jesus knows his sheep and can lead us to good pasture.

  • Joann wrote:
    Mar 28, 2010 at 5:05 pm

    Was a 3rd gen­er­a­tion JW for 40 unhappy years. I had rel­a­tives who sold out and moved to Bethel to await 1975. Now it’s like none of that hap­pened. Just us dis­grun­tled exes mak­ing stuff up. Broke free too late to have a real life, but thank­ful for what I’ve managed.

    I wish there were some way to turn up the heat on the WTBS by hit­ting them in the pock­et­book. So many would leave if it wasn’t for destroy­ing their fam­i­lies in the process. But ask your­self: Are you really putting Christ Jesus first when you let the borg rule your life? No one comes to the Father except through me (i.e., not the borg).

    It’s so easy to see when you’re out, but oh-so-hard to turn your back on when you are embedded.

  • Freeman wrote:
    Mar 31, 2010 at 3:29 pm

    There are doc­u­mented effects of this organization’s deal­ings from indi­vid­u­als, to fam­i­lies, to con­gre­ga­tions, to coun­tries, and to peo­ples. What will it take to wake up the major­ity of rank and file? Only God knows. Maybe he is allow­ing a slow awak­en­ing instead of just unplug­ging the beast. I’m just glad I’m free!

  • Hill Jab wrote:
    Apr 2, 2010 at 12:37 am

    Anthony,
    You have not answered my ques­tion as to who is ben­e­fit­ting from the fraud you so claimed. I wanted to know on an indi­vid­ual basis who is build­ing their bank account while these broth­ers and sis­ters are left squan­der­ing. And even on a cor­po­rate level, who are the stock­hold­ers who don’t want to see their stocks plum­met? Please what­ever you do, make sure you don’t sin against God’s orga­ni­za­tion. Every­one has their own opin­ion, but if you have faith, pray for that God look after loyal work­ers and do not take it upon your­self to do what you con­sider to the right course of action. The heart is treach­er­ous there­fore rely on Jeho­vah the end is near.

  • louise wrote:
    Apr 3, 2010 at 11:05 am

    It’s so pathetic how the mem­bers of the WBTS are so mind con­trolled that they believe that any­thing that con­tra­dicts their teach­ings is a tool of the devil to mis­lead. How dare they insult people’s intel­li­gence so dis­mis­sively? You get accused of being apos­tate when you have sim­ply asked deeper ques­tions and then put the pieces together that this euphoric spir­i­tual par­adise is total manip­u­la­tion. It’s not fair; the wit­nesses pas­sion­ately guard and defend the mis­takes of the WBTS because they believe they are defend­ing Almighty God.
    As a way of life the morals are good etc, but it’s the total decep­tive­ness of this orga­ni­za­tion that is the aston­ish­ing truth. They really do believe that every­one else is blinded to Gods light but them. It’s really sad and quite upset­ting because some peo­ple really suf­fer hard­ships fol­low­ing the rules, yet they put them­selves through it as they gen­uinely believe they are suf­fer­ing in the face of evil out of faith, loy­alty and devo­tion to God. They don’t know the truth and are con­stantly reminded that these are the last days and if they leave the orga­ni­za­tion so close to the com­ing Armaged­don they will lose out ever­last­ing life, and also prove to God that the Devil was right in taunt­ing God with the idea that humans only wor­ship God out of self­ish motives for rewards. So if they walk away from the WTBS or even have doubts, the guilt and pain that is caused and the men­tal tor­ture of believ­ing they have mas­sively let God down by leav­ing His spirit appointed faith­ful and dis­creet slave class’ direc­tion is immea­sur­able.
    I never had an edu­ca­tion past the age of 15 and was dis­suaded from study­ing. I left home and worked really hard los­ing out oppor­tu­nity upon oppor­tu­nity to bet­ter myself as I believed Armaged­don was near, there­fore I didn’t need a ‘worldly’ edu­ca­tion as I would be edu­cated by Gods orga­ni­za­tion with the more impor­tant truths of life..
    I finally walked away as I real­ized I couldn’t carry on being mis­er­able and lonely due to never being able to find a decent part­ner as it was dif­fi­cult to mea­sure up to their standards.

    I’m hap­pier now than I have ever been, I’ve met the man of my dreams and I feel like the weight of the world has been lifted, as my con­science was really hurt­ing me as I was led to believe I was bad for leav­ing, until I found the real truths about this orga­ni­za­tion and its founder/s. I say this because the scrip­tures talk about a wrestling with the spir­its not just men, and were told the angels are on Gods side and they can see every­thing were doing , and when we sin or leave ‘Jeho­vah’ the demons are taunt­ing God even more as you have failed Him. Also that the angels grieve if we leave ‘Jeho­vah’, I just couldn’t cope with it all. I felt like a total worth­less per­son and bad through and through even though I tried so hard to be happy in that reli­gion.
    I’m so glad there is sup­port for us out there, thanks for your arti­cle and yes there is indeed hope.

  • Heather wrote:
    Apr 7, 2010 at 7:19 am

    Hi! I was totally brain­washed by this evil cult for 38 years of my life, then their teach­ings finally started to break up, and lit­tle by lit­tle i began to see the truth. Since then I have writ­ten web pages try­ing to help all JWs to at least look into their teach­ings. I gave 38 years to them of my time, love, and my energy from the preach­ing work as a pio­neer, and now finally after dis­as­so­ci­at­ing myself find myself out­side on my own totally pushed out in the cold. They are evil through and through and one day soon they will be stopped, whenour Lord Jesus returns as the king of the earth.
    please read one of my web pages: ~
    http://www.pitn.net the bible vs JWs or
    http://dpitn.livejournal.com

  • Anthony wrote:
    Apr 7, 2010 at 8:41 am

    Heather,

    Thank you for stop­ping by and com­ment­ing. It seems you may still be reel­ing a bit from your past. These things can make us a lit­tle raw — that’s for cer­tain. May Jesus con­tinue to heal.

    –Anthony

  • stephen helliwell wrote:
    Apr 9, 2010 at 2:28 pm

    two peo­ple in the whole world you would never call by their first names, ? mum and dad, so how can any­one call god jehovah,only jesus would know gods name.

  • stephen helliwell wrote:
    Apr 11, 2010 at 3:47 am

    Two peo­ple in the whole world you would never call by their first names,? are mum and dad, so how can any­one call god, jeho­vah, only jesus would know gods name.

  • Heather wrote:
    Apr 11, 2010 at 7:58 am

    Hi! Stephen, I totally agree with you, how dis­re­spect­ful it would be to use our dad’s name instead of call­ing him “dad” or “Father”.

    Espe­cially when it states in Exo­dus 6v2/3, by my name “Jeho­vah” was I NOT know to Abra­ham, Isaac or Jacob, but as “The Lord God”, and in chap­ter 3v15 it says ” say this to the peo­ple of Israel, ‘The Lord the God of your father’s the God of Abra­ham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you, this is my name for­ever and thus I am to be remem­bered through­out all generations”.

    So, was “Jeho­vah” the God of Isarel? NO! he cer­tainly was NOT, as he was NOT known to Abra­ham, Isaac or Jacob by that name. It was the Lord God who changed Jacob’s name to Israel, and log­i­cally speak­ing, if he did not make him­self known to Jacob, Israel, as “Jeho­vah” then “Jeho­vah was NOT the God os isarel.

    Every­one can see the truth except JWS. There is none such blind as those who do NOT want to see the truth because Satan has blinded their eyes and minds.

  • Komite Ajalvir wrote:
    May 18, 2010 at 12:03 pm

    Heirs of Agustí Cen­telles i Ossó
    Barcelona (spain) May, 17, 2010

    Sub­ject: Law­suit for use of pho­tographs with­out authorization

    Sergi and Octavi Cen­telles i Martí have instructed their lawyers to imme­di­ately file a law­suit against the entity “Jehova’s Wit­nesses” for the world­wide use with­out license and autho­riza­tion, omis­sion of author­ship and muti­la­tion of image, of a pho­to­graph made by Agustí Cen­telles i Ossó.

    The reli­gious orga­ni­za­tion obtained a pho­to­graphic copy, with­out autho­riza­tion of use, from the “Insti­tuto Munic­i­pal de His­to­ria” of the Barcelona City Coun­cil, neglect­ing to men­tion, when buy­ing the pho­to­graphic sup­port, the exten­sive cir­cu­la­tion to be made of the image. Nei­ther did they respect the con­di­tions of use indi­cated in the deliv­ery note nor sup­ply copies to the archive.

    The pho­to­graph itself cor­re­sponds to the bomb­ing of Lerida in Novem­ber 1937 and depicts a woman cry­ing before her husband’s body. It was pub­lished on page 3 in the mag­a­zine “La Ata­laya” on Feb­ru­ary 15 1994,.

    After a year try­ing to reach an ami­ca­ble agree­ment which would have avoided legal pro­ceed­ings, Agustí Cen­telles i Ossó’s heirs have been obliged to file a law­suit against the entity “Jehova’s Wit­nesses” for the use of the pho­to­graph in ques­tion, which was pub­lished in more than 116 lan­guages, in mag­a­zine form and which was, sub­se­quently, reis­sued in dif­fer­ent hard back editions.

    The law­suit aims to obtain acknowl­edge­ment of author­ship and fair com­pen­sa­tion for mate­r­ial and moral dam­ages due to the use of the pho­to­graph, with the max­i­mum respect for the reli­gious beliefs of every organization.

    This is the first in a series of claims for the unau­tho­rized use of Agustí Cen­telles i Ossó’s images; other edi­tors have sim­ply tried to “steal” author­ship by indi­cat­ing “author unknown”.

    Barcelona, May 17, 2010

    con­tact: Sergi Cen­telles
    fotocentelles@fotocentelles.com
    phone: 34–932 11 03 52

  • Teresa wrote:
    May 30, 2010 at 9:21 am

    Hi once more Anthony.
    This was just mailed to me today although I was aware some­thing was brew­ing in Spain from one of the Bible Stu­dent broth­ers. This prob­a­bly was before I started to read your writtings,

    Now this move to Canada, I won­der whats going to hap­pen there , or have I missed that also ? Do you think Canada allowed the WT to move in, think­ing it will open doors to employ­ment ? Do you think the WT would take in worldly help to work for room and board ? would they dare?

    The near by King­dom Hall has a atten­dence of about 40. They are leav­ing, so must be also watch­ing and lis­ten­ing here.

    Jahs Bless­ings

  • Teresa wrote:
    May 30, 2010 at 4:56 pm

    Anthony ‚I remem­ber that u tube on what a cor­po­ra­tion was.
    Espe­cially Big busi­nesses like the WT.
    When you have a cor­po­ra­tion as large as the WT the higher courts treat it as a per­son.
    And rightly so, the WT doesn’t have bear­ers of the ” good new of Christ” ‚rather they have ” pub­lish­ers,” and rightly so they are dis­trib­ut­ing the printed lit­er­a­ture of the WTTBS

    Acts 1:8 )reads (New Liv­ing Trans­la­tion)
    But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my wit­nesses, telling peo­ple about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, through­out Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

    »»>

    These pub­lish­ers cer­tainly are not sheep to the WT but rather they are a invest­ment. With out them there wouldn’t be a cor­po­ra­tion. They/ we belong to Christ, so which is it going to be !!!

  • lasu wrote:
    Jun 7, 2010 at 9:47 am

    God is not a copo­ra­tion put your faith in Jehovah.

  • partydelights wrote:
    Jun 12, 2010 at 2:04 am

    Hi, I only read Eng­lish. Is there any­one who care to trans­late the four doc­u­ment into Eng­lish? (If pos­si­ble put all into a pdf so that it’s easy to download.)

  • partydelights wrote:
    Jun 12, 2010 at 2:21 am

    Hi to all, espe­cially those who read Span­ish. Please attempt to trans­late the legal doc­u­ment and let­ters to con­gre­ga­tion in this thread. (I only read Eng­lish. Able to under­stand the doc­u­ment attached will be great!) By the way, if pos­si­ble, save it in a PDF file for easy downloading.

  • Daniel a Slave of Christ wrote:
    Jun 18, 2010 at 12:16 pm

    How many per­son have been enslaved by this verse:

    Jer.17:9 The heart is deceit­ful above all things, and des­per­ately wicked: who can know it?

    But God gives His Chil­dren a new heart which pro­duces a new per­son­al­ity, when they walk in love their hearts are not deceitful.

    But our hearts are very wicked and deceit­ful when one walks accord­ing to the flesh under doc­trine of men.

    But those walk­ing in Spirit under love they can trust their lives to the Spirit indwelling in them by Christ Jesus. They have God’s love writ­ten into their new heart, and love does not work evil towards anyone.

    It is when humans use God’s word to con­trol the lives of oth­ers claim­ing God’s love that we find verses within God’s word used to enslave peo­ple under fear. Love throws fear out­side; there is no con­dem­na­tion for those in Christ Jesus walk­ing in love.

    Groups that take prin­ci­ple of the Old law or law pro­duces the fruits of the law, which is con­dem­na­tion and death.

    Gal.5:14 For the whole law is ful­filled in one word, in this: “You shall love your neigh­bor as your­self.”{Leviti­cus 19:18}
    5:15
    But if you bite and devour one another, be care­ful that you don’t con­sume one another.
    5:16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you won’t ful­fill the lust of the flesh.

    Gal.5:1 Stand firm there­fore in the lib­erty by which Christ has made us free, and don’t be entan­gled again with a yoke of bondage.

    Daniel
    nu-truth.com

  • Alfred wrote:
    Jul 26, 2010 at 5:47 am

    Anthony
    I’m very inter­ested in know­ing the lat­est devel­op­ments at the Aljavir, Madrid Bethel… Are the “pink slips” in the mail yet?
    I’m still in the org… stay­ing in just a lit­tle longer while I slowly get my wife to wake up. Also, this gives me some extra time to pick some brains while I’m still “wor­thy” of engag­ing in “spir­i­tual” con­ver­sa­tions with the bros.
    Any­way, I just wanted you to know that I speak and write Eng­lish & Span­ish flu­ently… if you need help trans­lat­ing any­thing, I’ll be glad to assist (time per­mit­ting)…
    Please let me know the lat­est about Spain since this sub­ject is extremely sparce on the net…
    thanks… Al in Puerto Rico

  • cherryblossom wrote:
    Aug 25, 2010 at 5:10 am

    Learn the the­o­log­i­cal rea­sons for the orga­ni­za­tional changes

    http://community.beliefnet.com/go/forum/view/43851/70819/Discuss_Jehovahs_Witnesses

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