105 Years in the Watchtower Service – Program 3

By: Lorrie MacGregor, Joan Cetnar, Jean Eason, Helen Ortega; ©1986

What do the Jehovah’s Witnesses think about Jesus? How is the Christian Church failing in reaching out to members of the Watchtower Society?

Is Jesus Jehovah?

Introduction

Tonight on The John Ankerberg Show, you will meet four women who have spent a combined total of 110 years serving as Jehovah’s Witnesses. After years of service, they began to ask questions that the Watchtower Society could not or would not answer. Their search for the truth continued in spite of their being tragically cut off from their families and friends. Tonight, we’ll find out what questions they asked, why those questions were so important, and what they discovered.

John’s guests are Lorri MacGregor from Canada; Jean Eason from Kentucky; Joan Cetnar from Pennsylvania; and Helen Ortega from Georgia. Please join us.

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Ankerberg: Welcome. I’d like you to meet four ladies that have been Jehovah’s Witnesses all of their lives. You’re going to hear them talk tonight. We’ve done programs with the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I’ve found that they’re terrific people. They’re sincere people. They’re people that are absolutely dedicated to serving God and they believe that they are doing that. They’re people that really are interested in the truth. They believe they are in the truth and they want to share it with people.

But there are some questions that have come along into the lives of many Jehovah’s Witnesses and they’ve come to these four ladies that together have over 100 years of serving the Watchtower Society among them. And, gals, to start us off tonight, and Joan, maybe I can come to you, what were some of those questions that came to you that started you thinking, that eventually changed your life?

Cetnar: Well, I’m like Lorri. I began to look into that Kingdom Interlinear and began to see some of the footnotes. And you know that it says in their own New World Translation that Jesus is Jehovah? In 1 Peter 3:15 it says, “But sanctify the Christ as Lord in your hearts.” I looked down at the footnote and it says, “Sanctify Jehovah God,” and then there’s a whole bunch of little “j’s” with little letters and numbers beside, and we went and looked up some of those “j’s.” And J seven and eight says, “Sanctify Jehovah God who is the Messiah in your hearts.” That was an eye-opener.

Ankerberg: The reason it was an eye-opener was because as a Jehovah’s Witness that was the last thing you ever would believe.

Cetnar: Yes. It was about as shocking as….

Ankerberg: What did you believe about Jesus?

Cetnar: Jesus is the first and only direct creation of God. He is a creature.

Ankerberg: He is certainly not Yahweh-God.

Cetnar: No, in no way. Only Yahweh or Jehovah is the Father and God.

Ankerberg: So there right in your own translation you found a different answer.

Cetnar: A different answer. I found that the same Bible that Jesus read in Isaiah 8 says, “Sanctify Christ as Yahweh in your hearts,” which is where this is taken from. [Isa. 8:13]

Ankerberg: And any Jehovah’s Witness can look it up.

Cetnar: And what’s interesting is they should have translated “Jesus is Jehovah” there because in their foreword they say that “Everywhere they quote the Old Testament, in the New Testament, and the word YHWH, the tetragrammaton, is in the Old Testament, they will put it in the new. But they missed a few where it would come out “Jesus is Jehovah.”

Ankerberg: It wasn’t handy to do that in that verse. Jean?

Eason: And just as she has said, talking about the worship of God, Jehovah’s Witnesses say, “You do not worship Jesus.” And in my search into the old literature I found out that Russell, the first “faithful and discreet slave” of the Watchtower, actually said, “You should worship Jesus.”

Ankerberg: Where did he say that?

Eason: He gave Scriptures to prove it, and many of the older publications, especially the 1880 Watchtower magazine.

Ankerberg: So there the President of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who was the spokesman for God on the earth, said it was okay to worship Jesus and now it’s not?

Eason: Yes. That’s right. And I was so surprised because the organization is supposed to be in unity with itself, right?

Ankerberg: Because they are truth.

Eason: That’s right. Something else I found in the old literature, John, that I was really shocked about. They said that Christ, the ransomed sacrifice, covered the whole world from Adam forward. All the people were going to be resurrected.

Ankerberg: Everybody!

Eason: Everybody was going to be resurrected.

Ankerberg: Those that believe and those that didn’t believe.

Eason: That’s right; and brought into the new earth.

Ankerberg: But they don’t believe that any more do they?

Eason: No, only those accepting Jehovah’s Witness doctrines. I said, “My, what a change.”

Ankerberg: That was a clinker in your thinking, wasn’t it, as a Jehovah’s Witness, because how can God say two things out of both sides of His mouth?

Eason: That’s right; the same faithful and discreet slave.

Ankerberg: God doesn’t lie, in other words. Helen?

Ortega: Well, when I was questioning and questioning, even though I was of the 144,000, the anointed…

Ankerberg: What does that mean, Helen, because people don’t know?

Ortega: That means that you go to Heaven. You are to be with Jesus and…

Ankerberg: Under the doctrine you grew up with there were two classes: one goes to Heaven, and the other comes to Paradise Earth and…

Ortega: One stays on the earth.

Ankerberg: And the rest are annihilated.

Ortega: That’s right.

Ankerberg: The elect, the special anointed are the 144,000. You had the audacity to believe that you were one of them.

Ortega: Yes, and, you know, I realize why. I was trying to really analyze that: because I knew I wanted to be with Jesus, that was why. But in reading the Bible alone, which I did, it made me realize that Jesus was the answer. Jesus was the one. And yet I didn’t realize that this wasn’t the truth. So to combine Jesus and to be with Him and still stay in the Society, I just reached the conclusion that I must be one of the 144,000. Someone else lost their crown and I was going to take their place.

Ankerberg: Because that’s the only way you could get into the 144,000.

Ortega: That’s the only way I could make it and I did.

Cetnar: They closed the door in 1935.

Ankerberg: What thought did you have there?

Ortega: The thought I had was really funny because you know it was all going for me as being of the anointed and yet the Lord was showing me more and more, “Hey, this isn’t just for you. This is for everyone.” I remember reading this Scripture, because as Joan said they shut up the kingdom to all but the 144,000, particularly since 1935. Nobody except of the 144,000 could go to Heaven, and yet I came across this Scripture, “Woe to you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut up the kingdom of the heavens before mankind, for you yourselves do not go in, neither do you permit those on their way to go in.” [Matt. 23:13] And if that didn’t hit the Watchtower teaching, shutting up the kingdom before mankind.

Ankerberg: Some people that are listening that are not Jehovah’s Witnesses tonight don’t realize that the Jehovah’s Witnesses do not think they’re going to Heaven, because they don’t think they’re qualified. They’re not the 144,000. Those seats are taken. You were special. We’re going to get to that in another story here. So what they’re really trying to do is to get to Paradise Earth and they’re not sure of that until they work themselves to the ground really to make it and hope that Jehovah accepts.

Ortega: But, see, I made the switch.

Ankerberg: That’s right. But what you’re saying is that’s not the New Testament as you read it.

Ortega: That’s right. That isn’t in the New Testament.

Ankerberg: Jesus says everybody has the opportunity to go to Heaven.

Ortega: Right. Absolutely.

Ankerberg: Lorri?

MacGregor: Well, one of the teachings of Jehovah’s Witnesses I had a good long hard look at was the resurrection. You see, in the world of the cults they use all the Christian terminology but it means something else. When a Jehovah’s Witness says “resurrection” they’re thinking, “Oh, yeah. That’s when Jesus died; Jehovah annihilated Him. He was out of existence for three days and then He was re-created as Michael the archangel, raised a spirit.” And this is…

Ankerberg: So no literal, physical resurrection. It was just a spirit re-creation.

MacGregor: Right. It’s interesting. They use 1 Peter 3:18 that, “He was put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.” So they say, “Well, that means a spirit creature.” Well, if, “In the spirit,” means that then the apostle John was in trouble in Revelation 1:10 where he says, “I was in the spirit on the Lord’s day.” He obviously didn’t die and lose his body and become a spirit. So imagine as I was reading the Bible alone—something I wasn’t supposed to do—and in Luke 24 I found it, the Jehovah Witness doctrine. Here were the disciples that were confused and thought He was a spirit. It says, “While they were telling these things, He Himself stood in their midst.” Verse 37 says, “They were startled and frightened and thought they were seeing a spirit”—Jehovah’s Witness doctrine. What did Jesus say? “He said to them, ‘Why are you troubled and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet. It is I myself. A spirit does not have flesh and bone as ye see that I have.’” So here Jehovah’s Witnesses were saying He was a spirit. Jesus was saying, “I’m not a spirit,” and He even ate a piece of broiled fish. [Luke 24:36-43]

Ankerberg: And there’s no way you could get out of that as a Jehovah’s Witness, could you?

MacGregor: I really had to do some thinking about how Jesus was raised from the dead, because we live because He lives. We have to understand the resurrection, and we’re going to have a like one. And so this was another big crack in the Watchtower.

Ankerberg: Jean, I want to know how did you get into the Watchtower Society because you were not born into Jehovah’s Witness parent’s home?

Eason: Well, when I was about 10 my mother decided to take it seriously. Of course, she had been taught these things since she was a little girl. But I really didn’t become baptized until after I was married and my husband studied from the organization and then we just continued right on into it.

Ankerberg: And he was from a Roman Catholic background.

Eason: Yes, he did. And so we were just so in love with the truth as we knew it. We just loved the friends so much, and I just couldn’t wait to get out and knock on those doors. I wanted to save every one I could from that horrible Armageddon so they could live in this wonderful new Paradise Earth.

Ankerberg: Armageddon is the end of the world that the Jehovah’s Witnesses taught. You had taken that in, believed it down to your toenails, and you wanted to warn everybody else.

Eason: That’s right.

Ankerberg: Paraphrased Ankerberg translation there, okay?

Eason: Something we didn’t realize was the fact that we were going to have to accept all their future teachings. See, I didn’t know that. I knew there had been some changes in the past. I’d heard that from my grandfather, but I didn’t know many of them as it was, and I didn’t know there would be future things.

Ankerberg: You didn’t think they’d be very big either did you?

Eason: Right. So we began to have add-ons.

Ankerberg: What’s an add-on?

Eason: Well, that’s something that they never taught before.

Ankerberg: New light or new information, new revelation, God speaks?

Eason: Yes, exactly.

Ankerberg: What did you actually hold the organization to be?

Eason: God’s channel of communication.

Ankerberg: So, it’s just like the prophet of God on the earth. You’ve got revelation, and when the organization printed it in the Watchtower or the Awake magazines, God spoke; it’s the truth.

Eason: Yes. Everything else was false. In fact, all the other religions were of the devil.

Ankerberg: That’s what they said.

Eason: That’s what they said.

Ankerberg: And you believed that.

Eason: And I believed it with my whole heart.

Ankerberg: Okay. Then what happened?

Eason: Well, these add-ons came, you see. For example, about an add-on: In ‘57 or ‘58 I had written a letter asking the Watchtower Society if one could be disfellowshipped for accepting a blood transfusion. They said, no, that that wasn’t as bad as immorality.

Ankerberg: In 1957 you could have a blood transfusion…

Eason: No, you could not have a blood transfusion, but you would not be disfellowshipped.

Ankerberg: If you had one, you wouldn’t be kicked out.

Eason: Right. See, blood transfusions came in in 1945. That was new light of that age. Okay? And so now then a couple of years later they said you could be disfellowshipped for accepting a blood transfusion. Now, I had this good Jehovah’s Witness friend who gave birth to a baby and she began to hemorrhage and she accepted a blood transfusion. Now they began to teach also that you must report people. So if she didn’t…

Ankerberg: Another add-on.

Eason: Right. So, if she didn’t report herself, I had to do the reporting if I knew about it. And the news came to my ears unfortunately. I reported her. They called her on the carpet.

Ankerberg: Why did you report her, because you didn’t want to report her?

Eason: Well, they taught that if you didn’t that the sin was just as bad as committing it yourself.

Ankerberg: And you could have been kicked out?

Eason: Well, they weren’t actually teaching that you would be kicked out for not reporting, but you felt like you’re supposed to be obedient to the organization.

Ankerberg: So if you were going to be a true, faithful Jehovah’s Witness you had to do that, what they said, and you did it.

Eason: If you were conscientious, you would follow them, and I did it.

Ankerberg: You reported your friend and said she had a blood transfusion. What happened?

Eason: She said she had one and they put her on probation. I got over that little thing. It bothered my conscience but I got over it. Then the next thing was, they said you couldn’t work for a religious hospital.

Ankerberg: Another add-on.

Eason: Another add-on,

Ankerberg: Why couldn’t you work for a religious hospital?

Eason: Well, because they were of the devil, I suppose. You could still go there and be treated.

Ankerberg: In other words, all the other religions were of the devil. Only the Jehovah’s Witnesses were right.

Eason: That’s right.

Ankerberg: So now you’re cut off from employment.

Eason: Well, I wasn’t working then.

Ankerberg: But the people who were in those hospitals were cut off from their employment. What else?

Eason: That’s right. Because this good Jehovah’s Witness friend, I watched her wrestle with that, John. See, she loved her job. They were her friends, the people she worked with. So now she had to quit and go to a government hospital and work. So I began to notice, “Whose conscience am I following if I’m going to have to continue doing this?” There were many add-ons as I mention in my book, but time doesn’t permit to go into more of them right now. I decided that I was following their interpretations, you see, and I began to get serious.

Ankerberg: And you didn’t believe it.

Eason: No.

Ankerberg: You were doing it because the organization said you’d better do it but your conscience was saying, “That’s not right.”

Eason: That’s right. Also I noticed, too, in my search into the older literature, that they were not being completely honest.

Ankerberg: How did you find the older literature?

Eason: I inherited it.

Ankerberg: Your grandparents?

Eason: Well, I inherited that later on. But this particular group of books I inherited from Grandpa’s brother-in-law.

Ankerberg: But most of those aren’t around, are they?

Eason: Not too many people have them.

Ankerberg: Why aren’t they around, Joan?

Cetnar: They want to have them destroyed. In fact, when my husband was at Watchtower headquarters, he found them throwing boxes of these old books—some that were supposed to be going into libraries—into the furnace.

Ankerberg: The Watchtower said, “Please send your old books. We can stock the library,” and they put them in the furnace.

Cetnar: Time is the enemy of a false prophet and they wanted to cover up the past.

Ankerberg: They don’t want people to see these predictions and things they have said that did not come to pass, but you got a hold of these books. What did you find out? What were some of those that really “knocked your socks off,” in a sense?

Eason: Well, one thing was that 1925 was taught to be the end, Armageddon. And they gave Scriptures to prove it.

Ankerberg: They said, “1925, the end of the world was going to come.”

Eason: Yes.

Ankerberg: Did your grandparents believe that?

Eason: My grandfather thought Armageddon was coming in 1914 at first, in the very beginning.

Ankerberg: No kidding.

Eason: Christ was enthroned, returned invisibly in 1874 and the earthly kingdom was to begin in 1914.

Ankerberg: Why did He come back invisibly?

Eason: Well, because He didn’t return visibly like He was supposed to.

Ankerberg: Had to change something there, so obviously He came back invisibly. Okay. Then what happened?

Eason: You see, Russell actually learned that from the Seventh-day Adventists. He studied under them for a period of time.

Ankerberg: The Millerites. Okay, then what happened?

Eason: Well, after I kept looking into this old literature, I decided that I no longer trusted the organization to interpret the Bible for me. And so I made my decision not to attend any more meetings.

Ankerberg: I bet that went over like a lead balloon.

Eason: Oh, I was so spiritually lonely. I just can’t tell you how spiritually lonely.

Ankerberg: Why? What did they do? You just stayed at home?

Eason: Yes. They came and visited me, of course, and I had all these questions. By this time I had done a lot of research and I took notes. I said, “If you can answer these, I will stay in the organization.” So, a real loving brother, I just love him and still do today, he said, “I’ll send this notebook to the Society and see if they can answer your questions.”

Ankerberg: Okay. You really believed that they were going to be able to do that, didn’t you?

Eason: Yes, I was ready to stay in because what was there to go to?

Ankerberg: And what was the answer back?

Eason: Well, they mailed back three pages of answers but it didn’t really satisfy me.

Ankerberg: Then what did you do?

Eason: I really wanted to find the truth so badly. I thought, “Well, maybe this other organization that broke away in 1916, the ones that were still teaching Russell’s beliefs, maybe they had it.”

Ankerberg: Okay, because there was a split back there. They followed Russell and Rutherford actually kicked them out and said they were then “The Evil Slave class,” which wasn’t good, and they were still printing books. Still are, correct? The Dawnites?

Eason: Yes. Those that Rutherford called the “Evil Slave class” accused Rutherford of being apostate for changing their doctrines.

Ankerberg: Okay. So you went to them and what did you find?

Eason: Well, I thought, “It’s just the same old thing as Russell.” You know, and I thought well he…

Ankerberg: You saw the false prophecies again.

Eason: Yes. I couldn’t go through that again. So then I decided I’d look into the Adventist teachings and the Mormon teachings, and then I came across The Plain Truth. And I thought, “Oh, The Plain Truth. That’s got to be the truth.”

Ankerberg: Herbert W. Armstrong.

Eason: I knew their basic doctrines, you see, were the same as the Witnesses so I was looking for some similarity there. But I could soon see that it was about the same thing as Russell’s teachings and I couldn’t accept that. So, my next place was then to go to the library and check out some of the books from the early reformers of all the modern religions and see what they had to say.

Ankerberg: And what did you find?

Eason: Well, I found out that one thing that they agreed upon was the fact that they believed in Christ alone for salvation. Now they did have differences in opinions about many things, but they were not teaching that you must come to each and every particular denomination to get salvation. The churches were established to lead people to Christ.

Ankerberg: That’s right, in other words the non-essentials. But the essentials of the nature of God and the deity of Christ and how you got salvation and the condition of man, basically these things the Christian church, the Roman Catholic, Protestant and Greek Orthodox all have agreed to. We all hold to the apostolic code. Okay? You found that out. We do disagree on some of the other things such as baptism and those things, but on the main things of Christ we do not. Now, what did that do to you?

Eason: Well, I decided maybe I’d try to check out a little church, the one that seemed to be the middle ground of all the religions, a Christian church. My husband and I went and took our little children. And we had been going for two years and I was still searching because it takes a Witness a long time…

Ankerberg: Were you scared to go into that church? Why?

Eason: Oh, yes. You know, “It was of the devil.”

Ankerberg: That’s what you have been told all your life. So you were ready for the floor to open up and you’d go right down, right?

Eason: Yes, but I was willing to check it out.

Ankerberg: But you went.

Eason: But we went.

Ankerberg: How long did you go there?

Eason: We went there for two years.

Ankerberg: Did you find the answers?

Eason: No, not really.

Ankerberg: You went to a Christian church for two years and nobody helped you out!

Eason: They tried. I think I was just too dim. I wasn’t ready yet, perhaps. But, you see, what happens at this time is the Watchtower gets new light, another add-on. And it said that if anyone had ever been a Jehovah’s Witness, it didn’t matter how long they had been out of the organization, they could now be disfellowshipped. Now, during those two years my parents who were still Witnesses and my sister and her family, they chose to treat me just like they always had. It did not bother their conscience one bit to associate with me. But now that this new light came down from Brooklyn, all of a sudden they would have to be obedient and not have any fellowship with me if I was disfellowshipped.

Ankerberg: So they came to you…

Eason: And they told my husband and me if we did not stop going to church, we would be disfellowshipped.

Ankerberg: And what did you do?

Eason: We yielded, I’m sorry to say, but we didn’t know Christ. So we just stopped going.

Ankerberg: So you gave in even after all of that. The pressure of the organization came down. You saw your family. You didn’t want to be cut off from them.

Eason: That’s right.

Ankerberg: How much longer did you stay out of everything then? How long did that take?

Eason: Would you believe 15 years?

Ankerberg: So you went to a Christian church for two years and never found the answer and you went on for 15 more years because you gave in to the Society.

Eason: In fear. I lived in fear, spiritual fear.

Ankerberg: And for 15 years you lived in fear. Then what happened?

Eason: Well, finally my sister-in-law, Frances Ann, came to me. She’s a Catholic and she said, “Jean, I want to tell you something.” She said, “I have found Christ Jesus.” And she had such a glow about her and I had been noticing a change. She had been reading the Bible all the time. She was listening to Christian radio broadcasts. She had all these tapes she was playing. I knew that there was a change in her. And I was so spiritually lonely and she invited me to go to a meeting with her. By this time I thought, “I just can’t stand it any longer. I have got to get my spiritual life straightened out. I don’t care any longer if I do get disfellowshipped. I’ve got to go.”

Ankerberg: This was after 15 years.

Eason: After 15 years. I went to this meeting with her and I listened to a testimony and all I could hear was love, love, love. And all of a sudden when that was over I no longer cared about what hell fire meant, or what the immortal soul was, or what the doctrine of the Trinity was, or what the teaching of the new earth was. All I wanted was the love of Jesus, and I felt His love that night come into my life. And when I went home I was a new person.

Ankerberg: And it was so good, you thought it wouldn’t last, right?

Eason: I said, “It’s got to be gone in the morning.”

Ankerberg: Was it?

Eason: I still have it!

Ankerberg: You still had it. Then you went by a month and you thought “It’s got to last,… it will probably give up in a month.” And you still had it after a month.

Eason: Yes, I still had it.

Ankerberg: How did you come to thinking about what had happened to you then? How did you focus in on Jesus and the organization at that point?

Eason: I had such a hunger for the Word of God, not books about Him, but the Bible which told about Him. I started in Matthew and went all the way to Revelation and all I could see was Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. The “kingdom” had been taught to me to be the subject or the main idea of the Bible, but it was Christ Jesus. And so I finally just got down on my knees right in my own living room and invited Him into my heart and into my life.

Ankerberg: And He came in.

Eason: Yes.

Ankerberg: And then later on your husband did the same thing.

Eason: Yes.

Ankerberg: And then as you searched the Scriptures you came to understand that what you had been taught all your life, that was not what the Bible stated.

Eason: That’s right.

Ankerberg: And you found out that Jesus was God and that He was the Savior and everybody could go to Heaven, right?

Eason: Yes.

Ankerberg: For people that are Jehovah’s Witnesses that might be at the spot that you were at after the Society put the pressure on you to come back or at least to quit going to the Christian church, and for 15 years you did nothing except you lived in fear because of their authority; to those people that may be in that tonight, what would you say to them that might give them hope and encouragement?

Eason: I would say to them that it’s worth it to know the Truth, the Truth makes you free. [John 8:32] And Jesus is the Truth. [John 14:6] And if you don’t know that you have eternal life, ask Him into your life and He will give you the assurance that you do have eternal life. Romans 6:23 says that the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. It’s a free gift. You don’t have to deserve it and you don’t have to work for it. And then you will want to live a godly life because you have the Holy Spirit to guide you and to teach you all things.

Ankerberg: What would you say to those who fear the disfellowshipping process, because you were disfellowshipped eventually. What was it like, going through that?

Eason: How do you think it would feel, John, to get kicked out of something you hadn’t been in for 17 years?

Ortega: It didn’t hurt much.

Ankerberg: It didn’t hurt too much at that point, huh?

Eason: My husband had been out for 22 years when they came to disfellowship us. But you know, the power of God was with me, and that loving brother, he had been a dear loving brother in the past and he said, “You know, Jean, just because we’re friends, old friends, doesn’t mean that you won’t get disfellowshipped.” And I said, “Tell me, why are you disfellowshipping us?” And he said, “We have to keep the organization clean.” I said, “How can we possibly dirty it up if we’re not in it?” He said, “Well, it’s God’s arrangement and we have to do it.” He said, “I hear you’re going to church.” I said, “Yes, that’s what we’re doing.” And I said, “We have the love and the joy and the peace of God in our hearts.” And I said, “I hope someday that you’ll have this same experience. Right now you’re doing what the Watchtower is telling you to do, and I want you to know I won’t hold it against you and I still love you.”

Ankerberg: That’s terrific. With that, we’ll say goodnight. Please join us for our next program when you’re going to hear a lady that as a Jehovah’s Witness declared that she believed that she was one of the 144,000 special elect. We’re going to see what happened in her life as a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in our next program. Please join us.

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