My Wife’s Testimony! Out of the WT and into the arms of Jesus.

My parents converted from Catholicism into the Jehovah's Witness Organization when I was about 12 yrs. old. We were taught Jesus was "a" god--not the Almighty God. We were also taught salvation was through the WT organization. I grew up believing the battle of Armageddon (in which all non-JW's would be destroyed) would come in 1975. The popular saying around the Kingdom Hall was "stay alive 'til '75." So because of this I dropped out of high school and married a JW when I was 17, and had a baby girl when I was 18. The marriage ended in divorce 2 years later. I asked to be disfellowshipped and remarried in 1975, the same year the Organization had predicted the war of Armageddon. Still believing, I spent the next 6 years of my marriage to my new husband fearful, especially during big storms, that I would be destroyed at Armageddon. Everyone I knew, except for a few people were shunning me.

During that time my daughter was going on visitation with her biological father who was an elder in the Jehovah's Witness Organization. He would take her to the Kingdom Hall meetings, make her go door-to-door and participate in all their Watchtower studies. Occasionally he would even wake her up in the middle of the night to talk about Armageddon, showing her Watchtower pictures and articles and telling her how my husband, her brother and I would all be destroyed because we were not Jehovah's Witnesses. She began to have nightmares to the point of insomnia.

One night when she was about 9 yrs. old, she came to me and asked me if I believed in God. And if I did, then why didn't we go to the Kingdom Hall? It was then I decided it was time to "get right with God." I was going to go through the steps to be reinstated into the Witness Organization and bring my husband and my children with me. So believing the Witnesses had the truth, we started attending meetings with my parents.

My husband was attending college at the time and wanted to do some research on what the Watchtower taught, not wanting to go in blindly. He checked out several different translations of the Bible, including the Witnesses Greek Kingdom Interlinear Translation, which included the original Greek, with a word for word English translation. He borrowed my parents many Watchtower books and magazines along with a single book critical of the WT from the college library entitled, "The Four Major Cults" by Anthony Hokema. After many months of study he began to share some of what he found with me. So for the next few months we were constantly debating the Scriptures. I'd throw every WT argument I could think of at him, but he always had an answer from the Scriptures, which (for me) brought about great confusion and fear.

Since I believed the Bible to be The Word of God, it really startled me to find out that all the Bible Translations my husband had brought home may have read slightly different, but the meanings were exactly the same. All but the Watchtower's "New World Translation." In the "New World Translation" key words were changed, removed or added to change the whole meaning of the verse, making them completely different from all the other translations... or "The Watchtower" told you how to interpret the verse. I had been so used to being told by "The Watchtower" what some of the verses meant, that it took me reading them over and over again, to see what the Bible was really saying. My husband showed me a verse out of Romans... Romans 10:9, "That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." We looked up this verse in the Watchtower's Kingdom Interlinear Translation, and looked on the Greek side. The word Lord was translated "Kyrios" or "ha Adon" in Hebrew which the Watchtower says only applied to Jehovah. Their only explanation of this verse was simply that this was "not" Jehovah.

It came down to a decision for me... to believe the Watchtower's explanations or the actual Bible, the Word of God. I chose the Bible. I began to pray daily to God for help. I prayed for God to make the truth clear to me and for Him to guide me. Finally the confusion stopped. It was as if the Holy Spirit took the blinders off because all of a sudden I saw for myself, through the Scriptures, that Jesus always was and is God. And that I was a sinner in need of a Savior, and JESUS was that Savior, not an organization. I saw I couldn’t work for my salvation as I had once believed. Eph. 2: 8&9 says salvation is a Gift from God.

John 14:6 and John 8:12 became some of my favorite verses because I saw that "Jesus is The Way, The Truth and The Life" -- not an organization. And I saw that we need to follow JESUS, for... "Jesus is The Light of the world, whoever follows HIM will not walk in darkness."

In April of 1982, I received Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. And was later baptized (1986) a believer and follower of Christ. Immanuel, God with us, the great I AM! And as Thomas said, Jesus is the Lord of me and the God of me. We couldn't wait to share what we had found with my parents.

The verse that eventually opened my mother's eyes was John 20:28. We used the Watchtower's Kingdom Interlinear Translation on the Greek side and showed her where Thomas was speaking to Jesus and said, "My Lord and my God," which in the Greek reads "The Lord of me and The God of me." When she saw that Thomas was calling Jesus, God, she realized that Jesus was Jehovah and not the "created being" of the Watchtower. 

My dad at first was fearful talking with us about the Bible. The Watchtower society forbids its members to speak to a disfellowshipped person, especially about spiritual things. But my husband promised we would show him out of his own bible what we had found. He was astounded at the number of verses the Watchtower bible had changed, especially those concerning the person of Jesus Christ. And the many verses in Isaiah, the book of John, and Revelation that point to the deity of Jesus Christ. My dad then called the elders of his congregation to discuss with them what we had found. They refused to speak to us, and immediately disfellowshipped my parents. Even lying to the congregation telling them that my parents didn't wish to speak with Jehovah's Witnesses anymore. Months later my parents both came to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior. Praise God!!! They are both in heaven now, and I know someday I’ll meet up with them again. To God be the glory!

My Testimony is here.