Welcome and Introducing JT and Lady Cee

Part 1 of 2 · Ep. 1428

John Dehlin [00:00:02] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's May 10, 2021, and today I am so super excited for our interview. I have a dear friend in Houston, Texas. He's actually in Sugar Land. His name is Jason Moore.

John Dehlin [00:00:19] Jason. His parents, the Moores, have been dear friends as well, the whole family. It was Lynn Moore who recommended that I interview Mike Rinder for Mormon Stories Pod. That led to both me interviewing Mike and then Mike and Leah Remini having me on Fair Game Podcast. The Ex Scientologists. And that. So the Moore family, they've hosted several faith crisis retreats or events down in. Down in Houston and Sugar Land. But. But my buddy Jason, for some reason, my buddy Jason, who, who lives in Sugarland, Texas as well, we're the exact same age. We both grew up in Houston, and at the exact same time, my buddy Jason has been a big fan of Jehovah's Witness Ex Jehovah's Witness podcast, and particularly he's been a big fan.

John Dehlin [00:01:07] Well, he recommended that I interview Lloyd Evans a couple years ago, an ex Jehovah's Witness, and then he's been a big fan of these two guests that I'm going to have on today, J.T. and Lady C. J.T. and Lady C are active in. In the ex Jehovah's Witness YouTube community, and I'm sure they do a lot of other cool stuff as well. But my buddy Jason's been just telling me for over a year, john, you gotta interview JT and Lady C. And we almost did it right before COVID but then Covid made everything weird. And I'm just now getting back into kind of this backlog. So without any further ado, JT and Lady C, I am so excited to have you on Mormon Stories Podcast. Thanks for joining us.

Lady Cee [00:01:54] Thank you so much for having us. We're glad to be here.

JT [00:01:56] Yeah, we finally, finally able to coordinate and get together. It's been a long time, but we've been looking forward to it.

John Dehlin [00:02:03] Well, thank you. And I've been watching your YouTube channel. Why don't you guys just quickly tell everybody what it is you guys do, as you know, as, let's just say, ex Jehovah's Witness activists. Those are my words, not yours. Tell everybody about your channel. If you've got any books or websites or whatever, just as kind of an introduction, and then we'll go back into your stories. Is that okay?

JT [00:02:26] That's fine.

Lady Cee [00:02:27] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:02:27] Okay.

Lady Cee [00:02:29] Sure. We, we have a. Our website is xjwcriticalthinker.com and if you want to go to YouTube and check out our videos, it's just XJW Critical Thinker. We are working on a book, have been for a while now, hopefully that will be out soon. And basically we've just been activists out on the Internet for about what, maybe seven or eight years now. But pre Internet, you know, going online with YouTube, we actually was on a. We were on this bulletin board called Jehovah's Witness.net where JT he really was on that board more than me. And so he's probably has over 4,000 posts up there. So we did a lot of activism even before YouTube was popular or even came into existence.

John Dehlin [00:03:18] You're kind of OGs, as they say.

JT [00:03:20] Yeah, pretty much. We decided to set up a channel and we wanted to name it. What we feel is probably the biggest challenge for people who are involved with the Jehovah's Witnesses. And that's the lack of critical thinking.

JT [00:03:35] One of the things that this religion will do is they will literally shut down your ability to think critically. And it's a very effective tool because what they have done, they have very carefully, carefully made critical thinking, questioning God. And so as a result, anything that they write, anything they publish, since it is from God, you can't do any critical thinking or asking too many questions. I tell people all the time, basically, you can ask all the questions that you want, you can ask all the questions that you want, but you just can't question the answers. And that's why we have on our website a little saying that I prefer to have questions that I cannot answer than to have answers that I cannot question.

JT [00:04:21] And so this is what we felt was probably the biggest thing as to what holds people into this religion or pulls them back and brings them in is the inability to literally think critically.

John Dehlin [00:04:34] I love it. So you guys were doing this before Lloyd Evans?

JT [00:04:38] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:04:38] That's amazing. Okay, well, I'm sorry it took me so long to get you guys on, but I'm thrilled to have you today. Okay, well, I've got so many questions. We're going to try. We're going to have to kind of do a three hour interview today. Just so our listeners know. We'll do as long as we can with a max of three hours. Okay, so let's begin with how you guys joined. I don't know if you were born into the church. I get a sense that your family converted after you guys were born. But tell us, let's begin by just how you guys ended up becoming Jehovah's Witnesses, and I'm sure each of you is going to have a slightly different story.

Family Background and Becoming Jehovah's Witnesses

Lady Cee [00:05:18] Yeah, I like to look at it as a doorstop Witness. You know, my mother, back probably in the 30s, you know, her father was contacted in the door to door work, the door to door, going out in field service, what they call it, field service, knocking on their door. And my grandfather was smitten by the Jehovah's Witnesses. And he even came home and said, look, the Christmas tree is wrong. We're going to throw this out the house. But he really didn't take to this religion. You know, he talked about Jehovah's Witnesses. He let his children study with Jehovah's Witnesses and, you know, they were, they, they were like touch and go with the Witnesses.

Lady Cee [00:06:03] And so basically when my brother, I was younger than my brother, he was, I was two, he was six. And my brother was tragically hit and killed in a car accident. He was on foot and he got killed by some people that were driving up and down the street racing cars. And my mom, you know, she pulled back into her memory bank, hey, look, you know, there's these people, they talked about this paradise earth, you know, how can I get on this bandwagon? Because I want to see my son again. And so mom, you know, she had a Jehovah's Witness funeral for him. She contacted the elders at the Kingdom Hall.

Lady Cee [00:06:44] I want my son to be buried, you know, via Jehovah's Witnesses and all that kind of stuff. And so that's really where we got our start into, you know, becoming involved with this religion, being raised. My father was a, in the military, in the US Air Force.

Lady Cee [00:07:02] And after my brother was killed, we got, he got orders to go to another duty location. And when we moved, my mom contacted the Jehovah's Witnesses after we got there. So this is, you know, all I've known, you know, since I was 2 years old. You know, we've been going, you know, she didn't get baptized until I was older and you know, she did, you know, still dabble in Christmas a little bit and stuff like that. But I think it was like I was 7 when she got baptized and we no longer celebrated any of these holidays. But basically she never joined any other religion, never was a part of any other church. So I never really went to any other church. So the Jehovah's Witnesses is pretty much all I know.

John Dehlin [00:07:50] Okay. And that's so common, you know, it's so common for high demand religions in their missionary efforts. And you guys should know, I served a Mormon mission for two years in Guatemala and we have, I don't know, 50, 80,000 missionaries out across the world, at least in any given year. It's so common for missionaries to target people who have been through some sort of crisis, who are in poverty, who are, who have had a death in the family. Because when somebody is having those existential questions, will I see my loved ones again? How do I get out of poverty? How do I get out of addiction? People who are having real need are prime targets for missionary work. So that makes sense.

JT [00:08:37] Yeah. In fact, that is one of the focal points of the Jehovah's Witnesses ministry. Many of the elders, like myself and others who have served as speakers, we will often incorporate into our talks something about when we go out and knock on doors, that we're not looking for everybody. We are not looking for everybody. In fact, we are very specific. We are looking for people who are moaning and groaning over the detestable things they see going around them, which makes it a perfect religion to bring people in who are struggling, like you just mentioned. And as far as myself, that's kind of how my mom became a Witness.

JT [00:09:21] My mom grew up in the late 50s, early 60s, when civil rights was just really jumping off. She was very much involved in that. And her grandmother died. And so people want to get answers and so forth. So a witness knocked on my mom's door, older white lady, and she said, we're sharing the Bible, talking about the Bible. And down south, where I'm from, people are religious. People have a great respect for the Bible, whatever religion you are, generally speaking, if you're talking about the Lord and the word of God, you're going to get in somebody's house. And so my mom, you know, talked to the lady and there was a question that she asked the lady.

JT [00:09:58] She says, do you guys worship together? And the lady says, yes, we are. We have an integrated church. And during this time, the Watchtower was just starting to integrate all this congregation because of the passage of laws, they could do it now. And so my mom went to the Kingdom hall and like I said, living in North Carolina, living down south, especially with the little town I'm from, the little town I'm from has two churches had, a Baptist church for white people and a Baptist church for black people. And it's been there probably both of them have been there probably over 100 years. And to this very day, 2021 on Sunday morning, those two churches do not mix to go to services.

JT [00:10:40] And so when my mom went to the Kingdom hall, she saw something, actually, she heard something and saw it that she had never seen before in her life. She saw a white man reach out to a black man and say, good morning, brother.

JT [00:10:56] And at that point, it was done. This is the truth. This is the truth. And that started when I was. I guess I was about five or six years old. And like most Witnesses, we, we grew up through the whole Witness program as a kid going to school, not being able to do the holidays, you know, different activities in school, laugh that sent down to the principal's office, to the library when they would celebrate holidays and so forth. I mean, that is literally the Witness child path. Any, generally speaking, any Jehovah's Witness that you interview who has grown up in this religion, from small child up to when they finish high school, this was the path that you walked.

JT [00:11:35] You walked the path of suffering. Being kicked out of classes, laughed at, poked fun at. You know, you couldn't eat the Christmas cake. And it's, it's difficult. And the thing that makes it work, and this is what a good Jehovah's Witness parent does, does to their child. When they come home, they will tell them, all those children that laughed at you today and poke fun at you today, that's okay. Jehovah got something for them. They're gonna die. Armageddon. So it would take a child who was being treated this way. You would go back to school the next day, and when your classmates start poking fun, you're like, that's all right.

JT [00:12:11] Jehovah got something for you. And so, and so this is sad because when you think about this, you have a child who's in the first, second, third grade. They literally begin to look around at their classmates as dead men walking. Dead men walking. And this is what allows Jehovah's Witnesses to adopt that persecution complex. Because, see, now, you've done heard about Daniel and the lion's den. You don't heard about the three Hebrew boys. This is you. And a good Jehovah's Witness parent will inculcate this into their child. So when you look at people who are not Witnesses, your next door neighbor, your co workers, now Witnesses are generally very friendly.

JT [00:12:53] And this is what. And this is the catch 22. I mean, this. And we talked about this on our show, this is the catch 22. The public Persona of a Jehovah's Witness is wonderful. He's a good man, Wonderful man, Good people.

Jehovah's Witness Culture and Mindset

JT [00:13:05] But the way in which they view you as. They're standing at your door when they walk away, or if you're on the job, they view you as dead man walking. And the average person who, who knows a Jehovah's Witness has no idea that this Witness is saying to himself, unless you come in the truth, you ain't gonna get life. And so this is the whole mindset and that creates that wonderful us versus you.

JT [00:13:31] And this is what carries on. One of the things that we stress on our show, because it's very important, There are two things that is crucial, and we can't stress this enough. There are two things that are very crucial.

JT [00:13:46] One is to understand and know Jehovah's Witnesses teachings, because they're very unique. But the second part, which is a little bit more difficult, and that's the culture. That's that culture that takes place that is not written down in a Watchtower or any Watchtower publication. This is the attitude, the disposition, the viewpoint, how they think. There is a culture in Jehovah's Witnesses that at sometimes is even more powerful. It has more influence on what you do and don't do than even something that's written in their publications. And so that is kind of where we come in with our channel, is to help people to understand that you need to literally dig up underneath the surface, just standing on the front porch and everything, you know, nice little suit and tie, smiling and everything. But when you step behind, you get to see the man behind the curtain. And that makes a tremendous difference.

John Dehlin [00:14:42] I love it. Yeah, I know there are a lot of Mormons and ex Mormons nodding their heads right now. Just this idea of really nice people, good reputations, clean living. That's how we would describe how people see us as, well, maybe a little weird, but, you know, good, kind people. But I was just going to say, I really connect with what you're saying because I grew up in Katy, Texas, which also was a Baptist town, as a Mormon. And you would think that all the persecution I received as a Mormon in a Baptist town maybe would have made me question my church or made me weaker in my faith. It made me stronger. Why are you shaking your head, James? J.T.

JT [00:15:25] yeah, why are you?

John Dehlin [00:15:26] Why you're not in your head, Lady C. Right.

JT [00:15:28] Yeah, you're absolutely right. And. And this is what you have said. Man is the most important thing. And the reason why is because of the basic teaching of high control groups. And you've seen it, David Koresh, all those high control groups of cults, they constantly tell their People, folks, to go hate you. In fact, let me give you a perfect example. We was laughing, my wife and I was laughing on the day when we. When a Witness starts studying the Bible with someone, you come to someone's home and you. They. They let you come back every week to study. One of the things that you tell them is this.

JT [00:16:02] Now, let me explain to you that they're going to be those who will not like the fact that you are studying with us as Jehovah's Witness because you are learning the truth, and they're going to discourage you. They're going to tell you to not study with Jehovah's Witness. Then you know what happens? Two or three weeks later, they telling somebody in their family, I'm studying the Bible, Jehovah's Witnesses. And the first thing the person said, man, you believe them in the fool, crazy man.

JT [00:16:26] And so all of a sudden, the person like, oh, my goodness, he don't even know my uncle. And he was right. That's exactly what he said was going to happen. And what that does, that provides the confirmation that you have the truth. And so you now view persecution as a badge of honor. And that is why Witnesses have no problem going to jail. And because they think, they believe everything they're doing is for God. And it brings to mind that the statement that the apostles said that there will come a time where people would deliver you up and kill you and think they did a service to God.

JT [00:17:02] And that is what makes, unfortunately, some religious belief systems so dangerous. Because once a man or woman is convinced that what they are doing. And we saw this on nine, 11, we saw this. Once a person is convinced that what they are doing is what God himself says, you can't stop them. That person, man or woman, unstoppable, right?

Lady Cee [00:17:26] But you know what I also found was the name Jehovah, because they like to play that. That card, too. So, like, you would go to people's door and you would ask them, do you know what God's name is? And you would take him to Psalms 83, 18, and you would introduce them to Jehovah's name. And then all of a sudden, you know, they would be like, my pastor, my preacher didn't tell me God's name was Jehovah. And so then, you know, they had this. This thing where now they're so devoted to this concept, to this name of God and their preacher and pastor and priest and so forth.

Lady Cee [00:18:03] Didn't tell them about, you know, this name and all this kind of stuff. And then The Jehovah's Witnesses, the brothers who write the articles up at Bethel, when they start, you know, hearing about the grumblings and the moanings about people in the congregation because, you know, they get the reports from the circuit overseer when they come to go to the congregations and they, you know, give the little six month report on the congregation. Then they write these little articles in the magazines about, you know, what people are talking about in the congregation. So they had this little article up, I remember a long time ago, and the article was like, where did you learn God's name?

Lady Cee [00:18:39] So it's like, okay, so now you're gonna pull that and put that in my face and say, oh, stop complaining, because we're the people who taught you that God's name is Jehovah. So they use a lot of little ways to, you know, play on your emotions, your feelings and, you know, just people feel like they're indebted to the Watchtower Society because of that one fact, you know, so it's a lot of stuff like that.

JT [00:19:06] I love it. My wife often talks about it. Reminds you of abused women. You have a, an abused woman and she may become involved a man, and he'll say, I pulled you out of the gutter. You want nothing before you knew me. And that's kind of the trick that the Watchtower plays on its members because they'll, they will throw it in your face. Well, you wouldn't be here if it wasn't for us. You, if you wouldn't, we hadn't stopped by and told you. And so you begin like an abused woman, like, yeah, that's true. I wouldn't be here. And, and, and all of a sudden you begin to question yourself.

JT [00:19:38] Whenever you begin to start thinking for yourself, they, they will quickly remind you, where were you before you found us? And so it's, that's why I refer to it all the time that as a Jehovah's Witness, you and, and, and and yourself as a Mormon and anyone who's in a high control religious group.

JT [00:19:56] I mean, you're spiritually abused, man. I mean, you can call it what you want to, but, but you're spiritually abused. And, and it takes its toll on people, man. I mean, it, we, we see that. And you know, I saw that even when I was a Witness now I was an elder and man, the friends, the people were called just broken. And, and, and, and, and you knew you couldn't fix it because you didn't have no training, but because you had this title and people Just would listen to whatever you would say. That's why it makes so dangerous. Because you get a fool up there giving advice, man, you're in trouble.

JT [00:20:26] And unfortunately, you have a lot of fools out there. And so this whole idea that you can't make it without us, that runs deep. That runs very deep.

John Dehlin [00:20:38] Yeah. And that is a classic abuse tactic. Yeah. Okay, so let me ask you about conversion really quick because, you know, a lot of times, okay, we're taught as Mormons that you're converted by the Holy Ghost, that you get these warm feelings and, you know, you feel the hair in your arm stands up or the hair in your neck, you get a chill. And people, when they're with the Mormon missionaries, they're taught when you feel those feelings of peace or love or joy or warmth, that's the Holy Ghost number one. And the. That's the Holy Ghost testifying to you that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is the true church. How are Jehovah's Witnesses taught there to know that the church is the true church? We'd like to hear your version of that.

How Members Know They Are in the True Church

JT [00:21:35] That is a great question. I am so glad that you brought it up. Notice you said that you get this feeling and that's how you know that you're. That you're in the true church.

John Dehlin [00:21:45] Yes.

JT [00:21:45] Very important to understand that Jehovah's Witnesses cannot teach that. They can't teach that. You know why? Because Jehovah's Witnesses have two groups of Christians. They have two different sets of Christians. The only one who feels any warm and fuzzy, that's the anointed. God's spirit bears witness with their spirit. They're the only ones who can get any warm and fuzzy. If you are part of the great crowd and you talk about you got some warm and fuzzy, Witnesses will look at you like, oh, boy, watch out. So it's interesting how in your religion, you know you're part of the true religion because you get the warm and fuzzy.

JT [00:22:20] How does the Jehovah's Witness know he's part of the true religion? Very simple. You complete the questions that the elders have for you to get baptized. And they say you now can get baptized. Because in order to get as baptized as Jehovah's Witness, the elders will sit down with you and they will go over you a ton of questions. And once you complete all the questions and they get together because they have. They typically do three meetings, three different brothers get with you. And what they'll do, they'll go over a certain section the next one go over a little section next. And if they get together and say, I think he knows enough.

JT [00:22:50] I think, you know, he's doing good, he's doing good. That's how you know you're part of the true religion. There is no warm and fuzzy.

John Dehlin [00:22:57] Interesting.

JT [00:22:58] And it's because the Witness is too. The Witnesses teach that there are two separate groups, and only the anointed have God's spirit bear witness with theirs. So you can't give that to the great crowd, man. You can't have great crowd folks talking about they feeling some warm and fuzzy.

Lady Cee [00:23:14] Well, the closest thing. Actually, the closest thing that you're going to get to something like that is like. Like when 911 hit and when the. The two twin towers went down and the Witnesses had been, you know, preaching this gloom and doom, all these Jehovah's Witnesses that had stopped going to the king, everybody was flocking back to the meetings. So what they're. They're. To me, they're warm and fuzzy is they have identified gloom and doom ahead. When gloom and doom appears, it's like, yes, they've been talking this for years, and now it's time to get back to Jehovah. That's. That was my warm and fuzzy.

JT [00:23:52] Yeah, that's. That. That's kind of how like. Like right now with COVID Oh, my goodness, man. When Covet hit Witnesses, like, oh, the end is here. The end is here about, you know, pestilence and sickness and death. And for the Witness, this was. This was the Holy Grail. And so that's the kind of stuff that they do. And of course, you know, like, we was talking before and we did a couple of videos on, you know, I mean, it. Kobe has come, and from everything that looks like Cove is going to be pretty much moving on. And so what will happen is this will simply be another period in the march of humanity.

JT [00:24:27] And we know that because when you look at the start of this religion, they was hanging on to World War I, which was in 1914. The world was going to end when the war broke out. The end was coming. Witnesses knew it. And here we are now, man, a hundred and almost over 100 years later. And all those people back there who looked at what the Watchtower explained was, these are the signs.

JT [00:24:51] They're all dead now, man. They're all dead. The watch out taught you had to be about 15 years old to understand what happened in 1914. Those people are all gone.

Lady Cee [00:25:02] Right?

John Dehlin [00:25:03] I love it.

Lady Cee [00:25:04] And.

John Dehlin [00:25:04] Go ahead, Lacey.

Lady Cee [00:25:05] Yeah, I was gonna say, circling back to the warm and fuzzy. Here's another. Another warm and fuzzy for you. Okay, so Jehovah's Witnesses are told, be at your three meetings a week. Well, no, it's five. It's different now because they. They change things up. But when we were going, it was five meetings a week. So if you made your five, you felt warm and fuzzy.

JT [00:25:25] Yeah.

Lady Cee [00:25:26] If you went out and field service and you knocked on your fair share of doors every month, then you kind of felt warm and fuzzy. So if you were doing all of the things that Watchtower told you to do, those are kind of like your warm and fuzzies.

JT [00:25:41] Yeah, that's. That's the warm and fuzzy.

John Dehlin [00:25:44] So kind of kind of positive reinforcement for doing what you're told to do.

JT [00:25:48] That's exactly right.

John Dehlin [00:25:49] There's a. There's a good comment by somebody called Ex Jehovah's Witness Activism New Zealand. He actually writes, let's see. Jehovah's Witnesses claim to base their faith on facts, realities and truth, or head knowledge only. And that's interesting because I think that's different than how people would describe their conversion of Mormonism. So that's interesting. And it's interesting because I think now, you wouldn't quite call it facts and reality and truth, would you? You probably wouldn't call it that. Now.

JT [00:26:25] Yes, we did a video. If you get a chance, we invite you to take a look at it. The video is called From Truth to Trash. I'm going to share some of this. That, and I mean, this is the whole reason why we tell people. You have to think critically.

JT [00:26:46] The Watchtower has had basically four past presidents. Do you know that? Under the first president, Russell, Rutherford, Noah, and basically Frederick Franz. Do you know that Jehovah's Witnesses do not use any of the books that was published under those four presidents because they have all been basically relegated to the trash can.

JT [00:27:16] In other words, when Russell was alive, he stood before tens of thousands of people and said, this book contains the truth, man. That book is in the trash. Rutherford in England, all around the world stood before tens of thousands. This book contains the truth. It's in the trash now. Same thing with Nathan Knorr and now Frederick Franz. Most of the books that Frederick Franz wrote are now in either in the trash or heading to the trash. Frederick Franz.

JT [00:27:45] When I was at Bethel, I used to live down the hall from Frederick Franz. He lived on the ninth floor of the 124 Columbia High School.

John Dehlin [00:27:52] Tell us what in Bethel means.

JT [00:27:54] Bethel is basically the headquarters of Jehovah's Witnesses. Bethel means House of God. And so the Watchtower Bible and Track Society refers to their headquarters as the House of God. And so to be invited to serve at Bethel in the Jehovah's Witness world, it is literally. And I mean this. It is literally the Jehovah's Witnesses version of Harvard and Yale. It really is, because you're serving there with the governing body. When I was there, they used to tell us all the time, you, brothers need to be very aware of how fortunate you are. At the time, there are 6 million Jehovah's Witnesses around the world. Only 6,000 work at the headquarters around the world.

JT [00:28:39] And so you were part of the 1%. And so you got to see the organization literally on a level that the average Jehovah's Witness will never in their life see. And so that was one of the things that kind of drove us to actually. We. We left in 1998, man, 1990. We were gone.

JT [00:29:02] People kept saying, J.T. lady C. Y' all guys need to tell y' all story, man. Y' all guys, y' all were involved in a lot of stuff that most Witnesses don't know nothing about. I mean, y' all involved in Bethel level, regional level, circuit level. Y' all guys saw a lot of stuff. You need to let people know some of the stuff that you knew. And so, because we was going to college, you know, and so we decided, well, if we're going to set up a channel, we're going to set it up a certain way.

JT [00:29:27] We didn't want to get into debates with people. We simply wanted to simply provide you with information of what we lived and what we saw, what we've experienced. And you can take it and leave it, because I'm gonna tell you, man, this is a business. Watchtower is a business. Watchtower just sold all their property in Brooklyn, New York, to the tune of $2 billion.

JT [00:29:47] The Brooklyn Heights has, like, a little newspaper. They just recently, about a couple years ago, they did. They went down to the Kings county and went through all the Watchtower properties and what it sold for over $2 billion. The Watchtower clean out when they rolled up out of Brooklyn. And as you know, churches don't pay taxes. So the Watchtower, man, is a major corporation that just. I mean, the money side of this organization, man, is just unreal. I mean, it really is amazing.

John Dehlin [00:30:19] Yeah. Yeah. There's that saying from L. Ron Hubbard, if you want to get rich, start a business. If you want to get really rich, start a religion. And we kind of we kind of blew Leah Remini and Mike Rinder, the ex Scientologist, because I was listening to their podcast and they're like, scientology is worth two or three billion dollars. That I kind of blew them away because it was released a couple of years ago that just, just the cash, stock and real estate investments of the Mormon Church exceeds $120 billion.

JT [00:30:54] I believe it.

John Dehlin [00:30:56] And that's not counting the actual church and its actual assets and real estate of all its churches and temples and all its operations. That's not counting that. That's just how much money and cash is in their investments. Right. The Mormon Church owns 2% of the publicly available land in the state of Florida. 2%. So I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to flex on you guys, but I'm just saying, like.

JT [00:31:24] Oh, yeah, yeah, like religion. Religion is big business, man.

Lady Cee [00:31:28] I mean, the Mormons never said that they weren't trying to make money. They have been. We're not after your money. And they really are, they really are, but because they don't let. Because they don't really push college. See, you know, but I know about the Mormons. They do believe in going to college.

John Dehlin [00:31:46] Yeah, that's right.

Lady Cee [00:31:47] It says, you know, you can only get so much money from a turnip, you know, office buildings at night. I'm not gonna be able to give you too much in donations.

JT [00:31:58] Yeah, right. That's one of the things I do have to say about the Mormon Church, regardless, whatever you may feel about them, they did realize that we can get more money from people who got education and good jobs, who got people with no education and low paying jobs. I mean, I got. That was a good play. That was a good play.

John Dehlin [00:32:18] All right. I love it. Okay, so. So when somebody converts to Job's Witnesses, what do you think the main reasons are? We. We already talked about this a little bit. Maybe they've got a death in the family. Maybe they're poor. What do you think the main 3 to 5 reasons are? When someone converts, what is it that gets them? Is it the community? Is it they feel the love? Is it their, you know, what is it? What, what causes people. People to convert?

Why People Convert to Jehovah's Witnesses

Lady Cee [00:32:45] It's a lot of things. Like my mom, the death of her son. I know people may go out into the world, they may get involved in drugs and they have gone through a bad life and maybe had a near death experience and now they're like, look, I'm going back to Jehovah because ain't nothing in this world. And we get people you know, putting comments on our YouTube videos. And that was one of the reasons why someone came back is because they had went out into the world and gotten. Gotten involved in all kind of stuff. And they said, I'm not ever leaving the religion again because they felt it was a safety net.

Lady Cee [00:33:25] And then, you know, there's people that come back or getting baptized because, you know, they're just. Maybe somebody got disfellowshipped, you know, and so then they want to get reinstated. They're coming back to go talk to their family.

Lady Cee [00:33:39] We even get people that write us emails because they're dating someone that's a Jehovah's Witness, and the only way they're going to marry them is they got to convert to the religion. So there's just all. I mean, when you think about it, it's anything from A to Z. Why people would become a Jehovah's Witness. Maybe they're afraid, you know, of dying. Maybe. Like, I have an aunt who decided that she was leaving the religion. She had a conversation with me 10 years ago, and she said, I'll never go back. Okay.

Lady Cee [00:34:14] So at this point, we're having good conversations. We're talking back and forth. Aunt, niece, she's helping me get through caretaking. My mom. My mom is sick. My aunt, she's like the shoulder I'm crying on, Right. So all of a sudden, she gets this. This terminal illness. You know, she gets diagnosed with a terminal illness. Then all of a sudden she's going back to the kingdom hall, and she found out that we have a YouTube channel.

Lady Cee [00:34:45] And she decided that enough was enough and too much was foolish on her end. And so she cut me off and she cut my dad off. And so she went to her grave not speaking another word to me. And we kind of like stopped talking four years before she died. So there's a lot of reasons why people go back to this religion or. Or join.

JT [00:35:08] Yeah. But my wife, the point she made that they're just outstanding examples of the various reasons that people convert or go back. I think from a marketing standpoint, Jehovah's Witnesses are probably one of the better products that's being sold, religiously speaking.

JT [00:35:28] Many denominations teach that you're going to die, go to heaven, sit on clouds, play harps, eat honey, and drink milk. That's typically what you are told in many denominations, what you will do when you go to heaven. Jehovah's Witnesses, they have a different product.

JT [00:35:43] Their product is paradise. Paradise. Some that you've seen, some, you know, what it looks like you can go to Hawaii, you can go to the Caribbean islands. You can find, like, all around the world. And so when you are living in what we refer to as the ghetto or the hood or whatever, and Jehovah's Witness knocks on your door and they hold up that little magazine and they ask that magic question, would you and your family like to live in a place that looked like this? Now, only a fool would say no.

Lady Cee [00:36:15] Only a fool.

JT [00:36:17] But there's a price you got to pay, and it starts out very cheap. This is very, very true. As a Witness, you will tell a person, do you have just one hour a week that you can spare to study the vibe? Just one hour. Not two, just one hour. And the average person thinking, I got 160, 860, 970 hours. I just wasted 180. I'm wasting everything. I can give God at least one hour. That's how it starts, man. It starts with one hour a week. And the next thing you know, at the end of the day, it has literally taken over your entire life. And that's how it works. And so that is how it starts. Also, people come in because they want to get into the paradise. Also. Jehovah's Witnesses have.

John Dehlin [00:37:08] And I.

JT [00:37:08] You know, and this is just something I remember I had this discussion with someone before we left Watchtower, had Jehovah's Witness had probably one of the coolest networks in the world, I got to admit, as a religious organization, they got one of the coolest networks in the world.

JT [00:37:24] Basically. Basically, any Jehovah's Witness could travel anywhere they want to travel anywhere they want to travel in the world. Pick up the phone, call the Kingdom Hall. I'm out of town, brother. I need some help. And I broke down the side of the road, and basically somebody will come by and get you. That is one of the things that is really amazing among religions. You can have two Baptist churches, one in Chicago, one in Detroit, and you couldn't call somebody from another Baptist church that don't know you and say, I'm gonna be in town. That. That typically won't happen. But one of the things that the Jehovah's Witnesses do, they have this network, and this network works just like that.

JT [00:38:04] I have traveled all over. You need somewhere to stay? Especially I was when I was in At Bethel. You travel wherever you go. Where are you from? You from headquarters, brother. Come on down. Come on down. You know, my wife, she often relates experiences that she had because they was in the military, her dad was in the military. So they would get put on base after base, after base. And my mother in law, man, she just called the local Kingdom Hall. We here, my husband on assignment, and somebody show me the Kingdom hall sister. Come on down, girl. We glad to have you in, girl. Come on in.

Lady Cee [00:38:31] We love you. Yeah, because I didn't. When we went to Puerto Rico, we. When we went. We were. We were going from Duluth, was it? No, not Duluth. We were going from New Mexico with. My dad was stationed in New Mexico and we were moving to Puerto Rico. And I did not know this because I was little, I was young and I didn't know what was going on. And so I couldn't understand how we had got to Puerto Rico and all these people. Everybody in the Kingdom hall was like, we're so glad to see you guys. We were waiting. We've been waiting for you to get here and everything.

Lady Cee [00:39:02] So I finally asked my mom, I said, well, how did they know we were coming? And so she said that she had told the brothers. And they wrote Bethel, you know, the headquarters, and they sent a letter to the Puerto Rican branch. And then they let them know that we were on our way to Puerto Rico. And so the brothers were there waiting on us. So when we got to Puerto Rico, we had a whole congregation, a whole lot of friends. We didn't know the language at the time because when we were in Puerto Rico, they didn't have any English speaking congregations at the time.

Lady Cee [00:39:29] But the missionary couple would take us out knocking on doors right outside the gate, you know, of the base, because they had English speaking people outside the gate. But I just did not know that. And so, you know, my mom, everywhere we went, she would be, you know, knocking down the door of the Kingdom Hall. And we had people that we knew, you know, instantly.

JT [00:39:50] Yeah, but There's a catch 22 to that. There's a catch 22. The witnesses will sell this, that this is the way it is all the time. And what ends up happening is they sell you that this love that you receive or this welcoming that you receive, everybody does that. Well, the fact of the matter is everybody doesn't.

JT [00:40:15] Everybody doesn't. But here's the catch. You have to pretend like it does. So you can't tell a non Jehovah's Witness. Well, you know, some congregation, they ain't like that. They don't like people this color. They ain't got no love. You can't tell people that. So you're selling this product that there's love in every place you go. You're gonna be welcome. And that's not true. It's not true. But the problem is you can't really tell nobody about that part. So you. So you have the Witness religion literally selling this product that everywhere you go, this is what it's going to be like.

Lady Cee [00:40:48] Well, you know what? See, here's the thing about that, and this is what I learned through my own personal experience. The reason why our family was so well liked is because my mom was out in field service knocking on doors. And she was. She was a very, very regular out, and she was a very active Jehovah's Witness. And so she hung out with a lot of the, like, elders wives and pioneers and stuff like that. So that's the reason why, you know, she did so well. But we have been in congregations with people who hit and miss going to the Kingdom hall, didn't go to the meetings, and they would be called spiritually weak and stuff like that.

Lady Cee [00:41:24] And so they didn't get that support. But my mom, she was out because my mom didn't work a job. So working for the Watchtower, that was her job. She didn't get paid, but, you know, she was working. You know, love it. It is. You know, that was my personal experience.

John Dehlin [00:41:40] This is great. And, yeah, Mormons have this global community and network, too. Wherever you go, you can find Mormons, Mormons that will welcome you and treat you like a brother or sister. So we really relate to that. Let me ask you this. What is it? I'm of the belief that religions thrive because they actually do add value, at least for a time and at least for a certain group of people. What are the aspects of the Jehovah's Witness life that actually are in many ways healthy or valuable that's allowed the Jehovah's Witness, you know, church to thrive? There's got to be good. What are the aspects that are good or viewed as valuable to the members? What would you say those things are?

What Life Inside the Organization Looks Like

Lady Cee [00:42:23] Oh, I think it's the association. I think it's the. The lifestyle.

John Dehlin [00:42:29] What do you mean?

Lady Cee [00:42:31] Like, Pete. Like the, the value of, you know, like, they don't smoke or, or, you know, you know, to get drunk. They don't, you know, different stuff like that. And you have.

John Dehlin [00:42:40] Name all the. Name all those things. Because Mormons don't drink. What. What else? Don't drink. Don't smoke. What else?

Lady Cee [00:42:44] They do drink, but they're not allowed to get drunk.

John Dehlin [00:42:46] Okay. No. No getting drunk.

JT [00:42:48] Okay.

Lady Cee [00:42:49] They're, they're, they're, they're. When we were in. In the Jehovah's Witness religion, you didn't worry about people coming to your house, stealing. You could trust people. It was. It was just one of those things where you knew that the life was wholesome. You have to worry about people going out to clubs and, you know, getting in trouble or you, like, dating your wife. Maybe. Maybe you go to the Kingdom hall, some brother's trying to hit on some sister and it's not his wife, and stuff like that. This kind of stuff happens. You know, people have. You know, they get. They get in trouble, but you just feel like. You just felt like the association was clean.

JT [00:43:26] That's overall.

John Dehlin [00:43:27] Overall, good, clean living. Good, clean living.

Lady Cee [00:43:30] And you know what? We got a lot of people that we know that left or they won't leave because of that, because they're like, where are we gonna go? Who we gonna hang out with? Who y' all hanging out with? You know, and so. And because Jehovah's Witnesses, they don't really get that many invites. If you have a party, you ain't got to worry about nobody not showing up. You know, it's like, you know, like, some people, they. Like some of the things that they would teach us at the congregation, the Kingdom hall, it would be like, if you get an invitation, don't. Don't, you know, take an invitation and then, you know, get a better invitation and then go over here. So, you know, people kind of stuck. They kept their word, pretty much kind of stuff like that.

John Dehlin [00:44:10] They support each other. They try and support each other.

Lady Cee [00:44:12] Yeah. They try to support each other.

JT [00:44:14] Yeah. That's. That's a. That's a. That's a very good point for me. Since I have left the organization, I. I have set back and I have asked the question as well. And my philosophical viewpoint is that religious belief systems, they serve a very valuable role.

JT [00:44:39] I think that anyone who says that they don't is not really looking at what religious belief systems actually do. Religious belief systems, they provide us as humans with answers to life's most difficult questions. Why are we here? Where are we going?

JT [00:45:00] What happens after death? That's what religious belief systems do. They will provide us with one, comforting and two satisfying answers to life's most difficult questions. Now, with that having been said, that don't mean the answer's right, but they will provide you with comforting and satisfying answers. And what people do is we seek out the religious belief system that provides us with that comforting and satisfying answer. And typically, when people find that religious belief system, an announcement will be Made I have found the truth.

JT [00:45:45] I found the truth. And then sometimes something else starts. And this is kind of interesting. The religious belief system that this person now has, they will now turn to you and say, bob, you need to have the same religious belief system I have, because if you don't, my God is going to kill you.

Lady Cee [00:46:08] You.

JT [00:46:08] And you will see this system. You will literally see this as you look through religious belief system, after the person feels, well, this is what I need, then, then this is what you need. And if you don't accept what I got, you got to die. And so.

JT [00:46:21] And so religious belief systems, they will answer those questions. I mean, you look anywhere around the world, I mean, literally anywhere around the world, people will find those. But it doesn't necessarily mean that the answers is right, doesn't mean the answers are true, but they do satisfy that person.

JT [00:46:35] And so we often talk about this without religious belief system. Keeping people in check over the years will tell you you're gonna be punished if you do something wrong. Punishment is always a component. You can get punished. And so as kids, we know we didn't do a lot of stuff because our parents would punish us. Well, religious belief systems have a component where it says you don't get punished. And so it actually keep people, you know, in line. I mean, as a society and stuff.

JT [00:47:05] The sad part is that too many times, religious belief systems, they will take over the person's entire life because basically, you have high control groups and you have low control groups, and you can talk to people. Well, you have one religion where they. They impact everything you do. There's an article that the Watchtower wrote just to show you just how this thing works, What Jehovah's Witnesses were writing to the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, Can I buy my child this toy?

JT [00:47:39] So you have a group of adults who are part of a religious belief system, 35, 45, 50 years old. They're at the point where they don't even know if they can buy their child a toy because they need somebody. And as a watch, I said some friends needed somebody to make a ruling. But that's because the Watchtower makes its members so dependent. When I was an elder, the number one question I got as an elder,

Lady Cee [00:48:04] can we do that?

JT [00:48:06] Is it okay? Doesn't know what he can and cannot do. He doesn't know. And so as a result, when you have to ask somebody what you can and cannot do, you can rest assured, man, somebody's going to be willing to tell you what you can and cannot do. And that's kind of how it works in the organization. And that's what leads people down all kinds of roads to bad decisions, and it just goes downhill.

Lady Cee [00:48:35] Well, see, it really. Were you going to ask a question?

John Dehlin [00:48:37] No, no. Go ahead, go ahead.

Lady Cee [00:48:39] Well, I was going to say, really, it goes. When the religion first started.

JT [00:48:45] Yeah.

Lady Cee [00:48:45] You know, the rules weren't there, and so the. The least number of people that you have part of the group, you know, you don't have to, you know, bring the reins in so tight because, you know, at one point, I don't know if people knew this, but Jehovah's Witnesses used to celebrate Christmas years ago.

Lady Cee [00:49:04] And then as things started changing and they want to be different, more different from other religions, I don't know why they changed. But anyway, bottom line is, you know, like, when he was at Bethel, he would talk about. Which is the world headquarters for people who are just joining Jehovah's Witnesses.

Lady Cee [00:49:23] Basically. If something happened with those 6,000 brothers at Bethel, like, they had a. Was it. They had the thing about the practical jokes. They had something about practical jokes, you know, because that they wrote in the Watchtower because a Bethelite did a practical joke on somebody and made them think that somebody had fallen off the roof. You know, so when little things like that happen, or they had these people that were having parties at these big hotels charging people to get in, and they had thousands of young people that were at these parties, and it was getting out of control.

Lady Cee [00:50:00] So they started writing articles about not having large gatherings. So, you know, as. As the Witnesses grew and people began to do things that was going to make the group look bad, the Watchtower Society was like saying, no, you can't do that. And so there were things that are not even biblical that you can't do, all because they can't control the number of people that are participating in these activities.

John Dehlin [00:50:31] Interesting. Yeah, I really relate to that. Like somehow in Mormonism, Mormon orthodox Mormons believe that God never changes, the church never changes. The church is the same now all the way back to Jesus. It's basically, the Mormon Church is the same as Jesus's church. I'm exaggerating, but that's kind of. There's this mindset.

JT [00:50:51] Same here, we believe the same.

John Dehlin [00:50:53] There's this mindset that the church never changes, God never changes, but the church changes all the time. But somehow they know how to change just slowly enough, just gradually enough, and just in the delicate ways so that members don't realize that 50 years ago was a totally different church than you know, in many ways than the church is now. You guys relate to that?

JT [00:51:13] Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, if you look at the Witnesses of the turn of the century, you would not recognize them. And in fact, for those of us who have left coming out of the 70s, 80s, and 90s, when we look at this organization, we do not recognize it. Let me just give you one simple example.

JT [00:51:36] When I was at the world headquarters, one of the things that the Governing body was always cognizant of, and that is they kept a very low profile. Low profile. The average Jehovah's Witness around the world had not never even seen the Governing Body. If you were to ask them, can you name the members of the Governing body? You would not be able to name them, because these guys, they. They stayed in the background, which is what they like, because they didn't want to be the face. They didn't want to be on the front line.

JT [00:52:04] The new governing body. Man, these boys are rock stars. These are rock stars. And I'll give you a perfect example of what a rock star is like a member of the Governing Body was attending a summer convention, and someone had written to us and said, you will not believe what I saw happening. There was a line of people standing in front of this Governing Body member for the purpose of him autographing their Bible.

JT [00:52:33] How do you autograph a book that don't even belong to you? I thought it was God's book. How you gonna slap somebody's name up there on somebody's book? And so these guys are like rock stars. And so for a lot of Witnesses who came up in that era, they're like, this is. This is. This is. You're overshadowing Jesus Christ right now. And so it causes them to take that pause. We tell people to do. Take that pause, take a step back, and start asking some serious questions. And so for a lot of people, they just look at how the leadership runs things now, and it is really causing a lot of people to just take pause. Just on that alone.

John Dehlin [00:53:10] Yeah, I'm hearing a tiny bit of an echo. Is there something that happened on your end that made my voice have an echo? Is your. Did your microphone go up? Can you. Okay, now I don't hear it anymore. I don't hear it anymore.

Lady Cee [00:53:24] Okay, okay.

John Dehlin [00:53:24] Something. Something just changed. Okay. Okay. This is great. Okay, so let's start. You talked about no birthdays. You talked about no Christmas, no holidays. What are the main. You know, with Mormonism, it's a certain set of behaviors. What are the biggest, most important behaviors that sort of stand out for Jehovah's Witness that are different maybe than other religious traditions. What behaviors define a faithful Jehovah's Witness?

Obedience to the Watchtower and Defining Behaviors

JT [00:53:55] Wow, that's a good question. Probably the biggest thing that defines a Jehovah's Witness is their acceptance of what they're told. Published in the Watchtower magazines. I know people who. They go to church and they'll disagree with their past. I don't know why he was talking about today. He make no sense. Jehovah's Witness would never do that. Not publicly anyway. A Jehovah's Witness is taught to view the published works that you find in the Watchtower publications as food from God, man. There is an experience that the Watchtower wrote. The Watchtower uses experiences of Witnesses as teaching tools. In other words, if we want you to do something, we're going to give you an example of what we really want you to do without telling you. Hence, you can't claim that we told you to do this. The writing department, man, has the coolest writing style in the world.

Lady Cee [00:54:53] World.

JT [00:54:53] They can write stuff without saying it. And it's like one guy said, they can cut you, and you don't even know who cut you. Your shirt is turning red. You don't even know when you got cut. And that's what the Watchtower can do. There was an article about a Witness. The article dealt with Witnesses who were questioning the Watchtower Society. And they gave the example of an older couple that went down to their mailbox. This is when they used to send out the magazine in subscription form. You get them in your mailbox box. They went out to get the mail. They came back in, and the circuit overseer, another witness, was staying with them.

JT [00:55:28] And the older couple said, now, before we. Before we have breakfast, we want to thank Jehovah for this magazine. Before we take this wrap off, so will you mind praying with us? Because we're going to offer up a prayer for this magazine that we just got from the United States, New York City. And so you talking about idolatry. I mean, my goodness.

JT [00:55:50] And so this is what they did. They got down their knees and they prayed to God to thank him for this Watchtower magazine that probably in about five or six years was going to end up in the trash because so much information was now wrong or outdated. And so this is the type of mindset that, as a wit. And now this particular example, when Witnesses around the world read this, this lets them know this is what your view toward these publications should be. Just like this guy here that we use in this magazine. And that is one of the most powerful teaching things that Witnesses use.

JT [00:56:24] They use examples of other people. And they say, this right here, this is a good Christian. This is a good servant of Jehovah. Why aren't you doing that? And the guilt tripping that takes place because of that man, it is unreal. It is just unreal.

Lady Cee [00:56:42] And I think the other thing. And I know other religions because I've talked to people and they've talked about how Jehovah's Witnesses are not the only people that shun. Oh, yeah. And so. But I think. To the greater good or the greater bad, pretty much. I don't know if these other religions shun the way Jehovah's Witnesses shun.

JT [00:57:01] Yeah.

Lady Cee [00:57:01] Because we know people that have never spoken to their grandkids or this one family that I know out in Iowa, I kind of adopted them because their grandparents won't have anything to do with them. And one of the little kids who's now like, 10 years old doesn't even know that she has grandparents. That's how long it's been. So basically, when you look at the way they do the shunning, I mean, when I'm. When I say shunning, I mean, my dad called my uncle, who is not a Jehovah's Witness, who's the. The husband of the aunt that shunned me to the day she died, when my dad called the house to talk to her husband, because her husband's not a Witness, but she got to the point where the husband couldn't talk to us and he wasn't a Witness.

Lady Cee [00:57:53] And so whenever my dad would call the house, she wouldn't talk to my dad. She would just hand the phone straight to her husband. But then it got so bad that my uncle could have. He would have to sneak out the house, or he would be at the hospital with my aunt in the parking lot calling my dad to see how my dad is doing, because he can't talk to my dad in front of his wife, and he ain't even a Jehovah's Witness. So she got him shunning or sneaking around the corner to call somebody. It's terrible.

JT [00:58:25] Yeah. Get that beat down, man. Get that beat down.

Lady Cee [00:58:28] That's shunning. So that's shunning. And that's all about following the watchtower, too, because, you know, there's people like. My dad was raised as a Catholic. My grandmother was going to be a nun. She was in the convent for nine years. And for some Reason she never got, you know, became a nun. But, you know, I understood that they, they don't let you take communion if you're not in good standing, but they ain't shunning you, you know, so they didn't get. I mean, my aunt couldn't take communion because, you know, she wasn't going to, you know, she wasn't going to be. She wasn't going to church.

Lady Cee [00:59:00] So when they got ready to go do communion at my grandmother's funeral, they wouldn't let her come up there and take her communion or nothing like that. But nobody was shunning her at the church because she was going to church. So Jehovah's Witnesses, if you don't go to church, if you don't go to the Kingdom hall, you're going to be shunned. That's a big one. That's a huge one. Wow.

John Dehlin [00:59:20] You know, that's just so. What I just heard is profound. First of all, Mormons shun. And there is hard shunning within Mormonism. But what's more common is the soft shunning, where you're not invited to things. You're viewed as a disappointment by your friends and family. Maybe they won't let their kids play with your kids. You know, there's more soft shunning than hard shunning, although hard shunning exists. And that is one of the main things I expected to hear from you. Of course, I expected, you know, no blood transfusions, no Pledge of Allegiance, no birthdays, no Christmas.

John Dehlin [00:59:56] And of course, the missionary work is something that sets both Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses apart. But I just, I almost got chills when, when J.T. you jumped right to what I think is probably the dominant rule within both the Mormon Church and, and in the Jehovah's Witness church. And it was also reflected by a comment by, again, by ex Jehovah's Witness activism New Zealand. He wrote, they wrote, loyalty and obedience to the faithful and discreet slave is the number one rule of the Jehovah's Witnesses. And my dear friend Amy Germer from Seattle wrote, mormons don't question their prophets. So obedience to authority, I think is the number one doctrine of both our churches. Is that fair to say?

JT [01:00:45] Oh, there's no question about it. When you want. This is why I often get. This is why I often get Jehovah's conversation. Witnesses will make the following statement when you start about their doctrines are changing and they'll say, well, our core doctrines have never changed and you'll say, well, what are your core doctrines? You know, the hell fire and all this kind of stuff. And then I'll say, well, let me ask you a question, because I noticed the list that you gave me of all of your core doctrines that have not changed.

JT [01:01:20] Why did you leave off the doctrine of the faithful and discreet slave? Is that not one of your core doctrines? And I had this debate with Witnesses, and you will see, for some of them, they will stop. And they were like, yeah, that really is because that is, as someone mentioned in the comments, that is basically the foundational teaching of everything about Jehovah's Witnesses.

John Dehlin [01:01:46] Tell us what that is. What is that teaching?

JT [01:01:48] The Watchtower is basically very similar to the Catholic Church apostolic succession. You know, we got the Pope today is supposed to go all the way back to Peter. That's. That's kind of the way the Catholic Church works. Well, the Witnesses have their own process of getting back to the apostles. And they do that by what they call the governing body or the faithful and discreet slave. So the 12 apostles, they started off and then they included everybody who got baptized. And this is where the Witnesses made a crucial mistake in their teachings. I mean, it is a serious mistake in teaching, especially when you start telling people the teaching is from God.

JT [01:02:28] When the Witnesses started and we did a video on this and we invite people to. It's the 144,000 video. The witnesses started out teaching that every person who was baptized was of the Anointed and going to heaven. Now, when you go all the way back to Christianity, back with Jesus, and they were counting all the way back to Jesus Day, when. Which means from the, from 33 CE all the way till the early 1900s, there had not been 144,000 people who had served Christ. Because remember, the teaching was every person who dips into the water comes up out is of the anointed. And how many of the anointed? 144,000. Very quickly, the Watchtower realized a very simple fact. We got more people than we got seats

Lady Cee [01:03:21] because they believe. They believe that the 144, 000 is literal.

JT [01:03:24] That's exactly right. So what did the Watchtower have to do? They had to change their teachings. And what did they do? They literally created a second tier set of Christians called the Great Crowd. Because the number they was up like 54,000 people.

JT [01:03:43] Where are the anointed? You only got 144,000 slots. So it wasn't anybody who does Trajectory knows if we keep moving at this rate, we're going to hit 144,000 real soon and we'll have no more seats. And so that's why they had to change the teaching. They had to literally change the teaching. And as a result, they now had to create an entire new theology.

JT [01:04:03] And today, when I, when we were Witnesses, we were toy as kids. One of the signs that, you know the world is about to end soon is that the number of those who are of the anointed will decrease every year.

JT [01:04:22] Oh, yeah, every year, man. Every year, man. And I'm. And, and, and for any, for any Jehovah's Witness who is watching this video, who's been around this religion for a number of years, they know what I am saying, saying is true.

JT [01:04:37] We have a book, it's called the yearbook. It gives the count of how many are of the anointing. Every year when it was released, Witnesses would open the book and they would find that page. And when they find the page and the number was decreasing, it was a confirmation, man. The system's about to wrap up. It's about to wrap up, man. It's about to wrap up.

JT [01:05:02] When we left, when my wife and I left, there was about 7,000. And as a kid, it went down like 14,000, 12,000. And so until I came adult and when we left, it was like down to 7,000, man. There's 20,000 people now, numbers going back up.

JT [01:05:19] They must have set some new folding chairs up. And I don't know. I don't know. But, but this is what happens when you have teachings that you make up. And the Watchtower has actually acknowledged that a lot of their teachings, man, they just made up the guy called Fred Franz. He was literally the master behind the teachings of Jehovah's Witnesses. Some of their most prolific and most confusing and deep teachings was just stuff he made up. He just made it up. I'm serious. Fred Franz just made it up.

JT [01:05:52] He made it up. How do we know? Very simple. It's in the trash now. It'll take rocket science. If you, if you have a teaching of God that's sitting over in the trash can, that means the guy made it up. That's all it means. The guy made it up.

JT [01:06:07] And so most of all, those deep teachings about the gentile times and the antitype and the types, all that trash is in the trash. I tell my wife and I often tell people all the time. When I was a kid, my sister, My sister, even at her age, she realized it was goofy. We would be studying the Watchtower lesson and it would be about the antitype this and any type that. And my sister would, she would say, mama, this don't make no sense.

JT [01:06:33] And then we would get to the Kingdom hall and they would have the Watchtower study. And during the Watchtower study, people raised their hand and they comment on the paragraphs in the Watchtower on those deep lessons. You might have maybe three, maybe four, maybe five people who basically carried the whole meeting. 125 people sound like, I don't really know what, I'm not sure about that. So you have like maybe the elders, a couple pioneers, sisters. They would literally carry the whole meeting. And then the Watchtower conductor would conclude by saying, now, brothers, today's lesson was solid food. Steak. This wasn't no milk, it was steak.

JT [01:07:08] You got to chew on it for a little while. And so, and so you sitting there, you sitting there in the audience, man, feeling like an idiot because you're like, man, I just didn't understand this deep stuff. God was trying to help us understand that I'm spiritually weak because I couldn't grasp the point. And that's how everybody felt. Only to find out 25 years later, man, all this stuff was trash. And so this is the type of stuff that people are now able to see and able to talk about.

JT [01:07:37] Because even though you may have thought that the meetings or something was goofy and it was just made no sense, you couldn't tell nobody, you couldn't talk to nobody about it. But then the Internet came along and now people grow up this very anonymously. Did you see that lesson today? What do you think of that? Paragraph 14? That was some crazy stuff. Well, sure it was, it was stupid.

Lady Cee [01:08:00] I remember like during the time that I was meeting more Jehovah's Witnesses that were my age, I was meeting my husband, I was doing some deep research on my own. But it wasn't really research because you can't really research using somebody else's book. You gotta research people that's talking about them not reading their own books, but their own books, was telling some stories about them. And I remember reading this one book, I can't even remember the name of the book, but I remember reading millions now living will never die. And so I'm sitting there thinking, I'm sitting there, I'm like, now I'm like, I'm way younger than I am now, right?

Lady Cee [01:08:39] And I'm thinking, that don't make no sense. These people are already dead. Because the million style living was like back in 19, in the early 1900s. And I'm reading this in, like, in the. In the late 80s, and. But what's happening to me is I am getting more sucked in through my associates because I'm meeting people that, you know, have a lot in common with me, and we were connecting. And you're. Because before, you know, I met these, these other Jehovah's Witnesses, you know, I'm living in this little small town.

Lady Cee [01:09:16] Ain't no Witnesses my age. Everybody's older than me. You know, you believe this is the truth, so you think that this is where you got to be, and so you're starting to finally meet people your age in the truth, in the. In the watchtower, so called truth.

Lady Cee [01:09:30] And then I always tell people I was a mail order bride because there was this sister in my congregation. She had new JT and his roommate, and they were getting ready to come down to the district convention that year. And she goes, I got these brothers coming to visit, and they're coming down from New York. And she goes, and JT will just love you, you know. And so I'm like, oh, God. And so I had already been.

Lady Cee [01:10:00] Almost got hits with this other brother that I only want to go into that detail right now, but I was like, I don't want to meet no brothers. I don't care who's coming, whatever. And then I did. When I finally met JT, you know, I thought, JT's kind of cute. JT's kind of cute, right? So. But I mean, you know, so we, we. We knew each other for three years before we got married. But see how that sucked me in. Here's this man who's coming down from Bethel. He's coming from the Harvard and Yale, as he would say, you know, he's all into this religion.

Lady Cee [01:10:38] And he is the one that really got me in deep to this religion, because even though my mother was, you know, a. What I would consider a devout Jehovah's Witness, well, you know, she was out in field service at all her meetings. He took it a step further because he was like, like turning people in for little mild infractions. She watching soap operas. We're gonna turn her into her brothers. You know, it's like, I ain't never heard that before, you know, somebody watching the Young and the Restless, and now you're gonna get turned into the elders because you watching Jack and Ashley and all them, you know, But I'm just saying, it's like, what is going on?

Lady Cee [01:11:19] So he sucks me further in. He got me, you know, like, looking at people at the corner of my eye. At my eye. Like, you can't be around them because, see, Witnesses are. Are particular in the group. So it's not just you're Jehovah's Witness and you're at the meetings, but if you're going to the Kingdom hall and you're, you know, like, doing questionable things, you could be a Jehovah's Witness and people will be shunning you. Like you said, soft shunning. Because they ain't doing everything they're supposed to be doing with Watchtower. So he comes down from Bethel, and it's a whole nother ball of wax.

Lady Cee [01:11:55] It's like I'm being introduced to a whole new facet of this religion that I didn't grow up with because my mother, she didn't, like, tell me to get baptized as a Jehovah's Witness. She didn't tell me that Jehovah was going to destroy me at Armageddon if I didn't get baptized. I heard that from the platform at the Kingdom Hall.

Lady Cee [01:12:17] And what sold me was my father and I took a road trip. We're going from Michigan to Maryland. On our way back, the car breaks down, and we were, like, 50 miles from our house. I was 16 years old. Never forget this.

Lady Cee [01:12:36] And my mother was trying to call everybody in her family that, you know, me and my dad, we stuck on the side of the road. And this is pre cell phone, okay? And I was scared to death. I'm shaking like a leaf. There's these guys that.

Lady Cee [01:12:53] There were some. Some guys that stopped and said my dad asked them where the nearest gas station was, and they said it was over this way. And my dad didn't trust him, so he went over that way. And we just kind of, like, barely made it into the gas station parking lot. And so I told my dad. So when we finally got into the gas. And you know how your mind kind of just runs with. With you? And now that we travel, we find out that, you know, there's really a gas station on both sides of the road. At the time, you thinking these guys were steering us over here because they were gonna come back and rob us and all this kind of stuff.

Lady Cee [01:13:26] So every time the. The little diner opened, because we ended up getting to a gas station, but there was a little diner that was actually attached to this gas station. And so we were in there, and every time that door opened, I'm like, they're coming back for us. They're going to come back and get us. They realized we didn't go to the right place that they told us to go to, and they're coming back for us. And I'm sitting there just shaking like a leaf. So what ends up happening is my mom, she finally gets in touch with the brothers at the kingdom hall, right?

Lady Cee [01:13:57] Not her worldly family, not her non Jehovah's Witness family who had their whole Saturday planned. They're going fishing, boating, going to the beach. But they weren't coming to pick us up. We couldn't get them to come and get us, right? So this is the brothers in the kingdom hall. Brother Elder comes to pick us up. And it was like John Wayne and the Calvary had arrived. And at that point I was like, this is the truth. We couldn't get them worldly relatives of ours to come and get us. But these Jehovah's Witnesses, they were here and picking us up and didn't even complain, didn't charge us no money.

Lady Cee [01:14:36] And I was like, this is the truth. I said, when I, when I get old enough. Because I, I, I didn't get baptized until I was 18, so a couple years, but I was sold. I said, this is the truth, because those brothers were there for us. And I had a lot of, you know, we saw a lot of these different things happening in our lives that said that this was the truth. And that was my selling point. That's what I thought.

John Dehlin [01:14:57] I love it.

JT [01:14:58] Yes, that's, that's very profound. A personal experience like that. And, and, and what's so interesting is what my wife described. This overshadows teachings, doctrines. I've, I've lived this, I've seen, I've experienced. And so that's all you need. And so the emotional part will, will say, I don't care about the doctrines. And there are lots of people right now that we know they don't care about the doctrine. I mean, we, we, we have people right now will tell us, I don't care about the doctrines. I like being here. And so I'm thinking about. And you're like, well, we tell people when we knock on doors that if you're gonna stay in your church, you got to stay in your church because the doctrines are right.

JT [01:15:34] Well, that's different for us. No, how can it be different for us? We tell people we knock on their doors. If your church is not teaching what the Bible said, we need to think about leaving. And then you sit and saying you don't even care about the doctrines anymore. So, so you, you see that social aspect of it, that's Kind of what it was kind of what is different for my wife and I, her background or her experience and things that helped her to lead dealt more with the human aspect of people. For myself it was strictly doctrines.

JT [01:16:09] It was strictly doctrines. And the corporate side, because I saw this organization from the corporate side and we tell people all the time. One of the things I noticed in this organization, the people who move up the ladder in this organization and it just this don't make no sense. It shouldn't be that way.

JT [01:16:29] The people who move up, they are typically individuals who are less at demonstrating the fruits of God's spirit, love, kindness, self. Not these guys, but they are very corporate men. We used to call them society men. Watch our society man corporate. And those are the ones who actually move up to be referred When I was at, when I was at headquarters when if you refer to as he's a good society man, he's a good society man, that means you're a good company man. That's what that means. You're a good company man, which means you will do only what you are told. And that was how I was groomed.

JT [01:17:05] I have a mentor and that was how I was groomed. You only go with what is in print. If the society, if the slave has not said it, don't, don't do it. And so that was how I lived my life. And when I moved like she was talking about turning her mother, my mother in law in because she was watching this story.

JT [01:17:26] The Watchtower has an article that deals with. It's entitled do not share in the sins of others. And this particular article is used by elders and circuit overseers to give what is called a service talk. If they're having some problems in the congregation, you will put together a talk based on do not share in the sins of others. And I remember Circus, I told he said, I need everybody here to make sure this one elder has this talk in his bag. So when you need to give it, you already got it ready to go. And the reason why this particular article, do not share in the sins of Others is one of the most powerful articles to get people to turn in and rat on their friends, their wife, their cousin, their brother, their mama.

JT [01:18:07] In fact, to turn yourself in. And so witnesses will actually turn each other in. Husbands will turn wives in. Oh, yes. Oh yes, brothers, I'm concerned about my husband. He's starting to question what the society says in the magazine. Sister, you did the right thing. We'll talk to him, Sister. And so yeah, we get emails from people.

Lady Cee [01:18:27] Oh man, where, you know, they're no longer with their spouse. Yeah, they're getting into the divorce because they. They don't want to be. Belong to this religion.

JT [01:18:36] Man, that is probably the worst. Oh, yeah, that is the worst, man. I mean, we. Yeah, my wife, she will talk to people. I will talk to people. And we compare the conversations. It's always the same. Their spouse was questioning the organization, questioning the faithful in the street Slave. And there are. I mean, and we're talking about some. I mean, it's one thing if it's a man and, you know, he got a job and he can take care of himself, but, man, there'll be women who don't even work. They have no income. I'm still leaving. I'm still leaving, like, but you ain't got no money, girl, where you going?

Faith Changes, Marriage, and Shunning

JT [01:19:09] And so. And so it doesn't matter because they view this as a test of their faith and their loyalty. Everything in this organization, every single thing in this organization, man, is typically couched or put in the context of this is a test of your loyalty to God.

JT [01:19:29] And if everything that happens is always viewed in that vein, your job, your job says, you got to work tonight, you got a meeting tonight. This is your test, brother. Are you going to pass the test? I mean, so it's like, well, if I don't go to work, I lose my job. Well, once again, that's another test. Can you. It's like we just being tested all day long. It gets ridiculous after a while. So what.

John Dehlin [01:19:51] So what happens in a Jehovah's Witness marriage if one loses their faith? Is divorce allowed? Is divorce encouraged? Is divorce discouraged? Can. Can changes in faith break up a Jehovah's Witness family? And if so, how do you want to tell him?

JT [01:20:08] Want to talk about this?

Lady Cee [01:20:09] Well, he told me if I would have left the organization, he would. He would have left me. He wasn't going to stay, you know, and he told me that if I wanted to keep going to the kingdom after he found out this wasn't the truth, you know, he told me if I wanted to keep going to the meetings and stuff, I could have kept going. But he said we probably wouldn't have lasted because he knew he wasn't going. And, you know, if I'm still going to be looking at him and saying, you need to be at the meetings, you need to be out in service and you're going to the meetings.

Lady Cee [01:20:38] And people remember when he was an elder at Bethel, you know, that's going to really wear your relationship down. Because this religion is really all about. I mean, you live. You this. You wear this religion on your sleeve. This is not like I go to church on Sunday and I can do what I want Monday through Saturday. This is. I'm waking up at Jehovah's Witness. I'm doing my daily text. I'm, you know, making sure I'm studying for these meetings. I'm at these meetings. I'm out in service. I'm telling people in January that I'm getting ready for the district convention in June. Because, I mean, you just.

Lady Cee [01:21:11] This is all you're doing. This is. This. Is it a Jehovah's Witness? The first thing you do, you call somebody on the phone and you live in California and they live in New York City, and the first thing they talking about, who's your circuit overseer? What did y'. All. Did you get that. That point at the meeting that they had last week? Every. Every conversation is built around the religion to the point where people are going to know that you are not keeping up just by your responses. And I had a. I had a. One sister told me she moved from California to Boston, and there's this one YouTube channel that she keeps track of because she wants to keep in touch with her family in California.

Lady Cee [01:21:51] And so by her listening to this other YouTube channel, they keep up with all the latest updates. And so she said that she's able to continue having conversations with her family, making them think that she's still going because she's able to get this information, information off the Internet. So you're not going to get away from, you know, these Jehovah's Witnesses and be able to be around them with. Without them realizing that you're not participating. And I'll give you a perfect example. Jehovah's Witnesses are very into these titles. And when we left, the. The head elder at the Kingdom hall was known as the presiding overseer.

Lady Cee [01:22:29] And, you know, some years ago, they changed it to the Kobe, the, I think the coordinating body of elders. And so now if we keep Talking about the P.O. the P.O. you know, presiding Overseer, then Jehovah's Witnesses are gonna be like, you ain't up to date. You know, you're not up to date with the latest teachings. And I remember when I was, you know, coming along and we used to have this green Bible.

Lady Cee [01:22:50] And so it would be so funny because you would see somebody come to the meeting and they'd be visiting, and then we don't went to the black Bibles, you know, and then With JT at Bethel, they would get your name printed on the Bible. And then they had the. They had different types of black Bibles. They had like the soft, soft cover black Bible. And then they had that, like, hard cover black Bible. But when that brother or sister came to the meeting with that green Bible, you were like, they can't.

JT [01:23:18] They.

Lady Cee [01:23:18] They Jehovah's witnesses from the 60s, you know, because we ain't had, you know, green Bibles in years. And so you would know, you know, that they ain't up with the times, you know, so it's just. It's just all kind of stuff like that, you know?

JT [01:23:30] Yeah, they focus your mind. If you're with a group of Jehovah's Witnesses and let's say you're talking about sports or whatever, Witnesses are taught, all of them don't do it. But this is the point. It's the culture. They teach you to redirect the conversation.

JT [01:23:50] Redirect the conversation to talk about something that you heard the Kingdom hall, something you read in the magazine. And so this is how you. And this is. And this is why we're telling people it's important to understand the culture. Because, see, you. If there are four of you and you want to talk about, you know, man, you know, damn. And Washington Redskin, they need to change that name and whatever, and all of a sudden they're like, well, you know, there was an interesting article in the Watchtower last week, and. And you're trying to go back to the game, they will quickly realize, he ain't spiritual.

JT [01:24:16] He ain't spiritual. He ain't spiritual at all. And so now all of a sudden, they will begin to distance from you. And so these are like culture. You will never find this written in the magazine, but. But this is how the culture works. And every Witness watching this knows if a Witness. In fact, if a Witness get caught watching this show right here, as an elder, it would be my responsibility to pull that person to the side and say, you know, brother, I understand you was watching some former Witnesses on the Internet. What does the Society. What does the Watchtower say about that? And so he in trouble.

JT [01:24:48] He in trouble. And so Witnesses, we. We have. So sometimes we look at our stats and we see there's so many people who come, but they cannot subscribe. They cannot subscribe. Okay, can you imagine? Can you imagine you with some Witnesses and you subscribe to JT and Lady Scene all of a sudden says, ding.

John Dehlin [01:25:07] And this pops up there.

JT [01:25:09] Oh, Lord.

Lady Cee [01:25:10] Oh, Lord.

JT [01:25:12] And so they can't and so they can't do it.

John Dehlin [01:25:14] There's so much fear.

Lady Cee [01:25:15] One sister said. She said. She said, I was watching your channel for a long time before I felt like I could subscribe because she was afraid of what you were saying. She thought other people would be able to see her subscription, who she was subscribed to.

John Dehlin [01:25:27] Yeah.

Lady Cee [01:25:28] And so she was like, subscribe to that channel.

JT [01:25:30] It's crazy.

John Dehlin [01:25:32] As soon as I. As soon as I got excommunicated, people wouldn't like my Facebook posts. They. They wouldn't like it. They wouldn't want to friend me because they were just terrified what would happen if anybody saw that someone liked or friended me on Facebook. And we've. We've got the same thing. So. So in a mixed faith. In a. We call it mixed faith marriages. So, you know, would you shun. Let's just say you're. You're married. Your. Your husband loses his faith. I mean, if somebody leaves the church, the Jehovah's Witness Church, I'm guessing they might get shunned. In Scientology, it's called a suppressive person. In the Mormonism, it's called an apostate. Would a wife shun the husband? If the husband lost his faith, how would that work? Could it break up a family? Ultimately, it sounds like you're saying it could, and it does.

Lady Cee [01:26:23] Well, remember what happened. Okay. There was this one couple that was in our congregation, and we had a busybody sister in our congregation. Now, the way it's supposed to work is this. You can still talk to your spouse, but you're not supposed to talk about spiritual things.

Lady Cee [01:26:40] So this one sister came up to us at the circus family. She was like a busybody, and she goes, I need to talk to you to. To brother J.T. i gotta talk to brother. And so she come. Come. Come here. Come here. I saw sister so. And so talking to her husband. And she was. During the. During the.

Lady Cee [01:26:57] During the assembly, she's talking to her husband. So then JT looked at her and said, do you know what they were talking about? She says, no, but they ain't supposed to be. And, you know, so she was going off about how she was supposed to be talking to her husband about, you know, she thought they were talking about the assembly. And so that's the way it's supposed to work. They're not supposed to be shunning or treating them bad or nothing like that, but they're not supposed to talk about spiritual things. So if it's a man, he's not supposed to be Leading. Leading his wife, you know, with spirituality in the home. That's how it's supposed to.

John Dehlin [01:27:29] And that's kind of interesting because if for the believer, the Jehovah's Witness, religion is the most important thing in their life, and then they can't talk to their spouse about the most important thing in their life, what does that do in the marriage to their emotional intimacy? If they. They just have to live separate lives that way, and to terms of their interests and their passions, that can't be good, right?

JT [01:27:53] Oh, it's absolutely terrible. In fact, we know people who are actually living that right now as we talk. I mean, we literally know so many people. They contact us, they call us, they cry. They. I mean, it's tough.

JT [01:28:07] Let me just give you some of the parameters, which is kind of from the organization side, if a person's spouse is disfellowship. Let's go with the man is this fellowship. And the wife is still a Witness because typically, remember, the man is the head of the household, so he has to pray for the dinner and all this kind of stuff. Well, he can't pray no more. He can't pray no more because she can't be bowing her head. And most women don't. You know, that's. They know that. Okay. So one of the things that happens is it depends on. The Watchtower says. Depends on what his attitude is, though.

JT [01:28:42] Attitude is some people, they get this fellowship because maybe they did something wrong or whatever. But then you have people who get this fellowship because they've been questioning the organization. And as you mentioned before, this person is called an apostate.

JT [01:28:55] The Watchtower teaches. And this is why we tell people who are starting to. This is why we tell people, especially men or women, if you're married. And it's a very. It's a. It's a very sad thing to have to say, man. But we only say it because of what we have seen, what we see and what we know can happen. And it does happen.

JT [01:29:15] You need to be prepared for the possibility that your spouse may leave you. You need to be prepared. And here is the reason why. The same way you're on the phone with us, talking to us, or we're out dinner talking about your family and your wife, she's still in, and you can't get her out. Your wife is talking to the elders.

JT [01:29:38] She's talking to the elders, and the elders are telling her the following based on the official teachings of the Watchtower. Sister, if you feel that you are in experiencing a situation where you are in spiritual endangerment. You are being. Your spirituality is at danger. If you believe that Sister, you can leave this man.

John Dehlin [01:30:06] There it is.

JT [01:30:06] And so the congregation is going to support her for leaving this apostate agent of Satan, first cousin of Satan. I mean. And so this is what we tell people. And this is really the catcher. This is what. This is what makes it in it so important today.

JT [01:30:22] People who are leaving, they need to understand the dynamics. Some people just jump up and make the announcement. This ain't the truth. And it's true. But they're not prepared for the backlash. And, man, believe me, the backlash is fast and furious.

JT [01:30:40] I mean, like you mentioned about people unliking you. We had someone that was disfellowshipped. They had over 1200 people. 24 hours, man, over 800 people. Unlike. Unlike. Unlike. Unlike. Because words spread. He's his fellowship. He's his fellowship. Get off his site, you know, and witnesses know what to do. So if it's a family, if it's a couple, this is what destroys families in this religion.

JT [01:31:04] And unfortunately, and it's really a kicker, if a woman or husband, spouse is disfellowshipped, what is supposed to happen? Supposed to happen, but rarely does. The congregation is supposed to rally around the sister and her kids who are still going to the meet.

JT [01:31:24] Typically, that's not what happens. What happens is they're like, you know what? We don't want them over. We ain't have them. But don't invite them or don't invite them over here. We don't know what's going on over there. And so this sister who's trying her best to be faithful, dragging her little four kids to the Kingdom hall, ain't getting no love, ain't being invited to no functions, ain't been together nowhere. And so it. It just has a cascading effect on people all of a sudden, that love that you were promised for so many people. And I know kids, it's worse as a kid because you get left out.

JT [01:31:58] I mean, we got left out. My mom didn't. My dad was not a witness, and my mom had four kids. And so a lot of times, man, we would go to the Kingdom hall on Sunday, man, and the other kids. Jt, why we don't y' all at the cookout? Why don't you. At the cookout? Like, what cookout?

Lady Cee [01:32:10] What cookout you talking about?

JT [01:32:12] You found out you didn't get invited. You. You weren't. You know, you weren't part of the. The click. You Weren't part of the circle. No. And kids don't know that. You know, you. You 8, 9 years old, you just have. You went to the cookout over at brother Johnson house, and y' all had a good time with you look around, J.T. he ain't here. And so they see you at the meeting, and they ask you about it, and then you like, I ain't know anything about it. And so you just got left behind.

Lady Cee [01:32:32] And, you know, that's really sad, too, because as they're telling you not to hang out with your worldly relatives that would love to have you at their place. Place, you know, they. They. They don't want to invite you to their cookouts. And we had this one circuit overseer that gave a talk, and it was called widen out in your love. And he said, you got these people. You're out in service, you knock on the door, you come, you tell them to come to the meeting. You come to the Kingdom hall. You get them to slowly stop hanging out with their friends, and then next thing you know, you're not inviting them to any of your cookouts or your get togethers.

Lady Cee [01:33:04] So you got them to give up their whole life, but then you're not even inviting them or making them feel like they're part of the congregation. And so, you know, and. But, I mean, they give those little talks, but they don't really stick around long. People start inviting people, then over a period of time, they go back to their little cliques and stuff.

JT [01:33:20] You know, three months later, they don't stop. You know, so.

John Dehlin [01:33:24] Yeah, I. I think I heard you say in one of your episodes that the community can feel like a community of love until somebody stops doing what they're supposed to be doing. And all of a sudden, the community becomes really thin and unreliable. Is that true? Kind of superficial. Relationships that are tenuous, they don't last. If people fall out of line.

JT [01:33:46] Yeah. We call that conditional love. And the condition is you're supposed to be doing what the Watchtower magazines and books say you're supposed to be doing. And this cuts. And that's why we tell people all the time, don't buy that lie. Please don't buy that lie. That blood is thicker than water. Ask any ex Jehovah's Witness, as any person who is an ex in cults and high control groups, the best definition or the best explanation. Somebody I heard say. And I. And when the guy said, I said, man, that is, you are on the money if you want to know if you're in A cult or high control group, observe how they treat you when you leave.

JT [01:34:30] That's how you know. We have people, we work with, family, we have. They change church. I'm gonna be. I'm Episcopalian this week. I'm going down to the. To the Baptist church, their family, their friends. Don't, don't, don't, don't change.

JT [01:34:44] But in the organizations that are high control groups and cults, you watch how they treat you when you leave. That is your flag if you want to know. If you're in a high control group, watch how they treat you when you leave, and they will treat you. I remember talks, man.

JT [01:35:01] This is the definition. I remember a circle gave this talk. He said, he asked the audience, he said, what is the condition of a person who is disfellowshipped? They are spiritually dead. Now, brothers, how do we treat dead people? We have nothing to do with them. We don't go by the grave to check on. We don't do that. And so the lesson is, if you have a family member, husband, wife, you know, people out, especially people outside the house, especially outside the house. Because they have two sets of rules, one for inside the house, one for outside the house. If they're outside the house, they're good as dead.

JT [01:35:37] I mean, the Watchtower has. I mean, they have gone to great extents to make sure you understand we have nothing to do with people who leave.

Lady Cee [01:35:44] We.

JT [01:35:45] We shun them. And then when they put a camera in front of them, cbs, NBC, whatever, do y' all showing people? Oh, no, we don't really show people. We don't have nothing to do with that, man. And you'll be like, y' all just lying, right? It's bad, man.

Lady Cee [01:36:01] It's.

JT [01:36:02] It's bad. I didn't mean to get off track. My. I apologize.

Courtship, Marriage Rules, and End Times Belief

John Dehlin [01:36:05] My wife be like, that's not off track. That's on track. Yeah, the. The. Yeah, it's. I call it the crickets effect. That once, you know, you've got. You go to the activities, you've got all the friends, you're at church. If you leave the church. And in Utah, it's hard because, like, 90% of your neighbors are all Mormon in many places in Utah. And so as soon as you leave the church, you think, oh, well, they'll still be my friends.

John Dehlin [01:36:30] They call it crickets. Nobody comes by, nobody wants to know. Nobody's going to ask you why you left or why you lost your faith. It's just crickets. And all of a sudden you're alone and You've lost your community, you've lost your friends. You've lost everyone that you care about. And your family, they won't necessarily hard shun you, but, you know, they'll distance themselves from you as well. And all of a sudden you'll find you're alone. You'll find out that you're alone.

JT [01:36:58] Yeah, that warmth that the Bible, you know, natural affection. High control groups, they, they get right in between the natural affection that parents, mothers, children, husband and wives should have because of what is happening. Like you mentioned about the marriage, man. I mean, can you imagine you and your wife? The most important thing in her life is no longer the most important thing in your life. That really, that, I mean, that literally is the recipe for a failed marriage.

John Dehlin [01:37:26] Marriage, yeah.

JT [01:37:26] Or if not a failed marriage, merely a marriage that's perfunctory. Just.

John Dehlin [01:37:31] Right.

JT [01:37:31] Just going through the motions. I can't leave you because I can't afford. You can't leave me. But if I could get out of here, I'd be going tomorrow, you know, so.

Lady Cee [01:37:38] Yeah, well, you gotta look at this. Okay, so when you, when people get married, they, you know, marriage in itself is a life event. It's a big life event. So getting married is a big life event. They say buying a home, it's a big life event. You know, different things, you know, having a child, those are huge life events, right? So when you think about a person that leaves the Jehovah's Witness religion, that is considered a huge life event as well.

Lady Cee [01:38:06] So we know most people that, that both of them don't be, don't leave the organization, they end up getting a divorce. And the reason why most of these people end up getting divorced is because of how they got together to begin with, because a lot of people got married because of the religion, right? And so when they find out it's not the truth, and one or two of them decide, hey, look, I'm out of here. Like, if the wife leaves, this ain't the truth. She has no connection with the husband.

JT [01:38:35] That's a good point. Yeah, that's, that's, that's a great, that's a great point. Your, your actual marriage, unfortunately. And, and, and, and, and, and we've seen this. It doesn't apply to everybody, but we've seen it happen enough because Witnesses cannot have sex before marriage.

JT [01:38:54] That's one of their teachings. No sex before marriage. What that does is you end up getting people who, one, get married very young and two, they grab the first thing they can find. Women will grab the first man with pants on. And men will grab the first woman that they can grab many times. So. And it's often limited to often, this little circle of friends in their congregation or maybe the circuit at the most, rarely will you find people who go outside, way outside. It just doesn't happen. The only reason I end up because I'm from North Carolina, my wife is from the missionary is because I was at Bethel, I was at the headquarters, and I travel, and that's how we end up meeting.

JT [01:39:35] But what ends up happening is you end up having people. Because what happens if you. If you should take any interest? And the Witnesses are strict. I mean, they are strict on this man. They don't play no dating.

JT [01:39:46] If you take an interest in a sister, man, you better not sit beside her at the meeting. Oh, Lord knows, if you were to walk into a kingdom hall and sit beside a sister for the meeting, everybody keep up. Well, they must be they seeing each other. And so as a result, you now have to make sure that you are serious about marrying this person.

Lady Cee [01:40:08] You don't know this person.

JT [01:40:10] And so now Witnesses end up marrying people that they're not really compatible with.

Lady Cee [01:40:15] Proximity.

JT [01:40:16] Proximity and the criteria. Every Jehovah's Witness knows the criteria for marriage. Let me give you what the criteria is. This person attends all the meetings. He's regular. This person comments at the meeting, means regularly. This person goes out in field service regularly. The other stuff. Well, what about kind of work you do? I don't matter. All those things don't matter. I give you, you know, even myself. Even myself, when I was at Bethel, at the headquarters, we were told what type of sister we had to marry. Because if you wanted to stay at the headquarters, you had to marry a certain type of sister. That sister had to be what is called a regular pioneer. She's a person who does. Goes out, does 90 hours every month knocking on doors to be over 100.

Lady Cee [01:41:14] And.

JT [01:41:14] But they, they dropping the hours to keep the numbers up. Yeah, we got to raise the numbers up, you know, and so we were taught. So personally, all my friends, all my buddies, when we look for a wife, we wouldn't even look at a sister who wasn't pioneers. No. If a sister had kids, not at all. Because you knew that they. You would not be able to stay in the corporate side of the watchtower world. And so you had to look for sisters who were pioneering.

Lady Cee [01:41:43] Right.

JT [01:41:44] My wife had four. My wife has like four pioneer friends. They were all together, basically five of them. Do you know every one of those Girls are married to buddies of mine who were at Bethel. And a couple of them, they have gone on to be just super corporate men. Now. They. I mean, they're really in the circuit working. These guys are, you know, they're really out there. In fact, one of her roommates married a friend of mine. They were actually on the COVID of the Watchtower magazine. And is so ironic as we. He's in the circuit work now. I think he was. He was. They're back at their. Back at headquarters and they call him out.

Lady Cee [01:42:22] They've been back and forth.

JT [01:42:23] Yeah, they go, yeah, he's something. He's in the field. Something that bring him back to the corporate. He's an instructor up there. It's. It's so ironic. The only reason I mentioned is because we know them personally and they're on the COVID when the Watchtower. And you'll never ever guess what the name of the Watchtower is, man. It's. It's really just ironic. The name of the magazine is. Are Jehovah's Witnesses Occult. That is the COVID of the magazine.

John Dehlin [01:42:47] Oh, my goodness.

JT [01:42:48] And when you see the COVID of that magazine, that, that, that. That couple up there, that used to be our old pioneer party. And he used to be a buddy. Buddy of mine at Belfast used to be a bar. He's working the barbershop. And so this is what you end up marrying. So when you leave this religion. When you leave this religion, all of a sudden you realize, my husband, you know, I don't want him. Or you look at your wife like, I don't want her. And so they end up going in different directions. And that's what you end up. We end up hearing that a lot.

Lady Cee [01:43:17] See, I think what happened to us is like we knew each other for three years.

John Dehlin [01:43:22] Yeah.

Lady Cee [01:43:23] Before we got married. Even though we dated long distance. So we had, you know, we got a chance to talk to each other. I even drove what he told me. He said, why don't you go visit my parents? Because he was good. He was going to a wedding. And in connect, what were you going? Connecticut. I was living in Maryland at the time. And he goes, why don't you drive and visit my parents in North Carolina?

Lady Cee [01:43:47] And so I drove all the way to North. It was like four hours from where I was living at at the time. And I got a chance to go visit his parents even without him, and had a good time, you know, so I got a chance to meet them and you know, different things like that. So it was like we got a chance to get to know each other before we got married. So it wasn't like a six week, six month courtship.

JT [01:44:09] Yeah, we, we, we. We dated long. You know, of course it was long distance. And, you know, I always tell people,

Lady Cee [01:44:16] you know, and the reason why I said he was going to a wedding, because he was. He was. He was going to be serving as a waiter. He was. He was going to be serving as a waiter at this wedding because the Bethelites, when they got married, they would actually hire other Bethelites to, To. To go work at their wedding. So he, so he. I, I wasn't going up there. I was. I don't. I don't even think my roommates were going up there, but he just said, oh, you looking for something to do for the weekend? Go visit my parents, you know? Yeah, I got a chance to go visit them.

JT [01:44:48] I mean, it's an interesting system because one of the things that, that they, they want you to do is to talk to their. To your fiance or the girl you're interested in, call her elders up. So I called three of her elders up. Brother J.T. assisting your congregation. What can you tell me? She good? She ain't good.

John Dehlin [01:45:08] Oh, man.

JT [01:45:10] And vice versa. She called my elder.

Lady Cee [01:45:12] Oh, my God. It was like a nightmare. That.

JT [01:45:13] Was he a playboy? I mean, I want to know, is he a player?

Lady Cee [01:45:18] He was telling me, he goes, he goes, oh, don't worry about it. You could call up the elders. They're so nice. These brothers are so nice. And this one brother, he said, who. Who are you? And I was like, oh, my God. And so my mom said, I told you, don't be calling up them brothers and leave them people alone and this, this kind of stuff. And. And then when I told JT about it, he was like, oh, yeah, he's, you know, I guess he was used to brothers, people calling people up there. But. But you know what? That was like a. Kind of like a crack in the foundation because, you know, you're supposed to be this loving shepherd and you got this arrangement.

Lady Cee [01:45:52] And I don't told this brother that JT gave me his number, called the brothers to talk to them or whatever. And this guy, this brother was nasty. I mean, he was so nasty. I was like, oh, my God, I don't want to meet him. You know, I didn't want to meet him. No. Afraid of elders, too, back in the day.

John Dehlin [01:46:13] That's so fascinating. Yeah, we get married young. We get married way too fast. We. I think there may be a difference. We start having kids really early and we have a lot of kids. You guys are a little bit different that way. Is that right?

JT [01:46:26] Absolutely. In fact, Jehovah's Witnesses are basically, from the very beginning, they're really the opposite. From the early starts of this religion, Witnesses were discouraged from having children. The reason why is because there's only a little time left. The world's going to end soon, and we need you to move these books out into the neighborhood and you can have your kids in the new system. And that runs deep within this organization. You are praised when you do not have children. In fact, that is why my wife and I do not have children today. Our plan was to have our children in the new system.

JT [01:47:05] As I'm sitting here right now, man, and I'm very serious, we can name over a hundred couples that we pray. Personally know they got no kids and they don't want no kids. Most of them are either still at Bethel or they're out in the pioneer work or they're trying to get into the traveling work, and they don't want no kids. They're having kids in the new system.

Lady Cee [01:47:22] Can I tell them what group I used to belong to? I used to belong to a club.

John Dehlin [01:47:26] Tell us.

Lady Cee [01:47:26] I used to belong to the AAA Club. You know what that means?

John Dehlin [01:47:30] Tell us.

Lady Cee [01:47:31] Available after Armageddon.

John Dehlin [01:47:35] Oh, man.

Lady Cee [01:47:36] Because I was gonna. I was gonna be one of those people that didn't get married until after the new system. Yep.

John Dehlin [01:47:44] I'm just going to say that's. That's another reason why Mormons are way more wealthy than Joe's Witnesses. Because we have so many kids. And that's good for tithing in the long run. The more kids you have, the more your membership grows, and then the more money the church makes in the long run.

JT [01:47:59] Yeah, yeah. Witnesses, I mean, Witnesses are really discouraged from. Over the years, man, from having kids. I mean, when you hear people getting pregnant, I mean, I mean, it's, it's, it's. It was never really celebrated, especially within certain circles. Those who were considered doing more for Jehovah were those who didn't have children. And they moved here and moved there. They were praised.

Lady Cee [01:48:22] Right.

JT [01:48:22] My mom, I'll give you a perfect example. My mom, when she got pregnant with my baby brother, I remember, were coming home from the meeting. I was sitting in the back seat. I could see my mom in the rearview mirror. Tears were running down her eyes, man. Tears was running down. The reason why is because Witnesses, they take one of the statements that Jesus made about woe to the pregnant woman, woe to the Pregnant woman. And the reason they use that scripture is because they, they liken it. This is what Armageddon is going to be like. Well, you're going to have to run and hide from people trying to kill us.

JT [01:48:57] And you can't do that if you got a baby. That's why Jesus says, woe to the pregnant woman. And so my mom was pregnant with my baby brother and, and, and brothers would give talks like, are we really trusting in Jehovah, brother? And so my mom went home, man, and she was tears because she knew that if, if Armageddon came and she was pregnant, my brother, it was going to be hard to run, man. My brother's 45 years old. We still wait for the end, you know.

John Dehlin [01:49:28] So that's actually, that's actually really interesting because the Mormon Church is called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The reason why it's called Latter Day Saints is because we were a millennialistic church in the beginning. But after decade and decade and decade and we were all supposed to like gather in Independence, Missouri and Jesus was supposed to come, but then Joseph Smith died and we got kicked out of Missouri and Illinois and we had to move to Utah. Over time, we've, we've kind of dropped that teaching, but you guys have kept it. And some people are asking what is supposed to happen in Armageddon?

John Dehlin [01:50:06] So tell us a little bit about, you know, you've talked about end times. You've, we've talked a. You've made references to the fact that, that at various points in the history of the Jehovah's Witness movement, leaders have said it's going to happen this year, it's going to happen that year. And at least three or four years have come and gone where the, where the second coming didn't happen when the leaders had prophesied. Tell us a tiny bit about your theology as it relates to what happens when the earth is supposed to end and anything else you want to talk about that, that we haven't already addressed. Just because some the of asking, yeah,

JT [01:50:42] this is what is. This is what Jehovah's Witnesses are taught. They're taught that we are the only true religion, therefore we're the only religious denomination that has any standing before God. All other religions, no standing before God. In fact, you're literally under the control of Satan, the devil. Witnesses make it real. Black and white, us versus them. I mean, we talking Muslim, we talking Buddhist.

John Dehlin [01:51:06] Chris.

JT [01:51:07] It don't matter. It don't matter. It's just us. We get eight guys in New York City. Now they move to the suburbs. They're the only ones God is talking to nobody else.

John Dehlin [01:51:17] Eight guys. They're eight guys.

JT [01:51:19] Eight guys.

John Dehlin [01:51:20] And they're called what? They're called what?

JT [01:51:22] They're called the governing body.

John Dehlin [01:51:23] Governing body, okay.

JT [01:51:24] You call them the apostles, the governing body. Okay, so they're the only ones who can understand the Bible. God helps them understand the Bible. They write up in the magazine, they send out to 8 million Jehovah's Witnesses who get the information and they go to your house. This is what God wants you to know. Now, the reason Witnesses come to your home is because we're giving you a warning. Just like Noah. Noah said, y' all come and get on the ark. FOLKS LAUGH Witnesses say, we tell y', all, come on to the King hall with us. That's where it'll be. You're gonna be safe. Y' ALL LAUGH so Witnesses realize that people who do not become a part of this religion, who do not accept the explanation of Scripture as is presented by the Watchtower writers, you stand no chance of surviving Armageddon.

JT [01:52:06] And when Armageddon comes, all the governments and all the churches will be destroyed along with their followers. The only people who will be left standing, you guessed it, are Jehovah's Witnesses and those who are found favorably toward them. Because there may be people who haven't got baptized yet, but they were studying, so they're going to come on in too. And so basically, if you work with a Jehovah's Witness, he looking around the office realizing y' all ain't gonna make it. And that's.

Lady Cee [01:52:39] But the arma. But the Armageddon part is. She want to know what it's going to look like when all of it,

Failed Prophecies and the Organization's True Purpose

John Dehlin [01:52:45] all this is good. I'm loving all this.

JT [01:52:48] It will be the same type of destruction that most people envision with Armageddon. Fire raining down from heaven, angels like, total mass chaos.

Lady Cee [01:52:57] People said Will Smith movie

John Dehlin [01:53:02] Independence Day, Independence Day,

JT [01:53:08] The heavenly, the heavenly bodies will change colors, the angelic forces. Because remember, Satan is going to be abyss. So, I mean, it will be total destruction. And once everything is over with, the only people who will be left standing will be Jehovah's Witnesses. And every. With every Witness, this is what they are working for. And that's why Witnesses don't support community. That's why Witnesses don't support stuff in the community. That's why Witnesses don't have any real charity, because we ain't gonna need that. That's why we don't believe in going to college because we. There's not gonna be any doctors in the new system. Everybody's gonna be perfect.

JT [01:53:44] So why waste time going to be a doctor, preach, move these books. And so that impacts the whole thinking. And because it's only a short period of time, it's real soon, and everybody understands that. If somebody tell you, are we almost there yet? Oh, okay, I can wait. If someone keeps telling you that, after a while you're like, man, we going from New York to Florida. You told me it was like two miles. And so that's kind of the way it is for the Witnesses. Witnesses now are starting to get tired. And I'm gonna tell you, man, we. We really feel sorry for old Jehovah's Witnesses, unlike Mormon.

JT [01:54:16] See, y' all guys, y', all, y' all older woman people. Y' all were able to, like, have good jobs, good retirements and stuff. And in the case for Witnesses, man, Jehovah's Witnesses gave up college. We used to go to conventions, man, all of our lives. And we would have young people walk out onto platforms 30, 40, 50, 50,000 people, and they would make the following statement. I turned down a scholarship, full scholarship to MIT.

JT [01:54:47] And 40, 000 people would clap. He made such a wise choice. Fast forward the Watch. I remember the Watchtower made a statement. They said the following. Basically, you need to face the fact that you will never have a career, career in this system of things, because the end is so close. That was made in 1969.

John Dehlin [01:55:15] They've been saying that for over a hundred years. Yeah.

JT [01:55:19] Do you realize that if you were a young Jehovah when it's finishing up high school in 1969, you read that and you was trying to decide what to do, and you said, well, hang on, go to school, because I won't have time to even have a career in this system. Do you realize that a person was 18 in 1969? 68. They will be retired, living in Scottsdale, Arizona.

JT [01:55:40] And that story is told around the world. And what really concerns us is that we see how difficult it is for the American, the western Jehovah's Witness living in England and Germany, the United States and Canada, we see how rough it is for these older Jehovah's Witnesses who did not prepare for their old age.

JT [01:56:05] Can you imagine what it's like if you are Jehovah's Witness living in a third world country? Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. There are so many Witnesses. The Watchtower wrote an article about should you leave your Country. And a lot of Witnesses got the magazine, and it just went over their head.

JT [01:56:26] Leave the country. Teenager leaving the country. Because most American kids don't leave the country. I mean, most kids in Canada don't leave the country. But in Africa, a lot of people in Africa, they may go to Europe. They'll end up in Paris or end up in Germany and so forth. So a lot of Witness kids would see other kids who would leave. They would go and get. Go to school. They would go and. And they would come back. They. They would be doctors, lawyers, whatever. I remember a Bethelite that I knew when I was in New York. He was from the branch in Nigeria, the Lagos branch.

JT [01:57:00] And he told us of an experience of a Witness kid. Witness kid in some villages. In some villages, kids who are really outstanding at what they do if they had the opportunity to go to college, sometimes the whole village will help pay you to get you to France or Europe somewhere so you can get your college, come back home, and, you know, practice medicine, whatever. There was a Witness kid who had the opportunity for the community to send him to Europe.

JT [01:57:30] And I remember this because the buff Mike told us, he said. And like I said, I didn't even. It didn't even register to me that this article was being used in these countries by circuit overseers and by elders.

JT [01:57:43] And it dealt with, should you leave your country? And the article talks about, basically, no, don't leave your country. Stay right where you are. Be happy where you are. And so it was used to discourage all of these young people who could have got out of having to be a goat herder. Nothing wrong with herding goats. But if you have the opportunity to go and be a doctor who does surgery on people's brains and people's hearts, and that's what you have the skill and talents to do, your religion shouldn't be telling you not to do that. And like you said before, and I. I've always talked to people who are Mormons.

JT [01:58:14] You know, y' all guys got what Brigham Young. Y' all built your own school. I understand, you know, you don't want to go with world you didn't go to. You didn't want to go to school with worldly kids. So y' all built your own school because y' all at least understood the value of education. Yeah, Jehovah's Witnesses, man. We don't have no nursing homes. We don't have no schools. We don't have no hospital. Jehovah's Witnesses don't do soup. Kitchen, no soup. They have A soup kitchen. And so Witnesses have, they literally have nothing to do with their community.

JT [01:58:44] Nothing except hawking their books. That's it. And so every now and then when there's a nat and you're gonna, there's gonna be some Witnesses going right in. Well, when there's a national disaster, we help out. Yes, Witnesses help out when there's a national disaster. But folks in prison in the Joko Jail is oftentimes asked to come out when there's a hurricane. Help. We need to cut some trees down, guys. So it's no big deal, but Witnesses do not as an 8 million person religion, boots on the ground in 200 countries. If you were to ask Jehovah, can you name one charity? Give me the name of the charity in what country is in. Witnesses could not give you the name of one charity. Yet they enjoy the tax benefits in every country they can. That's right.

Lady Cee [01:59:27] But see, the problem with the Jehovah's Witness religion too is when the older population, when, when the people get older and they can start talking about the things that they knew then the younger Jehovah's Witnesses are like, oh, don't listen to them. They're, see now, so, you know, you, you can tell your story, you know, but nobody's gonna listen. No, because the younger group that's there, they're, they got their youth on their side.

JT [01:59:50] Yeah.

Lady Cee [01:59:50] So they're not really worrying about, you know, they're still thinking the end is going to come in their lifetime, you know, but the older we, we knew this couple in our congregation and she, and she always bragged about the three, the three legged tricycle she used to drive right out in service. And they're like in their 80s now.

JT [02:00:07] Yeah.

Lady Cee [02:00:08] But the only thing about it is they do have two children. And so, you know, think about the people that don't have the kids. You know, they don't have anybody at that age.

JT [02:00:17] I mean it's, it's one of those religions, man, where by telling people that God is going to destroy everybody around them and give them a paradise to live in, it makes it easier for them to hang in there a little bit longer. Hang in there a little bit longer.

John Dehlin [02:00:36] So they're stringing people along. They're not living the best life that they can. They're not having kids if they want kids necessarily. They're not getting their education, they're not pursuing meaningful careers, they're not actually engaging in community or philanthropic efforts. They're just like plugged into the matrix, selling the books, serving the church, building the church, helping the church make more and more and more money. But. But siphoning off the best years of their lives, not. Not living the best lives that they can.

JT [02:01:09] That's a way. That's. That. That's. Let me just give you just a perfect example. When I went to work at the world headquarters of Jehovah's Witnesses, they used to tell us all the time, this is your home. You stay as long as you want. This is your home.

JT [02:01:23] In fact, they had this little thing. It was kind of an unwritten thing. After you made five years, you was considered vested. In other words, there were certain things you could ask for that you would get because you were considered a member of the Bethel family. We used to always say, this is a family, and this is your home, and you can stay as long as you want.

JT [02:01:41] A little over a year ago, they let over a thousand Bethel mites go home. They told him, we need you to leave and go home and get a job. They let people go who had been working for the Watchtower Society for 10, 20, 30, 40 years. There is a guy right now, right now, as I am talking to you right now, him and I flew from Norfolk, Virginia, to Newark Airport and caught the shuttle over to Watchtower headquarters at the same time.

JT [02:02:13] He is still there. He is still there. When they asked these guys to leave, they gave them no severance, and you cannot apply for unemployment because you are not considered an employee. So you have people who went to Bethel like I did at 19, and at 49, 58, 52, 56, they were told, go now and get a job. And your job at Bethel might have been working in cleaning. You've been cleaning for 35 years, been in the laundry 42 years, shoe shop, maintenance shop. Everybody doesn't have a skill at Bethel, and so they let these guys go. And the worst part about it, man, I'll be honest with you.

JT [02:02:58] They didn't, like, send a letter out to all the congregations of Jehovah's Witness saying, we are letting some brothers go. We want you brothers to welcome them in, help them get jobs, find houses, get these brothers on their feet. Because they've been serving God up here for the last 25 years, man. They ain't say anything. So you have guys who left Bethel. They could not leave and complain when you went. When they went back home, they couldn't say, man, they did us wrong. You couldn't say that. I'm so happy. Because what they did, this is how they did. This is a new assignment from Jehovah, no job.

Lady Cee [02:03:35] Yeah.

JT [02:03:36] So this was their new assignment, man. And so you couldn't complain about your new assignment that you just got from God.

Lady Cee [02:03:42] It's terrible because when they got rid of the district overseers, I remember this one sister was telling us that this one district overseer, he and his wife, they got their letter that they were being terminated from the work as a district overseer, and the husband dropped dead of a heart attack the next day. And, you know, in this religion, women are not treated as well as the men. And so if they were a couple and this man was, you know, still living, he probably would have been able to be, you know, bought into the fold with some other brothers and different things like that. But I don't know what happened to his wife.

JT [02:04:20] Women. Women are not thought of too highly. Just to give you an example, in the Watchtower, there are different levels of elders. You have, like, the local elders, then you have what's called the traveling overseer. He's known as a circuit overseer. And they had another level, another layer called the district overseer. So a circuit overseer takes care of 20 congregations, and a district overseer would take care of 20 circuit overseers. It was. It was. It was a straight up hierarchy. Just straight up hierarchy. You put on a graph, you're like, oh, this looks like a business. It does. It is a business. And what is it called?

John Dehlin [02:04:57] Regional.

JT [02:04:57] In fact, they used to call. They used to refer to Jehovah's Witness congregations as companies. They call them the Christian Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses now. But when they first started, when the Russell. This is the company. Because they was moving books, man. It was moving books. It's the company. Company in Chicago. The company, you know, and so as a result of that, you now have these people who were told to go home. And these people have been in these positions for 20, 30, 40 years, man. I mean, you talking about cold blooded. I mean, that is some cold blooded stuff. And that's what happens in corporate America. Witnesses have been told for years, God does not lay off. Well, we see that angel.

John Dehlin [02:05:42] It reminds me a little bit of the. Of the Sea Org with the Scientologists. It sounds like, yeah, you guys have corporate workers that give their lives to the church and make almost nothing, and at the end of the day, they're kind of not taken care of. It. It's. It reminds me of Scientology in that way.

JT [02:06:00] It does, it does. I made 80amonth.

John Dehlin [02:06:04] For how long?

JT [02:06:06] Whole while was there. I got. We got a raise because six Years.

Lady Cee [02:06:09] If.

JT [02:06:09] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. If. If the subway. If the subway raises the fair in New York City, you can get a raise. So I got a raise from 80 to 90 because the subway. This is so you could travel back and forth to the Kingdom Hall.

Military Service, Conscientious Objectors, and Prison

John Dehlin [02:06:23] Let me ask you. Let me ask you to tell the story. I. I was listening to your podcast, your YouTube channel, which. Which is amazing, and you told the story of how. Let's just say in the mid-1900s, a Jehovah's Witness who was called to serve in the military had the option of doing some sort of replacement service work. And then. And people ended up going to jail. Can you tell that story? Because that is one of the most heartbreaking stories I've ever heard heard about, about the people that were going to jail and why. And then what happened when the church just miraculously changed its policies and how that. What that did to people's lives. Because I. I don't think my listeners are not going to believe this story.

JT [02:07:10] Yeah. This is a teaching that revolves around what is known as alternative service. Most countries recognize that they may have citizens who, because of conscious reasons, they don't want to serve in the military. And my wife and I, we were talking about this a while back, how this impacts Jehovah's Witnesses in such a horrible way.

JT [02:07:33] What happened was at one time, Witnesses could actually serve in the military. I remember, Fred, Friends, the president of the Watchtower would say that Witness men would serve in the military. Then the Watchtower came out with a position. We will not serve in the military at all.

JT [02:07:51] So as a result, people went to jail. And this is all around the world. So what happened was a lot of countries, they created what's known as alternative service. So instead of you going to prison, you will do alternative service. Work at a hospital, work on a road crew. You know, that's what you would do as alternative in lieu of going to prison. Well, the Watchtower, in their effort to always be different.

Lady Cee [02:08:15] Different.

JT [02:08:15] They took the position that we're not taking that either. We're not going to go to prison. We're going to go to prison instead of actually taking those alternative service jobs. So literally thousands of people went to prison. In fact, one of the guys I personally know from North Carolina, he actually went to prison during the Vietnam War.

JT [02:08:36] He got his draft letter. He went to the elders and said, brothers, anything I can do? So I go to prison. Circuit Overseer was coming in town. He said, well, we'll ask the Circuit overseer. Is there any new information from the Watchtower Circus. It gets there. He says, well, let me call. Let me call Brooklyn and see if there's any new information, and we'll let you know.

JT [02:08:57] And sure enough, he called. He came back and said, nope, you're gonna have to go to prison or you'll be excommunicated. Slash, disfellowship. So, like, a good witness thought he was dangling the lines then. Three Hebrew boys, he went to prison. 18, 19 years old.

JT [02:09:18] Of course, when he gets out, he's a felon. He struggles to get a job, and of course, it's on his record every. Every. Every job application. You ever been a felon? Yep. So it impacted him just as a man coming out of prison. But here's the kicker.

JT [02:09:38] The Watchtower was trying to get into the country of Bulgaria. That's right. It was trying to get legal recognition. And Bulgaria said, nah, we're not letting y' all do get legal recognition. There's two things about y' all guys we don't like, and you ain't coming in here and getting legal status.

JT [02:09:59] You tell our young men not to serve in the military. You won't let them take alternative service, and you won't let people have blood. And we don't. We disagree with both of those. So unbeknownst to a lot of witnesses behind the scenes, the Watchtower was trying to negotiate with Bulgaria to get this thing through the door.

JT [02:10:18] And all of a sudden, man, one of their teachings on alternative service, out of the clear blue sky. Witnesses had no idea where this came from. The teaching was changed. Oh, you can take the alternative service job now. You can go ahead and take that now. When they changed the teaching, thousands of young men were still in prison.

John Dehlin [02:10:41] Around what year was this, approximately?

JT [02:10:44] This was, like, what I think around the 90s.

John Dehlin [02:10:46] Okay.

JT [02:10:47] They were still in prison because this is one of the reasons why we end up leaving. I was like. Because I knew somebody went to prison for this. And, man, when. And. And. And this is a kicker. This is probably the worst part of all. And I can. I can send you. I can send you the. The article and stuff you like. You can put it in. In your. In your notes.

JT [02:11:09] The Watchtower, man, they had the nerve to blame. They blame the people who went to prison. They said, your conscience was just too strict. That's why you went to prison. Your conscience was too strict. And, man, it just crushed people all around the world because people were saying, it wasn't my conscience. You told me that's what God said I had to do. It wasn't a conscious matter, but the Watchtower played it as it was a conscious matter. And then a little later on they decided to do a follow up article. I mean, the Watchtower, man, they can pour gas on a floor fire.

JT [02:11:46] The Watchtower wrote an article. The article deals with. Do you feel you were unjust, unjustly treated? Do you feel that God unjustly treated you because you had to go to jail? That's amazing, man. That is absolutely amazing. Do you feel that you suffered needlessly was the name of the article. In other words, you suffer, went to prison. Do you think it was worth it was. It was needless. Of course it was needless. I went to prison because you said that God said I had to go. And then you talking about, well, you only got to go. And we really didn't tell you that you had to do it.

JT [02:12:27] I mean man, it was like. And, and so that was one of the cracks in my foundation in this religion because I have always been taught that you do what the slave says. And it was along that time period, man, along with a couple other things, a couple of doctors, they changed. I was like, damn, what are they talking about, man? I told my wife, I said they only talking about, yes, they taught us not to lie, cheat and steal. And now if I come to your house and you got 20 bill on the table, I'm not going to steal it because I've learned that you work for that you work hard.

JT [02:12:59] I shouldn't take it. So yes, they did teach us some good things, but man, a lot of things that they were teaching, they were just making up on the fly and they were selling it as this is what God says. And people were making decisions, as we often say on our channel. They took basically human opinions, elevated it to divine status and told you this is what God says to do. And so at that point, man, you know, I know how the system works.

JT [02:13:28] I know how the system works. If there's any, if there's one thing I know, I know this organization especially the way that on the policy side like the back of my hand because I was taught that, my mentor taught

Lady Cee [02:13:37] me that, yeah, he, he was all in this religion. And it's really interesting that he would. The experiences that he's relating because when he brought it to me, it didn't mean anything a lot to me because I was in it because I just thought this was the truth and I wasn't in the doctrines like that. And we have a friend that, you know, we met him a couple years ago and his Wife is still a Witness, and he is an apostate, you know, if you want to call it that. He's like, he ain't going back to no Kingdom Hall. And he was an elder in the congregation. He was at Bethel as well.

JT [02:14:15] Yeah, he was. Yes.

Lady Cee [02:14:16] And just a nice guy. And he was like, his wife doesn't know any. But anything about these. These doctrines. He said, she doesn't care any. About anything about any of the stuff that, you know, he's talking about right now. You know, this stuff goes over her head. She doesn't even know what she believes in. All she knows is she's got this sense of community. She's at the Kingdom hall where she's supposed to be, because she's going to cash in. In on her Paradise Earth stock really soon. So there's two types of people. People.

JT [02:14:50] Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Lady Cee [02:14:51] People that believe and know these doctrines the way JT does, and people like myself who just went along with the Okie doke. We're supposed to be here. He's the. He's taking the lead. He's my husband. I'm at the meeting because I'm supposed to be there.

John Dehlin [02:15:07] Yeah. On. On Mormon Stories, we had an episode once where we talked about two types of Mormons, Validity Mormons and utility Mormons. A validity Mormon cares if it's true, and more often than not, men tend to be more validity Mormons than utility Mormons. A utility Mormon stays because it works. It is good for them. It's a system that just kind of, you know, it's a great way to raise your kids. It's a way to keep your husband from straying. Right. And that's the way that we've often framed it. Let me ask you, you guys, this. So obviously that that story about military service is just heartbreaking.

Blood Transfusion Doctrine and Its Consequences

John Dehlin [02:15:46] There. There are ways that religions just really. We could talk about, oh, it helps with your family, helps if you're poor. It helps you find community and friends. Sometimes there are ways that a religion turns deadly or destructive.

John Dehlin [02:16:02] What are some of the ways. What are some of the main ways that you've seen the Jehovah has witnessed religion ruin lives? We've talked about it. Breaking up families, ending marriages. Do you guys want to talk? A couple things that my listeners want to know about. Do you want to talk about blood transfusions and people dying? I. I would love to hear you talk about your LGBTQ policies, about how the church can treat their. Their gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender members. What are some of the ways the church main ways that the church. Church significantly harms people.

Lady Cee [02:16:35] I personally, now, I didn't get. I wasn't caught up in the blood transfusion situation, but I had to have surgery when I was 17, and I had no blood written all over my records. And the doctors were prepared to give me no blood if I needed it.

Lady Cee [02:16:55] And it was the same hospital that I didn't. I didn't need no blood, thank God. But some years later, there was a young kid in our congregation, and he had gotten hit by a car and he needed a blood transfusion. And the doctor tried to get a court order to get this. This young boy, get him some blood. And it was too late because he died. And they were in our congregation. And it was really, really sad, you know, watching that. You know, watching this young boy. He wasn't even. He was. He was still a teenager. And he died because the parents believed that he should not have a blood transfusion.

Lady Cee [02:17:35] And you can just multiply this all over the world with Jehovah's Witnesses. I think the blood transfusion is the biggest thing. And they used to have a policy where you couldn't get kidney transplants, too. And so I think they changed that. You could tell the story about the couple in our family congregation about that. Yeah,

JT [02:17:56] I think the worst is the blood transfusion. And it's for many reasons. Let me just give you a couple examples. One of the reasons is because the Jehovah's Witnesses, those in the upper leadership, they have no knowledge of the subject matter.

JT [02:18:18] The people who work. And this is very important to understand the people who work in the writing department, the writing department, the guys who work down there and write these articles. You need to understand where the vast majority of those guys come from.

JT [02:18:34] These are not guys who have journalism background. Most of these guys, they come from the cleaning department, the laundry department. That's right, Scaffolding crew, truck drivers. Because the writing department is considered one of the top departments to work in at Bethel.

JT [02:18:56] It's the top. So like two or three. Service department and writing department. And so where these guys come from, they come from basically two places. Either out of the field as a circuit overseer, district overseer, or they are. They are homegrown. These are guys who have faithfully done what they're told in cleaning. When they was 19, they then gave them another job at 25, they faithfully did that. And they have simply just worked up through the ranks, and now they're down there writing the articles. Writing the articles. Most of them have no college background.

John Dehlin [02:19:30] None.

JT [02:19:32] None. They are not experts in Greek, Hebrew, the language. None of that. None of that. See, at least in most churches, they have. They have what's called scholars. And the Watchtower does something real cool. They will quote. They will quote. But in their publications, they'll say, Bible scholars say abc. Bible scholars say cbs.

Lady Cee [02:19:56] Okay?

JT [02:19:57] They won't oftentimes tell you who these Bible scholars are. The reason why is because many of these Bible scholars, they're preachers. In other denominations, they're pastors. That's right. See, in other denominations, people have to go to college. They have to take classes in Greek and Hebrew, and so they at least have some background in the subject. Witnesses don't. They just take Greek for Dummies down the writing department. And that's basically it. That is why you will never hear anyone ever reference a Jehovah's Witness scholar from the Watchtower organization. Now, there are people who got PhDs in this organization, but the writers, they're never. They're not.

JT [02:20:36] They're not going to be cited as scholars, because they're not. And so that's where this issue with this blood came up. This is so bad because of the way in which they approached it. Remember, everything is from God.

JT [02:20:49] Witnesses start out teaching that you cannot take either whole blood or any blood fractions. You cannot take whole blood or anything derived from blood. Okay, let's go with that then. Let's just go with that. A few years later, the Watchtower says, but you can take certain blood fractions.

Lady Cee [02:21:10] Now.

JT [02:21:11] They literally created two lists. A list of approved fractions that you can take from blood and a list of unapproved fractions from blood. If you were to ask a Jehovah's Witness, can you take me to the Word of God and show me how you came over? These two lists, where it came from, they couldn't do it. Now, here's the magic part. The magic part is certain items in one list could move from one side to the other. So you have a religion that says you can't take whole blood or anything fractionated from blood. And we can understand that. If someone wanted to sell you a hot car and you say, man, I don't buy stolen cars, man. Get out of my face, man. I ain't buying no stolen car. If he went around the corner and cut it up into a shop.

Lady Cee [02:21:59] Shop.

JT [02:21:59] And came back and want to see the hood caps, could you now buy it? No, it's the same hot car that you had before. All of a sudden, Witnesses had these two lists. One was approved by God, one Wasn't. And at times, God would take one thing out of one list, put it in the other. If you look at the history of Jehovah's Witnesses and the teaching of blood, you will see how one day is a sin, the next day it's not. Why is that so dangerous? Why is that so bad? I want you to think about this.

JT [02:22:27] You have a couple, two sons, two boys in a car accident. They need blood. Both of them about to die. The Witnesses, they gather together. They're holding tight. They're encouraging a couple don't take the blood. Remember, the Bible says abstain from blood. And this fraction that this child needs is not on that list.

JT [02:22:50] All of a sudden, one child dies. Didn't get the blood fraction that he needed. Three days later, the Watchtower can come out with a magazine like they did. And now hemoglobin is now acceptable. So these same parents can now turn around and go right back to the hospital, go right back to the doctors and all the staff that says, you know, you can give my second son that hemoglobin that you couldn't give my first son last week.

JT [02:23:23] When you have doctrines that can change like that, as I say, we always say, when you start jacking with people's lives, man, that's a problem that religion has a problem. When you can jack with people's lives. There are people we have talked to over the years. There was a man. His wife was beautiful.

JT [02:23:42] She was in a fire. Her face was burned. The insurance company says we will provide coverage for the graphs. It's not gonna be a problem. Witnesses couldn't take skin grafts along with transplants and. And things of that nature.

JT [02:23:57] His wife, every day, this man had to tell his wife, she's beautiful. She's beautiful with her face the way it was. His religion wouldn't even allow him to have some type of surgery done that would give her some skin grafts to improve her look. And yet he had to tell her every day, she's beautiful. All because of his religion. All because of his religion.

Lady Cee [02:24:20] And they wouldn't even let you store your own blood.

JT [02:24:23] No, no, you can stir your own blood. And so when you see teachings that literally morph, because that's the whole point. On Monday, this is a teaching of God. On Monday, so teaching of God. On Friday, God changed his mind.

JT [02:24:39] And unlike in the Catholic Church, they changed their teaching on eating the meat. Well, probably ate a hot dog on Friday. Nobody died from it. But when you have teachings where people are going to end up dying, that is so Sad. When I was an elder, I was. I served in the position in the congregation known as a secretary. And one of the responsibilities of secretary is every year, you go over what's called the blood documents with all the congregation. So Witnesses can get a little blood card and they get a little form. You know, this is a form they fill out about what type of treatments they want in terms of blood and transfusions, all this kind of stuff.

JT [02:25:15] And I remember the other Elders, they would just laugh, like, jt, you gotta get that talk, man. I'm glad you getting it, because I don't know what that stuff's talking about. And on this form, man, you would see medical terms that I had no idea what they were.

JT [02:25:29] And then after the meeting, you would have all of these Witnesses who would come to. Brother jt, is this okay if we take this? And so the Watchtower literally had a checklist of what you could take and what you couldn't. And do you know, man, what so many of especially older Jehovah's Witnesses would tell me? But, Brother jt, I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna avoid all of it just to be safe.

Lady Cee [02:25:51] Yeah.

JT [02:25:53] So even when they were allowed to take it, they didn't know they could actually take it.

Lady Cee [02:25:58] Yeah.

JT [02:25:58] My wife said to mention you. An experience we had in our congregation. We had a very unusual. Very unusual experience. We had a couple in our hall. The husband lost his. His kidney starts shutting down. So as a result, he needed to have a kidney transplant.

JT [02:26:16] So they was doing. They was doing all these tests. They was trying to find a match and this and that and this and that. Couldn't find anything. His wife, she says, I'm gonna take the test. She took the test, man. And she came back as a match for her husband.

JT [02:26:32] So we had called an Elders meeting, and we were discussing, okay, now, brothers, we're gonna have. Both husband and wife are going to have surgery at the same time. They both are going to be down, and they got kids. So we need to see if we can set something up. So we have some of the sisters bring some food by and make sure they, you know, they're taken care of. Because both of them gonna get cut up inside. And, you know, at the same time, you're gonna take that cut one and put another one.

JT [02:26:55] And so we're sitting by there discussing this, you know, as a body of elders. And one of the senior elders, older elder, he was red I keeping up with his magazine.

Lady Cee [02:27:05] Yeah.

JT [02:27:05] He would read back like this. Yeah. And so when we finished they, the, the.

John Dehlin [02:27:09] The.

JT [02:27:09] The elder one, the presiding overseer at the time, he said, anybody got, Anybody got any additional thoughts and you want to say anything? He read back, oh, that's fine, brothers. But you see, before we can do that, it looks like we might need to have a judicial committee meeting because you can't take transplants, brothers.

JT [02:27:33] I looked at this other elder, like, what is old brother Sims talking about? And so. And you can see the elders in the room like. And the presiding goes. He finally said, brother Sims, the society has changed their position on transplants. So, so we won't be needing to have a judicial meeting in this fellowship. The couple, you know, so he was even up. He wasn't even up to date on what he could and could not do. And when you think about, there are men all around the world, from first world countries to third world countries who are sitting in rooms making decisions like that. Some of these men got 4th and 5th and 6th grade education and they're going to make decisions about people's lives. That's jacked up.

John Dehlin [02:28:23] Yeah.

JT [02:28:23] You want to look at it?

John Dehlin [02:28:24] Yeah.

Lady Cee [02:28:25] You know what's really interesting too, about this blood situation, because the friend of mine, when she was telling me about when she. They weren't going to give them her blood for her baby, and it was. So when she tells the story, you just get chills.

Lady Cee [02:28:40] And so it was a couple of times. I think she had one time where she had one child and they actually went into the. The brother and I didn't know they did. They were doing this. She said, the brothers came to my hospital room and they barred the doctors from the room. They kept them out of her hospital room.

Lady Cee [02:29:03] But she said when she had her daughter and her daughter needed just a drop of blood, she told me, she said after all the brothers left the hospital room, she went to the doctor and she begged that doctor, she said, please save my baby, please.

Lady Cee [02:29:26] And she knew she wasn't supposed to give that baby blood. So what the doctors did was they forced an injunction and they were able to get that. Get her baby blood. And the little girl, how old is. Because she's. My goodness. She's in the second grade now, I think.

Lady Cee [02:29:45] And she said. And she was on our channel telling her story. We. We talked to so many people that I can't get the dates right. Time right. So the bottom line is they, they were able to save her daughter. Her daughter's like in the second grade.

Lady Cee [02:30:01] And she said that they went to the doctor because she, she. They left. They woke up and they found that this wasn't the truth and they left too. She said when they left this religion she said they got a chance to go to the doctor that saved her baby's life. And they went to him. She said she cried like a baby in that doctor's office telling him how happy she was that he saved her baby's life. They couldn't believe.

JT [02:30:31] Yeah, that. That. That story is so powerful because unbeknown to a lot of people when the Witnesses leave the room many Witnesses have allowed the doctors to give blood to their child. What most Jehovah's Witnesses want, if they are found in a situation like that is they want the courts to make the decision.

JT [02:30:54] So you'll get the administration of the hospital. We're going out to get the judge to give it to him. And unbeknownst to the elders and the brothers who are there the family's like, thank God they gonna do it, because I ain't got to do it. And so they're able to maintain what they consider a clear conscience. Most people do not realize that Jehovah's Witnesses have an entire system.

JT [02:31:14] Listen to me carefully. They have an entire system to deal with the issue of blood in hospital. It is called the Hospital Liaison Committee. It is a selection of three elders in practically every city and locality around the world. Here in the Washington, D.C. area, we have brothers who serve on the Hospital Liaison Committee. Their job is to go to hospitals when Witnesses are there and facing blood. And they meet with the administrators, they meet with the doctors. I remember a brother I had a conversation with. He left this organization. He used to be on the Hospital Liaison Committee in his state.

JT [02:31:52] And he said, J.T. he says, man, sometimes you feel like an idiot. You're sitting in a room with eight, nine, ten people. Administrators, directors, all kinds of surgeons and doctors. All these men got medical degrees. And they're discussing something that you. Because you work, you're a bus driver, you drive Metro. Okay, you must drop. But you got your suit and tie on, you're looking good.

JT [02:32:18] And these guys are discussing medical terms that you don't know nothing about. Nothing about. And he said he could see as they was explaining the Watchtower's position on stuff he could see they would let him like, well, you just ignorant as you. You can get. Ain't no difference in cutting the blood over here and cutting this fraction the same as that fraction does the same thing. And. And so they understood that what the Witnesses were arguing made no sense.

JT [02:32:42] See, at least when they taught take no blood, no Blood, at least that was clear cut. But when you start cutting the blood into pieces and saying, God is okay with this one, but he's not okay. A bunch of idiots, man. Get out. Get out of our conference room. And so he said he would feel like an absolute idiot sitting back there trying to explain something about this issue, knowing he didn't know what he was talking about. Because all was the talking points that the Watchtower legal department has sent down for him to read. It's ridiculous.

John Dehlin [02:33:15] I kind of. I kind of feel like this is going to sound like religious bigotry, but I kind of feel like there should be a law where no one can say they speak on behalf of God, because that's the problem that gives any human or organization way too much power when they can claim to speak for God.

JT [02:33:37] Yeah, you're right. That is probably.

Lady Cee [02:33:42] That's.

JT [02:33:44] Yeah. And that is the whole problem. As a Jehovah's Witness, you grew up believing that those eight guys in New York, they speak for God himself.

John Dehlin [02:33:55] Yeah. And they're just making it up. It's like you said, they're just making it up as they go along. Yeah. Do you really quickly. Do you know what's the policy on gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender individuals? Do you know the policy of the Jehovah's Witness Church? And has that caused. In Mormonism, there's an epidemic of LGBT Mormons taking their lives of young Mormon kids dying by suicide? Is that an issue in the Jehovah's Witness movement?

JT [02:34:27] An issue? I'm not for sure if it's an issue. And the reason why I don't say, I say this is because of the way they handle it. In the congregation I was in, there was a gay gentleman. He had left this organization. And when he got aids, he came back to this organization and he was reinstated and he became a Jehovah's Witness in good standing, even though everybody knew he was part of the gay community for many, many years.

JT [02:34:55] It's important to understand how Jehovah's Witnesses handle this. If a person is gay, if they have gay tendencies. And this is how the elder and this is how elders are taught. If a person is gay, if he don't practice his homosexuality, then he's okay. He can have gay feelings. And he might. He might lust after men just like men lust after women. That's just his shortcomings, like my shortcoming. I'm not, you know, other folks. So that's how the Witnesses view it. That's his. That is his burden to bear until the new system. Once again, the new system. God gonna make him a full man right now while he's here.

JT [02:35:31] And so this is the way the Witnesses view this. You can be a homosexual gay person, but you can't practice it. You can't practice it.

John Dehlin [02:35:40] Yeah.

JT [02:35:41] So as a result, most Witnesses, if you are a young kid or young child, you know how the organization feels like about it. And so as a result, you have no one to really talk to because this is not something they talk about. So there is no lesbian gay community that's going to be a part of the Jehovah's Witnesses. That's just not going to happen. So people instead will remain, quote, unquote, in the closet because of all the blowback that you have. And so as long as the person doesn't practice it, he will remain so for all practical purposes, he's got to just deal with that.

John Dehlin [02:36:17] And if they do. And if they do practice, if they

JT [02:36:19] do, you know, if they do practice it, they will be excommunicated. Slash, disfellowship. That is an absolute. Unless they apologize, they can show that they made a mistake. I sinned and fell short. Please keep me in the organization, brothers. But other than that, they'll probably be disfellowship.

Lady Cee [02:36:34] Okay. The thing about it, the thing about the suicide is they do have a high rate of suicides in the religion with the gay and lesbians. We've been, you know, getting emails and stuff like that from on our channel, and somebody just. They just. Somebody said that they just heard that somebody just committed suicide because of that same situation.

JT [02:36:54] Yeah. It's not something that you can openly. It's not something that a person who is gay would feel. A gay Jehovah's Witness would not want to approach the elders and say, brothers, you know I'm gay. No, no, no, no, no.

Sexuality, Gender Roles, and Child Protection Failures

John Dehlin [02:37:08] Okay, what about. What about. I know this is a big deal. What about the church covering up sexual predators and sexual abusers and kind of like punishing victims and protecting predators? I know that's been a big deal for you guys as it has been for us, but do you guys just want to talk to that really quick?

JT [02:37:29] Yeah, just real quick. It's the problem that churches in general have, and Witnesses more so because the Witnesses are really image conscious. The Witnesses have a perfect image that they want to maintain. And so what would happen is in the past, and they may change because of the law that's on the back of their neck, as it were. What would happen is if someone approached the elders about Their child being molested by someone in the congregation. Witnesses believe that the elders are qualified to handle this issue, and it is best handled in house. And one of the questions that they would often ask a victim, well, Sister Davis, you got the mom and the little girl back there, right?

JT [02:38:18] They would say, well, Sister Davis, Jehovah has forgiven the brother for the mistake he made. He apologized. The congregation, elders, we've forgiven the brother. Can't you and your daughter have it in your heart to forgive the brother? Jehovah, we forgave him. So, so, so, so the burden is now on you, Sister. And so. And so you sit back there like, well, my little girl just got raped. Well, and so they're telling you, this is what you need to do, or if you want to go to the police. Now, what would happen is in my Suez. The culture is important to understand.

JT [02:38:48] Elders probably would not directly say, sister, you cannot go to the police and tell this. This is what they would say. How you think this is going to make Jehovah's name look in the community? We're in a small community system. People don't like us already, and we're trying to build a Kingdom hall up the street. We trying to get the paperwork through down at the county. And now we're gonna have this going into the newspaper. Now, if you want to go, it's up to you, Sister, but you need to understand the ramifications of you going forward. And so they didn't tell us she couldn't go, but they set up a scenario where you don't want to go. And so, as a result, these cases were handled in house. I just spent. Check this out.

Lady Cee [02:39:29] What?

JT [02:39:30] Less than a year ago, man, I just found out. The congregation I grew up in, North Kaki, the congregation I grew up in, we had three molestation cases in that hall. I never knew that. Never knew that. And so. And because it was handled privately, everything. One of the questions that elders ask when we go into a judicial meeting, this is probably one of the first questions we ask.

JT [02:39:55] So who knows about this outside this room? Who know about them? That's the first question we ask. And because of that, that will determine how that case many times will be handled. If nobody knows it outside the room, it stays in the room. Like that thing. What was it? Las Vegas stays in Vegas, okay? That's the way Witnesses operate for decades. And it's only because of the law Witnesses are taught. When you have a question, you call the Watchtower legal department. And if you live. Now, let me just show you how crazy this is. We live here in the. In the Washington, D.C. area. D.C.

JT [02:40:32] maryland, Virginia. I can literally. I can literally cross into Virginia in about 10 minutes. And in five minutes, I can go across the 14th Street Bridge and then come back into Virginia coming on South Capitol. So you can literally. I can literally cross into three, two states in a jurisdiction in less than 25, 30 minutes.

JT [02:40:50] So you could have a different law that applies in each state. So if your daughter got molested in Maryland, the Elders might be in a state where it's not reporting. Get just 10 minutes across the river, the fourth across the river into Virginia, you're in the reporting state, and then you go into D.C. that's a reporting state. So depending on where your child is molested will determine what the elders will do.

JT [02:41:13] And that is the type of stuff this. Or. And this is one of the problems this organization is having. We were just. When I was at Bethel, man, just. Just a little side piece. When I was at Bethel, the Watchtower had about 12 attorneys who work with about. The staff was about. Total about 12. And so support people.

JT [02:41:29] The Watchtower now is pushing a staffing of over 200 people that works in the legal department because they're fighting so many cases all over this country. And the Watchtower has branches in like, what, 85 countries around the world.

JT [02:41:42] And one of the things that witnesses are very proud of, very proud. We do the same thing everywhere. So the way Elders are handling a case in Chicago is the same way they're going to handle it somewhere else. And that is we're going to do it according to the Society's directive. So when people, when this thing goes to court, attorneys are like, y' all, guys, y'. All. Y' all set y' allselves up real bad.

JT [02:42:05] So it's very unfortunate. And they do blame the victim. One of the questions and. And someone has sent this to me. I gotta find it. One of the questions that they would actually ask the victim, man, I couldn't believe this. And they have. And you can see the phone number down the. At the bottom. S34, S23. These are forms they use.

JT [02:42:25] One of the question was, you asked the victim how they felt while he was being molested. Did you feel any pledge? And the problem, of course, man, is most of the elders, man, we didn't go to school for childhood behavior. We didn't go to school for psychology. So you got men who ain't got no qualifications, none. No early childhood development. And that's why for years, for years, until it became Such a public thing. You would have an 8, 9, 10 year old little girl sitting in the same room with her mama and daddy and three elders and the perp. And she has to describe in detail one of the things we talked about in one of our videos about the judicial meetings that elders have with Jehovah's Witnesses, especially if it involves some type of sexuality fornication.

JT [02:43:16] The questions that the person, especially women, the questions that they're going to be asked, man, are off the chain. Who on top? Did he insert this? Did you do this? Did you do that? Did you. I mean it. There is no bars limit. And here's the kicker.

JT [02:43:33] If you have a sister back there and she refuses to answer the question, that will be held against her. Did y' all notice she won't cooperate? When we asked that question about who was on notice, what she said? Right. She didn't say nothing. And so that's just how ridiculous this internal tribunal takes place with people's lives. This is the part of the Jehovah's Witnesses that people outside know nothing about. When you are studying the Bible with Jehovah's Witnesses, there is no chapter, Right? Judicial stuff.

Lady Cee [02:44:06] Yeah.

JT [02:44:08] And so I look back now, man, as an elder, and you know, you. I was a young elder and I was groomed. You, you think that this is the way it's handled because these are senior elders, 25 years being an elder, you just got, you just, you was appointed three weeks ago. We're going to show you the ropes, J.T. and so the questioning, how it's done, you think this is right? You think you're trying to peer and get to the truth. And I look back now, man, it was, it's sad. It's just sad.

Lady Cee [02:44:41] And the women, we just follow blindly and we thought that, that the husbands were, you know, like, you know, as a woman, you, you can think and, you know, like even in our lives now, after we left the Watchtower. Yeah, you know, I'm like, entrepreneurial. I do things and I've always been doing my own business. And, you know, I work full time, too. But, you know, you were told that you can't do that. And I remember this sister told me, she was like, you let brother JT take care of that, you know, but I'm strongly for my business and I don't need a man to tell me that I can't do this because he's going to do this, you know, and that's how it is in the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Lady Cee [02:45:28] And it's like, one of the things that we. That we have an issue with with the women is some of them don't work. And so they could probably be more. They could probably make more money than their husbands, you know, because of the way they work. But because they're told, you should be at home and doing all the things that a wife should do, you shouldn't be trying to work a job.

Lady Cee [02:45:54] My mother. I don't really think my mom didn't work a job because of being. My dad was not a witness when I was growing up. But I think my mom chose not to work because of my brother getting killed because she was not home. He was with a babysitter.

Lady Cee [02:46:13] And I think that's why she didn't work. But when she got older, she was so mad when she found out this wasn't the truth. And she said, I should have had a military career. I should have been. She was realizing that she should have been working a job. But mom didn't work a job.

Lady Cee [02:46:27] What ended up happening was. And I tell women this all the time. I let them know, I understand you want to work. You. You don't want to work a job. You want your husband to go out there and work his job, and you're gonna be at home and you're gonna be the Ozzy and Harriet relationship. I understand people want to do that. I want to quit my job every day.

Lady Cee [02:46:50] I realized that you need your own money. And my mother. When my mother got sick, and I'm telling you, I've been juggling one salary. Well, not what my dad got multiple streams of income, but he's got two people to care for, and the amount of money that they need to. That they. That he needs to have coming in.

Lady Cee [02:47:14] I don't know how I've been juggling this money and paying these bills, and I'm. I'm caring for their. Their. I'm taking care of his money, and I make sure that I pay her. Assisted living. And then he's in another place. They're in two different places. Because my mom's illness, my dad can't be with her right now. So she's in assisted living in one place. And he is in. Because he worked for the military. He's in a military place, you know, where he could stay because he's a vet.

Lady Cee [02:47:46] And so he's got these veteran benefits that he could. That he could tap into. And so he's able to live as an independent. But because my mom did not work a job, you know, it's really, really hard for my father to try to pay bills on her end and also have a measure of life for himself. So I always tell women, if you don't do nothing else, work part time, do something, have some money coming in, you know.

John Dehlin [02:48:11] Yeah, that's a, that's a huge problem in our church too. When, when a couple goes through a faith crisis and maybe one or both leave the church, oftentimes that destabilizes the marriage. Sometimes that leads to divorce or, or something else. And the women never got their degrees. Oftentimes they never got careers. Now there's a divorce and the women are just like, I don't know, I don't even know where to start. I'm like 40, 45 years old, I've got four kids. How in the world am I going to go back to school with four kids and start a career? It's a real problem. Let me ask you this, Lady C. I understand that the Jove's Witnesses are patriarchy, just like the Mormon Church. Can you talk about the ways really quick in which women are kind of second class citizens in the church? If that's the case? Yeah.

Lady Cee [02:49:06] Well, you know, they treat you bad, you know, you can't speak up. I mean, you know, like when I was at, when we were Jehovah's Witnesses, I was a freelance instructor and I would, you know, teach computers and stuff like that. And I went to the Kingdom hall one day and I saw this brother and he was trying to take a handwritten sheet where he was trying to, you know, keep track of all the books and everything, you know. And so I, I couldn't just walk up to him and say, hey, you know what? I got an idea for you. You can use an Excel spreadsheet and you could put all these names in here and alphabetize them, you know, and whatnot. I had to go to my husband and tell him so that he could go tell this brother.

John Dehlin [02:49:48] Oh.

Lady Cee [02:49:49] Because I was tired of waiting in this long line for him to work with this little handwritten sheet where he was trying to keep track of all these literature that he was trying to give out. And so I couldn't go up to him and tell him that. And I was like, you know, I know what I'm talking about.

John Dehlin [02:50:04] Why can't you, you can't.

Lady Cee [02:50:05] Why I couldn't go up to him and tell him that.

John Dehlin [02:50:07] Why?

Lady Cee [02:50:08] Because, because I'm a woman. I can't tell him or give him, give him, give him some ideas for doing that.

JT [02:50:15] She needs to be in subjection and submission.

Lady Cee [02:50:18] You know, So I went, no, she

JT [02:50:20] needs to know her role.

Lady Cee [02:50:22] And just little things. Like, I remember the sisters told me, this one sister told me, she said, I like this sister. And these two sisters in the congregation because they share their husbands, you know, because they let their husbands go do things with other sisters. The people that didn't have husbands, you know, they, they look at other women and they think, you're holding us other sisters back because, you know, because women, you don't get any respect in the congregation. You can't marry somebody that's not a witness. So you, so you can go and get this other brother to help you out with different things that you need help with, you know, and women are not supposed to show any leadership.

Lady Cee [02:51:05] So, like, if I was leading, let's say I'm trying. Let's say I'm the breadwinner in my family. I'm not supposed to be telling people that. You're not supposed to tell people that. You are, you know, you. Or you can't tell people your successes, or you can't tell people, you know, you couldn't, you couldn't, you couldn't have a disagreement with your husband in public, you know, or you could make people think that you came up with this idea. Or. I remember Watchtower articles that would talk about the husband has the last say. And I remember this one magazine that came out in the Watchtower, and it was talking about all the things that husbands and wives would have to do when it came to making decisions.

Lady Cee [02:51:47] And they, they made, they, they broke it all down to the situation with going on vacation. It was still the husband that had to have the last say on where you were going to go on vacation. And they went round and round around at the, the Watchtower study. And at the end of the day, the husband had the last word. So no matter what you did, you. You had to stand 10ft behind your husband. You couldn't have an idea, say it was your idea. You always had to dumb it down. You always had to make people feel like it was your husband's idea or you would be looked at as being a jezebel.

Lady Cee [02:52:31] You just couldn't be yourself. And there's nothing wrong with, you know, a woman knowing different things because you're two different people. So you and your husband have different skill sets. You have different backgrounds. You know, you, you, you, you're different people. And so you may have a fix to something. You, you may be the one in the house fixing cars. My cousin, I have a cousin.

Lady Cee [02:52:56] She, whenever something broke down in their house. She fixed it. Her husband didn't fix nothing. She was. Mr. She was like, Mr. Fix it, you know, but she wouldn't be walking around telling everybody that she's fixing the refrigerator and fixing flat tires and stuff like that, you know. But I'm just saying, you just. The woman has to always show that she's the weaker vessel.

John Dehlin [02:53:21] Oh, what? This is so fantastic. What. I mean, it's tragic and it's so powerful to hear you talking about this Lady C. So the eight or the nine, the governing council, Is that what they're called?

JT [02:53:33] The governing body?

John Dehlin [02:53:34] Are there any women in the governing body? No, never. There's never been a woman in the governing body ever.

Lady Cee [02:53:41] And they probably won't be.

John Dehlin [02:53:43] What about in the highest levels of the organization, at church headquarters? Are the women leading there?

JT [02:53:50] No, this is a male. This is a male. This is a male focused organization.

John Dehlin [02:53:55] What about at the church level, the elders? Are there any female elders?

JT [02:53:59] No.

Lady Cee [02:54:00] Well, they have some elder rats, some males. I'm being facetious.

JT [02:54:06] These are, these are like elders wives sometimes.

Lady Cee [02:54:09] I'm gonna tell you what. Some, you know, women, a lot of times we talk a lot and you know, like a lot of times, like in the, in the, in the, in the congregation, you will have women that you can tell that they telling their husbands what to do. So they have. Their husbands might be elders.

JT [02:54:28] Yeah.

Lady Cee [02:54:28] But they don't rant some things about those wives too.

JT [02:54:31] Right.

Lady Cee [02:54:32] In this one congregation that I was in in Michigan. Now, the women, they did make up. They. They did choose the colors with the Kingdom hall. Colors was going to be.

John Dehlin [02:54:43] Huh? Okay.

Lady Cee [02:54:45] That kind of stuff, you know.

John Dehlin [02:54:47] So was there something about veiling faces? Jt, did you mention something about veiling faces?

JT [02:54:52] What? It was, it was about when it's time to pray.

John Dehlin [02:54:58] Show us. Show us Lady C. Ready?

Lady Cee [02:55:00] Ready, jt.

JT [02:55:01] Okay, okay, okay. If.

Lady Cee [02:55:03] If you gotta put a napkin.

JT [02:55:07] It's the head covering doctrine. If, If a woman were to pray in front of a man, this is what she has to put on her head. And so what happens is, most jobless with his women, they always keep like a little nice scarf or a little hanky, but if you ain't got nothing, you just grab toilet paper.

Lady Cee [02:55:29] My dad came home one day.

JT [02:55:30] Oh, my God.

Lady Cee [02:55:31] My dad was. See, my dad wasn't a witness, and he came home from work and my mom was doing a Bible study or something, and she was about to pray or something, and she put her. She. She put her. Her napkin over her head and my dad came in the house and said, what are you guys sitting around with all these napkins on your head? We started laughing because, you know, he wasn't. He wasn't baptized or nothing like that, but we were still showing respect for a male being in the house.

JT [02:55:59] Yeah, it's. It's pretty bad. Let me give you a perfect example just how bad it is. We. If. If Jehovah's Witnesses are having a meeting and there are no men there. There are no men, but there's a little young child, he's nine years old, baptized.

JT [02:56:25] You could have Witness women who have been witnesses for 25, 35, 45 years. He actually tops all of them, right? Yeah. And it's very embarrassing. It's very humiliating for women, especially if you have women who have some education, when you have to have men who may not really qualify. We had a sister in our hall. She's a doctor. She's a clinical psychologist. She was a doctor before she became a Witness.

JT [02:56:56] And she had brought one of her fellow doctors to our meeting once. And this was a small meeting, it's called a book study, where it's held in someone's home. So it's only maybe 15 or 20 people there. And she had someone there. And that night, this person was not a Witness. And so that night, my reader, he's a brother who reads the pages or reads the paragraphs for them at the meeting, and I asked the questions, he reads the paragraph. Well, he didn't show up that night. So there was another brother. He's wonderful guy.

Lady Cee [02:57:31] Just.

JT [02:57:31] Just a wonderful guy. But he's not very well educated and he cannot read that well, but he's a brother, so I had to allow him to read. And it was really bad. I mean, it was really bad. These Bible teach. It was really bad.

JT [02:57:55] So she came to me a few days at another meeting. She says. She says, Brother J.T. i brought my friend there. It was kind of hard because her friend was a doctor like she was, and she was wondering, why don't this guy use some of these women either read, because this guy can't read.

JT [02:58:10] But. But that's the way the system is set up. So we will sacrifice the quality of the meeting because he's a male. And that's what happened. And so when you are part of a male culture, religion, men are in charge, women are not. It takes many different forms. It can go. I mean, and it does. And it goes from one extreme to the other. I mean, there are elders and brothers who are Witnesses, who. Them and their wives. They view each other as partners. But the overall attitude of.

JT [02:58:44] Of this organization is that women have their place. You need to know your place and stay in your place. And like my wife mentioned, you know, don't be coming with no ideas. In fact, it's so bad that the Watchtower has stated years ago that, for example, if your husband gives the wrong answer as a wife, it would not be proper to correct it. Let it go. Just let your husband be a fool out there. Let it go. Don't try to save him. Just let him go over the. Over the cliff. And so I told my wife, I said, if you see me acting like a fool, doing something stupid or saying something crazy, let me know. Don't just let me hang out there and drive. But this organization says, sister, yeah, just let the man hang out there and drive.

Lady Cee [02:59:28] We went to brunch with a couple of couples, and they weren't Jehovah's Witnesses after we had left. And I remember we were. We had been gone for a couple years. And so, you know, the training was still, like, deeply ingrained in my mind. So the one couple was there and the wife was. Was disagreeing with the husband in public. Looking around the other lady at the table, I'm thinking maybe somebody gonna say something to her in a second because she needs to stop talking to her husband like that. You know, I'm thinking, oh, my gosh, she's embarrassing, you know? But then I realized they were just talking about the food.

JT [03:00:02] Yeah.

Lady Cee [03:00:02] They were having a good time.

JT [03:00:04] Yeah. I mean, you're right. She's right. I mean, it takes so many different levels. But. But overall, at the end of the day, women have their place and men have their place. And if you get out of that place, you will get checked as a female. You will.

John Dehlin [03:00:16] It is just. It is mind blowing.

Lady Cee [03:00:18] You gotta dumb yourself down. I feel like. I felt like you had to dumb yourself down in order for people to not look at you and think that you were sidestepping your. Getting out of your boundaries.

JT [03:00:31] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:00:32] It is mind blowing to me that in 2021, there's any organization, let alone a Christian religion, that is barring women from full leadership and full participation. And the Catholic Church has it, the Mormon Church has it, Jehovah's Witnesses have it. It's just mind blowing. It's just. But thank you so much for answering that question. I have a huge favor to ask you guys, and I'm putting you on the spot.

JT [03:00:57] Go ahead.

John Dehlin [03:00:59] Our time is up, and I have it least another hour's worth of questions. For you guys. Is there any chance you guys would be willing to come back on the podcast and let me ask you some final questions? Because we haven't covered racism yet.

John Dehlin [03:01:15] I'm dying to know if the Jehovah's Witness religion has a history of racism, because the Mormon Church sure does. And if there are racist policies or practices today. And then I want to talk about what's caught, how the church is doing, what's causing people to leave the church, how the church is dealing with people that are leaving, how the church is dealing with the Internet. And then I'm totally dying to know what it's like to be a Jehovah's ex. Jehovah's Witness activist. What are the upside? What's the downside? Do you guys get attacked? Are you guys ever.

John Dehlin [03:01:50] Are you guys ever, like, in the firing line like I am and like other people are? And then I want to talk about how we can collaborate and help each other, because I think we can learn a lot from each other and help each other be more successful. I know that I have a lot. I don't know if you know this. I have a lot of Jehovah Witnesses that listen to Mormon Stories podcast. Did you guys know that?

JT [03:02:09] Oh, yeah. Because it's almost like first cousins.

John Dehlin [03:02:13] Yeah, exactly.

JT [03:02:15] We share so many of the same commonalities in terms of how these organizations run, the rules of the organization. And when you take a step back, you can quickly realize this is very similar to what I. And because, like you've been saying throughout this whole program, man, I can relate. I can relate. And it's because. And what it is, you will find that it's because the same techniques of these groups are used.

John Dehlin [03:02:40] Yeah, yeah.

JT [03:02:41] They change the colors, they change the outside appearance, but underneath the skin, you got the same product.

Lady Cee [03:02:46] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [03:02:48] So you guys will come back?

JT [03:02:49] Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin [03:02:50] Yeah. Okay. Just like, one or two hours more, and I won't beg anymore. But also, I just want to say, I know my listeners are going to love this. My viewers are going to love this. You guys are so delightful. You're funny, you're interesting, you're brilliant. You're. I just. You guys are the best. So, J.T. and Lady C. I am so in love with. With you guys and what you do. Thank you so much on behalf of our listeners. Thanks for what you do for your people, but also for our people. And I can't wait to have you back.

Lady Cee [03:03:24] Absolutely. We can't wait to come back.

John Dehlin [03:03:26] Yeah.

JT [03:03:26] If there's anything that we can leave is to Let people know, regardless of what group you may be in, there is always life afterwards. It's always life.

John Dehlin [03:03:37] Life after what?

JT [03:03:38] It's always life afterwards after the religion.

John Dehlin [03:03:41] Oh, oh, right, right, right. Okay.

JT [03:03:43] It's always life after the religion. So we tell people, take the lemons and make lemonade.

John Dehlin [03:03:48] Okay. And we're going to talk about that. Like, what are the lessons you've learned about how to leave a high demand religion and to heal and grow and even thrive after you've left something? It feels devastating to leave it. How do you leave it and end up thriving? That's a, that's a really important topic.

JT [03:04:06] That's probably the challenge that every person faces who leaves.

John Dehlin [03:04:09] Okay. All right. So thank you. I adore you guys. I'm sorry, I have to run. We're going to bring you back for part two and then I want you guys to give me a big old list of what I can do to help you guys. Is that okay?

JT [03:04:20] Thank you so much.

Lady Cee [03:04:21] Thank you so much. We appreciate you.

JT [03:04:22] Thanks for the invite.

John Dehlin [03:04:24] Make your list and we'll be coming right back and doing more great stuff. Tell us, tell us your, your website and your YouTube channel one more time.

Lady Cee [03:04:33] XJWcriticalthinker.com and it's XJW. Well, wait a minute. What is our thing? XJW.com is the website and then go to YouTube and it's just XJW Critical thinker.

John Dehlin [03:04:51] Okay, you guys are the best. We'll see you. Let's, let's email about when we'll have you guys back. Thank you. And, and again, Jason Moore, thank you so much for recommending J.T. and Lady C. You guys not only didn't disappoint, you guys dramatically blew away my expectations. You guys are the best. I wish Mormons had you guys. So now they do.

JT [03:05:18] Now they do.

John Dehlin [03:05:20] All right, you guys take care.

JT [03:05:23] Take care.

John Dehlin [03:05:23] See you guys soon. And listeners, thanks for listeners. Join us again. We'll be doing more great stuff on Mormon Stories. Thanks to everyone who gave comments today. Your comments were amazing. Everyone. Take care and we'll see you guys again soon on Mormon Stories podcast. Take care, everybody.

Part Two Opens With a New Co-Host

Part 2 of 2 · Ep. 1429

John Dehlin [00:00:03] Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is May 14, 2021 and we are here for part two of an episode that I think is a really, really historic and important Mormon Stories podcast episode. For those who joined us earlier in this week or or who just listened to the previous episode. We were so fortunate, so blessed to have J.T. and Lady C on Mormon Stories podcast. J.T. and Lady C are two of the most prominent and well known YouTubers who were former members of the Jehovah's Witnesses and they have a YouTube channel that is wildly popular.

John Dehlin [00:00:55] They have been doing this for many, many, many years. In some sense, they're the OGs of ex Jehovah's Witness YouTube and they're funny and they're soulful and heartfelt and experienced and they're wise and they're back for part two of this epic interview. We did, I don't know, three hours with you guys before and that just wasn't enough. Two to three hours covered so much ground. We covered you guys, your experiences being raised in the church. We talked about your courtship and when you guys met. We talked about living the lifestyle, all the demands of being Jehovah's Witnesses. We talked about shunning. We talked about, you know, the church organization and the leaders of the church.

John Dehlin [00:01:50] We talked about how you get ahead. We talked about what it does to families to have differences in faith within the church, how people can get alienated from their families. We talked about disfellowship meant and shunning and backlash, what happens when you speak out publicly. We talked about conditional love in the community.

John Dehlin [00:02:13] We talked about getting married fast and young and marriages that sometimes shouldn't have ever happened. We talked about Jehovah's Witnesses discouraging their members or de emphasizing the bearing of children. We talked a lot about the second coming and Armageddon and, you know, how Jehovah's Witnesses aren't encouraged to necessarily get education so that people are kind of indebted to the church and dependent on the church.

John Dehlin [00:02:46] We talked about so much community and missionary work and the missionary zeal and oftentimes how church workers can be mistreated. We talked about military service and how that's discouraged and blood transfusions and the LGBT members of the church. There's just so much that we talked about how the church handles abuse and sexual abuse and cover ups so much women in the church. There's so much that we covered and we were just scratching the surface and so I was so thankful that at the end of that, where I'm like, oh, my gosh, we've got so much to cut, more to cover. JT and Lady C agreed to come back to Mormon Stories for yet another interview. And so they're back. Thank you, JT and Lady C, for joining us again.

JT [00:03:38] Thank you for having us back as well.

Lady Cee [00:03:40] Thank you for having us. We appreciate it.

John Dehlin [00:03:42] And I have to say, the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. People have loved our time together. They loved you guys. You're funny, you're witty, you're smart, you're experienced, you're wise. And so we're just so glad to have you back.

JT [00:03:54] Yeah, it's good to be back. It's a very serious subject. But as they often say, if you, if you don't laugh, you'll cry. So we try to, we try to put a balanced approach towards it.

John Dehlin [00:04:07] Tell them really quickly, your YouTube channel, your website. I just want to get shout outs to that right at the very beginning.

Lady Cee [00:04:12] Website is xjwcriticalthinker.com if you go to. I'm sorry, no, that's right.

John Dehlin [00:04:21] That's good.

Lady Cee [00:04:22] Okay. And then if you go to our YouTube, if you go to YouTube and you put a certain search XJW Critical Thinker. And we're also on an audio podcast and I know we're broadcasting through itunes. So if you go to itunes and type in critical thought, that's the name of the podcast. So critical thinkers have a critical thought. So that's what that's all about.

John Dehlin [00:04:47] I love it. I love it. Check all that goodness out. Follow them. Their YouTube channel is so funny and brilliant as it all is. So glad to have you here. Shout out to my buddy Jason Moore from Sugar Land, who put us all in touch. He's the reason this all happened. And he was tenacious with me, my Houston brother from a different mother. He was tenacious with me about doing this interview. And now I'm wondering, why did I freaking wait so long? I'm kicking myself. And as if this weren't all enough, we're going to be joined today by my good buddy, my colleague Gerardo, who is my cinematographer. He helps me look good, but he's also, he creates the thumbnails. He's a graphic designer, and he's also a brilliant, thoughtful human. Gerardo, why did you want to join us for today's episode?

Gerardo Sumano [00:05:37] Hi, John. Thanks for having me. So the reason why I wanted to join was because during my two year mission in Mexico City, I became really fascinated with the Jehovah Witnesses. And so I studied a lot about their doctrines. And not only that, but I would go and look for their old books, purchase them on ebay while on my mission, and collect their old books and sometimes carry them around with me because there were so. There's so many Yahoo Witnesses in Mexico City.

Gerardo Sumano [00:06:14] It's. It grows. It has grown super, super fast. So we would see them on the street all the time. So I would carry these old books from the YHVH Witnesses to prove them that their doctrines have changed. And. And with time, I was able to like, figure out what things make them kind of like think a little bit more, what things triggered them and kind of like there's the strengths and also their weaknesses of their doctrines. So because of my fascination with Jehovah Witnesses, I asked you if I could co host this episode.

John Dehlin [00:06:53] Yeah. So we'll welcome and love your questions and impressions, Gerardo, as we go today.

JT [00:06:59] Yes, thanks. Yeah, we look forward to your thoughts as well because you're able to give a perspective of a non Jehovah's Witness as you deal with Witnesses and how they respond when you raise issues. Most people don't raise issues because most people know very little about the doctrines. So it'd be interesting to see what you have to add as well. Should be very interesting. Very good.

Gerardo Sumano [00:07:21] Yeah. Yeah. I was actually able to go to different elders homes and like be with my companion and preach to their families. So at one time we went to one of their meetings where they do. Can't remember, I don't know what the translation is in English, but where they do the. The bread and the wine and where like nobody takes of it, we went to that. So yeah, I had quite an experience with Yahoo. Witnesses.

JT [00:07:51] Yeah, yeah, the passing. Yeah, the passing of the Britain wine is very unique.

Lady Cee [00:07:55] Right, right.

JT [00:07:55] When it comes to Jehovah's Witnesses. Very unique.

Gerardo Sumano [00:07:58] Right.

John Dehlin [00:07:59] Okay, so we covered so much in our last episode and we've got so much to cover today.

Lady Cee [00:08:04] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:08:05] I wanted to begin with the question I was dying to ask you guys last time. You know, Mormonism, for, for all the, you know, there. There are positives and negatives about any organization and we're not going to be focusing on the positive things about Mormonism today because the church does a really great job of telling the world about how great it is. And you know, who are we to disagree with that? What I am going to say is that Mormonism was born and conceived in. In racism.

John Dehlin [00:08:36] And that's a shocking thing for Mormons to Hear Mormons, bear with me. I am one of you in so many ways. But you know, Joseph Smith comes out with this book that basically claims, and it's still Mormon scripture today, that Native Americans that we all, you know, would see Native Americans were cursed with dark skin by God as a curse for their wickedness or the wickedness of their ancestors. And that's a basic narrative structure in the Book of Mormon. Light skinned Nephites, dark skinned Lamanites, they had the dark skinned because they were cursed with the mark. And the white and delightsome Nephites were killed off by the dark and loathsome Lamanites.

John Dehlin [00:09:30] And that's the Book of Mormon. And if anybody wants to argue with that, you're literally arguing with reality. And I also want to say I'm feeling this anxiety and sadness that I'm speaking in such an offensive and shocking way. But this is Mormon doctrine and theology.

John Dehlin [00:09:52] And so it's awful and it's reality. And then if you want to just take it one way, worst step further. Even though early in the church's history there were some people of color that were baptized by Joseph Smith, by the time you get Joseph Smith's successor, Brigham Young, people of color were told, you're not allowed to be members in good standing in the Mormon Church.

John Dehlin [00:10:18] You can't go to the temple, you can't do all the high rituals in the church, and men can't hold the priesthood, and you're basically second class citizens in the Mormon Church. And this was true all the way through the civil rights era, all the way through Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, all the way through all that until 1978, when the church, after decades of pressure, finally relented and allowed people of color to be members in full standing. That is Mormon Church doctrine and history. And by the way, that nasty, distasteful Book of Mormon stuff is still in the Book of Mormon that we teach as God's most correct book on the earth.

John Dehlin [00:11:01] And the Church teaches this Book of Mormon is the cornerstone of Mormonism. Now I just, I'm wasting time. But that is Mormon doctrine and theology. And I got in trouble, I got in trouble recently for saying something that, that hurt a lot of people's feelings, rightly. So I asked the question, how could a person of color ever convert to the Mormon Church given its racist teachings? And that's offensive because it's insulting. And people join religions for all sorts of reasons that don't have anything to do with being intelligent. And what we actually know is many people who join Cults are highly intelligent. So it was a bad thing to say for all those reasons.

Racism and Race Relations in Jehovah's Witness History

John Dehlin [00:11:44] But now with all that background, I'm going to ask you guys two, three big questions. Does the Jehovah's Witness church have a history of racism? And if so, what is that? Was, was your experience in the Jehovah's Witness organization? Was there racism built into that? And if so, how.

John Dehlin [00:12:06] And then, you know, how do you make sense of race and the Jehovah's Witness movement today and people that might still be converting to the Jehovah's Witness, like people from Mexico or like people from Africa? So let's tackle racism and the Jehovah's Witness movement, and we'll just give you guys as much time as you want to talk about that.

JT [00:12:28] Okay, that's, that's a very good question. And is the answer is. Is. Is. Is an interesting answer because it's a developing answer. This religion was started by a gentleman. The name was Charles Taz Russell. And Charles Taz Russell, interestingly, he came up in a time where the views toward race was clearly defined, that there was no question about it in the 1800s.

JT [00:12:55] In fact, part of his teachings was that one day black people will return back to the. The blessed color, which, which would be white. So there was a, a lot of this racial attitude that brought itself right along into the teachings of Jehovah's Witnesses.

JT [00:13:14] Now, it's interesting because Jehovah's Witnesses, as in many areas, they often do things that's a little bit different. And one of the things that kind of make Joe wasn't somewhat unique, especially for their time, is that they actually begin to address racism and the color issue in a certain way.

JT [00:13:35] On one hand they took a few steps forward. On the other hand, they took two or three steps back. For example, a lot of people who came with this, like with my parents, in fact, that was actually one of the reasons that my family became Jehovah's Witnesses.

JT [00:13:52] During the late 50s and early 60s, the civil rights movement was really kicking off. And as I mentioned before, my mom had a white Jehovah's Witness come to the door. And that was one of the questions that my mother asked.

JT [00:14:08] Do you people worship together? Lady said, yeah, you know, we have integrated, integrated religion. We, we, we. We worship the same place. And this was actually during the time when the Watchtower society was starting to integrate congregations. Because at one time in the United States specifically, there were white congregations and black congregations. And so when the laws change, they begin to integrate the congregations so when my mom went to the Kingdom hall and she literally saw and heard a white man reach out and shake the hand of an African American and said, good morning, my brother, my mom knew that this must be the true religion.

JT [00:14:46] And the reason why is very simple. Many religions, as they often say, 11 o' clock on Sunday morning is the most segregated place in America. And that is true. I'll give you an example. The little town where I'm from, two churches, one Baptist by white people, one Baptist for black people. And to this very day in the year 2021, these have never integrated. They have never attended each other's services right till today. And so the Jehovah's Witnesses, they do.

JT [00:15:19] Now, with all of that having been said, one of the things that Witnesses do do is they oftentimes overplay it. And that's the sad part. You see, Jehovah's Witnesses do not like to discuss discrimination, racial inequality. They do not like to discuss it. And it kind of falls literally along two lines, along the lines of white Jehovah's Witnesses and black Jehovah's Witnesses. When I was growing up in many African American Jehovah's Witnesses will tell you that if they were to try to talk about how they personally were being impacted by racism, discrimination, many times a white Jehovah's Witness would find that very uncomfortable to discuss.

JT [00:16:05] So over a period of time, many African Americans, they actually just held to themselves what they were going through and how they actually felt. You see, during the 60s, the Watchtower took the position that we are not going to have anything to do with, with the civil rights.

JT [00:16:24] So Jehovah's witnesses during the 60s did absolutely nothing in terms of moving the goal post along in terms of racial equality. Instead, they stood back and they waited for other groups to go forward and try and get laws changed and get segregation and so forth dealt with by the means of laws. And as a result, we know that they had the, the young men sitting in the, in the Woolworth back in the 60s. They were mistreated. And it started the train that we now see a lot of the civil rights movements resulted in. So it's interesting because the Witnesses didn't do anything. And what that means.

JT [00:17:05] I've had this conversation with a number of African American Jehovah's Witnesses. What that basically means is if it had not been for other people, other groups stepping in and saying, this is wrong, because there were both white groups and black groups that were very much involved in moving the civil rights issues forward, Jehovah's Witnesses would have done nothing.

JT [00:17:29] Which means if we had to wait for Jehovah's Witnesses as a denomination to help get discrimination and laws and so forth passed, it would have never taken place. In other words, Jehovah's Witnesses today would still be segregated. And the reason why is the Witnesses take the attitude of we have nothing to do with those on the outside, even though many of their African American members were being affected by what was going on on the outside. And that's kind of where you see it at today.

JT [00:18:05] In most congregations, you will rarely find an African American who will carry on a conversation about, you know, something that happened to me on my job with a white witness because they simply want to just, just, just, just keep it to yourself. Wait for the new world and it will be fixed. Just be patient, wait for the new world. And so it is a conversation that is rarely, if ever discussed. And because of my personal background, I had the opportunity to go to the world headquarters of Jehovah's Witnesses. And it's a completely integrated workforce. But as you begin to look around, you begin to see certain patterns.

JT [00:18:45] And those patterns are certain types of jobs are held by certain types of races. And if you look all the way to the highest level, for almost 100 plus years, the leadership of Jehovah's Witnesses has always been white.

JT [00:19:03] When I was at the headquarters, which is called Bethel, which means House of God, the question I was asked, and we used to ask all the time to other high ranking African Americans within the organization, when are we going to get a black governing body?

JT [00:19:20] And we will always be told, well, it's not time. It's not time. And the question we used to ask is, well, it's not time for who, who's having a problem with the timeline? Because we ready. We ready. So it really wasn't that African Americans weren't ready for a black governing body member, but others, the white leadership, they were not ready for it. That's really the bottom line. And the issue that was often presented was we take something like the country of Mexico, even to this very day, the country of Mexico and all of Latin America, going all the way down to South America, they are actually responsible for the vast majority of growth within the Jehovah's Witness denomination.

JT [00:20:04] I've been told by a number of individuals that if we remove the Hispanic side of the organization out, the Watchtower has absolutely no growth at all. But the Hispanic side is people who are looking for answers. They often find themselves in difficult circumstances. So the message of Jehovah's Witnesses. It appeals to them and as a result they become Jehovah's Witnesses in large numbers. And Mexico is considered one of the largest Hispanic branches of the Jehovah's Witnesses. But here's the kicker, and it's very similar to what happened in the Mormon Church as well.

JT [00:20:39] You have all these people who are actually supporters of, yet the Hispanic community has no representation at the table. The same thing happened when I was in New York at the time with the Asian community. The country of Japan was one of the fastest growing areas of Jehovah's Witnesses in the world. They were literally just setting records. Over 180 peaks, which is every month for over 180 months. There was just more Jehovah's Witnesses in every aspect of the religion out of Japan, making the Asian community one of the fastest growing at the time. And once again, no representation at the table. Now you flashed up a picture just a second ago, just recently.

John Dehlin [00:21:29] So is this, is this your current leadership?

JT [00:21:31] This is the current leadership. And there they have.

John Dehlin [00:21:35] I'm seeing a brother, I'm seeing a brother,

JT [00:21:39] there's a brother. And, and unfortunately, unfortunately, when you talk to some African American, they'll tell you he's a little token guy. So, and it's kind of interesting because the way.

John Dehlin [00:21:50] What do you mean? Tell us what you mean by that. For those of us who don't know,

JT [00:21:53] sometimes, you know, and I often tell people, you know, Watchtower is a business, unfortunately, sometimes corporations and organizations, in order to calm the mass crowd down, they will oftentimes select a person of a certain ethnic color just as a recommendation, just as simply a representation. But they don't many times will any power decision making. And of course they're often handpicked as always. And so they will fit right in real nice with, with the program. They're not going to raise any issues. That's, that's the bottom line. They'll simply go along to get along. And so yes, there is an African American who now serves on the governing body of Jehovah's witnesses after almost 140 years of people serving in leadership roles. Took a lot, as they say, a long time coming. Long time coming.

John Dehlin [00:22:46] Yeah. And what I'm trying to do just really quickly to kind of contrast that is I'm just going to pull up the Mormon Church's leadership, you know, because there's often kind of this kind of Olympics of who's got it better, who's got it worse. And this is our leadership right it's white. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. There is one exception. We've got. We've got Suarez, which I guess he's from Brazil.

JT [00:23:17] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:23:18] Is that right, Gerardo?

Gerardo Sumano [00:23:19] Yes, Brazil.

John Dehlin [00:23:21] And Garrett Gong, who I guess is of Asian origin.

Gerardo Sumano [00:23:25] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:23:26] But he's certainly not a native Asian. Right? He's. Yeah, he went. I think he went to Oxford. I'm very sure he was raised in the States and. But anyway.

Gerardo Sumano [00:23:37] Well, something that stood out to me, now that you're talking. Who has a. Who has the best? Who has the worst? They were not. The Jehovah Witnesses were not pro civil rights.

JT [00:23:48] Oh, no.

Gerardo Sumano [00:23:48] We were fighting against it in the name of God. We have apostles.

JT [00:23:54] We.

Gerardo Sumano [00:23:54] Which Mormons believe they're called, of God as a mouthpiece of God, saying that the civil rights movements were from Satan. Yeah.

JT [00:24:07] What's most interesting about these types of groups is oftentimes who are considered the most loyal.

Gerardo Sumano [00:24:16] Right.

JT [00:24:17] Most supportive, most obedient. And, you know, I will be very honest with you, in the African American community, Jehovah's Witnesses, who I have seen over the years, the African American Jehovah's Witness, he will do anything he is told. He will not question, he will not challenge. When I served as an elder, that was one of the things I would often see is white elders, they would often question and challenge. Where did you get that information from, brother? I've never heard of that. Could you. Could you get a reference for that? Is there anything in writing or in print where that information is found? Or is that simply your personal thoughts on the matter? And you contrast that to the African American brothers, they'll be like, I ain't saying that. No, but just.

John Dehlin [00:25:05] Don't.

JT [00:25:05] Just keep your head low. Keep it. You know, they wouldn't say anything. They would never do that. And so yet they are the most loyal. In fact, we was laughing and talking about it that sometimes in the African American community, the. The black witness is harder on another black Witness than even in the white community. Let me just. We're going to give you just a couple examples. You want to share an example of someone who was actually working at the White House?

Lady Cee [00:25:33] Oh, yes. So we had this sister in our congregation when we first moved to Alexandria, Virginia, and she was telling me about her story about during the time of the Nixon, when he was president, and the Watergate scandal, and she was working at the White House at the time. And so she wanted to quit her job because she felt like, you know, she was really one of those People that just thought that, you know, she was going to get called into court. I don't know why she thought that. But anyway, she didn't want to be, you know, brought into court and, and have to, you know, be a Jehovah's Witness and having to go against the president or whatever.

Lady Cee [00:26:10] I don't even know why she thought that. But so she went to the elders and she told the elders that she was going to think about quitting her job because, you know, she didn't want to get caught up in the scandal and maybe somebody would be questioning her, wanting her to go to court and so forth. And you shouldn't be taking your brothers to. Not your. Not your brothers to court, but you shouldn't be going to court at all, you know. So the brothers told her, they said, well, look, sister, you know, when are you going to be retiring?

Lady Cee [00:26:37] And. And she said she had, like, about six months to go, not that long to go. And so they told her, they said, do not quit your job. They said, go ahead and get your benefits and go ahead and retire. And, you know, don't. Don't quit the job. So she got good advice. You know, she was able to retire.

Lady Cee [00:26:56] And that was in the 70s. And, you know, we moved to Alexandria back in the mid-80s, late-80s, you know, so she was able to keep her job where other people that we knew, this other brother that was getting ready to get appointed to be an elder, and they wanted to know whether or not there was anything that would be keeping him from, you know, getting.

Lady Cee [00:27:18] Becoming an elder. And he was encouraged to quit his job because he, he went to the brothers and said that the company that he had been working for was making a war, a part that goes to a warship, which was just totally insane because they, I think it also did like they did car, automobiles.

JT [00:27:37] They did everything. They did everything.

Lady Cee [00:27:40] But he got bad advice.

JT [00:27:41] Yeah, Sometimes you would find that the African American brothers, they would. They would. You. Not only do you have the rules of the organization, but then they would even tighten the rules down. So if the organization said jump three feet, the African brothers with African American brothers now say, we. We really need to jump four feet. And so. And so you would see this. And as a result, the advice that is often given is very devastating.

JT [00:28:09] I'll give you another example. Like, for example, like we talked about going to school, there was a. When I was, when I was in, In Brooklyn, many of us, we didn't go to college. We turned down scholarships. We were advised this wouldn't be a Good thing to do. And if you gave it up, then you're making a good spiritual decision.

JT [00:28:28] And this impacted a lot of African American brothers because they oftentimes had opportunities. And many people I know, and there are people who are watching this program right now, when they was 17, 18 years old, they was ready for a scholarship. It was already in line. But because of the way the organization is, and so oftentimes the white brothers would often tell their kids, yeah, I want you to go to school. I want you to go to school. And I actually saw how that impacted people. When you got to the corporate office in New York, many of the guys that we were sitting around one day and we were discussing what we did before we came to New York, and people had like, like Ms.

JT [00:29:03] Most Witnesses. Little part time business. I had a little cleaning business, little yard service business, you know, the pool service business. And I remember one of the guys sitting there, white guy from, from Dallas, Texas. I'll never forget it.

JT [00:29:15] So we asked him, so what did you do before you came? And he said, I work for Dean Witter. And I'm thinking. And we was all sitting, we were looking at you like, dean Witter, mail room, right? Mail room, right. And he said, no, I, I worked in acquisitions and I dealt with derivatives. And we was like, oh.

JT [00:29:36] And then he began to tell us that his congregation, the brothers, they were white, well educated. His father was an elder and he had him go the Texas A and M. And so when he got to New York, he had the type of background where he was able to rise within the organization. And we told him, man, you're not going to be over here working with us long. And sure enough, after he made his first year, he came in one morning, he says, guys, this is my last week. I'm getting a job transfer. And he said, well, where you going to is I'll be moving down to the Treasury Department.

JT [00:30:10] And what he does in the Treasury Department and he's still there, what he does is when Jehovah's Witnesses die and they leave and they will things to the Watchtower Society, it is his responsibility to cash out all bonds and stocks, any real estate holdings, he will have those converted over into cash and everything goes into the coffers. So he's doing exactly what he went to college to do. He's working in the financial end of the Watchtower. And so you see the different lifestyles and you see the different ways that the races are impacted by the way they are, which they are taught by this religion and, and, and and we've had this conversation before with a lot of former Jehovah's with us who are African Americans.

JT [00:30:52] And they often mention, you know, that was one of the things, man, we just, we really couldn't talk about in the congregation, how, you know, how I was treated on my job. And it wasn't because I was a Jehovah's Witness.

JT [00:31:02] See, every time you have run into problems, it's not because you're Jehovah's Witness. Sometimes it's simply the way you look, sometimes the way your skin color looks, but when you can't even talk about it because it's always played, you know, downplay, downplay, downplay. And as a result, many African Americans, they simply just hold it inside. And until you have a private conversation, you would never know what they went through. Because they can't tell anybody.

Lady Cee [00:31:26] Yeah, because when I was pioneering and I was trying to get a part time job, and there was another sister and she was Caucasian, and she was able to go downtown and it was a small town that we were in and she was able to get a job, and the brothers were like, well, sister, so and so went down there and got a job. Why can't you? You know, but they don't understand that, you know, they already made their quota for that office. And so you don't always get to get the same jobs. And so a lot of Jehovah's Witnesses think that when you are a Witness, no matter what your color is, everyone hates you because you're a Witness.

Lady Cee [00:31:59] And that's not always the case. And I always tell people that, hey, look, people are people. And then they join a group or an organization. And basically what I mean by that is people grow up in different areas of the country. They got different cultures, they live in different communities.

Lady Cee [00:32:21] And then you go knocking on doors and these people come into the congregation and they bring their, you know, their racist views or their attitudes with them when they come in. And just because they become a Jehovah's Witness doesn't mean that they change how they view people of other races.

Lady Cee [00:32:40] Now, I can say this. I'm very, very fortunate. You know, I was raised around mostly Caucasians because my dad was in the Air Force and we lived in some of the most remotest places in the United States. And so there were no African Americans that lived there. But I am so grateful that the Caucasians that I was around, I didn't really see the racism. I don't know if it's because I was a little kid and I wasn't paying attention to all of that, but I just felt like, you know, I felt comfortable being around the Jehovah's Witnesses. So I'm trying to say something positive, you know, about that.

Lady Cee [00:33:19] But then on the other hand, as I got older and, and I saw, you know, how the brothers would treat, you know, other brothers that needed jobs that were African American. And when I was in my teenage years and things like that, I noticed that there were brothers that were self employed and most of the Caucasian brothers in a lot of the congregations that I attended were always self employed. But I also noticed that when there were African Americans that didn't have work and they were out of work, they weren't always so freely to give them a job.

Lady Cee [00:33:57] And another thing I noticed is that when JT left Bethel and came down to Maryland, where I was serving with my pioneer partners and we were getting ready to start our life outside of Bethel, because when we didn't get accepted into Bethel, thank God, I noticed that the brothers would not like the elders and things like that, didn't offer JT a place to stay. They put him with a sister in the congregation and her unbelieving husband. And so here he is coming down from Bethel, you know, the house of God, so, so to speak, but none of the elders, we got like five or six elders in the congregation and they put him with a, a sister and her unbelieving husband.

Lady Cee [00:34:43] Didn't, you know, I guess didn't feel comfortable opening up their home to jt. But I mean, you, those are just the subtle things, you know, it's the subtle things.

JT [00:34:53] Yeah, and, and, and, and that's why I was saying, you know, as a religion, they have done a much better job at, at dealing with race than many other denominations. I mean, some denominations have not changed since they were formed. So, but, but then on the other hand, there's also this.

JT [00:35:11] Let's keep things quiet. Just to give you an example. You may have seen Jehovah's Witnesses with the carts. And there are basically two types of carts. There's a cart that basically any Jehovah's Witness can be in charge of on the streets, but there's also one that's called Metropolitan Witnessing. For example, there are certain locations that the people who are actually manning the carts, they're specifically selected here in Washington D.C. take a place like at Union Station that may be shared with different congregations. So if a Witness wants to be able to stand out there, he actually has to submit an application to his body of elders.

JT [00:35:53] That's Right. He has to submit his application to his body of elders, letting them know, I would like to be able to stand out there, not talk to anybody, and just man the cartoon now on this form, which is really interesting. I mean, when someone sent this to me, I'm like, man, this is sad. This is really sad.

JT [00:36:11] One of the questions is, does this individual have racial problems? And I'm thinking to myself, how in the world, if you've ever been involved. If you've ever been involved in a company with the creation of forms, where people sit around the conference room table and everybody put their ideas together to come up with how many questions are going to be on the form. And then everybody.

John Dehlin [00:36:34] You.

JT [00:36:34] You vet each question out, and then you decide, okay, we got 30. 30 good questions. We need to get it down to just 10. How in God's green earth does a religion that calls itself the church, the faith of God himself. How in the world do you end up having the need. The need to put one of the questions on the form? Is this guy a racist or not? Do we want him being able to stand there with the car? If he's a racist, we'll say no. If they. Can you imagine how the elders are going to have to say, no, we think he's a racist.

JT [00:37:10] So the critical thinking question is, if you already know this man the races, why haven't you addressed this with this man? This is. This shouldn't even be an issue. How does a person that every. All the elders sit in the back room on the form, it says, is. Does he have a problem with people different color? Yes. Why have they not addressed that? And to think that out of all the questions asking, is the person a racist on a form, for a person who now is supposed to stand on the street with the word of God, how do you have something like that in your.

JT [00:37:42] In your. In your religion? And so the issue of race is there. People know it's there. But once again, we try to. They would. We would try to tap it down. Tap it down.

John Dehlin [00:37:55] That's helpful. Harada, you just shared with me some statistics that I think are really interesting. Should I read them really quick? Do you want to read them?

Gerardo Sumano [00:38:04] You can read them. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:38:06] Yeah. So. So the Pew foundation says that Jehovah's Witnesses, 36% white, 32% Hispanic, 27% black, and then 6 are of another race or mixed race. That's quite. That's quite balanced, actually, in terms of membership. But it's just kind of shocking. It was so that on the one hand, that's great. On the other hand, it's shocking to see then how, just how unrepresentative your top leadership are.

JT [00:38:35] Yes, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:38:38] And yeah, those are all, those are all important stories. Well, is there anything else you want to say about. Are there, are there doctrines, theological or doctrinal issues that are still taught in the church today about race or have they, have they denounced past racist teachings? You know, is there anything about the doctrine of theology?

JT [00:38:58] They have moved away from that. They refer to that as old light. Now, now we have a better understanding than we have. So, so those types of teachings that they had in the, in the, in the beginning, man, they, they, they move those to the side. But unfortunately, sometimes underneath the surface you may find sometimes the same attitude.

Gerardo Sumano [00:39:17] Do you know around what year they, they started changing their doctrines regarding race? What about mixed race marriages?

JT [00:39:26] Yeah, there are interracial marriages. You will find that in this organization. You will find interracial marriages.

Gerardo Sumano [00:39:33] Was it a thing that was not okay before?

Lady Cee [00:39:38] And remember, okay, so there was a situation where we had a special pioneer in our congregation and his brother was engaged to a African American. And they, they were trying to get into the circuit work, but they didn't want them to go into the circuit work. And the circuit work is a traveling overseer in the Jehovah's Witnesses. And what it was is they didn't want to put the mixed race couple out into the, to the traveling work. I don't know when, when that was. I know, I know. We were in their congregation, you know, in the late early 80s.

JT [00:40:13] And that's pretty much still a policy. Now. They don't that many times they feel that the congregations are not ready for an interracial traveling overseer. And you. And there, as far as I know, there are no, especially United States, there are no traveling interracial traveling overseers. Interesting.

John Dehlin [00:40:31] Well, I think our leaders must be talking to each other. I bet there's some club of like leaders of high demand religions because you may have saw Gerardo and I smiling, you know, when you said that instead of apologizing, hey, we got it wrong in the past. We're sorry for those bad teachings, now we're going to correct it. You know, that's what reasonable people do when they make a mistake and want to correct it. But, but the words you used of like just deemphasizing the past, moving in a new direction.

Gerardo Sumano [00:41:05] We saw through a glass darkly.

John Dehlin [00:41:08] Yeah, just saying. Oh, we got more clarification now. Right? Like, it must be that our leaders, they do Talking.

JT [00:41:15] They use such words as an amplification. We see clearly now. And their favorite for Jehovah's Witnesses is new light. New light from God. So it's like he gave you dark light on the other.

John Dehlin [00:41:27] We got it.

JT [00:41:28] We got it.

John Dehlin [00:41:28] But does your church ever apologize? Has it ever apologized for anything that you're aware of?

JT [00:41:33] Let me tell you what they do. Not only do they not apologize, they will often blame the members. Just a quick example, when the Watchtower was predicting the end of the world and they were setting dates, they learned better than to set dates. They actually, after the date came and passed, they actually blamed the members. Y' all was reading. Y' all were reading too much into what we said. Y'. All. Y' all took it too seriously. And so they actually blame the members. And that's a very common practice that they do in this organization. They will often actually blame the members for believing what they themselves were teaching.

JT [00:42:08] It's ridiculous. But that's what makes it a high control group. That's how you identify a cult, because the lack of humility to admit that you're wrong, yet as members, as individual members, they beat you as a Jehovah's Witness, that you need to come forward and admit that you've done something wrong. Yet from the leadership aspect, no.

Lady Cee [00:42:30] No.

John Dehlin [00:42:31] So you're saying there's a double standard of what they teach members to do regarding what repentance is, but an unwillingness to follow the steps of repentance themselves.

JT [00:42:42] Oh, absolutely. They have never asked that you forgive us. For example, think of all the teaching that people followed on blood, on transplants, and so many in alternative service going to prison. They did not come out and say, brothers, we are so sorry. We're so sorry for those of you who lost family members on the information that we gave you. We thought it was the best information that God wanted you to have, and we apologize for those, man. They will never do that. And the reason why? Because the legal department will tell them, man, we can't go out in public and say that kind of stuff.

JT [00:43:19] It's going to cost us a lot of money. And they will never see it. Yet if you read some of their magazines now, and we often laugh about this, the Watchtower can write some of the best written articles you can ever read. They just don't do it themselves.

Lady Cee [00:43:34] That's too much liability, though. I mean, you think they got 200 lawyers in Bethel now? They probably have to have 5,000.

JT [00:43:42] And so that's kind of the problem. You read the articles they write, they're very good on no forgiving, you know, saying you're sorry should you be too proud to admit you was wrong. And yet they would never actually practice that themselves. No, no, not the upper leadership. No.

John Dehlin [00:43:56] Is that sounding familiar, Gerardo?

Gerardo Sumano [00:43:58] Yes. You heard before, 100%.

John Dehlin [00:44:02] Okay. JT Lady C. The Internet is upon us. Google and YouTube and podcasts and, you know, it's taken. You know, religions are. Are, Are going down. They are on the ropes. You know, the rise of the nuns is. Is the movement that the Pew foundation has been talking about for a decade or more where people who are unaffiliated with religions are rising. It's the largest and the fastest growing group, church, religious group in the United States. And almost every religion's taken in the pants and is losing membership and in some cases, hemorrhaging. And in the Mormon Church's case, it's hemorrhaging. What is the status in 2021 of the growth or the decline of active membership within the Jehovah's Witness movement in the United States and globally? What can you tell us about the numbers?

Membership Decline and the Internet's Impact

JT [00:45:01] The numbers are really shocking when you consider all of the numbers you mentioned. The point was mentioned earlier that he had the opportunity to attend the memorial, the passing of the bread and wine. That is actually a very interesting number. For those who attend last year, they're roughly referred to as 8 million active Jehovah's Witnesses. These are people actually knocking on doors in the world. Report. Yeah, they have to report every month that they're knocking on doors. So it's about 8 million.

JT [00:45:33] When you attend the memorial, which is the passing of the bread and wine, the numbers is over 20 million people. 20 million people. Now, the Witness will use as they. As we often laugh, you know, you know, you know, numbers. You know, numbers are. You can't lie. You know, you can lie with numbers. You always can lie with numbers, but numbers themselves don't lie. Now, if you look at the 20 million, you would say, man, y' all have a tremendous attendance and people who are interested in your religion because you got 8 million knocking on doors and you got 20 million attending this. This particular service.

JT [00:46:05] But when you start digging down into who is actually making up this 20 million, what you will find is these are just simply old, tired, worn out Jehovah's Witnesses dragging back to that one meeting a year. And see, we used to laugh at other churches because we would say, look at them. At Christmas, the parking lot is full. At Easter, the parking lot is full throughout the week. Regular months, they don't have nobody going to their churches. Now Jehovah's Witnesses are struggling with the same thing. The parking lots are empty. And this was even before COVID And now they have one meeting a year where people will beg their family, parents will beg their children.

JT [00:46:43] Baby, you coming to the memorial this year? Yeah, Mama, I'll be there. I'll be there. So. And they come and it makes this number swell. But as the Pew report that you quoted earlier from, that is a very interesting statistics because it shows that Jehovah's Witnesses have what is known as one of the largest churn rates of any denomination. And what that means is for every person who is coming in through the front door, you have just as many falling out the back door. Yeah. And Jehovah's Witness kids, according to the Pew Research foundation that you quoted earlier, they make the point that Jehovah's Witnesses, they have the largest percentage of young people who leave the church.

JT [00:47:26] And that's absolutely true. You will find Witnesses have three or four kids. And then you go back years later when all their kids are 24, 20, they're gone. They're gone. Mom and dad, they might still be dragged into the Kingdom hall, but the kids, they're gone.

JT [00:47:40] And that's the problem this organization is having, trying to get enough young blood in. And it is a serious problem because as we mentioned before, this is a very male dominated religion. One of the things that they lack are quote, unquote, qualified men for positions in the church. A lot of young people want nothing to do with that. When I was coming along, 13, 14, 15 years old, me and my buddies on Saturday, we grab our lawnmowers, go down to the Kingdom hall, cut the grass, you know, trim the hedges. Today they can't get young people in Jehovah to do any of that. In fact, it has got so bad that they have now actually had to start using females to do things that men have always done in this religion because there's simply not enough young men who are interested.

JT [00:48:32] And so the decline. One of the things that concerns this organization more than anything else is they would literally prefer to have 300 Die Hard Jehovah's Witnesses, 300 Die Hard, than they have a thousand people who are just slack under this. They're just under the radar because this organization is about production.

Gerardo Sumano [00:48:51] Yep.

JT [00:48:52] Doing things. And so that's what they're finding now. And so a lot of people in this organization, they're just skimming by just to get by. And that does not work well for a high control group because that means the members, at the end of the day, they're not paying any attention to what the leaders are saying.

John Dehlin [00:49:10] Yeah. And this is interesting to me. So I was always stunned as a Mormon missionary when I learned that you have to wait like a year to join the church. Jehovah's Witness Church. We wanted to baptize people within a couple weeks, if not on the same day. You guys made people really earn it. Right. And I thought there was a wisdom in that because, man, once you joined, you had really earned it. You're probably going to be more likely to stay and stay committed to it. So I'm really surprised to learn that you guys are bigger than us. Gerardo, did you know that there are more Jehovah's Witnesses than Mormons?

Gerardo Sumano [00:49:45] Well, the 20 million, the 20 million number that JT is talking about is just on this one meeting a year, which I don't know how it's in other parts of the world, but at least in Mexico City, it's almost like this huge campaign to get as many people, members, non members, a lot of investigators to go to this one meeting. So that's a 20 million number. The 8 million number. I knew about that active Jehovah Witnesses. So I, I do think it, they're, they're bigger than Mormonism because Mormonism doesn't have that high of a.

John Dehlin [00:50:24] No, it's way bigger. If, if the church today said everybody go to a meeting, I think the most it would get would be 4 million. The Mormon Church boasts 16 million. Yeah, but we know a full third of those are just lost people that don't identify as Mormon anymore. It's just more than probably half.

JT [00:50:48] And that's the way it is for the memorial. So many of the people and you just. I remember as an elder, one of the things that the elders were told to do during the memorial, look around and see people who you haven't seen in 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 months and make sure that you get with them to try to get back into their homes and re. What we call reactivate them. Because there's just so many people they like, you know, they identify as Witnesses, but they have nothing to do with them. And so it doesn't really represent that these are all new people who are just so excited about our organization and our religion that, that they've come to the memorial.

JT [00:51:25] These are just old ti worn out Jehovah Witnesses dragging to the meeting. And like you mentioned, there's a concerted effort. The weeks Leading up to the memorial, every effort is made by everybody. Call all your sons, call all your daughters, your cousins, Call everybody. So it's really this big push. But then three or four weeks after, the number just goes right back down. And it's been that way ever since I've ever been involved with Jehov from a kid. Big meeting turnout. In three or four weeks, Kingdom hall is back to normal. Back to normal.

John Dehlin [00:51:55] Yeah. So you guys are definitely. You're definitely bigger than we are, which I did not understand. We would say we've got maybe 4 million active people who are really attending and contributing and who self identify well.

Gerardo Sumano [00:52:13] And then if you, if you rate the activity, rate how they do it, of, like, people are actually going out and preaching every week or every month, like, our numbers would go really, really low.

John Dehlin [00:52:26] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

JT [00:52:28] Now, now this is the thing that people don't understand. Sometimes the reason Jehovah's Witnesses are knocking on your door is because it is a requirement. Now, they play it two ways. Witnesses will say, we have 8 million volunteers knocking on doors, okay? And so most people, in their mind, they understand what a volunteer is. A volunteer is a person who goes down to the soup kitchen and he helps out when he wants to. He helps out as long as he can. But more importantly, when he tells the soup kitchen people, I'm not gonna be able to be down here this week or I want me to do this anymore, what do they always say?

JT [00:53:09] Thank you, man, for helping us out, man. We appreciate you volunteering, giving us a hand. That is not what happens when the Jehovah's Witness says he ain't gonna knock on doors. And so in the public, they tell people that. All these people you see, they're volunteers. But at the meetings, if you come to the meetings, especially when the circuit overseers is there, he will tell you, this is a requirement of God that you go out there and knock on these doors and.

Gerardo Sumano [00:53:34] But don't you need to fulfill certain, certain amount of hours?

JT [00:53:37] Oh, yeah, that's exactly right. When I came in and my wife came in, you were required to knock on doors for at least 10 hours to come up with 10 hours of preaching a week each month. Each month.

John Dehlin [00:53:50] And.

JT [00:53:50] And I was a secretary in the congregation. One of the most responsibilities I had was I used to tabulate the time every month. A Jehovah's Witness has to fill out a timesheet every month, every month, put his name up there, how many hours, how many books, how many magazines, how many times he went back to people's home to follow up. All goes on this form. It's put into a little box. And someone like myself, the secretary, we collect all these little time sheets up. I used to spread them on a kitchen table, take a calculator and add them all up. And then I would put it onto a master form.

JT [00:54:24] And that form is the one I would send to New York. And they would get these forms from all 100,000 congregations of Jehovah's Witnesses and did the record. We kept a record of every single person's time. Every single person. It was just like on your job.

JT [00:54:43] In fact, that is how you were evaluated. Any position within the church would be based on that card. So I had a box with everybody's card in the box. And I would transfer their hours to the card. And this is what the elders would look at. Let's see how Sister Johnson is doing. I noticed she's not. She's kind of low. Her hours are low. And this is how Jehovah's Witnesses measure people's spirituality. If Sister Davis has 80 hours. Oh, she's spiritual. That she loves God. She loves God. Other people, they will say, you know, they, they're, they're single digit publisher, they're giving token service. And so this is one of the things that Jehovah's Witnesses don't tell people.

JT [00:55:26] People often ask, why can't you get a Jehovah's Witness out of your house? They come in your house, they talk all day long. The reason why they're on the job, they're at work, they're counting time. So they have no problem staying in your house for two, three hours because they get to count their time. Especially in the winter time. You get a Jehovah's Witness in the wintertime. He's not leaving. He don't want to be on the street where it's cold, knocking on doors. I'm in one house on 13th Avenue. I'm staying as long as I can. And every Jehovah is watching this video. They know that's what they do. They notice what they do.

Lady Cee [00:55:58] And so especially for the people who have the. That has those. That's pioneers.

Gerardo Sumano [00:56:02] Oh, yeah.

Lady Cee [00:56:03] And they got to get so many hours.

JT [00:56:04] Oh, my goodness.

Lady Cee [00:56:05] And I remember the circuit overseer, he came to our congregation and he had some little formula and he talked about. I forget what the formula was. It's been so long ago, but the way it worked was you got like four weeks off at the end of the year. If you, you know, did what he said to Do. But people don't realize that when you're knocking on doors and you're getting in and out of cars, you're working, like, rural territory, or you're working in the city and there's no shade and it's really cold. The extremities in weather. His little formula sounds good on paper, but when you put that into reality, it just doesn't pan out, doesn't work.

Lady Cee [00:56:44] You know, it could be 60 degrees outside. And I remember, you know, going out in field service, and I look like a fool because it was 60 degrees outside. But when you're walk. When you're working outside and you're constantly being outside without being indoors, you're freezing. Yeah, so I had on this great big old down coat and what they call those big boots, you know, and it was like 60 degrees outside, and I had to stop to the. To the store on my way back from, you know, going out in field service. And I was thinking to myself, how crazy I look going in there with this garb on, because I was freezing, being out in field service.

Lady Cee [00:57:26] But if you're just jumping in your car to go to the grocery store and you just walked out of your house into the car and then into the store, you don't need all that gear on. But when you're going out in field service, you know, it's freezing, you know, and so these are the kind of things that we had to endure, you know, as Jehovah's Witnesses.

JT [00:57:44] Could not complain. Could not complain.

John Dehlin [00:57:46] Can I just. Can I just highlight the absurdity? So one of your listeners, one of our viewers, writes. King of Faders writes. Why is laughing?

JT [00:57:58] We know. King of fade. Good man. Good man. Good man.

John Dehlin [00:58:03] He says less than 10 hours equals, quote, low hour. Publisher, close quote. And quote, spiritually weak. Close quote. And treated like garbage. Okay, can I can imagine if I had a listener that would give me 10 hours a week of volunteer time? I mean, that's Gerardo, basically. No, we pay her a little bit, but. No, we try. We try and pay her as much as we can, but. But, like, 10 hours a week of service is viewed as weak.

JT [00:58:31] And they're just a month.

John Dehlin [00:58:33] Okay, fine. Two hours. Two. Two or three hours a week. Like, and you're treating them like garbage.

JT [00:58:39] Yeah, and there's.

John Dehlin [00:58:40] And, by the way, like, just this idea that in Mormonism, Mormon missionaries pay to be missionaries. That'd be like me going to Microsoft or IBM. Can I pay to sell software for you? And then if I only do three hours a week of volunteer Time that I pay for, I'm treated like garbage. Like, how. How did they do this? This is like a Jedi mind trick. Where.

JT [00:59:05] The way. The way they did. Yeah, the way they did it was very simple. We did a video on counting time. It's on our website. In fact, we had two videos that we. Expand on it. Yeah, there was the three.

JT [00:59:17] Basically, what happened was at one time, Jehovah's Witnesses did not have to turn in time. They didn't have to report. So when the Watchtower said, we want you now to start reporting, a lot of Witnesses were like, why should I tell the church how much time I talk to people about God?

JT [00:59:34] I'm talking to my neighbor about God. I need to tell you how much time I'm talking to people about God. So what the Watchtower always does, they will put information into their publications. And since these publications are viewed as from God, the Witness has to accept it. So they did an article that dealt with counting time. And in this article, they explained to all the Witnesses that this is an arrangement of God. You either work with the arrangement and have God's favor, or you don't work with the arrangement and you don't have God's favor. So by elevating, once again, human opinion to divine status, you're able to get people to do things that otherwise they realize is ridiculous.

JT [01:00:22] So for any of the Jehovah's Witnesses who are complaining, like why we got to turn in time, why we got to do this, that conversation now does not exist because once again, you would be viewed as the spiritual weak one. And I don't know anyone who follows any religious belief system who wants to be viewed by fellow believers as being the weak one in the ground. Everybody wants to be spiritually strong. So the Watchtower uses these little definitions to determine what your status will be. And as a Witness, you do everything in your power not to fall into these various categories. That's what you do.

Lady Cee [01:00:57] But you know what else really, that when I'm thinking about this whole thing about the counting of time, and they don't have book studies that they. Like they had when we were there, but that book study arrangement was a small group of people, and that's really how they censored each other. Censored each other, because when you go to that book study, it's only like 15, 20 people in that group. And so you're supposed to be meeting on Saturdays with your group. And that was a good way for people to gauge what you were doing as well. And. And being able to censor you and say, oh, you didn't go out in service.

Lady Cee [01:01:27] And that's. And then, of course, people like to gossip. And so when people come to the Kingdom hall, they're like, you know, this sister, she's in my book study, and I ain't seen her in six months or I ain't seen her. So people know. So they. They, like, know. Even though JT did the time, it was almost like those little small groups kind of showed you out. Because at the Kingdom hall, you couldn't really tell, you know, because everybody. There's more people that's there at the Sunday meeting and stuff. But in those small groups, they could tell who was. Who was going out and who wasn't showing up.

JT [01:01:56] Yeah, The Watchtower has a system. You know, many people today, you often heard, I belong to a mega church. I belong to a mega church. Jehovah's Witnesses have no interest in creating mega church. They do not have any interest in creating a mega church. Why? Because you cannot control that many people. And that is why in the Jehovah's Witness religion, once a congregation grows to a certain size, they do what's called a split.

JT [01:02:25] So if you have 200, 145, 150, 160. When you reach about 200, the congregation will often split. You have a north congregation and a south congregation. And here's the reason why. In a typical congregation, you have five elders, and maybe. And the reason why, because there are five main elder positions in the congregation. So when you have a congregation that consists of 125 members, that means that each elder is responsible for about 25 people, making sure that those 25 people are at the Kingdom hall, making sure those 25 people are out knocking on doors. And if. And. And a quote, unquote, good elder, if someone in that 25 group. And that's why he's calling book studies, is missing, when you get home, as a good elder, you would call that person up.

Gerardo Sumano [01:03:15] Sir.

JT [01:03:16] Johnson, how you doing? When we didn't see at the Kingdom hall today, everything okay? And so this constant, constant on you, on you. It's like working on a job, man. Everybody knows when the boss just walks through the plant. Everybody, hey, how you doing? But to have him just stand there all day, like, I'm gonna watch and see what y' all do all day. You know what kind of pressure that puts people on? Well, that's basically the way it works in this organization. So by keeping the congregation small. No, megachurch, keep it small. We can Manage these people better, and that's what they do.

John Dehlin [01:03:43] Have you. Have you ever heard of Dunbar's number before, jt?

JT [01:03:48] No. What? What? No.

John Dehlin [01:03:50] All right, so Dunbar's number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. Relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person. This number was first proposed in the 1990s by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who found a correlation between primate brain size and average social group size. By using the average human brain size and extrapolating from the results of primates, he proposed that humans can comfortably maintain 150 stable relationships. Yeah, so that's Dunbar's number. They're basically. As soon as it gets too big, the human brain can't. Can't. And by the way, Mormons do the same thing. It's this. They're called. Our congregations are called wards. And a ward gets split as soon as it grows too big. Now, there aren't many Mormon wards splitting these days because the church is hemorrhaging.

Gerardo Sumano [01:04:52] Well, My. My dad was. I was talking to my dad. My dad was a state counselor for many, many years. Like, over nine years. So he knows a lot about this, like splitting words and congregations. Something that I was talking to him was that now, in Mexico right now, the Mormon Church strategy is to start joining those congregations again because they're losing so many members.

John Dehlin [01:05:26] You mean merging?

Gerardo Sumano [01:05:26] Merging, yeah, merging them.

John Dehlin [01:05:28] Merging smaller units into bigger units.

Gerardo Sumano [01:05:31] What he said was interesting, that he thought that by splitting them, they made the congregations weaker.

John Dehlin [01:05:40] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:05:41] And then so people started leaving more and more. You bring investigators in, and then it doesn't look like a huge congregation. It looks like just very few people. So now the strategy is going to be larger, bigger words in at least in Mexico.

John Dehlin [01:05:56] So the church is collapsing units to try and make the average unit size

Gerardo Sumano [01:06:01] bigger, way bigger than has ever been before.

JT [01:06:04] That is exactly what Jehovah's Witnesses are doing right now as we are speaking. They are taking a congregation. You may have four or five congregations in a city. They're combining them down to two. And what that does, it gives the appearance, like you said, that the Kingdom hall is full.

Gerardo Sumano [01:06:21] Yeah.

JT [01:06:22] When reality, you simply just combine two empty Kingdom Halls to make a hole.

John Dehlin [01:06:28] I swear, I swear. Someone in the world. Someone in the world.

JT [01:06:31] They're talking to each other, man. They're talking to each other.

John Dehlin [01:06:34] Somewhere in the world, there's, like, a resort that's, like, private. It's like Jeffrey Epstein's island. It's this resort and the leaders of the Scientologists, Jehovah's Witnesses, the Mormons, they're all getting together and it's like, okay, how do we promote religious freedom? How do we maintain our tax exempt status? How do we, you know, how do we manage our membership now that our churches are hemorrhaging? How do we dominate the Internet so. So that we can control search engine optimization? How do we deal with YouTubers and podcasters? How do we malign them and blacklist them and smear them so that our critics can't ever have power over us? And how do we do missionary work in the modern age? I swear, they're all collaborating. They're all colluding because they're all collaborating like that.

JT [01:07:24] It really does something.

John Dehlin [01:07:25] How do we do marketing? How do we do marketing so that we can sell our message in the digital age? I swear they're collaborating. They have to be.

JT [01:07:34] It really. It really would make you come to that conclusion. No question about it.

Lady Cee [01:07:37] Remember when we were. I remember when Jehovah's Witnesses were, you know, just starting out, and they were talking about how. When the congregations were growing, how this was Jehovah's way of showing how the. Is he speeding up this work? And Armageddon's going to be here. So it was like, maybe a couple years ago. No, maybe like last year. So JT's mom was talking to somebody in her area, and his mother, don't go to the Kingdom hall no more. But the sister said, oh, yeah, you know, they're. They're consolidating Kingdom Halls. And, you know, they. They had. They had made them have to drive way on the other side of town in this rural community to go to the Kingdom Hall.

Lady Cee [01:08:14] And so the sister said, yeah, you know, Jehovah's speeding up the work because that's what the brothers were telling them, that the end is so close. That's why they're expanding. That's why they're now consolidating these Kingdom halls. It's like, oh, God, people will believe anything, you know?

John Dehlin [01:08:28] Yeah, it's crazy. Okay, so this takes us to our next big question. We're going to switch to a new big topic. All right, tell me how much time you guys have tonight. Do you guys have a. Another hour, hour and a half?

Lady Cee [01:08:40] We can.

JT [01:08:41] Yeah, okay, Keep it going. If you see me pass out, you say, I think it's enough, y'.

John Dehlin [01:08:46] All. Okay, so the Mormon Church is hemorrhaging right now. We. We're losing somewhere between 50 and 80% of the people raised Mormon in the United States. So imagine their sixth generation pioneer ancestry, couple hundred years. They're descendants of early church leaders.

John Dehlin [01:09:08] Between 50 and 80% of them have left the church by the time they're 20 to 30 years old. Massive hemorrhaging. The church is in free fall. It's in collapse. You guys say that you're starting to see a decline as well. Can you list for us, it's, for us the reasons why Mormons are leaving. It's. They're learning about the church's history. They're finding out all this shady, dark stuff that they didn't know before.

John Dehlin [01:09:35] But there's also racism. There's also sexism, patriarchy. There's homophobia and LGBT stuff. There's LGBT suicides, and then there's just. It's boring and it's irrelevant and, and the message isn't selling. We are gaining membership in Africa. It's almost like the church is like, where can we find the poorest, most desperate people will send all the. While the missionaries there. You know, we're collapsing in Western Europe. We're collapsing in developed Asia. In Japan, we're collapsing. We're collapsing in the United States and Canada.

Gerardo Sumano [01:10:10] Mexico.

John Dehlin [01:10:11] In Mexico, we're collapsing. Latin America seems to have kind of gotten our number. But, but, but in Africa, we're growing. Okay, so that's just kind of setting the stage of what's happening with us. What's happening with you guys? Is there a hemorrhaging? And if people are leaving, what are the main causes of people leaving? Jehovah's Witness movement?

Lady Cee [01:10:33] Everything you just said, yeah. And somebody said the, the Internet is where bad religions go to die. Is that what they. So, you know, for many years, you know, me being raised in this religion, you know, I knew that I was not supposed to go get any spiritual food anywhere else but the Watchtower. And I know as a, you know, personally, my own personal experience with the name Jehovah and how, you know, when I was growing up, they're like, oh, Jehovah's name is an encyclopedia. Because I used to make this thing about Jehovah's name, Jehovah's name all the time. Oh, look in the dictionary. Jehovah's name in the dictionary.

Lady Cee [01:11:11] Look in the encyclopedia names there. So of course, when I got my first computer, you know what I did? Search engine looked up Jehovah and did not realize they had a growing number of people on the Internet that were complaining about this religion. How they, if they would have known the information that they knew how they would have never joined this religion. Just all the. The just misleading teachings, you know, the lies that they told us. And just like, you know, like we had talked in our last interview with you, you talked about how the Mormons at least let you go to college. Yeah, but we couldn't go to college.

Lady Cee [01:11:48] So now I'm gonna throw another one in there for. For. For a lot of us that's leaving or that. That have left. The issue is you have lived a lifetime, and you look back and you have nothing to show for it. You know, in our activism, we get emails from people all the time telling us that they're living on a meager Social Security. And some people don't even have that. Somebody even emailed us and told us that there was a brother that used to be at Bethel, and when he got kicked out, when they kicked all those people out, he's now at a soup kitchen trying to get food.

Lady Cee [01:12:20] And so Jehovah's Witnesses do not talk about this at the Kingdom Hall. They try to make it look like everything is fine and dandy when there's a lot of people out here that's just struggling to make ends meet. And then you think about people who don't have Social Security in these other countries. So Jehovah's Witnesses, you know, a lot of people were, like, contemplating suicide. We had this one young man. I don't know where he is right now, but his story just touched my heart when he emailed me and told me that he had already planned his funeral. He bought his suit, he made his funeral arrangements, bought a shotgun, and then he decided to take one last ditch effort to go on the Internet to do a little bit of research.

Lady Cee [01:13:00] And he came across our channel, and he said we saved his life because the information that we had on our channel showed him that he was not going crazy and he wasn't alone. And he. And the fact that he didn't think this religion was anything that he wanted to be part of, you know, he thought that he was. It was going crazy. He thought that he had kind of failed God in some kind of way. And so. But when he was able to find our channel and find out that he was not going crazy, then that kind of, like, helped him out. And he said that he was.

Lady Cee [01:13:32] The sad thing about him was he was. I think he was disfellowship. And his mother and stepfather were living in his house, and here they are, he's taking care of them, and they're walking around trying to Halfway shun him in his own house. And so he said he couldn't do that anymore. And so a lot of people, you know, thank God, you know, a lot of people are finding the truth on the Internet and they're not committing suicide. But we can't tell you the number of people that we find out after the fact that they couldn't take it no more and they took their lives. So it's pretty bad out here.

JT [01:14:09] Yeah, the Internet is a game changer. And we always tell people on our channel that because one of the things that makes high control groups so effective is the ability to control access to information. A Jehovah's Witness is taught you never look up any reference material unless it agrees with the Watchtower publication. You can look up anything you want to, but if it don't agree with the. What the Watchtower says on verse 13, then you throw it away.

JT [01:14:40] So for the typical Jehovah's Witness, they don't look up anything. The Internet allows people who have issues and concerns, legitimate issues and concerns that they want to talk about. But you can, you cannot bring these types of issues up because if you do, you only do it a couple times. You go to the brothers once, and they're going to say, okay, well, let's. Let's look at this. And after a while, we don't told you what the answer is now. And so at that point, your relationship with God and everything becomes in question.

John Dehlin [01:15:10] What does the Jehovah's Witness leader say when you're like, wait a minute, what about these problems I'm finding on the Internet? What is the typical type of leader answer that they give?

JT [01:15:21] It's a very simple answer. The Witnesses, they're black and white, man. They black and white. They ain't nothing technical. The one. And this is one of the things that we did. We went to college and we took some psychology class. First things first. Classes we took when we went back because we wanted to understand how do people get involved in high control groups and cults? How do you. How do people normally they make good decisions in their life that they sound reasonable to you, and yet they get tired of us, a group like this. Well, in psychology, they explained to us how, how correlation work, how causations.

JT [01:15:57] And they explained us how you can literally be led down a path. A good lawyer gives, what leading questions. That's why the judge always got to stop them and the other attorney got to stop him, because they know if we let him loose with them questions, he gonna take him right down the Road. That's what the Watchtower does. They have leading questions. And so one of the things that we found is that the use of words becomes powerful in the religion.

JT [01:16:21] Jehovah's Witnesses are taught. Taught this man, if a someone comes to you, if someone approaches you, steps to you and says, I found this on the Internet, the Witness knows I'm supposed to reject it. Now, how is that for a stopper? You can't even get started.

JT [01:16:44] The minute you open your mouth and you say, I got this from the Internet, the conversation stops. How can you make progress? And let me just tell you how bad it is. I'm gonna tell you just how bad it is. The information is from their own publications, right?

Gerardo Sumano [01:17:01] But that's why I used to have the.

JT [01:17:03] The books. That's great,

John Dehlin [01:17:07] J.T. what do you mean, J.T. and then, Gerard, I want to hear your response. What do you mean it's from their

JT [01:17:11] own book, Jehovah's Witness. And you say, this is something that was written in the magazines and it's more than two days old. Because their religion, their doctors, like milk, man, they spoiled a couple of weeks. If you come to them with anything that's old, they don't want to look at it. And this is what we were taught. As an elder, I used to stand down the platform all the time. Brothers, we're not interested in old information. We want the new information that Jehovah has for us so every Witness knows if anybody steps to them. That's why we tell people all the time, do not try to send your family 300 pages of 1929 watchtowers. Do not do that.

John Dehlin [01:17:50] Now, just to be clear for those who don't know and didn't listen to the last episode, what you're saying is there's all sorts of doctrine and theology and prophecy that was made 10, 20, 30, 50, 80 years ago that would demonstrably show that the Church was getting it wrong, that they've changed, that they've turned around, that they've completely abandoned teachings that were once viewed as fundamental. You're saying you could show a current member those past publications from your own organization that would prove to them the Church wasn't true, and they are primed and conditioned to do what?

JT [01:18:29] When you do that, to shut down. And that's what we tell people. You need to understand that every Jehovah's Witness has been trained for 10, 20, 30 years as to. How do I respond if someone brings me something that is negative about this organization? Every Jehovah's Witness is trained. And we often use the example of the ATM machine. After you punch in two or three times, what does it do to your card? It takes. Takes your card, it shuts down. And the same with a Jehovah's Witness. The minute that you step to them, they have been waiting all their life for somebody to say, you know, the society watch dog got this wrong. They know exactly what to do. And this is what often causes people who are leaving to run into all kinds of unnecessary problems with them and their family because their family now goes silent on them.

Lady Cee [01:19:27] Yeah.

JT [01:19:27] And that's one of the things we try to do on our channel, is to tell people, look, you have got to take what you know about Jehovah's Witnesses and flip it. You got to flip it. You cannot do a direct approach with a Jehovah's Witness. You will lose every single time. This is the reason why, when people who are not Witnesses, they'll often say, I can never win an argument for Jehovah's Witness. That's because you're not having an argument. You're not having a conversation. When the Witness steps on your door and he asks you what you think the Bible means on this and that he don't care.

JT [01:20:03] He don't care. That is. No, I'm telling you, man. We use that as a talking point. The whole thing about the Jehovah's Witnesses, we understand like a good salesman, you never want the person to say no. You want to keep them talking. As long as a. A salesman knows, as long as you are talking, the sale is not out yet. And that's the way it is with Witnesses. And so if you're trying to explain something about something your church talk about in the Bible, the Witness will smile. That's an interesting point. That's an interesting thought. He don't care because he knows that the Watchtower explains it differently. And that's the way we're going now.

John Dehlin [01:20:36] I'm envisioning you as this young Mormon missionary running through Mexico collecting. Collecting Jehovah's Witness Witnesses, past manuals and books, trying to show Jehovah's Witnesses that their own church has changed things and has contradicted itself. And what was that like, Gerardo?

Gerardo Sumano [01:20:52] I actually did win a few arguments,

JT [01:20:55] but,

Gerardo Sumano [01:20:58] yeah, something that the Jehovah Witnesses do really well is their inoculation system,

John Dehlin [01:21:05] where that's what we call it. JT And Lady C. We call it inoculation.

JT [01:21:09] Okay.

Gerardo Sumano [01:21:10] Very robust. Robust inoculation system in which they train their members on how to respond to difficult questions and questions from Christians, from Mormons, from ex Jehovah Witnesses. And they have books that they literally give and study just about this stuff. One of them is reasoning through the Scriptures.

JT [01:21:33] Is that what it's called?

Gerardo Sumano [01:21:36] It's just about how to answer difficult questions. And that's something that I've seen the Mormon Church starting to do with, for example, the seminary manuals where they're starting to mention the gospel topic, essays about the difficult issues and start treating them as just if they were normal. And the crazy people are those asking the questions. And what I think is very, very effective for the Jehovah Witnesses is that they have apologetic book, but books. But they're official apologetic books from the Watchtower. It's not like we do in the Mormon Church. Some like non official, most apologies are non official. But you have the actual organization responding to these difficult questions and letting the members know ahead of time what those questions are going to be.

John Dehlin [01:22:33] So, JT and Lady C, does that term apologist or apologetics, does that even mean anything to you in your context?

JT [01:22:39] No, not coming out of the Jehovah's Witness background.

John Dehlin [01:22:43] Okay.

Gerardo Sumano [01:22:44] Because you don't have them. They ignore the Watchtower.

JT [01:22:47] Exactly. Everything comes from the watchtower.

John Dehlin [01:22:49] What the Mormon Church has historically done is outsourced. It basically creates these nonprofits that are technically separate from the church. And, and sometimes it uses like professors at our universities, which you guys don't have. But it's basically, it's basically people to defend the faith and explain why the problems shouldn't be seen as problems. But it's never the core leaders that are doing it historically in the church, it's always been like unofficial people in nonprofits or at universities on the front lines where the leaders never have to actually answer a hard question. Question. They never have to do any of the explaining. And that's what an apologist is in a Mormon context.

John Dehlin [01:23:34] And apologetics would be these websites where the church is trying to explain why Joseph had 30 wives, why Joseph lied to his wife that he was taking on 29 other women, why Joseph Smith used a peep stone in a hat to translate golden plates. None of this makes sense. Well, it would be apologists that would try and explain that and help its members, the church's members, not leave or to help people who are investigating the church find reasons to not discount the church. And what I hear you saying is just the church is doing that at corporate headquarters.

JT [01:24:11] The closest thing I can think of that may be to that is for many, many years, all Jehovah's Witnesses were taught, if someone wants to come to you like that, we do not argue with people. We simply say, we're not having this conversation. I'm serious. You won't get this apology. That's not going to happen with a good Jehovah's Witness. They will shut the conversation down if they see it's going in the wrong direction. And we were told we do not answer to our enemies. Jesus did not answer to his enemies. And so it became such an issue in this organization that it became necessary for the Watchtower to set up.

JT [01:24:49] They literally set up a department at the headquarters because they did not have this department. It is known as the public relations department. So many people around the world were making the argument about Jehovah's Witnesses that it became necessary. We got to get some official statements out. And one of the first individuals was an African American man. His name was J R Brown. One of the smoothest talkers that the Watchtower has ever produced, probably.

JT [01:25:15] And this guy, he could. He took over the place of another gentleman who tried to acknowledge that, yeah, we made some mistakes. We did. They took him out of that position. They took. I remember, I remember he was married to a ga. They had a German wife, used to be in the traveling work. He was actually at the headquarters when I was there. Real nice guy. He was a public relations guy. And he was trying to acknowledge, yes, we did some things. And the watch, I was like, no, no, no, we don't admit nothing.

JT [01:25:40] And then they stuck Junior Brown in there. And Junior Brown was like, well, you see the Watchtower as oftentimes, and you talk so slow, you just like, man, hurry up, hurry up. And he was frustrate. He would frustrate reporters because it would take him 20 minutes to say yes or no. And so as a result, they now have a full blown public relations. You go to their website, they have stuff for the press, everything. And it is good. I mean, you talk about spin, oh my goodness, they can put some spin.

Lady Cee [01:26:11] And you got to remember that people are getting, you know, soft, shunned, hard shunned and everything else for talking about the Internet out here now. So you, you know, and we try to tell people, you know, for people that are listening right now, yeah, please don't go toe to toe with your family members because they're not going to listen to you. And we, you know, the experiences that we're getting through our activism is a lot of people that begin to wake up from this religion are doing so because of some Some life event that has happened. You know, they saw some injustices, you know, different stuff like that.

Lady Cee [01:26:45] And then they, it brought them to a wake up moment to say, let me just investigate what I'm in. And so even though you've investigated and you've decided to take that leap and do your homework and your research doesn't mean that your mother and father, your brother and sister, or anybody that's close to you is willing to do that. And I mean, I just, we get so much correspondence. And recently there was a, a friend of ours that emailed us and she, she, there was a brother that had been disfellowshipped some 20 years ago. So here she's thinking that her good friend, the person that she thinks is her good friend, has forgotten all about this person's disfellowshipping and so forth.

Lady Cee [01:27:28] And she said, the moment that she said she talked to this person on Facebook or whatever it was, however they got in touch with each other. She said her friend shut her down so quick and she's not talking to her anymore. So she just quickly, just swiftly just ended their friendship just because she spoke to this man, you know?

John Dehlin [01:27:53] Yeah. Okay, so if you had to list, like off the top of your head, the five or 10 top issues that are taking people out, I know that I listed a bunch. I just want to hear you guys say it. What are the biggies that are taking people out?

Top Reasons People Are Leaving the Organization

JT [01:28:08] I would list being, becoming tired. And the reason why I said is because the message of Jehovah's Witnesses has, for a hundred and some years has always been, it's almost here, it's almost here. And when you are teaching people that something is almost here and they're moving into second, third and fourth generations of Witnesses, they're looking back at their grandmama and they're like, you know, they've been telling us here for a long time. And as a result, you don't have the excitement that those individuals had years ago, and they're wearing out. So people getting tired, the changes in the doctrines, and of course the Internet,

John Dehlin [01:28:52] because which doctors, which doctrines are the big ones that have changed?

JT [01:28:57] The big, probably some of the bigger ones is, is the teachings about when the world will end, because all of a sudden you just lost your hope.

Gerardo Sumano [01:29:04] Like, what?

JT [01:29:05] How does that work? And for many people, finding out about the child molestation, the Watchtower has written some of the best articles you want to read about Catholic priests and molestation. But unfortunate, it's not about them, you know, and so when Witnesses find out about this. All of a sudden, they were like, this is wrong.

Lady Cee [01:29:28] And remember when we left.

John Dehlin [01:29:29] Oh, yeah.

Lady Cee [01:29:30] We found out that they belonged to the United Nations.

JT [01:29:33] Yeah.

Lady Cee [01:29:33] There was a former governing body member, Ray Franz, when he left the religion, and they disfellowshipped him, excommunicated him. They basically, you know, he wrote a book. And then people that ran across that book, they found out the truth about the truth. There were people that, you know, had lived a lifetime, found out that they could have went to college because, you know, now Bethel is, you know, like, under the table kind of thing, asking for people with college degrees to come up to Bethel. So now here you were sacrificing your whole life, and now they're looking for people with degrees, you know, and so here you.

Lady Cee [01:30:06] You could have got a scholarship and went to college, and you couldn't go. So, you know, different stuff. Like that one brother, you know, we know in Ohio, he. He woke up because he was working on a. A building committee. He was. He was working on a Kingdom hall quick build, and he cut himself really bad. And the first thing that they asked him was, was he going to sue the society? And so he was like, wait. You know, so. So it's a lot of little things like that, too. It's like just little. Just little bad things that's happening that, you know, people end up in situations like that. Little things, not just necessarily doctrinal, but just behavioral things. You know, plus.

JT [01:30:49] Plus people are seeing, especially people who've been around for a minute, they're seeing the direction that the organization is moving in is exactly the opposite. Let me just give you just a couple examples. Many, many people when I grew up did not want to become involved in Jehovah's Witnesses because Witnesses don't have no choir, Okay? I know people was like, y' all ain't got no choir. Y' all can't sing. And so people didn't want to become part of a church. They got a choir. And now Witnesses can actually do things when they're singing. Like, when I was coming along, you would never just sway to the music.

JT [01:31:23] Oh, Lord, no. The brothers would pull you in the back. What's wrong with you, brother? Doing all this moving around and stuff? What's up with that? Now they can do it. At one time, when people who were disfellowshipped were reinstated back, you could not clap that this person had put aside all his sins and came back to God. You had to sit there like, well, we're glad you back, but we ain't gonna clap. Cause you came back and so now you can actually show emotion. I'm so glad the brother came back. And so it's like, why do you need someone to tell you what kind of emotions you can show to people? And so people are seeing these changes. Like, this makes no sense.

Lady Cee [01:31:59] Right.

JT [01:32:00] And once you start down that rabbit hole, man, you cannot get out. You cannot get out.

Lady Cee [01:32:05] I think the biggest thing that a lot of people don't realize about Jehovah's Witnesses is the fact that when a person becomes a Jehovah's Witness, they are taught that this is the truth. Yeah. Okay, so when you had mentioned about the Mormons and the lgbt, LGBTQ community, Jehovah's Witnesses know that that's, that's no issue. You're not going to be coming to the meetings and rallying around and saying that you're going to be, you know, you know, breaking through the, the barriers of giving these, this group a voice. But what people. And that's what I was saying, like the behavioral stuff. So like, when people who are Jehovah's Witnesses who believe this is the truth, and then all of a sudden they're in business with this brother who was supposed to die for him, and then he takes off with all the money in the bank account.

Lady Cee [01:32:46] You know, this is the kind of stuff they're like waking up and saying, wait a minute, this is not the truth. This can't be the truth. Or, or maybe that's just a. Maybe that's just a one off. But to that person, that ain't a one off. And so that just makes them do more digging and more research. So it's really going to be like the, I would say the love of the greater number is cooling off for Witnesses when they see the look. Because a lot of people complain about there's no love, no real love shown. But Jehovah's Witnesses, they really, they really build up this thing about there's so much love there.

Lady Cee [01:33:15] And they say we're the most loving organization in the world, you know, the happiest people in the world. And then people are sitting at the Kingdom hall and they're thinking, I'm not happy and the person sitting next to me ain't happy. And the person in the back just, he just fell out the back door, you know, So a lot of that is people are looking at the behaviors of what this religion is saying that all these people are. And then they're finding out they're not, they're not the, the loving Group that I thought I joined.

JT [01:33:45] Yeah, it looks like. It looks like a movie set. If you ever been to Los Angeles to the studios, you'll have a whole town and it looks nice. And then you go around the back side and it's got, you know, two by fours holding up the thing. And that's kind of what a lot of people are seeing in this organization.

John Dehlin [01:34:00] What, what they were told in Russia,

JT [01:34:03] not there in Russia.

John Dehlin [01:34:04] I think that was called a Potemkin town, where they would make the town along the street look beautiful. You just don't go behind the facades because it was all staged. We have a good comment from one of your listeners who's giving their own list. So Southern Boz lady, she says number one is shunning. So does the practice of shunning causing some people to leave the church, would you guys say, or not? Or

Lady Cee [01:34:35] that's what the religion is built?

JT [01:34:36] Yeah, that's what it's kind of built on. It doesn't cause people to leave as much as it scares people, because they see what happened to Larry. Larry lost his family, friends, cousin, and they're like, I don't want to be like that. And so sometimes that. And. And that is why over the years, the shunning has become tighter. In fact, now the shunning is expanding beyond baptized Jehovah's Witnesses. It's extending to people who are not even baptized, but they may have been going to the Kingdom hall for many years. There are people now the Watchtower is taking the position real simple. You're either with us or you're not.

JT [01:35:15] And so we have people who've been calling us up. Like, my family just called me up and said, are you going to go back to the Kingdom Hall? And I'm like, well, I might go. Well, I need to know right now. Because if you're not going. And this is our last conversation. And so these people not even baptized. And so. And so the organization is cranking down the pressure on people.

Lady Cee [01:35:34] See, I think. See, I really feel like it's access to information. If I really had to say what my number one reason why people are leaving is going to be access to information. And the reason why is because they really sold us on this being the truth. And so even though you see all these bad things happening at the end Kingdom hall and things where people are not showing love and everything, once you get that access to that information and you find out all those loopholes and all the things that they're lying to you about, then people are like, okay, I Can I can leave now?

JT [01:36:04] Yeah. You know, my wife and I, we call that getting the confirmation.

Lady Cee [01:36:08] Yeah.

JT [01:36:08] Once a person gets the confirmation, you know, you can't go back.

Gerardo Sumano [01:36:14] It's.

JT [01:36:14] It's just hard. It's just so hard because you realize it's like Santa Claus to the four year old. Once they land, once they learn that Santa ain't gonna be flying at the north pole. When you 16, 17 years old, you don't want to go sit in the old man's lap. It just don't have the same thrill.

Lady Cee [01:36:27] Yeah.

JT [01:36:28] And so that's the way it is for Jehovah's Witnesses once they get that confirmation. This is not exactly what they sold me.

Lady Cee [01:36:34] Yeah.

JT [01:36:34] And at that point, it's all downhill.

Lady Cee [01:36:36] And like the lady who commented, was it Southern bras lady?

JT [01:36:40] Yeah.

Lady Cee [01:36:41] And. And then what she said about Armageddon, because you know, you, you're at the meeting because you want to survive Armageddon, and if you died before Armageddon, then you're looking for that resurrection. So, you know, that would be one too. You know, the, the. When you find out Armageddon ain't real, you know that and then the child abuse. So, yeah, she, she's on point.

John Dehlin [01:37:01] So that was her second point. Claiming Armageddon is going to kill everyone except.

JT [01:37:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:37:05] Witnesses. That that's causing people to leave.

JT [01:37:08] Why is people Witnesses are beginning to see that they have worked with Mr. Davis on their job for 22 years. And to say that God got to kill this man because he don't believe what's in this pamphlet. I got that don't make any sense. Especially when the Panther keep getting it wrong. See, the pamphlet was right. Then you could, you could, you could work with it. But the pamphlet is wrong.

Gerardo Sumano [01:37:29] And so it's almost like what's happening in Mormonism with the LGBT people, where a lot of people are. Are leaving the church because they're seeing humanity on LGBT people and saying doesn't match with what the church is telling me about this group of people.

Lady Cee [01:37:43] Yep.

Gerardo Sumano [01:37:44] In your cases, the. What the church is telling me about the rest of the world, about everyone who is not Yahuwah Witnesses, does not really match with what I'm seeing about, like, not everybody deserves to be. To.

JT [01:37:58] Yes.

Gerardo Sumano [01:37:58] To die.

Lady Cee [01:38:00] Yes. Because one sister that I know that JT and I met through, she told me, she said I did not want to be in paradise with all those Jehovah's Witnesses Witnesses, she said, because they were so mean and nasty. And so she said if she had to live in the world with them. She'd rather not be there because, you know, because it's just, I mean, you, you wanna, you, you're with these people shoulder to shoulder, out in service, knocking on doors, trying to bring people into the religion. And then you got these people that are not loving, they don't display the fruitage of the spirit and all that kind of stuff. And then you talk about, you know, getting into paradise earth and living forever with these same people. Folks.

JT [01:38:35] Yeah, they, they oversold their product. They just oversold their product. That's all. It's just as simple. And people realize, you know, this is not a Rolls Royce, but it's a Volkswagen. They got a Rolls Royce fendering hood. And, and so, you know, you go, you know, got a, you go, you know, they got, you go, okay, and,

John Dehlin [01:38:52] and this is great. And so what, what are the main. Like, if the church were to make an enemy's people or resources or websites or books or whatever that were causing people to leave. Like, and you can give names, you can give names of YouTube channels, of podcasts, of books, of people. Like, I actually was put. Somebody leaked to me what's called a bubble chart of like the Church's own defined arch enemies in the world. And my name is on it. So I consider that a crowning achievement personally. But what would you say the church's list of top enemies are?

Apostasy, Disfellowshipping, and Surveillance of Members

JT [01:39:39] Apostates. Apostates. They are the worst. Many people leave this organization and they don't say anything when they leave. But for those who speak up after they leave, they are the worst, worse. And it's been like that ever since I was a child. We used to attend conventions in north, in. In. In Hampton. North in Hampton, Virginia. And we were told when you drive out, because they used to have witnesses out there, ex witness with signs up and stuff. And I remember being told as a child, do not even look at them when you drive through. Just keep your eyes straight. And I'll never forget, man, I was in the back seat and I turned around and I looked out the back window and there was a little boy.

JT [01:40:23] He was probably about my age. He had to be about my age. And he had a little son. And he wasn't foaming at the mouth, he wasn't. His eyes weren't red and flame with fire. He looked like a kid like me. And I'll never forget that. And so one of the things that the Watchtower has very skillfully, I mean, this is all about. And we tell people in our channel, this is by design, folks you need to understand this is not happenstance. This is by design. The Watchtower spends an enormous amount of time discussing former members and how to view them, how to treat whatever they say.

JT [01:41:00] For example, right now, the buzzword in the Watchtower, right now as we are talking, if someone says to you, child abuse, you think apostate. Apostate lies. And what that does, that shuts down the conversation. Even if it's a legitimate issue being discussed. You can't discuss childhood. Every witness knows, as of today, any statement about abuse is because it's coming from the apostates trying to make us look bad. And so once again, the conversation stops. Yeah.

Lady Cee [01:41:35] So, yeah, there would be like Ray Francis book, Australian Royal Commission, Go slowly.

John Dehlin [01:41:39] Ray Francis's book is called what Crisis of Conscience. Okay. Several people have mentioned that in the.

Gerardo Sumano [01:41:46] That was a high profile defection that you guys.

JT [01:41:48] Yeah, the highest.

Gerardo Sumano [01:41:50] But I think one of the advantages towards the organization was that during the time where you had that high profile defection, the governing body was not like no one knew who they were. So that, that worked, I think it towards the advantage of the organization because they're like, many, many Jehovah Witnesses could go like, oh, maybe he's lying. Like, how do we know that it's him? Because no one, nobody knew who, who the government body was.

JT [01:42:21] Yeah. The average Jehovah's Witness could not name you four or five members of the governing body.

John Dehlin [01:42:26] Even now. Even now.

JT [01:42:27] Now they can't. Now they can because these guys are high profile. But the old governing body, when I was there, most people knew Fred Friends because he was president and they knew Grant Suter because he was a secretary treasurer, because their names are in all the books. But the rest of the guys, Siddle, you know, Greenleaf, they didn't, they didn't know any of these guys.

John Dehlin [01:42:47] And you're saying this book that came out, Crisis of Conscience brought those names into the consciousness or what?

JT [01:42:53] Yeah, they started naming people that you didn't know. And that's what he talked about. He talked about his fellow governing body members.

John Dehlin [01:42:59] So he was, he was an insider, this guy.

JT [01:43:01] He was on the governing body. He was, he was the name, like an apostle? Yeah, he was. Yeah, he was in the Mormon Church. You call him an apostle.

John Dehlin [01:43:08] Tell us his story. Give us the two minute version of his story.

JT [01:43:12] His story was he grew up.

John Dehlin [01:43:14] His name. One more time.

JT [01:43:15] His name is Raymond Franz.

John Dehlin [01:43:17] Ray France.

JT [01:43:18] Okay, Ray France. He is the nephew of Fred Franz, who was the president of the Watchtower.

John Dehlin [01:43:24] Okay.

JT [01:43:24] So you actually had two family Members who were serving on the governing body at the same time.

John Dehlin [01:43:29] Nepotism is alive and well.

JT [01:43:31] Yeah, yeah, Nepotism. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Right, right. And so if Raymond France had not written his book, a lot of the stories about the organization would have never been known, especially the backstory as to why certain doctrines were changed. That to me was probably the most important, important thing. As he explained how these doctrines were known sometimes for decades, that they were wrong. They just couldn't figure how to write it up and change it. And so they knew they would meet all 10, 15 of. I know it's wrong, but we just got to keep it going, Gotta keep it going. And so when you read that, you like, oh my God. These guys knew that they was pulling out legs the whole while.

Lady Cee [01:44:15] And another one would be Barbara Anderson. She, she was the one that broke the story about the child molestation because she was, she worked with one of the governing body at New York and JT used to work for her husband in Bethel.

JT [01:44:29] Yeah.

Lady Cee [01:44:29] So she was another top heavy hitter that bought information out about this religion.

JT [01:44:35] Yeah, she was one of the few women. And I did. You gotta love these guys, man. These guys are good. She worked in the writing department, which is typically a man male dominated department, but it's what she and the other women did. The women did the research. They had to go through hundreds of books and drafts and then turn in their work. And the, the writer, he might use three sentences from a 45 page document that they had been working on. So the men didn't do the heavy research. They, they let the women do it. And then they would just take. I'll use paragraph one. They said, thank you. I worked in this for six months. So.

Lady Cee [01:45:12] And then another one would have been when, when we first left. Was, was his name Simon? So there was a. He's not really. Well, I don't know if his name is really out there that much, but he's the one that, that put together Jehovah's Witness.net and he bought all these Jehovah's Witnesses together on bulletin board. And it's still out there and people are still, you know, able to, you know, connect with each other. So they would be, they would have that on the chopping block. Oh yeah, Jehovah's Witness.net that was one of the biggest ones we were on back in the day.

JT [01:45:46] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:45:46] And then I'm guessing you guys would be on the list now.

Lady Cee [01:45:49] Oh yeah, Randy Waters was on there. Free Minds and. And then of course, John Cedar's channel yeah, he would be one of them as well.

John Dehlin [01:45:56] That's Lloyd Evans, right?

Lady Cee [01:45:58] Lloyd Evans, Yeah, Lloyd Evans. He would be on there big time. Yeah, they've been after him for a. A while now. Lloyd Evans.

JT [01:46:04] It's kind of ironic about our site because not only am I on the site, most of the guys at Buffalo know me. That's jt. What he doing up there on tv?

Lady Cee [01:46:14] You know, let's see what it is. Let's see what it is. Is. We're not using it. See, I think Lloyd got flagged a couple times was with copyright stuff.

JT [01:46:23] You have to be careful.

Lady Cee [01:46:24] We don't, we're not using any. I, When I did the time slip, I re. I read re. I redrew that on a computer. So I don't. We don't use any of their material.

JT [01:46:34] Yeah, because they, they, they got guys who watch the channels very carefully, and that's why they'll, they'll submit the paperwork. They're good. They're really good. And, and one of the things that we definitely do, we'll go over information and says, let's, let's, let's, let's redo this because we know the guys down in legal are watching and they'll be, they'd be sending something off to get you your site flagged. So, so we try to stay away from it because actually we don't, you know, for us, we don't really need that. I mean, we tell people, go do your own homework. Look it up. Which then protects us from having to put up copyrighted material. But for those who want to know about this organization.

Lady Cee [01:47:08] Right.

JT [01:47:09] You can find it. That's what, that's what makes it so nice today. You can find it.

John Dehlin [01:47:12] So when Mormonism, there's this thing called the CES letter that doesn't. The name doesn't make any sense, but it's basically like one PDF, one document, maybe 80 pages that lists like the biggest problems in Mormonism. It's history, it's scripture, its doctrine, it's theology. It's changes its problems. And you can read that document in like 30, in like three, four or five hours. And it's just devastating. When somebody stumbles on that, it can be a matter of days, if not hours before they're out. Is there like a source of information? Information where, if you want to read all the problems with the church and the, and the history and the citations, is there like a re. A resource of the listing of the problems with the, the evidence to back it up? Do you guys have something like that.

Lady Cee [01:48:03] Well, you know, we. I ran across something on Wikipedia the other day that had a whole bunch of stuff up there. But then there's also that JW Facts.

JT [01:48:10] That's probably the best challenge.

John Dehlin [01:48:12] Tell us what that is.

JT [01:48:14] It's a website that basically called. It's called JW Facts.

John Dehlin [01:48:18] JW F A C T S. And

JT [01:48:21] what it does, it literally takes the Watchtowers public. I mean, this guy, he just. I mean, this guy, he. He really put a lot of work into that. It basically takes the Watchtower publications and allows the person themselves to read it directly from the Watchtower. And many times there's very little commentary. Just read it for yourself and tell them what it says. And so if you are a sincere person and you are willing to.

JT [01:48:50] Yeah, if you're. If you're a sincere person and you're willing to say, you have to reach the point in your life where you say, you know what? And this is where we went to. And everybody we know, they went there. You reach the point where you say, I'm going to let the chips fall where they may. I'm gonna call a spade a spade. If you are at that point in your life, then when you read this, regardless of what it says, you're gonna accept what you read because you realize this is the stuff that they wrote. This is not.

Lady Cee [01:49:17] Yeah. What the JW Facts is all about is he just went out and got all of the Watchtowers quotes past, you know, failures, you know, failed teachings. So like when people email us and they say, can you give me the Watchtower article to such and such. If they just go to JW Facts and just put that in there, they could find it themselves. You know, you don't need somebody else to like give you that information. You can just go there and get it.

JT [01:49:44] Yeah.

Lady Cee [01:49:44] And the thing is, you got to know what you're reading because like, a lot of people that weren't Jehovah's Witnesses back in the day may not even understand some of the things that they taught back in the day.

JT [01:49:54] Yeah.

Lady Cee [01:49:54] You know that that's the issue. Issue that people are going to have is trying to correlate and put all these things together and how they fit with the teachings today.

JT [01:50:04] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:50:05] So how is the church responding to this deluge of apostates and critics and information to the YouTube channels? Is the church. Is the church responding? And if so, how are they responding?

Lady Cee [01:50:19] Watched our articles. They. They have their meetings and they address the issues that's going on and they'll. They'll even Talk about, you know, apostate lies. They even talked about mentally diseased people. And they mentioned this in the, in their, in their publications.

Gerardo Sumano [01:50:38] Yeah, in their magazine.

Lady Cee [01:50:39] Yeah. And so then you have a situation where, you know, they'll go to the Kingdom hall on Sunday. They're studying an article about somebody who fell away from the organization. And you got to remember when you first learned God's name. And, and this is, this is Jehovah's visible organization. And so they, they just plant these seeds and they just constantly bombard Jehovah's Witnesses with all this information to counter attack us so that we can't get through to our loved ones. Then they will find examples. And that's why we always say, when you leave this religion, don't be a watchtower poster child, because then they can use you as the.

John Dehlin [01:51:22] What does that mean? What does that mean?

Lady Cee [01:51:24] What that means is a person that leaves and they start living worse than they did when they were Jehovah's Witness.

John Dehlin [01:51:30] What are the examples? How, how, what do they do? What are the behaviors?

Lady Cee [01:51:33] Let's say somebody, well, maybe they're on drugs now. Maybe they're, you know, wino, maybe they're, you know, whatever they're doing, they're doing, doing something that they wouldn't have been doing as a Witness. You know, they don't, maybe they don't look the same. Maybe you can't recognize them. Because a lot of times people say, if I'm going to get me a job, and now I used to be a Jehovah's Witness and now I can look any way I want. So now I'm walking down the street with the skirt, with the poster stamp skirt on. And my, my, my looks are different than what it used to be as a Jehovah's Witness.

Lady Cee [01:52:02] But a lot of times people don't realize that Jehovah's Witnesses are not the only people that dress nice or that dress respectful. So if I'm going on a job interview, I'm not going to get that job because they're gonna be like, wait a minute, we can't have you working here. But so they become that poster child, the, the person that nobody wants to hire, nobody wants to be around. So, so then the Jehovah's Witness, when they see you leave and, and start doing bad or, or start looking different or whatever, then all of a sudden they're like, this is why you don't leave Jehovah. You stay here.

Lady Cee [01:52:34] So when they see people like that go to college, get their degree they're moving on in the world, they're doing. Doing good for themselves, then you can't be the person that they say is, you know, is a. Is a bad example.

Lady Cee [01:52:48] Because most people say, if I leave this religion, where am I going? Because that's, that's the big thing now. It's like, if I leave the Jehovah's Witnesses, where will I go? And they teach people that. They teach the Witnesses. When you leave here, where you going?

John Dehlin [01:53:05] Our leaders just. In a recent general conference, one of our leaders asked, where will you go?

Gerardo Sumano [01:53:11] Yeah, if.

John Dehlin [01:53:11] If the church isn't. If, if you don't think the church is perfect, well, where will you go? That's actually some rhetoric that our leaders are using against our people.

Lady Cee [01:53:21] Yeah. And so, like, JT always would say, what's that statement you always say when you leave? When you leave, you telling them to. Success is the best revenge.

JT [01:53:31] Oh, yeah.

Lady Cee [01:53:32] And so if you leave and you show yourself successful. Hey, Sunny. Thank you. So then when they, when they leave and success is the best revenge, then, you know, it's like, what are you going to say now to the people that's. That's left behind? You know, because.

JT [01:53:48] Because what they teach you is once you leave, your life will basically go, quote, unquote, to hell in the hand basket. And so if you leave this organization and next thing they see you on the news getting arrested for robbing the bank. I, as an elder, I used to use people like that. I used to say, some of y' all probably remember, the brother was in our congregation years ago. As you see, he's in the paper this week. Very sad. Imagine if he was here in the Kingdom all today. He wouldn't be locked up. And so if you're a young kid, like when I was growing, like, I don't want to leave.

Lady Cee [01:54:18] I only.

JT [01:54:19] And because that's all we saw. And it was really sad. Growing up, all I saw was people who left. Their life became like a wreck. I never saw the Witnesses who left and went on to become doctors and lawyers and dentists and active people in their community. We never saw those. We never saw those. And that's what the game changer is today. People are literally picking up their bag, walking out the Kingdom hall, and they are putting one foot in front of the other, and they're going on with their lives without having to end up in jail on crack, selling dope.

Lady Cee [01:54:53] Yeah, because one lady I met, she was on this. I was. I had hosted this ladies night for Jehovah's Witnesses. Several years ago. And she went on to become a judge.

JT [01:55:02] Yeah. And so this. And so what that does, that upsets the apple cart, because that's not what you were told was going to happen if you left. I mean, I take, for example, I take ourselves, for example. We run into witnesses all the time. And. And they'll look us like, y' all don't look broke down in word and. And depressed because they say y' all are gonna be depressed if you leave the truth. And you'll be like, how you doing? Pretty good day. Are you taking care of yourself? Good to see you again.

Lady Cee [01:55:29] And.

JT [01:55:29] And they'll stand there like, am I supposed to talk to jt? Can we say something to him? And so they just lost. And so that's the whole point behind success is the best revenge. Because when people see you live your life well after leaving them, they become confused because they're not seeing what they were told they were going to see.

John Dehlin [01:55:49] Yeah. And that's, that's honestly. I mean, honestly, I don't have the explicit intention on Mormon Stories podcast of getting people to leave the church, but what I can tell you is I've interviewed, you know, almost 1500 hours of people who end up leaving the church. And it's so powerful when you see these couples doing, well, happy, smiling with their kids, saying, I've left or I stopped believing and now I'm happier than ever. Business is going better than ever. I'm a better parent, I'm a better husband, I'm a better wife, I'm a better mother, I'm a better father, and I'm even make better money. Like, it is so devastating to the control that the church has on people for there to be happy, healthy, thriving people tell their stories.

John Dehlin [01:56:45] And that's what Mormon Stories is all about. And I just want to also say we just, we're doing a series on high demand religions or cults. And just this idea of dependence, of learned helplessness, that is what abusive partners and spouses do, and that is what high demand religions or cults do, is they teach you that you can't be happy and healthy without them. And when anybody teaches you that, whether it's a partner, a spouse, a child, a company, a business, a church, a podcaster, run from that person. Yeah, run from that person.

JT [01:57:22] Time to go.

Lady Cee [01:57:22] They take over your life. And so what we find is that leaving this religion is like a burden has been lifted off your shoulders, and you can now your life is now your life, and you don't have to wake up feeling Guilty or your conditional friends. You know, last week you were my friend because I put 50 hours out knocking on doors, and this week I didn't do nothing. So now I can't come to your cookout and, you know, or I can't be invited to be on the. The assembly programs, convention programs, because I can't tell the story of quitting my job to pioneer because you got to have these crazy experiences that go along with Jehovah's Witness life in order to be invited on that platform to share your experience.

Lady Cee [01:58:07] So they don't want to hear nothing about you going to school to get a degree. And now you're going to be on the Watchtower program telling everybody this. And I tell. And I tell friends all the time. I got people that are friends of mine, and they're telling me, well, I know what Jehovah's Witness and. And they don't do that. They talk to me still. They're still my friend. And I said, well, you go to the Kingdom hall and you tell them to tell everybody at the Kingdom hall that you guys are friends and that you guys hang out on the weekends together. I said, because they will not be celebrated for doing that. Yeah. You know.

John Dehlin [01:58:40] Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so next question. I. I guess I. I asked this before. I. What. What the church is doing to deal with all these people leaving. You said they're tagging everyone as apostate.

JT [01:58:54] Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:58:55] And basically telling everyone to stay away from apostates. Our church, you know, the Mormon Church, is trying to become more honest and open about its problematic history because so many people leave feeling betrayed. So it's trying to become transparent about its history, but it's trying to do so with spin and with contextualization that doesn't really own up to its problems.

John Dehlin [01:59:19] It's trying. So it's trying to kind of whitewash its history and spin it in a more truthful but in a still deceptive way. It's trying to show the appearance of being friendly to LGBT people. It's trying to create the appearance of being more friendly to women and less patriarchal.

John Dehlin [01:59:38] It's trying to share ways, promote alternative ways of believing in less literal ways while still not endorsing those alternative points of view. It's trying to use commercials and media and YouTube and social media. It's trying to take over the Internet, the Mormon Internet, by Instagram and Twitter and Facebook and YouTube, trying to beat the apostates at their own game by becoming better at social media. Is your. Is your church doing any of that? Type of stuff or other types of things.

JT [02:00:16] Oh, yeah. The Watchtower is moving away from. They are moving away from hard doctrines. They're going more to fluff and cotton candy. They have so many. Split the Watchtower into two magazines, one for the public and one basically for the witness in the congregation. The magazine that they share with the public is such fluff. I mean, we're talking about cotton candy. Oh, my goodness. The days of having a magazine that will talk about Babylon the Great and how the churches will be destroyed, that typically will not be placed at people's homes again.

Gerardo Sumano [02:00:53] They would make articles about other churches. Right. Like, they would make articles.

JT [02:00:58] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [02:00:58] Write articles about the Mormon Church, about the Catholic Church and that. And those were the magazines that they were giving to people.

JT [02:01:04] Those days are gone. They are moving more along the lines of the Joel Osteen Feel Good magazines. That's what they're doing now. The Witnesses are getting. Now this is. They're doing this publicly. This is what makes it so sad. This is just a public Persona at the Kingdom Hall. They still got magazines. They're leaving alone a lot of the. Trying to predict things. They're leaving alone a lot of the deep doctrines. They used to have this teaching called the types and the antitypes. Well, these would be doctrines that you would go to the meeting and you would not understand a thing. And they would tell you the reason why, because it's solid food, and you can't grasp solid food. Now they're just pushing all that away. They're moving.

John Dehlin [02:01:44] Why are you laughing, Gerardo? Why are you laughing?

Gerardo Sumano [02:01:47] Milk before meat.

John Dehlin [02:01:48] Milk before meat.

JT [02:01:50] That's what they call it. That's what they call it. Yeah, you're right. They are meeting before. They are having those meetings together. And so they're having those meetings together. And so now that's what they're doing. The Watchtower is building basically a media center at. When I was a kid, I remember asking, have you ever heard of David and Goliath? Yeah, David and Goliath was a little claymation that came out years ago. And they. They ran it for years. Little boy and his dog. It was. I think the Episcopalian Church put it out. And they always had, like, little Bible stories, little principles. Don't steal. Don't lie.

JT [02:02:22] Be honest. And I remember talking to brothers about that. Why does society do some cartoons for the kids? And they're like, jehovah's serious. God is serious. Oh, cartoon. No cartoon. Do you know the number one tool they have for young children now in the Watchtower Caleb and Sophia, which is a cartoon character.

JT [02:02:41] I mean, it's like, you know, it's like Donald Duck, Daffy Duck, you know, it's cartoon character. And so now they're using. They're building a multimedia facility that, from what I understand, and talking to certain people, it is literally going to rival mgm. The major studios, they will have the capacity to shoot film at the level of an mgm.

Lady Cee [02:03:05] And then you said they're sending people back.

JT [02:03:07] They're announced. This is. Man, this is crazy, man. They are now sending Jehovah's Witnesses to acting school. There were Witnesses who wanted to go into the theater, want to go into the arts, and they got dog. And now all of a sudden, the Watchtower wants to send people to the theater to learn how to do acting. To be or not to be, you know, that kind of crazy stuff. And so this religion is changing, trying to keep up with the times. And it's going to work for some people because there are some people who like the program. The doctrines don't mean much to them. And that's kind of where the organization is going.

JT [02:03:42] Don't worry about the doctrines. Okay, maybe it's a little. Maybe we got this wrong, but we teach you not to steal and lie. That's not good enough. And so now the organization is becoming more like watered down. The teachings are just that, watered down.

Lady Cee [02:03:57] But remember, though, see, the. The Watchtower kind of speaks out of both sides of their mouth because they have the. They have the magazine called the Awake magazine. And the Awake magazine is that magazine that kind of like gives you those puffball articles and it tells people that they can go spend the weekend with their family and go to the zoo and they'll give you, like, oh, husbands and wives should be. They should do this. And. And so they give you all those little nice articles, like you said, John, about how they're. How the Mormons are trying to counteract all the things. But then the teaching magazine, everybody knows how to treat the Awake magazine.

Lady Cee [02:04:33] But then everybody knows the one that they got to really follow is the Watchtower, because that's the one that they study those questions. You got to read the paragraph and answer the question. So the Watchtower always leaves itself with an out because somebody can say, well, you just said we couldn't go to college, but here's an article right here that said that they could go or they would kind of got given inference to it. So then Jehovah's Witnesses are like, well, they said that we couldn't overhear. Then they Say we could over there, but they know the hard answer is no.

Lady Cee [02:05:05] So it's really kind of. They kind of trip up their. Their adherence. The other thing that. That they're trying to do, I mean, I'm not gonna say we did this because I don't want to be saying all that, but we did a. We did a video about should I fade or disassociate?

Lady Cee [02:05:24] And the next thing we knew, we were telling people how to get out this religion and how all you got to do is move to another congregation, have your publisher, record card sent, whatever. And the next thing we know, we were hearing that they were telling people that if they weren't at the meetings, that they should treat them like, you know, like. Like, you know, soft shunning these people so people couldn't fade anymore.

JT [02:05:46] You can't fade.

Lady Cee [02:05:47] You can't fade.

John Dehlin [02:05:47] What's the difference between fading and disassociating? What's the difference?

JT [02:05:51] Disassociation is when you actually physically write a letter and give it to the elders saying, I no longer want to be one of Jehovah's Witnesses.

John Dehlin [02:05:59] So we call that resigning or resignation. You call it disassociation.

JT [02:06:02] It's called disassociation. Fading is when you just start missing mean, you know, you're not coming to all the means, and you just keep. You just increase that number until you finally literally just fade away, boy. Or people will move to a new area. They'll move from Chicago to Tennessee, and they won't call up the Witness and let them know there's a new Witness in town. They're just. They're gone. And a lot of people, they literally just disappear into the system just like that. But what happens is their family and all the Witnesses back where they're from, they'll many times still think that they're Witnesses where they're gone, but they're not.

JT [02:06:34] And so they kind of fade to try to keep family ties open. The change is the family is now calling them up. Are y' all down in Tennessee? Y' all going to the Kingdom Hall? Well, yeah. What kind of. What's name? The Kingdom hall you going to. I can't think of the name.

JT [02:06:49] And so all of a sudden, they get tripped up. And so that's. And so now the organization has now focused on people who are trying to fade. You will basically be approached and ask, what are you going to do? And the bottom line is, what you gonna do? And let us know now. And that's been putting a lot, and that's been Putting a lot of people in bad positions.

Lady Cee [02:07:07] A lot of people don't know that they don't have. Like you said, you're. You're in another state, but they don't even have to know that. That you left the organization. Organization, you know, and then there's the channel, the Mike and Kim channel. They. They keep track. They. They. They put out the breaking news information, and they tell everybody about the latest happenings in the Watchtower, what's going on on Zoom, and all that kind of stuff. So this one sister was telling me that she tunes into that channel to get the latest and breaking news so that she can still tell her family members that she knows what's going on in the art, in the organization.

Lady Cee [02:07:39] So all these ex Witnesses out here on the Internet, you know, they. They do. We all have a. Have a place. We all are working together because different channels do different things and they focus on different things, you know, and so it's really helpful when you got all these different channels that's putting out different information, all the voices, so that people can really, you know, get the. The information that they need to get,

John Dehlin [02:08:06] you know, so, yeah, that makes total sense. One of the things. So one of the dynamics. One of you guys has your audio turned up a little bit too loud because I'm hearing feedback, so I don't know if that's you, Gerardo. One of the things that's happening now with Facebook and with Twitter and social media is there's more and more Mormons that are questioning their church or even speaking vocally about problems with the church. And so the Mormon Church is starting to hold disciplinary councils where you can. Where you're getting excommunicated. And so the church is really clamping down on any Mormon that's speaking publicly against the church or criticizing the church or even just disagreeing with the church publicly. The church is really clamping down. Is any of that happening right now in your church?

JT [02:08:58] Oh, yeah, man. People. People get caught on the Internet. People come to their houses, check their cookies. I see that you've been on Witness sites. We look at out. We. We have realized that a lot of people who watch our channel, they cannot subscribe. Because remember, when you subscribe, basically you get notifications. And if you're a Jehovah's Witness sitting in a car with five other witnesses, and all of a sudden J.T. and Lady C. Pop up on the screen and you in trouble. You in some serious trouble. And so. And so Witnesses have to do like. Like right now, they're going to be Jehovah's Witnesses who are watching this show.

JT [02:09:34] But these are grown men and women who, unfortunately, because of the way the organization is structured, they have to do this secretly. You know, you 35, 45, 50 years old, paying your own house note, car note, water bill, and you have to do this secretly. And when you tell non Jehovah's Witnesses, you know, I have to do this secretly at night.

John Dehlin [02:09:53] I can't.

JT [02:09:53] I can't let nobody see me. They look at you like, you got to be kidding me, man. And so. But that's the way the culture is. That's why I tell people the teachings in the culture you have. Every Witness who comes on our site, even if they are defending the Watchtower, even if they are defending the organization, if they are caught, a good elder is going to have to deal with them. And. And so it's not just being caught,

Lady Cee [02:10:19] though, because remember that the Jehovah's Witnesses have a very specific vocabulary that they got to use as well. So one of the things that I found when I left the organization was you slip and say something, and they quickly know that you're not keeping up with Watchtower. Oh, yeah, you know what I'm saying?

JT [02:10:38] The language.

Lady Cee [02:10:39] The language is so, you know, they have this vocabulary they use. Use the language that they use. And so, you know, not. But it's the. I think it's the fear factor.

JT [02:10:48] Oh, yeah.

Lady Cee [02:10:48] With the subscriptions to the. To the Internet, to the website. But I think that we begin to talk different. A lot of times when people stop going to the meetings and stuff, too, don't they?

JT [02:11:01] Sometimes they do, but because they're still going to the meetings, they know what. What to say and what not to say is. I mean, it's literally a whole language. Like, if you use the word po, they know you haven't been to the King hall in years because there is no more po. If you say district convention, they know that you don't. You don't even go. Because it's not called a district convention, it's called a regional. And so the language. In psychology, we learn that language and words. It's like the 1984 movie Newspeak. That's what. That's what is Newspeak. The Witnesses have perfected Newspeak. I will give them credit for that. They got new speak. Down to a science. Down to a science.

Lady Cee [02:11:39] Yeah. But if you said something that you saw on the Internet, like when there were people that were saying something about the Australian Royal Commission and the Brother at the Kingdom hall had never heard of that before. And so he knew that that person had been somewhere looking on the Internet.

JT [02:11:55] If you ever say anything about information that you got off the Internet and It is not jw.org as a witness, you know, you. You dismiss has no effect. I mean, the organization has got people taught so much that if you say that your information is from anywhere except jw.org right? It's gonna get dismissed.

Lady Cee [02:12:15] Exactly.

JT [02:12:15] It's just a simple. I mean, that's a perfect system. I mean, you talking about locking folks down, lock down, no conversation. You. You will never have a conversation of Jehovah's Witnesses saying, you know, brother, I Internet, and I was reading something so and so. What do you mean? It was. It was just a site on biblical history. No, that's not gonna happen.

Lady Cee [02:12:36] That's not gonna happen.

JT [02:12:37] Not gonna happen.

Lady Cee [02:12:38] You have to see. You have to. You literally have to walk on eggshells when you're. Walk. When you're at the Kingdom on you trying to fade. Because if you're talking to us and having a conversation, you could slip one of these words out. I know at that point they're gonna mark you, and you slip too many of them words out, you're gonna get disfellowship.

JT [02:12:55] I know.

What Disfellowshipping Means and Its Growing Scale

John Dehlin [02:12:56] And what is, what is disfellowshipment like in the Jehovah's Witness Church?

JT [02:13:01] It is probably the worst thing that could happen to a person psychologically and emotionally and many times even physically, because it results in you being cut off from all ties with the only community that you know. Jehovah's Witnesses do not associate in general with people who are not Witnesses. Hence, you will rarely hear Jehovah's Witness refer to someone who is not a Witness as, this is my best friend. They're not going to do that. So your entire framework is built on this congregation and the organization. When you disfellowship, they take all that away from you. As a result, you're standing out there with nothing to do.

JT [02:13:39] Probably the best example, just that most people can relate to, is the Amish. Imagine an Amish kid, 19, 20 years old, is kicked out of the Amish farm, and now he's in New York City. Can you imagine what he's up against? He's dressed just like he's dressed in the hills of Pennsylvania, but he's on Broadway. So he just becomes a target for everything, and he is totally lost. That's the way it is for the average Jehovah's Witness. And that's why some people we know, they leave and they're like, I can't do it, man. And when I, I remember, I don't know if you've ever seen the movie. Was it, it's called the, this was this, it's Morgan Freeman and it's a woman in prison. Shawshank.

John Dehlin [02:14:22] Shawshank Redemption.

JT [02:14:23] Yes. There is a scene in that movie of an older man who's been in this institution for so many years.

John Dehlin [02:14:30] Yeah.

JT [02:14:31] They let him go free. He's free. You can do what you want to do.

John Dehlin [02:14:34] Yep.

JT [02:14:34] He committed suicide.

John Dehlin [02:14:36] Yeah.

JT [02:14:37] Because he could not deal with the outside world. And I know that for a fact because my father worked at the prison. My father retired from the prison in North Carolina. There are people who have been there so long that when they leave, they feel better being in an institutional environment. And that's kind of the way it is for you Jehovah's, especially a long time Witness. They find I'm more comfortable here. I, I, this, this is my liner's blanket. I'm not letting go.

John Dehlin [02:15:08] Southern boss lady says that Joe's Witness disfellowship is the same thing as Mormon excuse. Thank you. Thank you. SBL so would you say disfellowshipments are on the rise right now?

JT [02:15:21] They rise every year. In fact, let me just see how bad it has gotten. The Watchtower at one time actually published a number of people who were disfellowshipped. And the question all the elders asked was, are we going to get this number every year in the, in, in, in the publications? And I remember talking to someone who works in the actual department that releases the numbers. And the decision was made that they felt that because of the number of people being disfellowshipped, that number would prove to be too discouraging. So we're not going to list it in the publications anymore.

Lady Cee [02:15:51] I think I remember being like, was it 32, 000?

JT [02:15:53] I'm not for sure what, what the

Lady Cee [02:15:55] number was because we were still in

JT [02:15:56] the organization, but they no longer release it. And that's the reason why the number, because it was, see, it was, it would make a statement like, oh my goodness.

Lady Cee [02:16:03] Yeah.

JT [02:16:03] Because it's very important to understand basically for every person who is disfellowshipped, we were told at our elder school that roughly about two to three people are disciplined or reproved.

Lady Cee [02:16:17] So you forever disfellow.

JT [02:16:18] Forever. Every dis fellowship, there's about two to three people who actually reprove. They're the ones who got by they, they, they, they, they, they, they. They was forgiven. They didn't get fired.

Lady Cee [02:16:26] They.

JT [02:16:27] They put them on. On probation, basically.

Lady Cee [02:16:29] Well, they don't. They can't have that number out there because they can no longer say that they're. So that they're not tainted or whatever they want to say. Like, they're just as bad as any

JT [02:16:37] other religion, you know, and that's kind of the catch 22 is people begin to see that Witnesses. The Watchtower is interesting as a Jehovah's Witness, as a Watchtower organization, we bragged about how we are so different from the world. When the child molestation issue came out, we didn't brag, brag. Witnesses didn't brag that, you know, we're different because we're. We're God's people. Instead, what the Watchtower said, well, we're like any other community that's having problems in this area. We're no different. Now, you used to be God's people, used to be God's channel. Now all of a sudden, you just regular church, like, down the street. And so the Witnesses, the organization plays whatever works to their advantage. That's how they do it. They always do that. And they're good. I mean, the guys are good.

John Dehlin [02:17:20] And I just want to say again, this is proof that there's a retreat of leaders of these organizations. Our church published its statistics. We have a general conference twice a year where they always publish members, how many people have joined, how many missionaries. And it was always like this big thing because decades ago, the church was growing, and everybody was excited because every time we went 10 million, 11 million, 12 million, 13 million, it was all like, oh, my gosh, you know, the second coming is nigh. The Jesus is coming back. Like, oh, we're growing. We're going to take over the Earth. And then all of a sudden, the numbers started getting more and more problematic.

John Dehlin [02:18:02] The growth started slowing. People started slicing and dicing the numbers and realizing that there was a problem here. And guess what was announced a few years ago? J.T. and Lady C, you guys might be able to guess what was announced.

JT [02:18:16] Maybe that they would. They would. They would. They would cease releasing the numbers.

John Dehlin [02:18:20] They stopped releasing the numbers in General Conference. So our. Our people are talking, brother man. People are talking.

Lady Cee [02:18:30] They're going to the same conventions right now.

John Dehlin [02:18:32] They're. They're coaching each other. It's like, what do we do with. What do we do with these YouTubers? We got to do something. Okay, so let me ask you that. Like, I have been attacked Viciously. I've been called, you know, a child abuser. I've been called. I've been called, you know, rapist. You know, just like that. They really coming after their critics, trying to smear them, trying to destroy them, trying to defame them. Is the church. Is. What's it like being an activist against the. The, you know, the Witnesses? Is it hard? Does the church come at you? Do the members come at you? Or is it awesome and fun? What's it like to try and speak truth to power? What's it like?

Lady Cee [02:19:18] I don't. Well, we haven't got those kind of things that somebody said. Remember that time somebody said that we were part of the Illuminati?

JT [02:19:24] It was part of the Illuminati. And I was like, well, so that. Am I gonna get to hang out with Jay Z and Beyonce if I'm part of the Illuminati? Not let me know. And.

John Dehlin [02:19:33] But you guys aren't being attacked by the church. The church isn't attacking you.

Lady Cee [02:19:37] But the church hasn't.

JT [02:19:38] Yeah, the. As I said before, the organization's position is we do not respond to apostates. They. They will never debate someone who has left the organization. That is the official policy. We will. Because, first of all, we don't talk to you. See, they. I mean, they. They take it to a different level. We don't even talk to you. So don't think we're going to debate these teachings. And so as a Witness, they're told we do not debate them. But the problem is Witnesses can't help themselves. That is why they come on these channels all the time. And. And you.

Lady Cee [02:20:10] You.

JT [02:20:11] You can't get mad at them because you're taking away the only thing that they have. Like I said, it's Linus's blanket from the peanuts, right? And so people respond back. And. And it's interesting because what happens is there's a pattern because former Jehovah's Witnesses, for the most part, many of us, we did exactly the same thing. We went onto these channels and we tried to defend the organization because I know I did. I was up here as an elder. Well, no, this was all this, this, this, this, this, right? And I couldn't do it, man. The guys was. They were cleaning my clock. They was cleaning my clock because I was willing to go back.

Lady Cee [02:20:46] I.

JT [02:20:46] When I first came on the Internet, this is interesting. When I first came on the Internet, there were elders, circuit overseers, pioneers, people with serious titles in this organization. Even a guy from Bethel was actually online and so we would have conversations back and forth about the organization, elders arrangements. And then the society made the announcement. Basically, if anybody's up here on these sites, we're going to take your stripes. And all of a sudden, all the elders, ministerial servants, anybody with a title left the Internet. They were gone. And it left basically people who didn't have any position, which meant they didn't have access to any of the information, because that was why I left.

JT [02:21:30] I had two elders, former elders. They challenged me. They said, jt, you, the secretary, Go back and look in the file and look under these records here and tell me what it says. Now go to the Kingdom hall and look it up. I'm like, oh, man, they got me. They got me. And so after a while, you get tired of losing because you realize you're being told things and introduced to things that you didn't know was in the file cabinet. Letters from the organization you had no idea existed, because they go back so many years. And then you back in the read. I was some sergeants.

JT [02:21:58] My wife would be like, where's JT at? I would be at the Kingdom hall looking through the file like, oh, man, I ain't realized. Oh, Lord have mercy. We was crazy. And so.

Lady Cee [02:22:07] Yeah.

JT [02:22:07] And so I began to see, like, man, this ain't what I thought it was. And that's what happened.

Lady Cee [02:22:11] But you know what, John? We got just the opposite effect almost from. From our. From our activism, because in our little community here in the area that we live in, we just can't believe the number of people that find us. Yeah, we're at the Kennedy Center. Somebody said, oh, she. I was like, I think there's our friends down there. And she turned around and she says, I know that voice from somewhere. So you guys get noticed on YouTube. You know, we're at BJ's, and a lady was coming. We thought she was coming to ask us for some coupons. And she was like, I just saw you on YouTube last night.

Life as Public Ex-Jehovah's Witness Educators

Lady Cee [02:22:43] We were at. We were at Best Buy, and a guy comes up and says, jt and Lady C. I follow you on you. We couldn't believe it. So everywhere we go, we're running into all these people. He's at the gas station. I was at the elevator at my job, and people are just saying, you guys are doing a good work. Keep up the good work. So it's. We just can't believe the number of people that are just getting our message.

JT [02:23:07] The best one, you know, the best one I had. This is so funny, man. I'm at work. I am at work. I am walking down the hall, and I'm seeing this guy coming toward me, and he has his iPhone. He's looking at the iPhone. Look at me. And we'll. And we're walking toward each other. And then he passes me, and he turns around like, are you a jt? And so. And so I. I said, yeah. He says, man, I'm looking at you on. On the YouTube right now. And. And so people are found. People are finding out this information because it pops up on their feeds. And so.

Lady Cee [02:23:49] But I got even a better one. I got. I have an even better one. I. I mean, this is. We can't make this up.

JT [02:23:54] Yeah, you can't make this kind of stuff up.

Lady Cee [02:23:56] We're in Detroit.

JT [02:23:57] Yeah.

Lady Cee [02:23:57] Oh, Baker's Keyboard Lounge. Hanging out, celebrating our anniversary. It's a small jazz club. So we're like. We're the tourists, you know? And so there's this lady. You know, I got my little. I have my little video camera, and I'm recording the show.

Lady Cee [02:24:18] So I go and I put. When I get back home, I put this online. You know, it was a good show. It was two ladies. They were singing. It was a band and all this kind of stuff. So we're. So jt. And I was sitting in the kitchen last week, and I. And, you know, I had gotten this email from this. This. This sister telling me about her situation with her family. She said, what do I do? You know, I got, like, five siblings. They're Jehovah's Witnesses. They're. They're disfellowshipped, and I'm the only one in the organization.

Lady Cee [02:24:50] She said, but I'm sick. And she said, and I need some assistance. What do I do? So I'm emailing this lady back and telling her what to do, giving her some advice, blah, blah, blah. So then, like, maybe, like two weeks later, I get another email.

Lady Cee [02:25:04] And I'm sitting there, and I'm like, this lady, she's sending an email. She said, hey, I reached out to you before. Now I'm reaching back out to you again. And then she goes on to tell me, I saw the picture on my Gmail.

Lady Cee [02:25:20] I'm like, that lady looks so familiar, right? So then I look down, I see the area code. It's a Michigan area code. I see her name. I said, jane. I said, jay, don't tell me that this is the lady from Baker's Keyboard Lounge. She was the lady that had been singing at the club that night. She was.

John Dehlin [02:25:40] Oh, that's awesome.

Lady Cee [02:25:42] She was calling out for. I grabbed my phone. I was like, girl, don't tell me. Don't tell me this is you. I said, what are the odds. Yeah, that you would be hanging out, having a great time at a jazz supper club, and a person who. That you were in their audience would reach out to you and say, I need help. I'm one of Jehovah's Witnesses, you know, and I need some help. And I was like, oh, my God. So we have so many experiences that we just can't believe. And. And it's like, come on, Hollywood. Come and knock on our door so

John Dehlin [02:26:17] we can share,

Lady Cee [02:26:20] you know, it's crazy.

John Dehlin [02:26:21] No, I shouldn't talk about the haters so much, because the number of people that love what. What Mormon stories or the work that I do or the other people that are in this field, it's tens of thousands, if not over a hundred, you know, if not in the hundred, hundreds of thousands of people at this point. Yeah, I get. I was. I was recognized at times, you know, at Central park in New York. I. I get recognized in the airport whenever I travel. And in Utah. Yeah. I've had people pass me on the airplane, show me Mormon stories as they're listening to the podcast as they walk by.

John Dehlin [02:26:53] Like, in fact, our. Our YouTube channels are almost identical. We both have around 31,000 subscribers. So I think we share kind of a similar level of kind of a profile. And isn't that wonderful that people are so kind and generous and that YouTube or podcasts allow us to help and reach so many people? It really is a beautiful thing. And I love to hear that you guys have those similar types of experiences.

JT [02:27:22] Yeah, it's a good feeling when you are one of Jehovah's Witnesses. The objective is to bring people into the organization. And I look back now, we have probably been responsible for just tens, just multiple people in comparison to how many people we brought in. And this is what the Internet does. It makes it possible for people to find out something in the privacy of their home. And that's the key. They can look at this stuff every night without having to talk to anyone about it. And that's what people do. We've had people who said, jt, I've been watching your site for three or four years before I even said anything.

JT [02:28:01] And now they're gone. Now they're going back to school to get their law degree. And so. And so you. You see how people. If you give people information, and this is why cults don't give out information. They can. Well, they control the flow of information. I guess that's the best way to put it. But when you give people information, just like the guy who used to run the store in New York City, his name was SI Sims, he said an educated consumer is his best customer. And that's really true. And that's the same way it is with anything. With more information, people can buy better cars, they can buy better products, because now they can go and check it out. Well, interestingly, it's the same thing now for religions.

John Dehlin [02:28:45] Amen. Hey, Rob, from geeks to God says know him.

Lady Cee [02:28:52] He's like, our. Our play, son.

JT [02:28:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:28:57] Let me just ask you really quickly, do you guys ever get attacked by other ex Jehovah's Witnesses?

Lady Cee [02:29:04] We. We stay out of that.

JT [02:29:05] Yeah, this is.

Lady Cee [02:29:06] Let me.

JT [02:29:06] I'm. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead.

Lady Cee [02:29:08] No, you go ahead, J.T.

JT [02:29:09] this is very important. When I was at Bethel, when I used to be at the Watchtower Society, we used to laugh. We used to laugh. You have 2,400 people rolling on the floor because we used to laugh at former Jehovah's Witnesses and how they argued among themselves.

JT [02:29:31] You see, we had a governing body member he used to talk about. He said, see, this is what happens when they leave. They're not unified. See, we know we're unified. Same language, same speech. And of course, the problem is that one of the mistakes that too many former Jehovah's Witnesses make, and they make this mistake in very different aspects of this issue.

JT [02:29:55] When we were at the Kingdom hall, we all had to think the same, act the same, have the same views, the same values. Everybody had to be in lockstep. Unfortunately, when people sometimes leave a high control group and they end up hooking up or meeting up with people who were in the same control group that they were in, they make the sad mistake of thinking that we need to think the same still.

JT [02:30:29] And you don't. That was the biggest relief for us when we left, that I no longer have to think like other people. I no longer have to have the same views and perspectives and ideas that other people have on any subject. Any subject.

JT [02:30:44] And so sometimes you will see former Jehovah's Witnesses attack each other. But as far as the organization is concerned, they are laughing at them. And because we know that, we refuse to get involved in any silly argument. Because at the end of the day. At the end of the day, if you're not talking about this issue, then you're not talking about anything. We have seen people on the Internet. I'M like, man, that's so silly.

Gerardo Sumano [02:31:12] Cut that out.

JT [02:31:12] Because the boys at Bethel, the boys in New York, they are laughing. They are laughing their behinds off. And so we just refuse to get into such petty stuff because people's lives are at stake. We talk to people, man, who are going to lose their husband, they wife. My wife is leaving me tonight, man. She's packing right now. Jt, look, look at the camera, man. And his wife is putting stuff in the bag. She's leaving. And so for me to turn around, argue with some Jehovah's Witness over something society said or, or some Greek word or Latin word, you know, man, ain't got time for that kind of stuff, man.

JT [02:31:48] I just, I tell my fellow time, I, I just that don't have time for that kind of stuff. And the reason why, because I know from a different perspective, this organization is no joke. These boys, they play the win.

JT [02:32:03] And so that's why we refuse. Why when we left, we refused to be a poster child. I just refused to do any. That's why I did not write a disassociation letter. I was not going to waste the pen, paper or ink to write a disassociation letter. Because elders are taught when you get a disassociation letter, you only read enough to find out is this person coming back or not. Once you read enough and feel it, figure out he ain't coming back, you ball it up and you throw it in the trash. People write 12, 15 page letter. They don't even read that trash. They throw it in the trash.

JT [02:32:36] So I'm like, I'm not going to give them the pleasure of. On the way out, they still making up rules for me. We need you to write a letter. You ain't writing nothing. You won't get nothing from me. And so understanding how they play their game, this is why, like I tell people, it's like a chess game when you know every move that your opponent is going to use, you have no reason to lose. You have no reason to lose. As a former Jehovah's, we know everything that they will say, everything that they will do. We know every technique they will use. Learn to flip it and use it to your advantage.

JT [02:33:10] And my wife and I, we, we, we laugh at how we were so involved in this religion that we couldn't see the forest for the trees. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:33:27] I love it. How do you guys support yourselves financially? That was beautiful. Like, I want to clap. And I think my people need to listen more to you guys about that. Because we do sometimes get involved in, in some silliness that doesn't help that just Salt Lake City, the corporate headquarters. Laughs so that, that, that was useful to me. So thank you for that. How do you guys support yourself financially? You know, are you, do you work on donations? Do you just do your full time jobs and this is all volunteer? Because I believe that this stuff should be supported so that it can be sustainable. So how do you guys deal financially with, with, with what you do?

Lady Cee [02:34:07] We, we work full time jobs. We, we don't, we don't solicit money for this channel. We, we, we feel like that that's just not something we do. We, we have a hard time, you know, asking for money for people because we realize that people were already in a situation and given money and stuff like that. So we put our own money in or we use the, the money from the YouTube ads that we get. That's, that's all we use. So that pays for our equipment and whatever the YouTube ads don't pay for, we, we put it in, put money in out of our own pocket. And both of us work full time jobs. So we do not, we don't have a patron account or nothing like that.

JT [02:34:59] Yeah, I mean some people decide to do that and I think that's, that's the personal decision. We have people over the years, in fact, we have a number of people, they ask, you know, how can we support you? And we'll say if you want to give something fun. But you know, we just haven't gone down that road because at this point we've been able to manage so, you know, so far, so good.

Lady Cee [02:35:21] But we might start selling some, some Lady C cups because somebody just sent an email. I'm just kidding.

John Dehlin [02:35:26] Merch.

JT [02:35:26] Some merch.

Lady Cee [02:35:27] Somebody just emailed and they wanted to get my Lady C cup. So if they're listening, I might put that out there. But we're not trying to do that. I have another YouTube channel that I use for that kind of stuff, commercial stuff on another channel. But we're not, we're not trying to get, you know, any patrons and stuff like that.

JT [02:35:47] And we know people who do. And, and, but see, that's the kind of stuff that, like I said before, what people do, everybody has a voice, okay? Everybody has a different approach. Everybody has a different style. I will not tell someone else what their style should be. Of course, vice versa, I'm not gonna let nobody tell me what my style should be either. And for people, if they like your style, they will listen. If they don't like your style, they'll move on. And I'm not, you know, and this is to me. This to me, this is so simple. We were Jehovah's Witnesses. People hated us.

JT [02:36:22] I spent my entire life growing up being hated. So if somebody disagreed me now as an adult, it's like, okay, what's new? I mean, at some point, your skin has got to be thicker than clinics, okay? And that's. That's just the way it is. And so all my life, I've been hated. I grew up as a Witness. So I tell my wife all the time, what this supposed to mean?

JT [02:36:45] I was put out of a classroom. 30 kids. Everybody laugh when you walk back in. So for somebody I don't even know, don't see, ain't paying my rent, I cannot use energy to get bent out of shape over people I don't know. And this is what makes this. This is what makes the Internet so dangerous as well. This type of stuff here can become heady. This kind of stuff can become heady because all of a sudden you got people who want to follow you. And this is. This is, to me, this. For some people, this can become Charles Taz Russell, too.

JT [02:37:17] It can become Charles, because that's how we. Charles Taz Russell got started. Most people start out good. Good intentions, noble. But if you don't check it, if you do not check it, your head can grow because people are constantly praising you. The greatest sliced bread. No, you not. You ain't the greatest since sliced bread. You just got something that you can help people with, then great. But you have to check yourself. It's very easy when people start praising you. This is why the governing body. This is why they're where they are. This is what happened to Charles Taz Russell. Yeah, Charles Taz Russell started out and he heard.

JT [02:37:50] He heard people saying, I think Charlie is the faithful and discreet slave. According to the book of Matthew. Charles Taz Russell had a chance to shut that thing down. He was in charge of every magazine that was published. What he should have done was he should have done the same thing that the angel did to John. When John fell down on his knees and started to worship the angel, what did. What did the angel tell John? He said, man, get up off your knees, man. You will get me in trouble in heaven. Get off your knees. Same thing with Charles Taz Russell. When he started hearing people praise him like that, he should have said, brothers, I'm just trying to, you know, share some things.

JT [02:38:26] I looked up. I'm not no Fulfillment. My mama had me. I wasn't fulfilling no Bible prophet prophecy. I'm just Charlie Russell. He didn't do that. He sat back and let people praise him. And the next thing you know, you have a man who now speaks for God. Now, once they got that thing going, they didn't want to get rid of it. And then J.F. rutherford, they kept it going. We speak for God. And that's how it really started. And once you get that bad boy rolling down the hill, you can't stop it. So the same with, with people who have YouTube channels and people. Keep it in, keep it in perspective.

JT [02:38:58] Just keep it in perspective. That's all you got to do. And life will be good. You'll be good. She gets those senses. She's like, dang. I know, I know, but that's just the way I feel. I think we just have to keep stuff in perspective, man.

John Dehlin [02:39:09] No, it's, I'm, I'm really moved by the fact that you guys have your own careers and, and put your own money in. I, I started that way for years. I've been doing this since 2005. 2005. And I had to go get a PhD in psychology just to be able to know how to help all the people that were reaching out to me.

John Dehlin [02:39:33] And so I started just saying, hey, podcast listeners, if you guys want to support, you know what we do, I can spend more and more of my time helping people. And what that's ended up doing is growing into a full time job where literally every morning I wake up and I'm like, how do I make a bigger difference? How do I make the YouTube channel more successful? How do I get better cinematography? How do I start doing events and retreats and workshops and, and how do I support other people? And so for me, it's grown into a career.

Lady Cee [02:40:03] Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:40:05] And I'm, and I'm, you know, I'm torn because I love the altruism of what you guys are doing. And I'm not saying I make more of a difference with my people than you do with yours, but what I, what I can say is I do love that there are people that can spend full time positions trying to support because there's so many divorces, so many families being blown up, so much depression, so much anxiety, so many LGBT issues that the more and more people we can have spending more and more time helping people, that, that's, that's the trade off. And so that's sustainability.

JT [02:40:41] And so the same with us. If circumstances where we would need the help Like I said, people have always asked us and so at this point, we've been able to manage and if we can't manage and you know, we would ask for help because we think that the work we do is a good work, it's an important work, and it just goes with that. But at this point, you know, it's something that we've been able to manage so far.

John Dehlin [02:41:05] I think it's beautiful. I think it's beautiful. Gerardo, before we, before we part for tonight, do you have any final questions, Gerardo, for JT or Lady C?

Gerardo Sumano [02:41:15] No, I, I think.

John Dehlin [02:41:21] Do you want to say anything to him? Do you want to say anything to him?

Gerardo Sumano [02:41:25] Just that I admire what they do. I think it's, it's great work. I've seen some of their videos and it's a lot of work and I, I admire what they do and, and thank them for, for helping their, their community. And at the end, we're all on this together. We were all part of, in different levels, but part of a high demand organizations that have caused some issues or situations in our lives and we're glad to be out and we want to help people who are on their way out or, or just to informed consent, you know, if they want to stay, that's fine. All my family are members of the Mormon Church and active members. But yeah, informed consent.

JT [02:42:16] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:42:17] Yeah, that's a good point. That's a good point.

JT [02:42:18] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:42:19] Well, JT Lady. Yeah, thank you, Gerardo. I'm so glad you joined us today. J.T. and Lady C. I just want to say that one of the things I said to Leah Remini and Michael Render is what if we're more powerful, cross supporting and cooperating between traditions than what we're able to do in our own silos? And so I have this vision someday of maybe even an annual conference where ex Jehovah's Witnesses, ex Scientologists, ex Mormons, ex Evangelical Christians, ex Jews, ex Muslims, we can all start coming together and learning from each other, supporting each other, strategizing together and figuring out ways where the aggregate of what we're doing can actually become more powerful than the sum of its parts.

John Dehlin [02:43:15] And so I'm inspired by you guys. I'm inspired by Lloyd Evans, I'm inspired by Chris Shelton of Scientology, Leah, Mike Rinder. There's so many brilliant people out there. I, I want to just put a little birdie in your ear to say what if we're to collaborate more? Oh, and I'm going to come on your pod. I'm Going to come on your YouTube channel.

JT [02:43:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:43:39] What if we could collaborate more? I want to just have us start thinking about that. I know that we, I have listeners that are ex Jehovah's Witnesses. Oh, yeah.

Lady Cee [02:43:46] Oh yeah.

JT [02:43:48] As we mentioned before, they cross over because as we, as, as you said, they all attend the same conference.

John Dehlin [02:43:56] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So let's collaborate. Let's, let's learn from each other and let's find ways to help make each other successful. But most importantly, we've all got the, and this is something we didn't get to talk about. What are the, what are the ways we can help people build a new life outside of their religious tradition so that they don't fall back into another cult or so that they don't wreck their lives and maybe we should end with that. If you were to give parting words for my listeners or for yours. What are the, what's the best advice you guys have for somebody leaving a high demand religion so that they can find healing and growth on the other side? And that's how we'll end today.

Rebuilding Life After Leaving and Final Reflections

Lady Cee [02:44:38] Today. Great. You want, you know, you got to take care of your, your mental health after you leave because once you've been in this religion, we recommend that people seek therapy, get a little therapist, you know, or something to talk to somebody. What we did was we went back to college, got our degree, we began to rebuild friendships outside of the religion. And then of course, you want to start looking for ways to, you know, get a career because a lot of people didn't have a career path when they were Jehovah's Witnesses. And we just really feel like, you know, good association, good wholesome association and finding friends.

Lady Cee [02:45:13] And that's one of the biggest things that people have had. I read the comments of our YouTube videos and I see people saying that they, they've been gone for six or seven years and they still can't find any friends. And I, I just started, you know, going to like meetup group groups and trying to, you know, meet people that like the same things I like to do and hobbies and stuff like that. And the other thing I did was I reached back into like my old job I used to work at years ago and I reached back and started talking to people there and we friended each other on Facebook and then we started having like monthly like brunches that we would go out and different stuff like that.

Lady Cee [02:45:54] So, you know, and we're going to start doing videos too about how people can regain their life after leaving. So be on the lookout for some of those videos as well.

JT [02:46:04] Yeah, I, I think, yeah, I think that's an excellent point. And it kind of, it kind of dovetails with what my mom told us. She said, y' all guys need to build a new clientele of friends. And I think because that is the common denominator in most high control groups and cults is that you have no structure around you once you leave. And so because you're going to lose everybody who's around you. And most of those groups have told you not to do, not to deal with other people. So you have nobody. And so building a new clientele of friends is very, very important. And you know, you start going back to your high school, start going with your family who are not part of that religion.

JT [02:46:48] If you have family members who are not part of the religion, talk to them. Why do you never, why you never joined us? And you'll be surprised. Hey, I saw y' all was crazy over there. So, you know, so you, you'll get a chance to see that. And that's what we did. We reached back to our non witness family and we were shocked. I mean, we have aunts and style aunts and stuff. They said, jt, we feel sorry for y'. All. Y' all out there, eight 19 year old little suit on, your little briefcase, look like you're IBM salesman. All the other kids watching Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and y' all out there selling books on Saturday, we felt sorry for y' all guys.

JT [02:47:19] And then they were like, we glad y' all out. And they welcomed us back into the fold with, with no regards to anything that passed it. Like, it's like we never missed a day. And so we tell people all the time, reach out to all the people on your job you, you didn't do with people you went to school with. When I went back to my class reunion, they were still calling me preacher man. Preacher man. J.J.T. preacher man. You know, and so. Because that's all they remember, James, you know, JT was always trying to sell them books around school. And, and so you, you reach back and you explain to people, hey, man, we left, man.

Lady Cee [02:47:53] Y' all left.

JT [02:47:53] Yeah, man, we left. Had to get out.

Gerardo Sumano [02:47:55] Chief.

Lady Cee [02:47:55] Yeah. Definitely tell people, definitely tell people that you left.

JT [02:47:58] Yeah, tell me. Let people know you left.

Lady Cee [02:47:59] Don't let people keep thinking you still belong.

JT [02:48:02] Because when I got back to that class reunion, everybody like, no, he knew. He. And, and when we told them, they are you really a left man? And so be sure to let people know you left because if not, they will still grade you on the same grading scale. And once you let people know, you will find they're like, man, I always wondered about what happened, because a lot of the guys I went to school with, you know, because everybody. I was taking all college prep classes throughout my entire high school career. And so all the people we knew. I knew, they all went to college. And so we came back. They're like, I always wonder what happened to you, man. You know, you didn't go to none of the college. We heard that you went to New York or something like that.

Lady Cee [02:48:39] You went to Harvard, baby.

JT [02:48:41] Yeah, I went to Watchtower Harvard, you know, so that I think is very important. Like my wife mentioned, you know, starting that new clientele of friends is very crucial.

John Dehlin [02:48:50] Yeah, I love it. I love it. Are you guys. Did you guys join another church? Are you guys Christian? Or did you guys just kind of stop doing church? I'm just curious.

JT [02:49:00] Well, that was one of the things that, like most witnesses, when you leave is the first question you ask, where am I going? Where am I going? And. And we have the opportunity to go to a lot, visit a lot of different churches, a lot of different religions. But what we found out. And this is just a personal. This is just a personal observation. And I often tell people this.

JT [02:49:17] When you leave, you need to understand what you were just a part of. We were literally spiritually abused. Spiritually abused. And if you had a friend, she was in a relationship, her husband beat her, all the time, you go, this a girl. You need to leave. You. You need to stop and, you know, think about what you're doing for your kids. You need to really think about this. And she just won't leave. And then she finally calls you up on the phone, and she says, I did the day I'm leaving.

JT [02:49:50] And while you on the phone, you say, well, girl, I got somebody I want you to meet. Would you do that? No. What you would tell her is, girl, you need to give yourself time to heal. And if you want to get back into a relationship with someone, then you'll be in a better position to do that. And if you don't want to be in a relationship and just be single, that's fine, too. And that's what we have observed with people who lead this organization, including ourselves. You need to give yourself time to heal. Because I've seen so many witnesses jump out of one group right into another, and we're talking to them, like, two years later.

JT [02:50:28] So we tell people, take your time. Take your time. And if you Decide to be a part of another religious belief system, that's up to you, but at least take your time. And that's what we decide to do. We have friends in vice churches all the time. I just don't think we probably will never become part of a religious group again. Because for us, from our perspective, every time we go to church may just remind me of being at the Kingdom Hall.

JT [02:50:51] We went to one church, and this woman treated us like a Bible study. Y' all sit with us. And she was just so happy. They with me. They with me.

Lady Cee [02:50:59] And.

JT [02:50:59] And then she was. And we heard the message. She said, now if you really want to get some spiritual food, you need to come to Wednesday night meeting. I'm like, oh, Lord, not again. Not again. So. So. So, you know, we. We have no problem with people and their religious business, but for us, you know, we're fine right where we are. And maybe down the road we would, but, you know, and once again, you know, people are different. Let people be themselves, and that's what we are. And, you know, at this point, for us, you know, we found that simply living your life to the very best, that brings us the most happiness. That's just us.

John Dehlin [02:51:41] Amen. Preach it. Hallelujah. Gerardo, can I get an amen? Gerardo? All right. Well, we're gonna end on that, so.

JT [02:51:51] Hey, man, it's been good. Hey, man, it's been good.

John Dehlin [02:51:54] We respect you guys, the world. We're cheering you guys on from Salt Lake City, Utah. We admire you guys. I want to hang out with you guys. I want to have a root beer with you guys someday.

JT [02:52:04] If you have on the east coast, look us up. Look us up.

John Dehlin [02:52:07] So you're in the D.C. area? Virginia, Maryland.

JT [02:52:10] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:52:10] Okay, I will do that. And you guys, too. And if you guys decide you want to have me on your. On your channel, I'd love to come on and absolutely turn the tables, and you guys can grow me.

Lady Cee [02:52:21] We'll have our people call your people.

JT [02:52:22] Yeah. People call your people.

John Dehlin [02:52:25] I love it. All right, all right. Jt, Lady C, you're awesome. Tell everyone again your channel so that they know where to get your stuff.

Lady Cee [02:52:36] Xjwcriticalthinker.com that's our YouTube. I mean, that's our web address, and our YouTube is xjw critical Thinker. And our podcast is the Critical Thoughts.

JT [02:52:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:52:50] All right, you guys take care. Stay good.

JT [02:52:52] Enjoy the rest of your evening, guys.

John Dehlin [02:52:53] And if we. If we can ever help you guys with anything, don't hesitate. I'll fly out Gerardo and I will fly out and help you guys out. Just put you up.

JT [02:53:02] We got the room. We'll put you up. All right, then. Take care.

John Dehlin [02:53:05] Bye.

JT [02:53:06] Bye.

John Dehlin [02:53:07] Thanks, Gerardo. Thanks, listeners.

JT [02:53:09] Yeah, man. Thanks a lot, guy. Appreciate it.

Lady Cee [02:53:12] Okay.

John Dehlin [02:53:12] And listeners, thanks for joining us on Mormon Stories. Take care. Be good to each other. Love each other. Be kind. Find joy. That's the best. Revenge is living a happy, healthy life. You heard it. You heard it from JT and Lady C here. Thanks to everyone who supports us on Mormon Stories podcast. Stay tuned. We'll see you guys again soon. Again, be good to each other. Bye, guys.

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