Why Jehovah’s Witness are Losing Members: An Interview with James Beverley

The following is a pre-recorded program. There are voices of dissent among the Jehovah's Witnesses. Those voices are rising.

You'll find out why today. It's time for The Line of Fire, with your host, activist, author, international speaker, and theologian, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution. Michael Brown is the director of the Coalition of Conscience and president of Fire School of Ministry. Get into The Line of Fire now by calling 866-34-TRUTH.

That's 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Hey, friends.

Welcome to The Line of Fire. This is Michael Brown. We've got a very special broadcast for you. I won't be taking calls, and you'll be glad because you're going to want to hear everything that my guest, Dr. James Beverly, has to say. He's got a brand new edition of his book, The Crisis of Allegiance, a study of dissent among Jehovah's Witnesses.

Jim and I have gotten to know each other pretty well in the last year plus, spent a lot of time interacting, talking about lots of issues. James Beverly served as a professor for many decades, but has always been a research scholar. In other words, he digs deep, goes through source after source after source, thousands of sources he'll go through, get evidence, lay things out, and follow the evidence where it leads. Over the years, over the decades, he's published major works on world religions, but has also looked at the cults. Again, the title of his book, Crisis of Allegiance, we want to find out who the Jehovah's Witnesses are, some of their history, some of the strange beliefs that they have, where they are today around the world, and what is happening in terms of this crisis of allegiance. Hey, Jim, welcome back to the Line of Fire. Thanks for joining us.

Great to be with you, Mike. Now, how did you get interested in studying Jehovah's Witnesses? Well, when I was hired in 1978 at a Christian college in Eastern Canada, I was told to teach a course about cult groups.

So that, of course, cut me into studying Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses and groups like Scientology. A few years later, I was at a conference in Toronto, and I met probably one of the most influential ex-witnesses in the world, a guy named Jim Penton, and that led to the book you've just mentioned to your audience. I did a book on what led Jim Penton, a history professor at the time, what led him to leave the Jehovah's Witnesses after being in it for generations.

So I got to interview him, his family, his friends in Alberta, Canada, and I told a story. So I've always followed the Jehovah's Witnesses, and then this year I decided, hey, I should do a new edition of the book, and I connected in a fuller way with Jim Penton and got an update on his life, although I've stayed in contact with him over the years. So I studied the witnesses mainly because I think God led me in my life to look at other religions and see how they compare to the gospel or contrast to the gospel.

And the witnesses are powerful and big, so it's been great to learn about them and help people get out of the group or warn them that's a group they should never join. So let's just very simply, very quickly establish some basic definitions. If we speak of world religions, we'll speak of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc., what's the difference between a world religion and a cult? Well, cult is used in general conversation as a word for a group that's, okay, it's used in two ways. One, a group so wacky that virtually anybody calls it a cult except the people in the group.

So think of Heaven's Gate, the people that wanted to follow a UFO and they committed suicide, the UFO cult, or think of Jonestown, that's the biggest example that we have in our common mind, people following Jim Jones drinking the Kool-Aid, dying. So a cult is one used for a group that's really, really, really wacko. And then it's also used in Christian circles of a group that claims to be Christian but falls so far away from the basics of the Christian faith that we don't call it a denomination, we call it a cult.

So it's generally reserved for small groups. It hasn't been very successful to say, for example, that Islam is a cult or Buddhism is a cult, even though they're non-Christian religions. So these would be then deviations from the gospel. And of course, some have grown to be large, not on the level of an Islam or Hinduism, but have grown to be large like Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses. I want to get into specifics.

I want to talk specifically about these voices of dissent. But when I was a new believer, it wasn't long after I was saved, Jehovah's Witness came knocking on my door and got to interact with them and began to learn more about what they believed and speak the truth to them. And as opposed to Mormonism, which has this whole sensationalistic thing and the angel Moroni and the revelation of Joseph Smith, and he puts on the special glasses and can read the tablets and all the angels with the other stuff and prophets today and a lot of their esoteric beliefs, Jehovah's Witness stuff, I just thought, okay, it's flat. It has no special appeal to it. It doesn't give any assurance to its followers.

It seems legalistic and dead. And yet it obviously has a certain appeal. It is some of the fundamental appeal that the church hasn't been truthful to you and the translators of the Bibles have been lying to and we alone have the truth. But what do you think the special appeal of Jehovah's Witnesses is? I think it works with people who don't know the Bible very well, who get tricked by their rhetoric and by their dogmatic claims.

I think that's the big explanation. The other thing, as you said in relation to Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses are far closer to Christianity than Mormonism or other groups. And so the fact that they have some biblical truth is of course part of their appeal unless somebody isn't attracted to the basics of the Bible.

So they tell a good story. They say they're the only organization that has kept faithful to the Bible. They claim that their leaders are basically divine.

They're humans but they're chosen by God to give proper teaching to the faithful. So they make big claims. They sadly don't back up the claims with careful research or truth telling.

Now folks need to realize they're not totally wrong. The average Jehovah's Witness would be a decent person. They'd be loving and gracious. So the worry is not extended at some core level of this is an immoral group. These are decent people who I believe have been led astray and I don't think their leaders really care about scholarship and truth and careful Bible study. They have a pathetic translation of the Bible, one of the worst actually. So I tell people in my book, there's five big things about the witnesses that are not true. They are not prophets. They don't have prophetic ability and by that I mean they can't predict the future. They've made some of the biggest blunders in religious history.

They used to say, make due till 72, stay alive till 75 because they argued that 1975 would be near the end of the world. So they claim to be prophets. They're not. They claim to be pure doctrinally. They're not. Most of their unique teachings are not true. In fact, when I was redoing my book or doing a second edition, I had a wonderful encounter with a former witness named Eric Wilson.

Now picture this. He, he lives in Ontario, Canada. He was a witness. He was raised a witness and then he remained a witness for 60 years and then he started studying one Bible topic and realized the leaders had lied to the watchtower group and he said, well, what else have they lied about? And then over a 10 or 12 year period, um, he's come to be a Bible believing Christian and uh, he's, he has one of the best websites on Jehovah's witnesses.

It's called Berean Pickets and we can make the address available to your listeners, Mike. So they, uh, witnesses claim to be prophets. They're not. They claim to be teaching doctrinal truth.

In many ways they don't. They, they claim that they're the scholarly group. Well, that's not true. This guy that my books about, uh, Jim Panton, he was a history professor in Lethbridge, Alberta, Alberta for decades. He's a pretty famous Canadian historian. He was one of their only scholars. He wrote a letter to the leadership and told them ways they could improve the long and short of it is they kicked him out and uh, and then that, that was one of their dumbest mistakes cause they lost one of their great scholars. They're not scholars.

They're not good at Bible study. Uh, so that's a third thing that I warn people about. And then they also claim that they're getting better and better.

Um, Jim Penton told me recently for my book, uh, I did a question and answer at the end. He thinks that over the years they've got worse. They've got tighter, more legalistic. Consequently, their numbers are falling. And then here's the, here's the biggest thing wrong with the witnesses. They demand loyalty to the organization in a way that crushes your freedom. So I warn people, you shouldn't go into the witness world.

I mean, you can go look at it if you want to, but I don't advise it. Um, if you become a witness, you have to obey the leadership. If you dissent, you'll get, you'll get warned, you know, you don't get kicked out automatically. But if, if you raise a fuss over any of their teachings, uh, you'll get kicked out. And then, um, let's say, uh, you go to a kingdom hall, you're part of a part of the congregation with a hundred members. If you get kicked out, other Jehovah's Witnesses are not allowed to talk to you. And they even have some limits on a family connection with someone who's kicked out.

So you could really generally get shunned in this case. And if you've come in with your whole family and other things, the consequences of simply not obeying the leadership energy, you can't question, all right, got a short break. We'll be right back. I'm speaking with James Beverley, brand new edition of the book, Crisis of Allegiance Study of Dissent Among Jehovah's Woods. Since we come back, I want to ask the question, where did all come from?

How did they begin? It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get into the line of fire now by calling 866-342.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. I'm speaking with research scholar, professor and friend, James Beverley, his book, Crisis of Allegiance. This is a new edition of an important book about voices of dissent within Jehovah's Witnesses.

Jim, obviously you could give us a several hour explanation, but let's, let's boil it down to a few minutes. Where did Jehovah's Witnesses come from? What is their real origin in history? Well, they're part of what's called the Adventist tradition, that period in church history in the 17 and 1800s when Christians were really preoccupied with the end of the world.

So Witnesses came out of the same milieu as the, as the Seventh Day Adventists and other Adventist groups. But in particular, they are rooted in a man named Charles Russell, who started the Witnesses in 1879 with his publication of Zion's Watchtower and Herald of Christ's Presence. Russell was preoccupied with eschatology, the end of the world. He wrote many books. He's most famous for six volumes called Studies in the Scriptures.

But in his writings, he, he basically implied that 1914 might be the end of the world than 1918. So the Witnesses owe most to Charles Russell, though they've changed so much over the years that if Russell came back, if he went to a kingdom hall, they wouldn't accept them into membership because what he taught doesn't agree with what Witnesses taught today, a rather ironic thing. Interesting. So Charles Russell got it going. And then the second leader is a guy named Judge Rutherford, Joseph Franklin Rutherford.

He was a judge for a while. He became a leader in a bitter fight to see who would succeed Russell. And he turned the Witnesses into a more ruthless organization. And, and then after Russell died, the leadership has been more mundane, not as volatile.

Whereas Rutherford, he was, he was power hungry in ways that wasn't true of, of Charles Russell. The, the current leadership of the Witnesses, it's eight men based in mid-state New York, about two hours, an hour and a half north of New York City. They used to be headquartered in Brooklyn and they had the famous Watchtower buildings on, on the, near the Brooklyn Bridge.

But they sold most of that property and built new headquarters in, in mid-state New York. The, the leadership, these eight men, they, they have enormous power. They're, I mean, whatever they say goes.

It's, it's really distressing. Now, as a new believer, I, I began speaking to a local Jehovah's Witness. She lived down the block from me. She and her husband are married. And her husband was a staunch unbeliever, atheistic and very hostile to the faith, in a fun way, but hostile. And she was a Jehovah's Witness. And she came knocking on my door, my family's door, began to speak with her. And over a period of time, by God's grace, was able to, to lead her out of Kingdom Hall.

She told me a story and I don't, I don't know how accurate it was, but it's what, what she had learned. So the question of the 144,000, you know, where that comes from, the idea that they are the 144,000 elect or that there are only 144,000 total that know that they know that they're saved and everyone else is just like a loyal servant who then hopes to, to, to go into the Millennial Kingdom and then make it from there. You know, because when I talk to them and talk about knowing that I'm saved and quoting these verses and this is written so you know you have eternal life, they'd say no, it's just for the 144,000. So according to what this woman told me, that there was a, an early meeting with a guest Judge Rutherford and he said, how many of you have the assurance of eternal life expecting every hand to go up? And it was just a few of the people raised their hands and that is what opened the door to the Stock Rule. There are only 144,000, most in the early church, but then you know, this little remnant through history.

Can you shed more light on that? Well, it's all based on whatever the Watchtower leaders have said over the years. So doing their study of revelation, they think that the number 144,000 applies to the, to those who, it's not like Jehovah's Witnesses believe they're the only, they believe they're the only Christians and they believe that only 144,000 are chosen by God to go to heaven, but the rest of the witnesses will remain on earth. Of course, if you study Revelation, when it talks about 144,000, it's talking about males, it's talking about virgins. So the only thing they take literally is the number, but they've changed their doctrine over the years.

It isn't the same now what it was 40 years ago or a hundred years ago. I bet it, but if you're a Jehovah's Witness, you are required to put in certain hours doing certain things, you know, knocking on doors, doing whatever else you do. And yet at the end of the day, you don't have the assurance of eternal life, forgiveness of sins. Is that similar to a Muslim, devout Muslim that at the end of the day still does not have assurance of going to paradise? How would these two compare? I would say there's a parallel.

Now we don't want to overstate it. One of my connections in Toronto is with one of the most famous Muslim leaders in Canada. And you know, he doesn't have really strong assurance, but it's not like he's, it's not like he's crying every night saying that he might go to hell. He just says in the end, you know, you can't know and only Allah knows. I think your average witness would be pretty, see they're, they're mainly thinking about I'm part of the one true group. We're the only ones who really follow the Bible. We're the only ones who have the full truth. I think their confidence is in that.

And then being, you know, good, obedient workers. You know, there's little emphasis on salvation by grace, which is a tragedy because grace is our only hope. So what would you say are some of the wackiest beliefs of Jehovah's Witnesses?

Well, one of them is a deadly. It's the view that blood transfusion is wrong. Now here's something paradoxical. I wouldn't be talking to you now or to your audience if my parents had been Jehovah's Witnesses. When I was born, I was, I'm a twin. My brother and I were born two months premature. We weighed under five pounds together. I weighed under two pounds.

It's hard to believe if you could see me now. I weighed under two pounds and I needed a blood transfusion to survive. If my parents had been Jehovah's Witnesses and they followed the normal procedures, they would say, no, no blood transfusion.

If he dies, he dies. This is probably the sickest thing about the Jehovah's Witnesses, that they have a teaching that can lead you to your death. But there's other things as well. They think their new world translation is the best translation. That's not true. They think that Jesus was Michael the Archangel. They think that Jesus died on a stake, not a cross, and you distort the evidence on that. They don't believe in the bodily resurrection.

Here's another one. They don't believe that every, the only people who are allowed to take the Lord's Supper are people who are part of 144,000. They only celebrate communion once a year at Easter time or close to Easter.

If they, if you went to a kingdom hall or a gathering to witness the communion, most people wouldn't take it because there's hardly any members of the 144,000 that are alive. There'll be no, no, Hey Mike, I'll ask you this based on your knowledge of the Old Testament. Can you think, or Andy New, can you think of any passage in the Bible that implies that there will be Old Testament saints in heaven? That implies that there will be Old Testament saints in heaven. Yeah.

Okay. So in heaven, you could argue in Psalm 17, when the Psalmist says when he dies, he'll see God's face. You know, some take that to mean a face-to-face encounter. But otherwise, primarily in Old Testament, there's the introduction of the, yeah, go ahead. What about New Testament? Does the New Testament reference Old Testament saints in heaven? Yeah.

You could potentially get it from Hebrews 12, the multitude, the spirits of righteous men made perfect in the heavenly Jerusalem, and perhaps from some Old Testament passages, some passages in Revelation. But most of what's spoken of is addressing New Testament believers in the New Testament. Right. Well, JW's believe there will be no Old Testament saints in heaven.

Let's see what else. They believe that Christmas, Easter, and Halloween are terrible. You can't celebrate birthdays. Yeah. They'll say the only time birthdays are mentioned, it's Herod's birthday and Pharaoh's birthday, and they're both wicked men. So it's wicked to celebrate a birthday.

So it's not the most joy-filled religious expression. All right, listen, we got a break coming up. If folks are interested in your book, Crisis of Allegiance, this is by James A. Beverly. Where can they get it? You're in Canada, but where can they get it in the States? Amazon.com.

And I imagine it's at Barnes & Noble and other distributors, but I know it's on Amazon for sure. Got it. And if they prefer a PDF, they can go to my website, JamesBeverly.com, and if they follow a link or two, they'll get to my Shopify store if people prefer.

Some people prefer PDFs. Got it. So that's Beverly with an E-E-V-E-R-L-E-Y. And listen, Jim, for someone that was born as a two-pound baby, you have filled out nicely.

So that's all good. It's The Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Your voice of moral, cultural and spiritual revolution.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. I'm speaking with my friend, Dr. James Beverly, about the new edition of his book, Crisis of Allegiance, which looks at a study of dissent among Jehovah's Witnesses. It is an authoritarian religious cult.

It is one that rules with an iron hand. And if you speak to people who are Jehovah's Witnesses, one of the best things to ask them is, hey, share your testimony with me. Jim, I remember speaking with a fellow who had been in Jehovah's Witnesses for several decades.

And I wanted to kind of check this out. And I said to him, so tell me your testimony. How did you become a Jehovah's Witness? Your average born-again Christian, share your testimony. They light up and they talk about how they came to faith. And many who were raised in the faith will talk about their great upbringing. But people like me came from outside the faith, radical conversion, transformation, how you met the Lord.

It's wonderful. And I asked this fellow and he said, well, you know, I went to a Bible study, invited to a Bible study and started learning and learned the truth. And I was baptized. And I've been with this now for 25 years.

I thought, that's it. You've been working this hard. You're knocking on doors.

You're doing everything you're doing. And that's, quote, your testimony. So obviously when people begin to question things, the bottom can fall out pretty quickly. So tell me about what you cover in Crisis of Allegiance. Tell me about some of these voices of dissent. And is this growing worldwide or Jehovah's Witnesses numbers getting smaller? What's actually going on?

They're getting smaller. They're selling off a lot of kingdom halls all over the world. They're in a crisis because I don't think they're offering a healthy, happy religion.

And there's especially rebellion from younger people. If people want to pursue this topic, my book's helpful because it's not too long and it tells a very interesting story, if I may say so. There's also another figure who left the Jehovah's Witnesses. And this guy is probably the most influential ex-Jehovah's Witness. His name is Ray Franz.

He wrote a book with a title sort of like mine, Crisis of Conscience. So Ray was a lifelong Witness. He became a member on the governing body.

His uncle, Fred, was the leader, the head of the governing body. And Ray started to have doubts. And he tried to get the governing body to be more compassionate, less legalistic, and more biblical. He would point out Bible passages that contradicted Jehovah's Witnesses' teaching. He thought they would listen to him. You know, he's the nephew of the president. He's on the governing body. Instead, they kicked him out. And he then wrote a memoir about it called Crisis of Conscience.

The reason it's so good is it's not nasty. It just tells a compelling story. Now, it does make you mad when you read it because you're reading about injustice and a blind organization. So if people could only read about two ex-witnesses, one would be Jim Penton, the guy who I wrote about, and the other is Ray Franz.

Those two are very important. There's a guy in Europe who writes detailed Bible studies about their false views of eschatology. He's created enormous mess, too, because he shows that they aren't really good at Bible scholarship. Yeah, and as someone that's worked on translations of the Bible myself and translated the book of Job, currently translating Isaiah, and wrestled with texts, written many articles just on specific Hebrew words and things like that.

My doctoral dissertation was on one Hebrew word. Yeah, the New World translation is really bad. It's a really, really poor one.

It's not just one of the better ones. It's really, really poor, and it always pains me when I think of Jehovah's Witnesses because of the devotion, the hard work, and as you said, being decent people in terms of an ethic and stuff like that, and yet being so lost. So tell us more about the contents of Crisis of Allegiance and this one journey that you trace.

Well, I must confess, when I started the work, it was 19... Well, I met Peton in 1981, and I'm working on the book in 1984, 1985. I was a little worried, what if my in-depth study that I'm going to do shows me that the witnesses might be a better group than my own evangelical Baptist tradition slash connections with Pentecostals, Nazarenes, et cetera. You know, so slightly worried.

Not too much, but slightly. Well, lo and behold, all my study just made me think this is one of the last places people should go. So it was great to meet Jim Penton in a fuller sense because I went out west.

I stayed in Lethbridge, Alberta, in southern Alberta. I stayed there for quite a while. I interviewed all the people that left the Kingdom Hall because of Penton. He was so highly regarded that when he and his wife and his children left the Watchtower Society, that woke people up.

There's something wrong. Because they knew that Jim was a faithful guy to the witnesses. They knew that he was a moral, decent person.

His wife, Marilyn, who has since passed away, she's wonderful. The kids were wonderful. So it was great to meet them. And then I met the people who left and interviewed them. And they were absolutely torn apart by what was done to Jim Penton. And they had the courage to stand up, even though it caused them fellowship with other witnesses. One of the interesting things, too, is I wrote all the major Jehovah's Witnesses who took part in getting Jim Penton kicked out. None of them would talk to me.

Really? I had none. None.

None at all. The only witness who would talk to me was their public relations person who I met at the Canadian headquarters west of Toronto. He's a really nice guy. I don't know if he's still alive.

Walter Graham, he'd give me plenty of time. But talking to him was like going on a merry-go-round. Like, I asked him about their prophecies. You know, our Jehovah's Witnesses, false prophets.

Here's a line. If someone claims to be a prophet and make false prophecies, maybe they're false prophets. Well, he could barely admit they've made false prophecies, even though they predicted the end of the world or something close to it in 1874, 1878, 1925, 1941, and then finally they caught on. It's a danger to predict the end of the world.

They made one last prediction in 1975, and that didn't work out either. Well, trying to get Walter to admit they've been a group that makes false prophecies, it was like pulling teeth. And again, this is different than pointing to charismatics who've made false prophecies. Charismatic leaders tragically happened with the Trump prophecies recently and the supposed dissipation of COVID last year. But these are individuals who are speaking falsely. So it's wrong.

It's serious. There needs to be accountability. But they're not the leaders of a religious organization making pronouncements on behalf of the religious organization. That ups the ante, especially when the people making the pronouncements are allegedly making them as those ordained by God to lead the only true group in the world. So the stakes would be much higher for Jehovah's Witnesses, wouldn't they?

Yeah. And the other thing is the blunders that the witnesses have made are just close to an enormous joke. For example, Charles Russell thought that you could study the corridors in the pyramids of Egypt and use the lengths of the corridors to predict when the world would end. So one of his books is an elaborate analysis of the pyramids of Egypt. Now, here's the trouble. Say you measure a corridor and say, well, that corridor is 20 feet long and that means it's 20 years until the end of the world.

Well, what do you do in 20 years when the world doesn't end? Well, no kidding. In a new edition of his study, he just increased the length of the corridor. So he had little concern for being careful, et cetera, et cetera. And you know, one of the early books I read about Jehovah's Witnesses, it was called Thirty Years a Watchtower Slave. And the guy was in the early days and it was getting close to 1914 when Jesus was going to return. And instead of kind of getting ready for the end of the world, they were told I'd get out more literature, expand this, expand that, which the guy thought was contradictory. Okay, one thing you want to get the message out, but it seemed like they were preparing for years to come even though they're saying 1914.

So that was one of the big issues and ultimately it was obviously an old book. The fellow ended up leaving, but it was after 30 years, but he referred to himself as a watchtower slave. Now, I know that people can be in good churches and then they leave, they fall away from the faith and then they get a bad taste in their mouth and they misrepresent the church. I was part of a cult. But here you've got, very consistently, people could relate to that concept of watchtower slave.

Just got two minutes before the break. What is a watchtower slave? Why would people think in those terms? Well, it's because the watchtower is an organization that demands loyalty and you don't ask questions. I mean, they didn't even – Jim Penton wrote them an 11-page letter – I think it's 11-page long – very detailed letter showing how they're careless and they need to change. All they did in the reply was tell them to follow the watchtower leadership.

In the end, he was basically told, if you keep talking, we're going to kick you out. So, you know, it's not total slavery like being in a prison camp in Siberia, but in terms of religion, they run a pretty tight ship and you really can't ask questions. In fact, listen, if people bought my book and tried to give it to somebody who's in the witnesses, they would be told, no, I can't read that. It's spiritual pornography. Same with Ray Friends' book Crisis of Conscience, same with that book 30 Years of Watchtower Slave. What's interesting, though, is they'll say a book is terrible and then you ask them, you know, have you read it? And the answer is no. And, you know, they – well, they would get in trouble if they read it. They could get in trouble just for doing that. It's opening yourself up to spiritual pornography.

Yeah. So, so friends, let me just say this. Whatever group you're part of, whatever church, whatever denomination, whatever religious organization, if you are not allowed to ask questions, I don't mean you come in a nasty, abrasive way, name calling, but if you're not allowed to ask honest questions and if your questions are not welcome, then you're not in a healthy environment. We'll be right back. We've got a little more segment with Jim Beverly. It's The Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Your voice of moral, cultural and spiritual revolution.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. I'm speaking with my good friend, Jim Beverly, author of the book now in its new edition, Crisis of Allegiance. Jim's written many, many books and contributed to many, many large dictionaries, encyclopedias and the like. So, Jim, some years back, I'm remembering where it was.

So this would be probably about 20 years ago. I was teaching a class at Fire School of Ministry one day and we also had Fire Church and then our missions organization, Air International. And one of the students, kind of a fun-loving guy, he raises his hand one day and he says, Dr. Brown, is fire a cult? With a smile on his face. And I said, no, it's not. But if anyone asks you how you know it, tell them your leader said so.

We were all laughing about it. So what are some signs? I know you've got three big ones. What are some signs that someone is not in a group that is healthy? Well, I'll say one general thing first. It would be people should make a list in their mind or on paper of the clear teachings of the Bible that are not in dispute. And I mean, in dispute by, you know, the vast majority of evangelical Christians.

So you have that list in mind. And then if you if you go to a group and they teach something that is clearly not in the Bible or it's not in the focus of the Bible, then then you should run for the hills. I just wrote a column about UFO religions. Well, you know, at one level, if Joe says he was kidnapped by a UFO, well, all things being equal, that won't harm your breakfast. However, if Joe claims that he got messages from the aliens and and and Zeus is really the creator and well, then you leave.

So does your group, your church, your teacher teach the basics of the Christian faith? But then I got three things to guard. First, guard your mind. Now, we've already hinted at that, Mike, when we've encouraged people to think and to ask questions. So guarding your mind means never join a group where you're not allowed to ask questions like you just said. What kind of questions? OK, I imagine within Jehovah's Witnesses, if someone says, I know we teach this. I'm not sure why.

Could you explain it? Those kind of questions would be welcome, right? In other words, explain to help me believe these things better.

Or I was I was witnessing today talking to someone and they raised this question and boy, I never thought of that before. How do I answer that? So those kind of questions are welcome. What kind of questions are not welcome?

It would actually be thanks for making this me more accurate. It would actually be the fine line between asking questions versus it looks like you're starting to doubt the organization's teaching. Now, you can do that to a certain point, but if it goes very far, you will you will be disciplined and get kicked out. So groups, you know, the witnesses compared to other groups are pretty open, but again, not open enough for me. So let's say, OK, so I'm into this now. I start studying and say, well, you know, we've always been taught this, but the more I study it, it seems that this is not right or that neural translation is, I mean, it seems some real problems.

And even like I heard about this one was a major leader and left. And I got some questions here. I'd like to have a serious talk. OK, they would sit forever with people as long as they think they're asking questions in good faith. But if things turn away from what the Watchtower says, that's when you'll get in trouble and you'll be disciplined and you'll get kicked out. All the if people go to the websites listed at the back of my book, you can read horrendous stories of people starting to question and then they get disciplined and then they get chastised and then eventually they either leave or they get disfellowshipped.

Now, of course, it's not it's not like some groups like I'm friends with the guy who used to be number three in Scientology. I'm absolutely sure Mike Rinder tells the truth about his experiences. He said, if you objected to the leader in that group, he would punch you in the face. And I mean it literally. So I asked Mike one time when I was with him in Florida, how many did you know, did you just get punched in the face once, Mike? And he said, oh, no, quite a few times. OK, so not as not as close to Scientology.

So we've got no qualify there. All right. So so guard your mind.

That's a major now to work. Guard your body. Meaning be careful of leaders making moves on your body as in sexual assault. Now, this, thankfully, this is not true of current Watchtower leaders. I believe all things being equal, they're decent moral men and they wouldn't sexually assault women or men. But the early leader, Charles Russell, he committed adultery on his wife.

The next leader, Judge Rutherford, he was a well-known womanizer. So this applies more to other groups. Guard your body. Now, people are not going to a pastor or a teacher or a rabbi or a priest. They're not going to come to us and say, by the way, I want to abuse you. Take your clothes off. Right. It'll be far more subtle than that.

It'll involve compliments and compliments and all all the rest of the seductive story. So people should guard their body. And then thirdly, they should guard their wallets and purses because some people are out for your money.

Now, every organization has to raise money. So we're not talking about this in a simplistic way. But but but be careful of groups that look like they're just fleecing the flock.

Now, I will say here, Mike, one thing the world's kind of simplistic on the topic. They'll say they'll notice, for example, that some pastor lives in a really nice house or has quite a financial empire. OK, I think a lot of times those leaders go way over the top. But I would bet that the vast majority of those leaders are also incredibly generous.

So we just have to be careful on the topic. You know, the the media love to, say, critique some Pentecostal pastor who has a big home and a nice car. Well, the people who run The New York Times have big houses and fancy cars. They don't even see the hypocrisy in their condemnation.

Yeah. And I imagine The New York Times people would say, well, we're earning our money legitimately in a business. And here, these people are getting rich by by by fleecing the flock, by by taking widows Social Security funds, by telling people the money is going to help the poor, which really going in their pockets. That's where their abuse would be. On the other hand, there are people that written books and the books have done really well or made business investments that have done really well.

So you can't you can't just judge by outward appearance, but obviously, yes, watch, watch your pocketbook and let there be financial accountability. So just two minutes left. You mentioned that Jehovah's Witnesses numbers are declining on how big a level from what you can tell. All I know is based on talking to Eric Wilson and Jim Patton. It's that there's hundreds of kingdom halls closing or merging. That's all I know.

I I'm not in I'm not good at math, so I don't do much statistics, but they're not growing. Thank God. Yeah. And, you know, the thing I remember two Jehovah's Witnesses came came to my house, oh, thinking where I live, maybe about 10 years ago. And so I let them talk to me. And then I told them about my relationship with the Lord, forgiveness of sins, loving him, seeking to live a holy life, sharing the gospel wherever I go, you know, just as overflowing as I could possibly be with truth and love and grace. And then I said to them, so what are you offering me that I don't have? And one of them stumbled, well, hope we you know, the world is falling apart and we have hope. But I mean, it was it was really it was really sad.

I mean, I thought he's got to realize that he does not have what I have. And again, it's not just what I have, but what true followers of Jesus have and the Holy Spirit living within and the hope of eternal life and the assurance of forgiveness of sins. And on and on it goes and the moving of the Holy Spirit in our midst in such wonderful and life giving ways. So my heart's always going out to Jehovah's Witnesses. And hopefully, listen, if somebody you know is a Jehovah's Witness and they're open, have some questions, get them a copy of Crisis of Allegiance again by James A. Beverly. That's B-E-V-E-R-L-E-Y. And again, your website, Jim, if people want to go there.

JamesBeverly.com. I just realized one more thing that I should mention. If any listener wants proof of the dark side of the Watchtower Society, get them to look up the Australia Royal Commission on Child Abuse and read their study of the way Jehovah's Witnesses have responded to allegations of child abuse based on some really stupid legalistic understandings. The Witness leadership have covered up abuse.

I don't have time for details, but it's a horrendous story that shows the corruption that goes on when you get in a legalistic framework. And that's the key. Hey, Jim, we're out of time. It's always great speaking with you. Again, JamesBeverly.com.

That's B-E-V-E-R-L-E-Y. Check out the newsletters there. You can get a PDF of this book, Crisis of Allegiance, Study of Dissent, among Jehovah's Witnesses. God bless. Thanks, Mike. Another program powered by the Truth Network.