I graduated from high school in June of 1969, in Bellevue, Washington; an affluent suburb of Seattle. These were, of course very turbulent times. Most of the next four years was occupied by one thought: maintaining my II-s student deferment with the local draft board. I went to college at Washington State University, in the small town of Pullman, on the opposite side of the state. I was not a good student, my primary activities were chasing girls, drugs, and drinking.
I was, however politically active and spiritually curious. I investigated astrology, eastern religions and other mystic outlets. I did not discover what I was looking for in any of these avenues. In the spring of 1972, my junior year, the years of abusing my body and mind caught up with me. I went through a long bout of depression and anxiety, and began to take a more serious view of my life. At that time there were large numbers of “Jesus Freaks” on campus. Several of my friends had joined this movement. I did not view these people in a favorable light, I thought they seemed brainwashed. Yet, I felt that something must be behind this large a movement. A friend had given me a Bible and I began to read it every night.
In the April of that year I became a Christian, acknowledging Jesus as my Lord and Savior, but I had not yet joined a church. This happened while I was home for Spring break. When I returned to school a casual conversation with a former roommate turned into an informal Bible study. He was now a Jehovah’s Witness. Through my senior year I continued my conversations with him, this eventually led to a formal Bible study with the Witnesses in the summer of 1973.
At that time the Witness community was convinced that the fall of 1975 would see the end of the world. World events seemed to confirm much of what they said. Richard Nixon’s presidency was coming unraveled, the mid east erupted in war, gas prices soared, there were shortages of many products. During this time I was becoming more indoctrinated in Watchower beliefs. I was attending meetings and began engaging in their door-to-door preaching work. I was baptized in November, 1973.
Because of the nearness of the end, all witnesses were being encouraged to spend as much time preaching as possible. I passed up a chance to go to grad school, even though I’d been accepted into the Master’s program in Education and my parents would have paid for it. For much of the next year or two I worked at various odd jobs.
The Pullman congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses is a small (less than 100 members-at least at that time)and very close knit group. There were a number of people close to my age and we formed quite a cluster of friendships. It was at this time that I met a young woman named Debbie. We were married in the Kingdom Hall on October 6, 1974. Shortly after that I took a full time job at WSU.
The next few years were good times with friends at the hall, but also filled with much JW routine. Meetings, assemblies, preaching, studying. We had two children and tried to keep an active home life as well. In 1982 I lost my job with the University. In what later proved to be a major turning point, we left Pullman and I went to school in Spokane for a year, studying accounting.
When I got out of school we ended up moving back to Bellevue. This move broke our connection with the close knit witnesses. The Bellevue Congregation was not the sort of group we’d been associated with before. Without the close support we’d had before both of us began having doubts about what we’d learned. We did not know it until the spring of 1988, but for a year or so both of us had been seriously questioning witness doctrine. The breaking point was a circuit assembly in which it was emphasized that children should not be sent to college in view of the short time left in the world.
For me this fed into a problem I’d been having for some time. I knew that the Watchtower had been preaching the nearness of the end for a long time. My question was “Does it not have to end at some point?” Unlike myself, my wife had been raised going to church. She was having increasing difficulty squaring some witness doctrines with what she knew of the Bible. In particular she could not swallow the Watchtower belief that Jesus was mediator for only the 144,000. So one Sunday morning all of this came out in a conversation the two of us were having at our dinning room table. The next day our research into the history and teachings of the Watchtower began in earnest.
That summer at the district convention, we took special notice of some one who had been a feature at these meetings for some years. He was a protestor with a large sign reading call 244-free. My wife wrote down the number but we forgot about it for a time. We also took it as a time to sit back and really listen to what was being said with a critical ear. We came away from the convention with a clear understanding that we no longer felt the Watchtower was accurately teaching God’s word.
The fall of 1988 saw some very interesting times as we broke away from the JW mindset. We celebrated Halloween, voted, celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas. One night while we were talking Debbie pulled that phone number from her purse. I called it, got a recording and left a message. About five minutes later Pastor Ralph Parsons called me back and invited us to a support group at his church. We went a number of times and met a very nice group of people. One couple in particular stood out. They lived not far from us, he had been a JW elder for a number of years, and left over the kind of questions Debbie and I were asking. He invited us to the church he was attending.
It took us a while to go, and the first time was a bit shocking, as it was the largest church in Washington. However we were welcomed, and enjoyed the service. Our children were very impressed with the youth group, their experience of church was very much a refreshing change from the Kingdom Hall.
In March of 1989, within a few days of each other two very important events occurred. At a special Easter presentation at church my wife and I rededicated ourselves to Jesus Christ. At about the same time we mailed a letter to the Watchtower Society and our local congregation formally ending our ties to the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
The Watchtower is fond of saying that people in our situation have no spirituality, that we are immoral, or lazy. In our case nothing is farther from the truth. We are both active at church, my wife teaches kindergarten at their weekday preschool, which she also directs. Both of us serve in the nursery on Sunday mornings caring for infants while their parents attend the first service. We then go to the second of the two services. We have a happy family life with our three children, although the last one just moved out to go to college. I’m in the process of doing the final edits on a novel I’ve written, based very loosely on my time with the Watchtower.
I have no regrets.
Jeff Thomas
Carnation, WA
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