Watchtower — Bait & Switch?

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The Bait?

The Switch?

Over the years the Watchtower organization has stated in plain straightforward language that folks who want to become Jehovah’s Witnesses do not join an organization to do so.[1] But in various ways it has also nibbled around the edge of this plain-spoken teaching by intimating there is a joining of an organization to become Jehovah’s Witnesses. Yet Watchtower does not come out and say in explicit language that becoming one of Jehovah’s Witnesses requires joining an organization.

It is after becoming one of Jehovah’s Witnesses that, suddenly, the Watchtower organization expresses in straightforward language to individuals that they had in fact joined an organization when they became Jehovah’s Witnesses, and on that basis they are, under law, bound to accept terms at the sole discretion of the Watchtower organization, such as whether to hand over documents containing personal information in lands were such disclosure is not mandated by statute.[2]

More Bait?[3]:


Marvin Shilmer
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References

1. Awake!, published by Watchtower, April 22, 1957, p. 12.

2. Letter from Watchtower lawyer, dated February 16, 1996. (Full text of this letter is available in the article Watchtower Lawyer Fills in the Baptism Blank)

3. What Does the Bible Really Teach?, published by Watchtower, 2009 Printing, pp. 182-183.

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