Episode 4 - What Do Jehovah's Witnesses Believe?

This JW Life

What is the hierarchical structure of Jehovah's Witnesses? What happens at those meetings in the Kingdom Hall? How do Jehovah's Witnesses view the world around them and how history has unfolded? What does the future hold according to Jehovah's Witnesses? Are you ready to learn "THE TRUTH"? I'll break all of this down for you in this episode. Direct Download Here [expand title="Click Here To Show Transcript"] [00:00:01] There are over eight million Jehovah's Witnesses Jay Dubbs or J-ws worldwide. I wasn't born one was introduced to it around the age of 8 or 9 and would spend the next three decades trying to process what I had unwittingly become involved in ultimately leaving and costing me dearly. This J.W. life is my response to the encouragement I've received to write a book about my life. In my story you're going to learn about this called and why refer to it as such rather than as a religion. You're going to see how I went from suicidal and incredibly anxious to free and happy. Why I put on 50 pounds and how I took it off while my wife and I owe the IRS fifty five thousand dollars and how we paid that off in 18 months. And while that wasn't even the biggest win to come from that time there are lessons to be learned here whether you're in a Colts or you're just your average person living life for the SJ doves out there. I hope you find comfort in knowing that you're not alone and maybe this helps you process your own pain for those who have family that are Jehovah's Witnesses. I hope this gives you a glimpse into what they're both involved in and up against. For those that have no ties I hope this broaden your horizons maybe sheds light on the human experience a little. And if there are any current Jehovah's Witnesses that listen I hope this gives you something you need for wherever you are now in your journey. But in the end I hope you find happiness and peace. [00:01:24] You've been through a lot and you deserve it. I'm not a professional producer. I'm a professional housecleaner. You'll find out why that is. And as well as how it is possible even to save my life later I'm recording this as a podcast as a fitting way of telling my story as it was podcasts and audio books that helped me awaken to the realities of the life I was given as a child and that I tried to live up to for decades including as an adult. [00:01:51] I want to take a minute at the beginning of this to thank everybody that has listened so far. I've had over twelve hundred downloads and that's amazing. I really didn't expect that. I've also had a couple of iTunes reviews and I can't tell you how much that is appreciated. If you enjoy this podcast please leave a positive review on iTunes. It helps with the ranking and the higher the show ranks the more people will find it. My wife and I are doing all we can to promote this but it is hard. I'm not doing this for monetary gain. In fact this cost me each month to keep us posted and online for everyone to access but I know Jehovah's Witnesses though and I want to make it clear that my motives here are pure and not for any personal gain. So if you can leave positive reviews on iTunes please do. If you can share this podcast with others please do. I'm doing this to help people and by doing so you get to help me help others. Again I am not doing this for any monetary gain. I also want you to know that I've appreciated all the messages I've received on my site through sites like Reddit or there's a forum I'm a member of it's called Jehovah's Witness dot com. That's my jam. That's where I started all this in the first place. The first quote apostate web site I ever went on was Jehovah's Witness dot com and that message board helped me a lot. [00:03:19] So I received good messages there I've received messages on Instagram Twitter just all the places. It means a lot to me that people want to share this with me and you know whether it's telling me that they appreciate my story or whether they share some of their own story. [00:03:37] You know I think it's kind of awesome that people want to share. So here's what I'm going to do. I'd like to invite anyone that has questions or wants to tell their story to email me at this. J w life at gmail dot com. Again that's this. J. W life at gmail dot com. You can also go to my Web site at the bottom right of the home page or probably either page. There's a button that shows the email address. If you can't remember this J.W. life at gmail dot com for some reason. If I get enough questions and stories maybe I'll save them up and do an episode entirely devoted to answering your questions. Or [00:04:22] I'd love to tell other people's stories as well if I could do that at the end. [00:04:28] And finally I know I had originally said that I'd put some pictures and such up on my web site and I didn't do that at first because I didn't have time. But upon further review I think I'm going to have to decline that offer with good intention but I have noticed that I have limited photos. Well first of all I do have limited photos that I received before my shining. It's not like I can go ask for more pictures and some of the photographs I have had family members in them and it's not something I'm comfortable doing in relationship to this show to put pictures up like that. I just don't really feel right about it. There is also some issues that I played around with and there were some issues with formatting them for my site. So for now I'm just going to focus on the podcast itself. Getting the message out there and give people like you opportunity to participate by asking questions or sharing your story if you like. But for now I'm just going to back off the possibility of images. All right. Now this next part of the story really overwhelmed me when I was making notes for it last week so overwhelmed me emotionally because I was reliving some ugly parts of my life growing up at home. But this week I want to take you into the beliefs that Jehovah's Witnesses have and how my life as a witness grew out of it and the path that it took. [00:05:56] There was just so much to discuss that this is going to have to be broken up into at least two episodes maybe three depending on how it breaks out. I spent hours just organizing my notes alone on this and trying to make it understandable to those who haven't been there. So what do you know about Jehovah's Witnesses and what they believe. The first thing that usually comes to mind is there those weird people that don't celebrate anything. And obviously you're correct. You've already discussed that or maybe you know that they believe only 144 thousand of them are going to go to heaven. So you know what's that mean for everybody else. I've always heard that question if only 144 thousand go to heaven. Where is everybody else going to go. Kind of limits the playing field if you have the dichotomy of an afterlife that consists of either heaven or hell and you are right. They only believe that one hundred forty four thousand go to heaven. But you know maybe the only thing that you know of Jehovah's Witnesses are those nice people that come to your door and wake you up on a Saturday morning and again you'd be right. However you'd know so little about what Jehovah's Witnesses really teach. Most people really have no clue. There's a lot of information online and on different podcasts and programs about Scientology or Mormons. But there's really not a lot about what Jehovah's Witnesses are really teaching what really goes on in their culture. I have a feeling that you're going to learn some things in this episode that you never knew unless you were at one time one of Jehovah's Witnesses. Again though I'm going to try to approach all of this through the lens of my life experience personally. [00:07:48] Now let's go and talk about that Jehovah's Witness life a little bit. What we believed and then eventually I'm going to take it to the life as me as a child. And then how I grew up through adulthood and into married life to do this. Let me first give you some idea of what the Jehovah's Witness schedule was. I think I've touched on this a little bit before. But remember this is a very performance based cult. So there were things to do and my family did them all. [00:08:21] I want you to understand the basic setup of the congregation the meetings and what we did when we were knocking on doors. This is effectively what my new life as one of Jehovah's Witnesses at the age of eight or nine began to revolve around on Tuesday night. There was the corrugation book study that was typically at an individual's private home. People would volunteer their homes for these books studies. These studies were one hour long in duration and they would alternate what books we would go through we would go through a book about Revelation let's say and then once we went entirely through that book we would go through the Greatest Man book about Jesus and his life. So it was a question and answer session as a lot of these meetings are. And these were small groups usually 10 to 20 people in some congregations maybe they didn't have enough private homes that were volunteered. So they would do these books studies at the corrugations Keenum all Thursday night was the Theocratic Ministry School and the service meeting. This was a two hour meeting. The Theocratic Ministry School was a program designed to help Jehovah's Witnesses be more effective preachers when they were going out door to door it never really made sense to me how some of this was supposed to translate for brothers. [00:09:56] Brothers had talks such as the bible reading where they would get up for five minutes and read a portion of the Bible there's not a lot I don't know about you but going up to somebody's door and reading for five minutes would be kind of awkward. But this is what they did and I understand they just wanted us to be effective readers. There were also other talks especially of course brothers. I think we're really just being groomed to be effective public speakers. And if you ask a lot of extra ho as witnesses that's about the one thing that we got from this this call when we left that we could take with us was the ability to do some measure of public speaking if we if we wanted to for sisters and the congregation they were to get up and give demonstrations their talks. They were given a subject and the setting and some sort of a setting like going door to door or on a Bible study with a single mom or something like that and they would sit up on the stage with another sister who would be their householder. So one sister would be basically preaching to the other sister. And of course in these scenarios and it was always funny to me anyway that the other sister if there was a magazine or any literature being presented or whatever it always ended up in the best case scenario of course and you know nobody ever said in these parts get off my porch before I call the cops. [00:11:34] But you know this is how they were to be give and it was to be encouraging to the congregation so sisters would get up and give these parts with one another. At least I have to say at least that in some way mimicked what went on in the actual ministry when you were knocking on doors what the brothers had to do had nothing at all to do with such. Then there was the service meeting the service meeting on Thursday night was again about an hour long this was a two hour meeting Theocratic Ministry School was an hour and the service meeting was an hour and the service meeting was taken from the king the ministry the king the ministry is a pamphlet that baptized members of Jehovah's Witnesses receive and it has announcements from the branch office it has specific articles on subject matters. [00:12:38] If for instance it was the end of the year we might have articles encouraging us to preach to people around the holidays whatever seemed relevant at the time or if there was a need for Kingdom Hall is to be built in certain areas there would be a call in there to help with this. There were just different things like that that would kind of stress what the organization wanted you to either help with or to know as well as doing that the Kuna ministry would have parts called the local needs. And this was an opportunity for the local brothers your congregation to decide what it was everyone needed to work on or an issue that was presenting itself in your territory and so the elders would get up for 15 minutes or whatever and and give a talk about that. There was also the announcements where you would learn about who was whose turn it was to clean the Keenum hall that week or to mow the grass or who the speaker was going to be Sunday coming from another congregation or who messed up and had to get disfellowshipped they would announce that during the announcements as well at times or sometimes they would say that to the end of the meeting it just depended on how it works at that particular congregation that particular night. On Sunday there was the two hour meeting. It was the public talk which was typically a 45 minute talk given by one of the elders. It's just a general bible subject. [00:14:18] Maybe like I had mentioned before my dad got to give plenty on how to have a happy family life so whatever the subject matter that's what a talk would be given on and then the Watchtower study followed that which was the question and answer part going over the Watchtower lesson that had been assigned for that week. So each Watchtower had two or three lessons in it to be studied at the congregation. They were question and answer parts. The conduct would stay in the congregation someone would read the paragraph up on the stage and then the conductor would ask questions we would answer them and he was to lead us down the path that the Watchtower lesson wanted us to understand. [00:15:08] There were some unique features to the meetings. There was absolutely nothing for children. [00:15:13] There is no Sunday school no daycare no nothing. There was a mother's room at the congregation that I went to I don't know that they all had them. The mother's room and the creation I would see was almost a soundproof room with black scented glass where mothers could take their children back there and breastfeed or beat them if the children were behaving during the meetings and other congregations that I was a part of. We didn't have the mother's room but there was always rooms in the back where people could take their kids if their kids were acting out or have a little privacy if they needed it. There was no collection plate. There were just these boxes in the back. For private donations you could walk by and donate. This was a this is a big selling point of the meetings Jehovah's Witnesses like to brag about how you know there's no collection plate. You'll see it on their signs sometimes as opposed to those awful religions that pass the collection plate. Of course in years since they resorted to passing out paper slips and usually around something they want the creation of participate in and making people pledge to donate X amount per month for whatever it is that they want. So yeah they don't pass around a collection plate but come on they're passing around slips of paper for people to pledge monthly donations to. And although no one is technically going to know if they don't make follow through with that donation the individual knows and they're going to feel complete shame if they can't keep up. [00:16:51] There's a lot of guilt and shame in this organization and out of me talking heavily on that at some point. [00:16:58] The question and answer parts that were at these meetings were so dumbed down that virtually anyone could participate. It was always encouraged to answer the questions in your own words not just to read the sentence that was the answer from the paragraph word for word but there were so many people who did it was like this mind numbing call and response Keenum halls themselves if that wasn't boring enough Keenum halls themselves are drab and boring. There are often few windows of jokes before us probably so you wouldn't see outside at the colors and beauty while we sat inside and this completely sterile environment. The chairs are boring. [00:17:44] The decor is boring and you know I will say now that the parts on the meeting are abhorring though when I was a fully indoctrinated Jehovah's Witness I wouldn't say that I actually enjoyed it. Some of the parts because the meetings were laid out ahead of time with myriad materials to go over at each one. We were supposed to study before every meeting so that we knew the material and could go participate in this call in response call in response to really kind of dominated a lot of the meetings. There were no like rituals or anything that you could connect to emotionally. There was nothing that most people would I guess kind of refer to as the term spiritual. There really wasn't anything of spirit. It was a lot of intellectual exercise. And this call in response we were also supposed to do Bible reading every day. That's the encouragement at least from the organization I'm not going to say that everyone did. [00:18:58] In addition to that there was a daily text that we could study so that we could it was a little booklet that each witness had so that we could start every day with a verse and an explanation of that verse with whatever point that narrative they wanted to tie this into from some Watchtower publication of the past. And so if you haven't noticed already through the call and response through the study before the meetings through the daily Bible reading through the daily text through the personal study or family studies that were encouraged the indoctrination is so strong here. With meetings spread out like that spiritual food as they called it you really never got away from the messages that were being pounded into your mind and heart they were ever present. And then of course you had assemblies and conventions. I think I mentioned them on an earlier episode briefly but these were either one two or three day events. There was one of each throughout the year and during these there would be much greater crowds. So instead of at a book study you'd have 10 to 20 at a Kingdom Hall you might have 80 to 100 120 for like Sunday meetings at assemblies you might have anywhere from oh I don't know a couple of thousand to eight to 10000 depending on how it was broken up in that particular area. And during these I have to say you know they were kind of enjoyable. [00:20:40] OK the conventions themselves weren't that enjoyable but it was cool. It was one time where you could get dressed up go to another place you could see people you hadn't seen in a long time. As a young person you would see your friends that maybe went to another congregation and kind of hang out. That was cool. But the actual indoctrination sessions were basically it was a full time job you would start at 9:30 in the morning the program would start and it would be over at 5:00 p.m. and there might be an hour lunch. So these were heavy indoctrination sessions in and of themselves. And it just furthered their narrative. There is a hierarchy in the corrugation. Jehovah's Witnesses will claim that they're not elders like to claim that they're just there to serve the congregation. So they're the lowest among the brothers but that's completely not true. The elders have the ability to decide whether or not you get shunned. So there's some power dynamics that are going on here. And I just thought I'd lay out briefly who these people are what the labels are for the different types of people that make up your average congregation. [00:22:02] First you have the rare person that is just the study. Maybe it's just a kid in the creation of one of the families or maybe it's a Bible study someone is studying with someone that they met knocking on doors or at work or whatever that person is interested in comes to the meeting. Then you have what are called unbaptized publishers. So a person that start studying with the witnesses is expected at some point to start participating in the field ministry work. [00:22:32] That person is not baptized they're not a full fledged witness but they can still be an unbaptized publisher the publisher name is a throwback to the fact that this is or was the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York. They were essentially a publishing house for all these magazines and books and back in the day those magazines and books were actually sold door to door and there were people who took commissions on them. That's not necessarily how it happens anymore but there were people who supported themselves doing that back in the day. And so the term publishers still used you also have the baptized publishers. Now these are full fledged Jehovah's Witnesses who are regular in going out and knocking on doors. Beyond that you have the auxilary pioneers. These are people who have devoted I believe now it's 50 hours a month that they can sign up on a month to month basis whenever they want to go out for 50 hours that month they're announced from the platform. So Brother so-and-so or sister so-and-so is an auxiliary pioneer and they get some accolades for that and get to feel good about themselves. Regular pioneers are people who basically sign a contract to devote. They used to be a thousand hours when I was doing it I think it's like 840 now and it breaks down to like 70 hours a month or something. But anyway that's what a regular pioneer does now. And then there are a ministerial servants who can only be brothers and the congregation. [00:24:20] They are brothers who handle various responsibilities around the creation whether it be handing out literature or handling microphones for the call and response sessions or running a yard crew for the Keenum all maintenance or just any number of things giving territories out to brothers and sisters to work out in the field ministry. Beyond that you have the elders. That's what ministerial servants are essentially aspiring to be they're working their way up. Elders are of course all brothers and they give the public talks. They handle all the important corrugation manners matters like the accounts they handle the direction of all of the meetings. They are the ones who would like conduct the Watchtower study call and response sessions or the book study in someone's home and they make all of the judicial decisions. [00:25:29] You know most of the judicial That's because Jehovah's Witnesses have their own judicial judicial system. [00:25:39] Beyond that you have the circuit overseers the circuit overseers visit congregations on a six month rotation essentially and just make sure everything's in order and basically check in on everybody and give specially encouraging talks during which the congregation members fall all over themselves and laugh at every dumb joke they make and think that they are the most awesome person in the world and all the brothers wear full suits instead of slacks and sport coats so that they can they can you know look the part of you know present themselves best when a circuit overseer comes it is a big deal for a week and all of a sudden the attendance spike at the congregation and there are so many more people there than there ever are on any normal week and everybody loves everybody and everything is great. And then he leaves and the next week there is nobody at the meetings. And the brothers can't find their suit and suddenly they're aware that that those ugly dress pants with ugly sport coat that don't match. That's how it happens. [00:26:49] Beyond that there are district overseers. They essentially manage the circuits in the circuit overseers. Occasionally they make accommodations. [00:26:58] I don't know exactly how long they get around it is before they get around all of them. But of course when they do it's the same festivities as when the circuit overseer is. And now now we're going to talk about the magnificent seven magnificent seven are the governing body of Jehovah's Witnesses that reside in New York state one time at the end of the Brooklyn Bridge. There was the Watchtower headquarters there was a big Watchtower sign. Since then they have moved to I think it's Wallkill New York maybe wrong on that regardless. Who cares. I'm not going. The governing body the Magnificent Seven these seven men are responsible for the organization. They have recently even come out and labeled themselves the guardians of doctrine. [00:27:52] What's that spell. Guardians of doctrine. G O D. I kid you not. This is from their own mouths. They are the guardians of doctrine. [00:28:06] And so these men are responsible for essentially everything that goes on in the organization today. Now originally the organization started with one man Charles Taze Russell and it was then eventually he died and then Rutherford took over. [00:28:28] Kind of in a hostile takeover. He wasn't supposed to. And as you go down through the history eventually they decided that rather than just one person. Just like in the congregation there's a body of elders. They decided to have this governing body. This group of men who would lead the organization. Now right now it's the Magnificent Seven. And other times I believe there have been other numbers of people on the governing body. And people can be appointed to it. There is a whole political thing there and it's all done up in New York and it's not like members of the congregations vote on it. It just happens. There's a new person and they participate. When I was growing up no one well people could find out who the governing body was. But you really didn't ever see them in the last few years they become extremely public. They go to conventions and people flock to them as though they were talking to the ODIs themselves and get their pictures taken with them. And they're special and they give these talks and they've really put themselves at the forefront of the organization. It's just kind of an interesting development over when I was young and they were in the background and nobody really knew who wrote what or who said what. Now they have really come to the forefront and gotten attention. All right now let's talk about field service now Field Service. Again that's when we went out knocked on people's doors. [00:30:09] There were meetings at the Keenum hall every day during the week Monday through Friday usually at around 9:00 on Saturdays we would meet for field service at 9:30. That way you could sleep in you know get that extra half hour. And then on Sundays after the meeting the meeting usually ended around noon and then around 1:00 we would go out for like an hour or something like that the field service meeting was a 15 minute meeting conducted by a brother who would give some sort of bible topic that was relevant to maybe one of the magazines they were placing that that week or one of the books for the month or whatever the case and they would organize people in the car groups find out who had plans with who they would divvy up territory and send everybody on their way. There was always a break and that was like the best thing about field service was that there was a break usually around 11:00 11:30 people would go to a spot maybe particularly agreed upon a restaurant for us. For years it was McDonald's. Everybody would meet there. Drink coffee generally be extremely cheap and pay very little money to the actual McDonald's but sit around and swap war stories from that morning in entirely too loud of a tone for the people who were sitting around and kind of dominate that restaurant while paying for very little food or anything. So now you can get. I understand. I don't know if that's I don't know if that's boring to the average person or not but I wanted you to understand kind of you know how these things function and what the structure is now that you understand that. Let me tell you briefly what they believe. [00:32:07] First let me say that Jehovah's Witnesses have a term for their system of beliefs. [00:32:13] The truth in all caps envision it with a little trademark sign behind it. The truth. [00:32:20] Kind of like the Ohio State University if you're a sports fan out there this is the one the only truth from God's one and only true book the Bible. If you believe anything other than this you are wrong. There is true religion. Jehovah's Witnesses have it there is false religion. That's what everybody else has not. Not only are you wrong but you are blinded by Satan the Devil himself. If you don't take to the truth when we come to your door and present it to you I don't know how to emphasize this anymore. People ask one another when did you learn the truth. How did you come into the truth and so on people struggle after leaving Jehovah's Witnesses sometimes years or decades after. They don't even believe it anymore. Not to refer to it as the truth. I believe this is one of the most simple and ingenious methods ever thought of for indoctrinating someone. Once you have that truth do you really need to even consider anything else. Why would you. You are locked down by this one little name. [00:33:38] The truth. [00:33:41] So are you ready. Are you the listener ready to learn the truth. I'm about to break it down for you. All the years of human existence that have ever been or ever will be. [00:33:55] Here we go. Jehovah is God's name and Jehovah alone is the all mighty Jesus is his son sent to Earth by him to die for our sins. The Holy Spirit is God's active force that he uses to accomplish things. Now we are all pawns in a bet between Jehovah and Satan who was once an angel but wanted all the glory for himself so he rebelled against Jehovah Satan wagered that man was best off by managing himself and didn't need Jehovah's input Jehovah set out to prove that man apart from him was incapable of ruling himself and needed Jehovah's guidance. Satan has been trying to pull man away from Jehovah to serve him or anyone but Jehovah ever since this wager between the two of them impacts all of us. We live in sin and imperfection and since perfect lives were lost in sin. Adam and Eve only perfect life given without sin. Jesus Christ could balance the scales of justice yeah perfection is only batting 3:33 but that's good in the majors right. And yeah only one perfec life was given to balance the scales of what was lost by two perfec laws and it took a special person and God's only begotten son to come down from heaven to do this not just a regular perfect human but was a half price sale on perfect justice that they so we'll call it even. So ever since the world has struggled under Satan's control as God has backed away. [00:35:45] Thus proving that Jehovah has a right to rule and that we need him God's plan to write this starts with Jesus death and then the year 1914 through some very creative prophetic prophetic math involving the book of Daniel and several completely incorrect predictions that nobody wants to talk about. They arrive at 1914 as the beginning of the last days of this wicked system of things since World War 2 happened to start that year. They really think they've landed on the correct year this time of course. Originally they thought that the world was actually going to end in 1914 but when that didn't happen the organization does decided that well it must be the beginning of the end. It's as just as good right. So in 1914 Jesus supposedly began reigning in heaven over the earth. It is an invisible rain for now. A pair of C-A or presence of course because you know no one likes a bragger. In 1919 Jesus chose the International Bible Students as Jehovah's witnesses were called back then as his people his only people to dispense truth and to this world. Of course back then they smoked and celebrated holidays and did all kinds of things they would never do today. But I digress. The changes thereafter have been seen as a refining work. At some point imminently and by eminently Apparently they mean any day now for over the past century something called the Great Tribulation will break out. [00:37:27] It will start with the destruction of Babylon the Great taken from Revelation the world empire of false religion. Jehovah will put it in the heads of world leaders to eradicate all religion from the earth. Because that will eliminate things like holidays. The merchants will beat their chests in horror and frustration as they can no longer sell things like they once did. Money will become worthless. [00:37:53] People will be throwing it in the streets at that point. The world will descend into chaos. All religion will cease except one. Can you guess which one that you can't help. Jehovah's Witnesses will stand alone continuing to do their thang despite any persecution because of this. The nations are going to turn on them and when they do it will be like touching God's eyeball and he will immediately react with a day of his fury. Armageddon in which billions of people will be slaughtered mercilessly because they didn't listen to the warnings given by Jehovah's Witnesses once everyone is dead. The world will start to grow back to perfection as will the members of Jehovah's Witnesses. They will spend the next 1000 years growing back to perfection and cleaning up this earth. Don't worry the birds are going to pick apart all the billions of the dead so they won't have to handle the bodies of all their dead loved ones. [00:38:50] Be kind of rough you know stepping over grandpa to get to you know one of your kids who died. I mean you know you weren't supposed to care about those people anyway. They were worldly as I explained on a previous episode so you know what I ever how. [00:39:08] They will all live in a beautiful paradise as the earth goes back to the state of the Garden of Eden. Everyone gets a panda and a lion you see and all their artists depictions of this of this paradise people are playing with lions and pandas. Animals will no longer be dangerous and there is no fear because of that. The animals I guess are going to be perfect. No fear no pain no tears just pure bliss and lots of Jehovah's Witnesses the dead will be raised from the memorial tombs and a great resurrection that will take place during these 1000 years. It will be a resurrection of the righteous and the unrighteous. They will look the same as they did before so that we can recognize them. Otherwise we're just talking creepy zombies. We can have that a scripture says that the wages of sin pays is death so death is therefore the equalization of their sins. They get a do over so to speak if they listen to Jehovah's Witnesses and study with them at that time they can possibly live forever if they don't. Well you know Joe was going to have to kill him again but yeah. Oh well that happens a lot with Jova. He likes to kill people. After that 1000 years humans on earth will be perfect. Now at that point you think that everyone could breathe a sigh of relief and maybe you know I don't know. Be happy. Nope during that one thousand years Satan and his demons were bound up in an abyss. [00:40:45] But at the end they are going to be let loose to try to tempt humankind one more time. Humans still will not have proven themselves worthy gods pretty insecure like that. So he will unleash them. They will tempt mankind and the carnage and fallout from that will be as the sands of the sea. Innumerable deaths as mankind falters once again now in the end. [00:41:10] Whoever is left over gets to live forever this time. For reals I guess. Unless of course they turn on God like Satan did because like he was perfect and he turned on God so that Jehovah did give his creatures free will after all. He just doesn't really like them using it. [00:41:29] So if they were at that point to exercise free will and do something that Jehovah doesn't like. Then again he can smite them. So that's the story in a nutshell. That's what they believe and what I believed for so many years. [00:41:44] In the next episode I'm going to get into the things that they don't advertise in their books not just doctrine but the actual culture of the organization. You see that is the most damaging part of the organization. I'm going to introduce two methods of control that are used by cults to keep people in line. It is observed in what has been termed religious abuse but it's also seen in other forms of abuse and it's a very important subject that you know whether you've ever been in a cult or not. You've likely seen at some point in your life essentially how people control other people and get them to do things that they otherwise probably would not do if left to their own base humanity. [/expand]