Transcription
So these letters had gotten forwarded to the writing department. I didn't know that. And they liked it, and the writing department said, "Let's get Jay on board and have him submit articles." In this case, a series, they said, "A series of Watchtower study articles." So, what, two or three or four, all refuting the Trinity? I was on board for that. So I submitted my first article.
Hello, everybody. Welcome to, uh, my interview with Jay Hess, former Jehovah's Witness who has a story that is just absolutely astounding, and I wanted to introduce you to him. Jay, welcome to the interview. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Sure. Um, there's so much to say, and I, I want to chew up a lot of time, but there's so much of this is useful and helpful. Uh, I was raised as one of Jehovah's Witnesses. My parents got involved in the mid-1950s. They got baptized in the late, uh, late 1950s. Uh, we went to meetings occasionally, and then over time, more and more.
Um, then back then, of course, the, the big deal, we still talked about the end coming close, and my mother would talk about it. This was in the early 1960s. "The end is coming." And I'd say, "When, when, Mommy? You know, what time? When, when is the end going to come?" And she says, "Well, they don't know, but I'm sure when you're in your 20s, you know, that that that will be when the end will come." So, we're all very excited, and I'm going door-to-door, and I'm believing, and, and I was believing everything that the Watchtower taught at that time because we're going door-to-door, knocking on doors, and I'm listening to these older fellas, uh, talk about the Bible, and it was just, uh, the people at the door just didn't know what to say. And we get people that were supposedly informed in Christendom, and yet my, whoever I was working with would just tie these poor Christians up into knots. So I believed this stuff.
And then in 1968, we had the publication *Freedom, Freedom of the Sons of God, Everlasting Life*. And they had this timeline and indicated 1975. Oh, we're so excited. And I got baptized in 1969. That was, uh, end of high school time. And I was sure, "Oh, it just sounds so real. And this is the only organization that has the truth. We go door-to-door like we're supposed to, like Christians are supposed to. And we always win our debates at the door." So, I'm convinced of this stuff, but I wanted to go to college. That was what I was better at school than cleaning windows. I did, I worked with another brother who was a pioneer. He cleaned windows real fine, and people who did the menial tasks, and that was okay. I didn't mind doing it, but it was hard. I had back problems. I did, I actually did work digging ditches. Absolutely didn't.
And then, uh, I wanted to go to college, but the Watchtower came out with Watchtowers that said, you know, "This is reckless to to go to college. That's college has an onslaught unto truth, and they attack you morally, and it's, it's, it's a bad thing." But for health reasons, I decided I'm going to go to college. Oh, I got so much trouble. And, uh, everybody criticized me, said, "Well, how can you do this?" Because Watchtower showed us that 1975 is the end and it's so close. And I go, "Well, it's so close, but I got to, I got to eat. I got to live." So, I went to college. The pressure got worse. So, after two years of college, I dropped out because it's so close. I dropped out in, um, uh, yeah, about '72. And, okay, well, I'm going to pioneer, vacation pioneer, we called it, doing all these things. I was appointed a ministerial servant, we call them, I called them many servants. And then we go to assemblies, circuit assemblies, we called them. And I remember this one circuit assembly, the speaker says, "Brothers, you know how an alarm clock has the setting that, well, you, you set the alarm clock, and just before it goes off, there's a click. Brothers, we have just heard the click." How terrifying. That's just terrifying.
At our, at a congregation meeting, they talked about the, uh, coming of the end, and we all better be prepared to make every meeting, otherwise we won't know where our next meeting is, because we all have to have to be careful because the, the UN will be following us. Okay, all this stuff. Anyway, so I stuck it out, dropped out of college. And, oh, by the way, 1975, the world didn't end. It came and went. I had a family. And now, at that time, the Watchtower said, "Oh, we might be off." This is 1974, I think. It said, "We might, or '75, so we might be off a little, maybe a year or two, but not more than that." Oh, okay. Oh, okay.
So, I, uh, I finished up college, got a job, and the end wasn't there. Wasn't happening. And I, well, started, uh, digging more into this Watch. I still believed it. Uh, I had a couple issues. I had questions about some of the publications. They certainly elevated the Watchtower Society. I thought, "This is odd." And then I started sharing research. I started doing research. Of course, you weren't supposed to do that because I'm researching things in Christendom's literature, you know, these reference works. And then I convinced a friend of, uh, something, uh, another elder. See, what had happened is that I was, uh, going to a Kmart, came out of a Kmart, and there was a Christian handing out these little handouts. And I walked up and I said, "Oh, this is going to be fun." And I walked up, and I'm one of Jehovah's Witnesses. And he immediately changed. He says, "All right, I got a question for you." Oh, he was ready. Yeah. Oh, he was, he was ready. Put on his tracks and he says, "Do you worship Jesus?" And I go, "Uh, no." And he goes, "Well, you know, explain to me Hebrews 1:6." And I didn't have a Bible. He read it out of the Bible, his Bible, that, uh, all the angels were to worship Jesus. And I was puzzled. I didn't remember that verse, Hebrews 1:6. Uh, so, hm, I didn't have an answer. And I'm used to having all the answers.
So I go home and I research it. And at that time, the New World Translation still said at Hebrews 1:6, it used the word "worship." Now, shortly after this, they reissued the New World Translation, took out the word "worship," and put in the word "obeisance." But at the time, the New World Translation that I was using in the ministry said, "All angels were to worship Jesus." Hebrews 1:6. So I started researching this, and this is by the end of the 1970s, on into early 1980s, and I'm finding more and more that Watchtower used to worship Jesus. And their older publications, up till 1945, the Society consistently said to worship Jesus, and I'm going to talk about that in a minute. Uh, so I was free to tell people that. I didn't feel I couldn't tell people that because at that time, they worshiped Jesus.
Unknown to me at that time, the Watchtower is changing its view. This would have been the late, uh, 1980s. They were going to, they were changing their view to stop saying that Jesus should be worshiped. They had, uh, declined to talk about it from the 1970s and 1980s, but now they're going to change their view. Also, at the same time, I, I forget exactly who got me in touch with the research department at 25 Columbia Heights in New York, at at Brooklyn Bethel. And I got involved with the research department, and I was living in California. And they would make requests to me to do certain research projects. And one of the things they asked me to do was go to our local Kingdom Hall and take out some of the publications that the Society wanted, very old publications that they're hard to find, and they wanted me to take them out of the Kingdom Hall library and put them in a bag instead of the Brooklyn, uh, local elders didn't like that, and they asked, told me I couldn't do that.
So, as time went on, uh, Watchtower Society, I had a friend say, "You know, talk to the Society." Uh, I forget if I was supposed to call them or they were going to call me, but I spoke to a contact from the research department. His name was Sue Allesino, and he said, um, "Brother Hess, the writing department is aware of your research, and they would like you to start writing for the Society." Oh my. That, that's exciting. So, I sure, uh, still a loyal JW. And this, like I said, was in the, this was would have been the mid-1980s. Uh, like I said, I was baptized in 1968, and this was now the 1980s. And they said, "Well, let me give you your first assignment. You see, Brother Hess, there is a fellow in Christendom, a scholar who has written a book on why you should believe in the Trinity, named Robert Bowman." And he says this book is, he said his phrase was, "It's disturbing the friends." Mmm. So I don't know if Witnesses were getting the book, or whether they were hearing about it from knocking on doors, but somehow, someway, this book was upsetting Witnesses that didn't, couldn't find the answers to Robert Bowman's, um, uh, book. Now, I've actually met Robert Bowman since then, but, uh, I, I was okay. I, I'll.
He, now, he said, Sue said, you know, "Don't tell anybody this assignment. Don't tell anybody that you're going to do this, but you can get Robert Bowman's book. Read it." Then he says, "Do you live near a seminary?" I said, "Yes." He says, "Go into their library." Now, don't tell any of the friends about this. Go in the library and research the early church fathers and see if you could write up a Watchtower study article, you know, with, with all that you, a regular study article, uh, that would be used, of course, on a Sunday, uh, at the Watchtower Sunday Watchtower study. And I go, "Whoa," because that's not just an article in the Watchtower *Awake*, but this is actually a study article, which is, you got 30 paragraphs at the time. So this is all exciting. And I wrote the first article attempting to refute the Trinity because I'd written articles on my own for, I'll say, some of my friends, uh, on how to refute the, the, the doctrine of the Trinity.
So these letters had gotten forwarded to the writing department. I didn't know that. And they liked it, and the writing department said, "Let's get Jay on board and have him submit articles." In this case, a series, they said, "A series of Watchtower study articles." So, what, two or three or four, all refuting the Trinity? I was on board for that. So I submitted my first article.
Wrote back a thank you note, says the writing department liked my first article, so write another. Now, this is in the late 1980s, and through this, I had met other Witnesses who were also on the writing department, not living at 25 Columbia Heights, but living at other places. Uh, in this case, two of them were living in California, and, uh, one of them has now passed away by, by now. And several of us said, "Hey, let's, why don't we get together?" So I flew out to California. I was living in North Carolina at that time. I moved from California to North Carolina. And let's get together. So I flew out to California, went to this brother's house, spent the evening sharing research, talked with him. He'd written a book, a huge book refuting the Trinity. We made, we made friends, and he indicated to me that he too believed that Jesus should be worshiped. I had come to the conclusion that Jesus should be worshiped. Again, this is sparked by that Christian coming out of Kmart, and he had written a book not on the worship of Jesus. He too was refuting the Trinity, but he was sympathetic to the view of writing of worshiping Jesus. He told me that there was at least one writer there at Brooklyn who was sympathetic to the view of worshiping Jesus, but that was not the majority view there in Watchtower headquarters. So he said, "Hey, why not go ahead and write an article?" Now, this brother has since passed away, but he says, "You know, why don't you do that?" So I wrote up the next Watchtower study article on why it's okay to worship Jesus using scriptures. And the scriptures I used were scriptures the Watchtower used to use in the 1940s: Hebrews 1:6 and John 5:22 and 23.
So I submitted the article, and then I got a phone call from one of the other writers saying, "Jay, this will be the last time I'll be able to speak to you, but watch out, you're in trouble." And next time the circuit overseer came out, we got a whole new circuit overseer who told me that I was in trouble for having advocated the worshiping of Jesus. And soon after that, I was put on trial. A friend of mine went on trial first. He was an elder who I had shared this material with, and he became convinced that he, Jesus should be worshiped according to Hebrews 1:6 and John 5:22 and 23, and he was, uh, not disfellowshipped because he promised he would never again say that Jesus should be worshiped. Then I was, soon after that, put on trial, and I did not repent. I didn't say I would not worship Jesus, and I was found guilty. I was disfellowshipped. I appealed to the governing body because since I had been with the writing department, these were special judicial committees with elders I'd never heard of, never seen. They would send in directly appointed by the governing, governing body. I put on trial. Then I appealed, like I said, and then another body was a judicial committee was set up again. Three elders I'd never heard of, never seen, and found guilty a second time. And that's the end of it. You can't appeal anymore. So I was officially disfellowshipped. And that would have been right around 1989. Uh, was the final, uh, 1980, 1990, maybe. I, I don't remember the exact date anymore. Um, in my notes, I've got it in my notes. Doesn't matter. So I was.
That's an incredible sequence of events. So that Watchtower study article was never published then?
No. And while this trial was about to happen, I called up Sue Allesino, and he says, "Brother, you are in trouble. The, uh, service desk is coming after you." And he says, "No, we can't use your stuff. It's too hot. We can't use anything you've published."
You said, you know, Jay, what's interesting is I have the old Green Bible. I don't know where they got that color from, right? Just so awful. But I just looked up Hebrews 1:6 in this Green Bible, and it says, "But when he again brings his firstborn into the inhabited earth, he says, 'And let all God's angels worship him.'" Incredible. Incredible. This was the Bible that I used when I was a kid, you know, not, not this f-, not this particular one, but that translation. Yeah.
So, I wanted to, to fill this out, what's, why this is still relevant today, why this is so important, and give you some of the real facts. This is where I would start with a Witness. And, uh, this is the, the book, *Pay Attention to Daniel's Prophecy*, 1999. Okay, so it wasn't that far ago long ago. Well, here's the major mistake they made. This is hilarious. All right, on page 178 of *Pay Attention to Daniel*. Okay, pay attention here. Page 178. You get down halfway through paragraph 26, and it says, "Remember, they're going through Daniel, Daniel's prophecy, and all these things, you know, we have to pay attention." It's because that's the title of this, *Pay Attention to Daniel's Prophecy*. Woo. And they find fulfillment of all these things. This is talking about the 2,300 days in Daniel. It says, uh, "The calculation leads up to October 1944." Says, "On the first day of a special assembly held at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, on September 30th and October 1st, 1944, the Watchtower Society's president spoke on the subject, 'The Theocratic Alignment Today.' At the annual corporate meeting on October 2nd, the Society's charter was amended in an effort to bring it as close to a theocratic arrangement as the law would allow. With the publication of clarified biblical requirements, theocratic organization was soon more fully installed in the congregations of Jehovah's Witnesses."
And here's what's so funny. So, what fulfills? What is it that fulfills this prophecy in Daniel? The 2,300 days. That must be pretty important. It's in Daniel. The answer is the Watchtower's charter of late 1944. Wonder what the charter says. Now, this is hilarious. Wonder what the Watchtower's charter says. I mean, it fulfills this Daniel, and, and it's here in, in the book, so it must be really important. Try and get a copy of that 1944 charter, which was an amendment to the earlier charter. Just try and get a copy. Wouldn't it be odd that you can't, because it fulfills Daniel? So go ahead and try and get a copy if you can. And the answer is, you can't. The Watchtower will not reprint it because of this thing they say inside at the, in the near beginning of the charter. Now, uh, what I have here is the 1945 yearbook. What's in the 1945 yearbook? Well, everything from 1944. What's in there? A reprint of part of that chart. I wonder what's in here that just fulfills Daniel that's so incredible that it, we're, it's worth being put in here. And why can't I get a copy of it today? If you try and find any reprint of this in the Society's literature, they always leave out the same sentence. What's up with that? I'm going to read that.
So, I am page 32 of this yearbook where they reprint this page out of the charter. And, well, I'll show the page. It's here, this long paragraph of all the things that the Society has as its purpose. And I'm going to get to the bottom, toward the page, of all these things they do. It says, um, "teachers and instructors in the Bible and Bible literature and for public Christian worship. Public Christian worship of Almighty God and Christ Jesus." Wow. You cannot get that statement anymore except the 1945 yearbook because the Society will not reprint it. They will reprint, reprint up to that. Then it'll say, "the worship of Almighty God," then dot dot dot, or it'll say, "Almighty God through," and then they put brackets, "through Christ Jesus." But this is said, "worship of Almighty God and, and Christ Jesus." And remember, this charter brings them closer to God and fulfills prophecy in Daniel. Wow. Isn't that cool? That's such a, that, you know, that document must be prophetic. This would be the document that should be in all Kingdom Halls because it fulfills this special time in Daniel, the charter of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. Isn't that funny?
So that's what I'm saying is this is hilarious. They have printed their business on worship in other publications. I've got it. Who did it start with? C.T. Russell is one of the first, back in the 1800s, says that "we worship Jesus just as we do the Father." That's because of Hebrews 1:6 and John 5:22 and 23. Yeah. And what's incredible is, you know, you were, you were disfellowshipped based on old light. Yes. Old light, in their words, is, is the reason why you are dispelled. In Christ. And you can find, like I said, I've got some books here. Light. This is Rutherford's light, *Deliverance*, *Preparation*, and Witnesses can't answer that. "Oh, worship doesn't mean that back then." Oh, yes, it does. The Watchtower in these books says, "You cannot worship men. You cannot worship anybody. You cannot worship Mary, but you should worship Jehovah and Jesus." And it just says it just like that. You know, I was doing some research recently on Maria Russell. I actually went to her grave, and it, I didn't intend to do that. It was kind of like an accident, but I was doing, I was reading one of the first *Zion's Watch Tower* where Charles T. Russell wrote that some people consider it blasphemy when he says that he himself is divine. So Charles Taze Russell was considered, considered himself a god. It's just the things that they believed back then. And, and he himself was, was quite an interesting character. But that was old light.
My parents stayed in, and some of their friends were pregnant in 1974, and they were just vilified. I mean, these poor people were just, I mean, the, the, the sisters in the congregation just were doing so much gossip and treated them so badly. And now, and they had a daughter. And that daughter is what, in her 50s right now. My daughter was born in, I had a daughter born in 1975. She's still a loyal JW, and here she just 50. So, uh, and I have no contact with her. I, she was 18 last, or 16 last time I talked with her. So this is, yeah, this is tragic. It destroyed my family. It has destroyed families ever since. All because of a devotion to an organization of men who now tie up the knots even in their history. Even though this business of worship is old light with the, this book here of Daniel, that means it's not all light anymore. It fulfills prophecy. Yeah. They cannot figure this out. No, they can't. It just gets worse for them. And, you know, there was a picture, I think it was in the *Live Forever* book. It was the marquee, uh, movie screen. It says, "Just put through daily" or something like that. Uh, so to insinuate that they're just, it's all a big joke, you know. Yeah. And you wonder if this is deliberate, that they're doing their deliberate deception of printing that in the Daniel book leading back to the 1944 charter, knowing full well what it said, but omitting it, knowing that the friends can't even find what it, what it said. Yeah.
So, you can actually get a copy of the charter, but not through the Watchtower. Uh, I was working in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and went to, uh, the recorder of deeds office, went to the second floor. I don't know if that office is there anymore. And walked up and I got a certified copy in person of their charter. So it can be gotten, but they don't care about it. Even though this book says you should care about it, they don't care about it. No. Because they, they've been deceived. And nobody wants to believe that they've been deceived and sunk their whole life, all the relationships, everything in it, uh, skipped out on college, skipped out on having families and kids, and then to find out that it's all run by men trying to, uh, figure out the Bible, which is not a bad thing, but then exercising authority and say, "Don't you dare read this and research this on your own. No, no, no. Don't you do that. And you have to trust us. We have the authority." How do we know that? Because we say so. I, I had mentioned to somebody that it's like the organization destroys every single thing it touches. Yep. You know, it's, its goal. That's the goal is just to destroy people's lives. And that's what, what happens. I hear from my viewers all the time. So, and, and you know, I've been shunned for 38 years by my family members. You've been shunned.
So, now Jay, you get disfellowshipped. Obviously, you do lose some loved ones. Tell me what happens next. Like, now it's a new beginning for you, and tell me what you've done with this new beginning.
Yes, that's also a very, uh, interesting story because I didn't see it coming. I really thought this was Watchtower was God's organization. I knew they made mistakes. I knew they messed up. I didn't know how much. But, uh, I knew that the obviously the 1975 thing was a mess. So by the, uh, end, by the, uh, again, early 1990s, about 1991, and I was disfellowshipped. Even though I appealed, I still wanted that there could be an answer to mankind's problems. And I'd read enough of the Bible, researched it enough, okay, on my own too, that there was a likelihood that God was real and the Bible was true. So I wasn't going to give up. I'd put too much time in reading the Bible. So I continued to research. And first thing I had to do, I had to sort out this Trinity business because I was an anti-Trinitarian. And I got to say, okay, what's, I got to know. And so I dug into it, and I just, me and the Bible, and some Greek and Hebrew resources that I got through a seminary, and came to the conclusion that Jesus was a distinct person from his Father, and Jesus was eternally subordinate in rank to his Father. And I said, "All right, am I crazy?" Now, this is not what the Watch, well, this is. The Watchtower does not believe that Jesus was eternal, and Jesus is not to be worshiped, and that I could easily show that the Watchtower was wrong. Duh. I've been disfellowshipped for holding, uh, the word, the view that Jesus was to be worshiped. So I wondered, what is there any place in mainstream Christianity for me?
So I found out about a scholar. This is the real deal. He's still alive, uh, today. Uh, he's elderly now, and he is a world-class Greek scholar. So I found out that he was a seminary professor at that time, in the early 1990s, a seminary professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois. I got his home phone number, so I called him up. Uh, Dr. Harris, his name is Murray Harris. Um, uh, I, you know, recently out of Jehovah's Witnesses, and I've come to a conclusion that Jesus is a distinct person but eternally subordinate to his Father and worthy of worship. Uh, where do I fit in mainstream Christianity? And he says, "Well, Jay, you're a Trinitarian." I go, "Wait a minute. Uh, I've been arguing with Trinitarians at the door for years, and they, they don't seem to believe that." And he says, "Well, you know, there may be some scholars who don't, but generally among scholars, they believe that." And, "Oh, by the way, if you go to a seminary library, you can look up these books and see that this is the, uh, orthodox historical view of who Jesus is." And I went to the seminary, found the book in the library, looked it up, and yes, at 1 Corinthians 11:3, Jesus is eternally subordinate to the Father. And I go, "Wait a minute. The Watchtower told me that only Jehovah's Witnesses know that Jesus is subordinate. Was the Watchtower lying to me? What's going on here?"
So I decided to call up Robert Bowman. That was the guy I was supposed to research who wrote the book *Why You Should Believe the Trinity*. Called him up, and I asked him the same question. And he says, "Christians tend not to talk about Jesus being subordinate, but that is what scholars believe, and it just doesn't get it down to the church level. So when you're knocking on doors of people at the doors, they don't know this." Okay, reasonable answer to me. So I decided to pursue looking through mainstream Christianity where I had the freedom to research, and the people running the show were educated, informed. And I started going to a church, which was within driving distance of this local seminary, and met seminary professors. Got to talking to them. Yeah. They, they affirmed, "Yes, that's what we believe about Jesus as well." And this is the Trinity doctrine. And I'm okay. And stuck that out and continued to research. And because of that, I got invited to join the Evangelical Theological Society. Um, I didn't have a PhD in biblical studies, but if I get, if you get recommended like I was, you can join it. And thus opens doors to real research. Yeah. Heavy-duty translators, uh, Hebrew and Greek translators, uh, seminary professors gave me access to their materials, their books, their papers, which they published 650 papers per year at the seminary level. It was just like the floodgates opening up from allowing me to research across denominations. It had nothing to do with that was denominational. That, uh, launched me off into a sea of a path of meeting other Christians, other ex-Jehovah's Witnesses, and eventually, uh, became a pastor of a small evangelical church here in North Carolina. I returned. And that's really what you needed. You needed to dig that deep in order to get it figured out. And, you know, former Jehovah's Witnesses really make great researchers because we've been so deceived. Yes. You know, and, um, I want to read, uh, Revelation 1. I just want to see what it says in the Green, 1973, I think. Revelation 1:7 and 8. It says, "Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him—who pierced Jesus—and all the tribes of the earth will beat themselves in grief because of him. Verse 8: 'I am the Alpha and the Omega,' says Jehovah God, 'the one who is, who was, and who is coming, the Almighty.'"
So, I read this verse to a Jehovah's Witness out of the Bible I had at the time. And it says, you know, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the one who is, who was, and who's coming, the Almighty." I said, "Who's coming?" And she said, "Jehovah." "It's got to be Jehovah." Well, no, he's not coming. The Jehovah of the organization. No, Jehovah's not coming. Who was pierced? Jesus. They've changed it. It's so clear because this, and, you know, in the title of the book, they claim is a revelation to John. The name of the book is *The Revelation of Jesus Christ*. It tells you exactly who he is. Yes. Yes. It is this doctrine, this teaching of who Jesus is, is throughout scripture. But the Watchtower would hide things, or they would change things, and tell us, "Don't look anywhere else. No, no, no. Just read their literature and you rehearse it." Then you come up with these conclusions, easy things, because, you know what? We would never believe what we did if we were not in the extra-biblical texts, right? That we knew as the publications. Everything was added to scripture. Everything in those publications. They had a kernel of truth, just enough, enough to suck us in, but then, of course, they twisted the truth where it, it mattered most.
So you became a pastor after all of that deep diving that you did into the real truth. Right. And, um, tell me, tell me about where you are now.
Right. So I did retire from that, uh, particular church. I'm still a member of a, a church. Um, I just don't want all the responsibility of what a pastor has to do. It's a lot of work. I prefer to do the research and answer Bible questions. I, for a number of years now, have been working with Rick Farren in his, uh, what he does on the weekends. So I have a call-in show that's every other week, uh, where I answer Bible questions for about two hours. People either text on YouTube or they call in, whatever question they ask. I love it. Uh, I am not locked into any denomination. Uh, I, I'm locked into the Bible, but I, I've learned so much about the Bible and following Jesus. I have such freedom. It's such a breath of fresh air. No one tells me that I can't read this or I can't read that, or I can't research here or can't research there. Uh, I have enough background that I can look and see the difference between the opinions of men and the facts. So if someone is getting into the Greek and says, "This is what the Greek text says," okay, that's a fact. Then I understand the difference between that and interpretations, and I'm not governed by any denomination. I don't, they don't ask me to. I don't need to do that. I am free to seek God. I'm free to change my opinion. I change my view as I learn more, and no one gets upset. Right.
And, and you know what I love about your show? I've watched your show. That what's so unique is that you, you, you answer these questions from the Bible, giving, giving the callers or the viewers an opportunity to do their own research, because that's really the way it should be. You point them in the right direction, let them find out by themselves. But you also have that Jehovah's Witness background, so you understand where a lot of these questions are coming from. So you kind of undo what they were told, and then point them in the right direction. And so your show, what I'm going to do is I'm going to put a link to your show, the time and all that, in the description of this video. But it's every other Sunday, for the most part, at what time?
4:00 PM Eastern.
Okay, 4:00 PM Eastern. It's on YouTube, and I think it's on Rick Ferren's channel.
Yes.
Yeah. And, um, it's really fantastic. You do a live show, and then also you can find the recorded sessions as well, right?
They upload once it's recorded, it's uploaded, but it is live. So the questions just come right in. People either typing in on YouTube, type, type, or they can call on the phone and, uh, they ask a question, and we dive into it. And I wish there was something like that when I was exiting the Watchtower. I was so upset and hurt, losing family, and having these tough questions. And I could go to a church and ask, and they wouldn't know the answers. They, they just, they wouldn't know, and they can't teach what they don't know. So I was hungry. And so I just want to do for others what I wish someone could have done for me. So I, you know, Jay, when I left, um, well, I wanted to leave at 13. Of course, I couldn't. My dad, I said, "Daddy, I don't want, I don't want to go to the meetings anymore." And he said, "Well, you're going, and you don't have to go when you're 18." And when I turned 18, I said, "Daddy, I don't want to go anymore." And he said, "Well, you can't live in my house." Well, I certainly wasn't going to move out because what could I do? And it wasn't until I was 23 that I had the courage. I, I threw in the towel. I said, "Enough is enough." Um, I thought I was, I thought I was selling my soul to the devil by getting out. I said, "If this is what serving God is like, serving the devil can't be any worse." And that's what I believed for like about 20 years. Whoa. I didn't know. I mean, really, the internet back then, there was no internet, right? And it wasn't until, um, the internet started coming around. It was about 2004, and I said, at that time, I had been shunned by my family. Every single one of them. I mean, I never saw those people again. My former JW friends, I never saw them again. And it was about 15 years, and I said, "What, what is going on? What's the, what's the drive? What's driving this organization that they have such a grip on them?" Well, I started researching the, the organization, and right away I went down into darkness. That's where my research took me. And I researched for three months. I couldn't stop. It was like I was falling asleep at my desk because I didn't want to stop. And at the end of that 90 days, I just had a picture of evil that wasn't pretty. It was not pretty. And, and frankly, I was scared. And I cried out to God, and I said, "I was not serving you. I thought I was, but I realized, who are you?" And I fell on my face. I just was on my face outside under the stars, crying like, uh, just a crazy person, crying out to God. And all of a sudden, I just sat up and, um, wiped the tears off my face, calm as anything. And I went in and I found an old Bible I had stashed that I hadn't looked at in forever. It wasn't a Jehovah's Witness Bible. And I turned it to page one, and I read all the way to the end in 90 days. And I cried and cried and cried and cried because I met a God that I didn't know. And it wasn't until I got to about, uh, Paul's letters, maybe Romans, maybe Galatians, Ephesians, that I realized that Jesus saved me when he died for me and rose from the dead and ushered in the new covenant. And it's a free gift. And that's, you know, that changed everything in my life. And I, I dedicated to myself to sharing this truth with, um, with, with everybody. And I, I thought that I was going to be called on the mission field. Instead, I started making videos six years ago and started sharing the truth of Jesus with the people that I love the most, and that's the exhibit. So I never looked back, Jay. I never looked back. As hard as it was, I never said, "Maybe I made the wrong decision." Never. No. It's like the monkey. I was like, "Wow, I feel, I feel like this weight is gone." You know, it's amazing. So, getting out of the Watchtower is freedom. And it's actually a beginning of a new life. Yes. And freedom in Christ if you turn to him as your savior. Yes. I never, never for an instant did I think of going back to that mess. Yeah. I'd seen so many crazy things, uh, contradictory but harmful things. They did a lot of harmful things. Yeah. Shame on them for, and they will, I believe they will pay for it one day. Uh, the families that they destroyed, the lives that they destroyed, without any emotion or any, uh, repentance, without any regret. Uh, terrible things, uh, horrible stories of elders exploiting the flock, uh, doing things that they would disfellowship others for, they were doing themselves. Yeah. Oh dear. Yeah. Yeah. I faced, you know, I always seemed to be a target for the elders in my congregation. We didn't have many young people. There was maybe, I don't know, three young teenagers, girls, and, um, I always seemed to be a target. And I faced some judicial committees, and boy, were they. You know, I, I look back on them. Were they vicious? Especially one of them. And, and he's passed on. And I just say, he's gone to his reward. Hopefully, he, you know, found the Lord before he died, but his whole family's still in now, and he's gone to his reward, whatever that may be. Right. Right. Whatever that is.
So Jay, um, you know, there's a lot of people out there, people Jehovah's Witnesses, who are physically in, but they're too afraid to get out. Yes. They're mentally out. Um, any advice or guidance that you, a godly man, can give to them now?
Yeah, my thought was, uh, I don't know what God, at that time, I don't know what God has in store, but I know that this organization is not the truth, and I want the truth, and I was willing to put faith that I can find it, and it will be better, and to stay with this organization. I understand you have friends and family. I had friends and family in it too. But by doing the right thing, if getting pushed out of an organization for doing the right thing, then I, I shouldn't be in that organization. And thankfully, God led me to the answers, and that's why I do this call-in show, and you, anybody can call in. It is so freeing to get out, make new friends, uh, find a new fellowship. Uh, it is so satisfying. I can't imagine a reason to stay in. Yes, you'll lose friends, but are they really friends? Really? Are they really friends? Even though they're family, you, once I got out, I found friends who were really friends, like family, that, you know, it's not worth it. So I would say it's not worth the grief that your mental health goes down the tubes because the day is going to come, well, if it hasn't already come. What are they going to do with the last generation? Okay, that last generation, second and third generation, the mental health is, is going to go down. They are proven to be false prophets. This is an organization that is going to chew you up. Yeah. And these people are not your friends if they are loyal to other imperfect people who do these terrible things. Break free. And there are so many ex-Witnesses who want to help you break free. And it's not that hard. It's going to take some time, going to take some work, but the community, ex-Witness community wants to help. And, and we understand, we understand they can. Yes, they can, uh, help, uh, be real friends, real true friends. It's, uh, it's a wonderful place to go and then to serve the real God, the God of the Bible, Yahweh. I, I use the name Yahweh. Uh, and to know the real Jesus. There's nothing like it. People throughout for the past 2,000 years have made sacrifices to follow Jesus. It's, it's well worth it. I, I don't regret a thing.
Yes, I agree. Well, thank you, Jay. Is there anything else you'd like to share?
Uh, just that, uh, pay attention. If you're still in it, do some research. There's so much online research. Uh, I gave some of the best arguments that I think that I was used. There's thousands of them of the terrible things this organization does. And to know that the Bible does make sense, right? Granted, it does take some digging, but the, the real truth is not that hard. If you think that, "Oh, but I love this doctrine or that doctrine." Okay, research it. I believe in the coming kingdom. I believe that there is going to be an earthly kingdom. Come to find out, though, that most evangelical scholars believe it, too. So, it's just that at the church level, it does, so many people don't know about it. Uh, it's, it's freeing. And, uh, so that would be, uh, that's my final word that it's a wonderful future. I'm not disappointed in it at all, and, uh, hope for the best for you all. Yes.
Well, thank you, Jay, so much. It was just such a delight to talk to you. It's been really wonderful getting to know you better. Um, I'm just going to encourage people to tune in to your show every other Sunday. Look down in the description box for the information. Okay, Jay, you have a great day.
You too. Thank you. And bye-bye.