Perhaps They Will Listen

Perhaps They Will Listen

Dear Brothers and Sisters; 10 October 2003

With this letter we aim to make known to you some important things that are in our hearts and have disturbed us for a long time. To be silent is cowardice; “in love there is no fear,” says the apostle John. (1 John 4:18) Our aim, however, is a compulsion stemming from love. More accurately, the love we have learned from God and His Messiah compels us to write this letter to you.

As we learned from you, formerly, to research the religion we were in and to try to see its errors by asking questions was a correct behavior. We did exactly that too. We did this not out of obedience to you, but because it was right and was God's will.

You taught us that every kind of lying is wrong; not to take and give bribes, not to kill, not to withhold help, not to act with hypocrisy and so on. For this reason, by keeping away from these, we made changes in our lives. We did this not in order to obey you, but because we found it right. We also believed that our Creator wants these things to be so.

We also learned to be always open and honest; so open and just that, without hiding anything, without shame, without feeling a need to conceal. Because people do bad things in secret, when they are ashamed, when they are embarrassed. We tried to keep these too. Again we tried to do so not merely because you said them, or out of obedience to you; but because we saw that these things are right and because they are the will of Jehovah God.

The points we wrote above were only some of hundreds of examples. We aim to keep our letter as short as possible. These were for us beautiful words, counsels and encouragements. Our acquaintance with you came about about 18 years ago. And three years after our acquaintance, in the family only I was baptized. Unfortunately, in this period of time, since we did not much see the application of the points we indicated above as they were preached; as you will understand from the continuation of our letter, we tried to set down the most popular of hundreds more points together with my husband, me, and a brother who served as an elder and whom you threw out from among you because he said, “God sees the future always, not now and then.”

I still remember very well the regional convention held in Germany in 1988. At this convention, held in a multi-story parking lot with translation into many languages at the same time, we, as the whole community of Witnesses, had stood up and, mentioning one by one the errors made and believed in all the general religions, had cried out, shouting with joy and faith, how we abhorred these. These were: wrong teachings, avoiding God's name, belief in the trinity, immoral lives, etc. We emphasized that we abhorred these because we did not find them right. Such things were not the kind of things to be passed over with imperfection.

It is precisely for this aim that we write you this letter. This does not mean that we are better than you, nor should it mean that we know better, and least of all should it mean that we are greater than you. To put it in your own words, we write this letter not as some “from above,” but as some “from the very lowest.”

What was important for us was what God expects from humanity. Not who has which label or power. And we also learned from Jesus the Messiah that we are all brothers. Again we must say with sorrow that in practice we did not see these either. Plainly, what do we in fact mean? I believe the continuation of our letter will explain what we mean by these.

After entering among you, we noticed that asking questions was looked upon with a wrong and bad eye. These questions were not simple questions stemming from ignorance. I think I need not say that you welcome such questions with great pleasure. The questions we mean were, after a serious research, questions based on proof and evidence, which required us to think deeply about the Organization's teachings. To those who ask such questions, generally, rather than an answer, the person's motive (heart attitude), his aim is asked, and an answer is given. And with this, we encounter attitudes and behaviors whose answer is in no way satisfying.

For instance: the understandings about when the end will come. (1874-1914-1918-1925-....1975) Although none came to pass. Just as the errors made in these dates are never confessed, on the contrary; these dates and the year 1914, which never loses its currency, are still defended. Even if these carry no importance for us now, the terrible thing we noticed is that you throw those who do not believe in these dates out from among you and declare them now far from God and unable to be saved. And you say you do this with the authority you received from God. And your belief that you are the channel coming from God makes the situation even more frightening! These are only figures, dates, but many people's belief in them and the changes they made in their lives in that direction caused those people later to carry on their lives in very difficult situations. Some had their retirement insurance paid out in advance because the end was coming, some sold their property and wealth, some, by leaving their very good jobs, later found themselves face to face with unemployment. This went so far that they got into boats and spent a few days at sea to watch the destruction of the world!

Another subject, the situation of the brothers in Malawi, is much more bitter and terrible than these. In order to live in keeping with the order they received from you, they did not only lose their houses, their fields. Their women were raped, they were burned alive. Their fields and houses were plundered and thousands had to flee, to leave everything behind. Why? Because carrying a «party card» had been forbidden to them by their religious Organization. That is, you had forbidden it. Yet in the country there was only a single party, and this card was something the state saw as necessary for everyone to obtain, obtained for very little money, something everyone naturally had to fulfill. We could even call it a card that took the place of an identity paper. But these Witnesses, rebelling for an absurd reason against the one-party administration that came to power after the revolution in the country, met with the hatred of that society out of nowhere, and so these things befell them.

And the most enraging aspect of the matter is that, at the same time, you easily permitted the Witnesses in Mexico to obtain, with a bribe, a card saying they had done military training! While the brothers in Mexico did these things with lying, bribery and fraud, their consciences not being at ease, they write this to your governing body of responsible persons there: “We have done so until now, what should we do from now on?” The answer: “Do not write to us about these matters again, do as you have known until now.” While on the one hand those people in Mexico are permitted to do something with bribery, lying, fraud and that is unlawful, on the other hand in Malawi, lawfully and without requiring any lying or fraud, without selling anything of their own character, taking the lawful Party card with the aim of using it like an identity card is forbidden! Yet this card neither forced them to vote nor to take sides. As we said anyway, it is a one-party administration. Who wants it to be so? God's channel! From among you, who will carry the blood guilt of all these people?

The situation in Hitler's Germany is not much different either. You still boastfully read in your conventions the letter you wrote to a dictator madman. A letter written to Hitler himself! From the Jehovah's Witnesses in America to Hitler. And with these letters, defiance is shown to Hitler. There is a saying in Turkish: “to step on the tail of a sleeping snake” — it is exactly such a situation. It should not be hard to guess the situation of the Witnesses living in Germany after that. While they wrote such a provoking letter to someone like Hitler, those in America had their backs at ease, of course. While the copy of this letter was being read for the first time at the convention, before listening to its result, I had said within myself: “The Witnesses there are burned.” And indeed they were burned. Here, however, the Witnesses' attitude is appreciated, that they were exemplary behaviors that could be shown against Hitler's policy. But what we cannot understand is your provocation. In our view a surprising and very unwise behavior. A behavior that cost the blood of many. What did you correct with that letter? What of it are you still boasting about? What kind of benefit was seen then and later? Are you boasting of being fearless as one who defies? Even if someone living in Germany, not in America, wrote that letter, we would still see it as not brave but as having acted foolishly. But for you it is not only foolishness; at the same time we cannot think of anything but that you, as it were, helped in the shedding of many people's blood and in those people's sufferings.

At the beginning of our letter, by “questions that cannot be asked of you,” we meant such questions. Well, where do we know these from? Because such truths vanish away silently among only a handful of men within you. But one of you reveals this. And from one who sits in very high places. A 62-year Witness who served you for 43 years of his life and spent his last 9 years in the governing body. A valuable one, not resembling you, Raymond Franz. His books (there is no Turkish yet) have been published in many languages. One is a conscience problem, the other is a search for Christian freedom.

In the point we wrote above, we are not speaking of some lying, fraud, bribery subjects, or of the ordinary lies among Witnesses considered ordinary. Our subject is how a Witness, knowingly or unknowingly, later, out of fear, denies before the law his words on a subject that conflicts with the Organization. Or saying things that have nothing to do with the truth in order to protect the Organization. And with an easy conscience at that. If necessary, in court. By doing this, those people see themselves as if they had sacrificed themselves for their Organization. It is taught so and this air blows among them too. And while defending themselves, they comfort themselves by saying that even the apostle Peter, in a hard situation, had denied Jesus. Yet Peter did not do this in a planned way, nor did he resort to such lies systematically as you do. Another thing I noticed while preaching door to door is that, when a Muslim's door is knocked and a conversation is begun with them, upon the Muslim person's question to the Witness: “Have you read the Quran?”, the Witness too says “yes.” Yet it is an expression and use of language that serves nothing but to deceive the householder, when he has read only one or two verses, a line or two, of the Quran. With this so-called manner of preaching, God is being served by telling lies!

While somewhere in your publications you boast that until now no Witness has taken up a weapon and killed anyone, on the other hand there are thousands of people sent to death by your order. The Malawi event we mentioned above. And with an almost threatening letter to Hitler, the so-called Witnesses are tried to be saved! Because of this, the tortures done to tens of thousands of Witnesses all over Europe, the torments in the Nazi camps, etc. These are subjects we all know. But that you have never taken such a foolishness upon yourselves astonishes us. A subject that draws our attention too is that for all these years, you have never apologized to anyone about any subject in your publications. So then, despite your saying “we are imperfect,” the conviction emerges that in practice you are perfect.

Although we knew that you are not prophets, we received you as if giving you the value of a prophet. Although you are not God's channel, we listened as if you were speaking from God. I believe that many, like me, approached you with the same thought and faith. They still serve you, but not God. But still Jesus' words are hope-giving for ones like us. There:

“Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a reward worthy of a prophet. Whoever receives a righteous man because he is righteous will receive a reward worthy of a righteous man,” it says. Gospel-Matthew 10:41

We, possessing these thoughts, carried on our relationship with you. If you do not produce works worthy of this, this will be your burden, not that of those who believe in you. But for those who insist on using you, as it were, like a “faith staff” in drawing near to God — because they do this only thinking of their comfort, or because they are afraid — God will take that staff of theirs out of their hands in the shortest time. Then how will this people walk? Do you not say, “before the end comes all religions will be banned”? What will this people, who cannot tell their right from their left and whom you have made dependent only on yourselves, do then?

A brother who knows for certain that he will die because of his illness, a person who believes in God and has believed from the heart. A Jehovah's Witness. Only because this person, before dying, saying “let me see my children one more time and then let me die,” accepted taking blood in order to live a few more days, your speed in declaring, while still in the hospital, that you had cut off your relationship with him! What kind of speed of yours is this! That person is dying that very day anyway. What was this haste of yours in stamping him, before his death, as no longer worthy of God and a son of hell? Because he took blood? Yet while you teach taking blood as a great sin, all of you indirectly take everything related to blood. How? It is explained in detail on pages 143 to 158 of the 2nd section of Raymond Franz's book Christliche Freiheit (CD). But we will take up this subject again later.

Let us say that brother sinned by taking blood. He did not, because if he took blood directly, you take it anyway by indirect ways. (I think I need not say that one of the vaccines that your missionaries have administered, or vaccines related to immunity, is obtained from at least 15 liters of blood; these are general knowledge.) Again let us suppose that brother sinned. To someone who will die that very night anyway, was it necessary to say, our relationship is cut off, you are deprived of God's mercy; in other words, you will now never be saved? Is this what it means to follow Jesus? Did Jesus not say to ones like you, more than a little, “I want mercy, not sacrifice”? How did Jesus judge the woman caught while committing prostitution? When he said, “let him among you who is without sin throw the first stone,” have you not read that all the Jews left one by one, leaving that woman alone, and that Jesus too did not judge her? Is it you who claim to be the follower of Jesus? Bravo, truly. You are not alone in this matter; your similar examples on earth are so many.

You claim, “we are God's channel and we teach through this channel.” Your elders, who take teaching from this channel, ask the place that is your governing body, New York-Brooklyn:

A sister cut off from association (relations), but she still attends the meetings. While climbing the steep stairs in the congregation with a baby carriage, alone, she turns her back and pulls the carriage up the steps one by one. No one helps; they are afraid of falling into sin! But still, the consciences you have cauterized must have disturbed them, since they ask you: “Shall we hold the baby carriage to help her climb the stairs?” These are elders, the poor things! And I say, “did they not ask within their consciences, what would Jesus do?” No, but they ask Brooklyn, “what must we do?” You have understood why I call them poor things.

What does the Lord say through Jeremiah about you and ones like you?:

They are wise in doing evil. But in doing good they have no knowledge. Jeremiah 4:22

If, at one of your conventions, a speaking overseer takes a brown Holy Scripture in his hand and says “if the organization says this book is black, this book is black,” and is held in a rain of applause, what shall we say of this people! Hitler was always the guilty one, but what was the German people who applauded him? As I hear these things I feel shame. Those who applaud, however — Jesus already said they would be theirs. What does it mean if these teachings are not reflecting your true face? We write these things perhaps to provoke you in some way and make you ashamed. Perhaps we also aim to help some among you, in some way, to see the truth. Listen or do not listen, but we write so that, when God's day comes, you cannot say “we did not know.” Did you not warn us? Why should we not warn you in the same way? Besides, we see this as a debt. And is this not God's command too? And while commanding, without asking on which floor we are! God will surely not make a distinction like you, “does this letter come from the very bottom, or from the very top?” (Ezekiel 3:18)

Even if we do not expect you to accept your error, we will still warn. In your Watchtower and Awake! magazine publications, now set down a little of your own wrongs and errors too. For a whole century your own mouth has only praised yourselves. Even the church, 3-4 centuries later, with some comicalities, they too apologized! (The Galileo case) Or do you too need that much time to apologize? Then will it be given to you? Just as you judged their wrongs and sins, do you suppose you will not be judged the same way? They are sons of destruction according to you; well, with these works of yours, what sons are you?

Again, the number of those who, because of the Organization's pressure among you and the conscience they shape in their members, fall into depression and commit suicide is not few at all. These experiences, which we can never come across in the Awake! magazines or the Watchtower publications, we read and hear from those you call “apostates,” from the newspapers. That in our roughly 20-year relationship with you, and in the whole of your much earlier past, in all your publications you have always been a self-praising organization is indeed another subject. Yet how much this boasting is a behavior contrary to the spirit of the Holy Scripture. In the Proverbs of Solomon 27:2:

“Let another praise you, and not your own mouth; a stranger, and not your own lips,” it says.

When necessary, with quotations from Moses' laws, you use God's word with the aim of confirming your own works, with verses with the aim of fitting them to the Organization's interest or teaching. But you also know that there it says: “I will seek the blood of an innocent person from all Israel.” A similar verse occurs in Deuteronomy 21:7,8. In Malawi, in Hitler's Germany, in Mexico, and alongside all these, the innocent people you threw out from among you who served you faithfully for years. And your reasons for throwing them out are: either someone ate a meal with his apostate employer (and the employer's reason for apostatizing being that, during a book study, to his question about a Watchtower publication “why does this write so,” he said, “either they made a mistake or it is a stupidity”), or another, while talking with a friend, said, “I too do not agree with the organization on every subject” — these cause those people to be thrown out, for you. And that brother is 91 years old when he is thrown out. This man, whom you no longer let anyone help, dies three years later. Some are thrown out for saying, “God sees the future always, not now and then”! Another, a widow, is thrown out because she works in cleaning jobs in a military barracks to make her living. At the same time, the Witness wife of an officer who works in cleaning jobs in a general's house in that barracks is looked upon normally. Because the general gives the money from his own pocket, while the one who works in the barracks takes her salary from defense! Some, while working in gardening, are thrown out because, “why did you cut the weeds in the church's garden.” Or a brother who is an electrician is kept away from the meetings because, “why did you do the church's electricity.” An old grandmother is also cut off from association for, “why did you talk with your grandchild whose relations are cut off.” Mothers and fathers are thrown out because their children came to visit them. Because the children say, “we no longer want to be Witnesses”! We had just written how mercilessly and hastily you threw out the father who took blood to see his children one last time before dying. If I set about writing the thousands of examples, books would not contain them. These words of the Lord in the book of Ezekiel came to our minds:

“Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will seek my sheep from their hand, and I will put an end to their feeding the sheep; and the shepherds shall feed themselves no more; and I will deliver my sheep from their mouth, that they may not be food for them. Ezekiel 34:10

My sheep wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill; and my sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth; with none to ask and none to seek. Ezekiel 34:6

Since you push with the flank and shove with the shoulder and gore all the weak with your horns until you have scattered them outside; therefore I will save my flock, and they shall no longer be plunder...” says the Lord in Ezekiel 34:21.

Do you suppose God will not seek the blood of all these people from your hand? If He sought it from the old generations, He will seek it from you too. Just as He formerly threw off His own nation of Israel, He will throw you off too. Besides, they were a nation called by God Himself. Well, who called you? Yourselves. From the bloody hands of Catholic, Protestant, Muslim and so many more religions, are your hands cleaner because you do not go to be a soldier? We say no. By no means be arrogant with yourselves and say, “you learned about God from us and now you are being ungrateful.” The apostle Paul — who, if anyone deserves to boast, is the one — look at what he says with God's spirit:

Who is Apollos? Who is Paul? Each is a servant who was a means of your believing... I planted the seed, Apollos watered. But God made it grow. What is important is not the one who plants or the one who waters, but God who makes what is planted grow. 1 Corinthians 3:5-9

Paul here emphasizes that all the value be given neither to the one who plants nor to the one who waters, but to the one who makes it grow. And since this is neither Paul nor Apollos, it can certainly never be your “Organization,” which you raise up to the heavens and exalt as if worshiping. Well, who is it? We read what Paul says: He says “the Lord.” Is there such a spirit in you? We have not seen it. To understand whose channel's spirit you are is no longer hard at all.

The churches worship and exalt Mary and Jesus as God; the Muslims give this glory to Muhammad; the Jews to Moses; I think I need not count the Hindus, the Buddhists. You too are in the same vessel with the value you give to your Organization rather than to God. I write this because you see yourselves as the only and cleanest on earth. We also know that with this letter we will only arouse hatred in you. But the prophet Amos says thus:

“They hate the man who rebukes them at the gate, and they abhor the one who speaks with uprightness,” these words in Amos 5:10 were not said in vain.

Jesus the Messiah said: “No one can come to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6) And 1 Timothy 2:5-6 says: “There is one God and one mediator between God and men.” You, however, by binding eternal life to the Organization, insidiously force people to deny both the Lord God and Jesus the Messiah. Because in the Holy Scripture we see that this authority is given to no one other than Jesus the Messiah, the mediator between God and Himself. But did Jesus not warn humanity very beautifully on this subject? In Luke 21:8:

“Do not let them lead you astray. Many will come in my name, saying: I am he, and the time has drawn near. Do not go after them.” (The book of the Good News, that is, the Gospel)

Is there a verse anywhere in the Holy Scripture that says, go after the Organization? Unfortunately, as you too know very well and as you took up this subject in the governing body, the word “Organization” does not even occur anywhere in the Holy Scripture, in no way at all.

Well, who is the “faithful and discreet slave” taught to us until now with such heat? (Matthew 24:45-51) Jesus says a word that sheds light on this question:

Who is my mother, who are my brothers?... Whoever does the will of my Father in the heavens, he is my brother, sister and mother.

Whoever on earth is in keeping with this principle, he is also the faithful and discreet slave. But for some reason you never read to your members the lower parts of that verse you love so much. Come, let us at least voice it in this letter. Perhaps you will think. Because Jesus also speaks of the bad servants who will be among those slaves. And he says exactly thus:

But if that bad servant says in his heart, My master is delayed, and begins to beat his fellow servants, the master of that servant will come on a day he does not expect and at an hour he does not know, and will cut him in two and give him his portion with the hypocrites; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Matthew 24:48-51

We also know that you appropriate to yourselves all the good things written in the Holy Scripture, and ascribe all the bad things to those who are not with you. As we said, listen or do not listen, we will continue to speak. Our conscience compels us to do this. In the light of the subjects mentioned above, you can be at most of this bad slave class. Because if this parable of Jesus is a prophecy, does it not fit exactly you and those whose works are like yours? We do not carry the aim of getting an answer to this letter we wrote from a robot you employ in the writing section. Our aim is: if our words were harsh because of your works, direct your thoughts and feelings not toward us; toward your works, your teachings, toward thinking how you will free yourselves from the Organization whose tool you are. And evaluate our letter as one coming from the very lowest, of a warning nature, not of an enemy nature. Even though we do not believe you will do such a thing, our aim is for the sake of these words God said to the prophet Jeremiah:

Perhaps they will listen, and everyone will turn from his evil way, and I will relent of the disaster I thought to bring upon them because of the evil of their works. Jeremiah 26:3

Again, as you say, nowhere in the Holy Writings is it taught that meetings, or congregations, are the head of the man. Besides, while who knows how many Christian religions and sects on earth claim this, we would like to emphasize that you are not alone. But the apostle Paul clearly says in 1 Corinthians 11:3:

...the head of every man is the Messiah... He does not say meetings, congregations, organization, or the like. Indeed he gives this authority of being a head neither to an elder, nor to an overseer, nor to ranks taken under another name, nor to people. But short and concise, he says “it is the Messiah.” The verses that say “be subject to the elders over you,” we again understand in the sense of the verse “be subject to the administrations over you.” Just as one must say “no” to administrations in their demands that are outside God's will, why should a different interpretation be drawn from these verses against those who pass as elders?

This shows that God gives no one other than the person He has determined for us the authority to be a head over us. Only then can we expect help on this path we are walking with the encouragement of God's spirit.

At the beginning we too were deceived, and thanks to you we also deceived. The swollen words in your writings, for instance in your German publications, in the Erwachet! 22 Feb. 1985 “Durch Aufgeschlossenheit Gottes Wohlgefallen” magazine. In this magazine of yours mentioned here, it is taught that a person should be open with a sincere, heartfelt uprightness coming from the heart. In fact we now evaluate this, with our present eye, as bait laid to catch people in a trap. Again, one of hundreds, the Wachtturm magazine dated 15 Jan. 89, “Bist du für neue Gedanken Aufgeschlossen?” That is, “Are you open to a new thought?” Again the same trap and the same bait. These, as we said, are only two examples of your hundreds, thousands of teachings. We read these writings with great joy and were deceived. We preached these words to others in order to draw people to you, and deceived them too! As we said, thanks to you!

Until you take a person in among you, you teach that he must do all these expected things. For instance, saying: “A person must research his own religion, ask questions and certainly get an answer too. He must examine the history of that religion, etc. etc.” But the same principles are not valid for a Jehovah's Witness. A Witness, whether right or wrong, without any comment or his own thought being asked, must believe as the Organization says, live so, and die so. Did the Organization make a mistake? So be it; the slogan «rather than walk alone on the right path, walk on the wrong path together with the Organization» has not been unfamiliar to your ears either, has it?

On page 13 of the Truth book (in German, Wahrheits-Buch), it is written what a person must do to change his religion correctly toward you. There:

“We must research not only the things we ourselves believe, but at the same time, as to whether it is right, the things our religion teaches us too. Are the teachings complete and in harmony with the Holy Writings, or do they rest on human teachings? If we love the truth, we must not be afraid of making such a research. We must all sincerely know what God's will is and do it too,” it is said.

Why do we not begin this research right away with our Organization? As to: “Do the teachings throughout the past 100 years rest on human teachings?” As to: “Why did none of the prophecies they told come to pass?” As to: “Why do they throw out from among them right away those who ask such questions?” With your brainwashing program prepared with such questions, do you suppose you are making fools of people? And what does it mean to say, “go ask these questions to your own religion, but after coming to me, do not dare make a peep”? What kind of justice and uprightness of yours is this? With your whole program you have taught 6 million people until now not only that black is white, that day is night; but also that no questions are even to be asked about these!

Is this the truth to which you invite people? Just as we do not accept the truth ourselves, not to permit those who accept it either! How beautifully Jesus said for ones like you:

You shut the Kingdom of the heavens in people's faces; for you yourselves do not enter, and you do not let those who are entering enter. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves. Matthew 23:13-15

But what does C.T. Russell, the founder of the Watch Tower, say: “No Organization on earth can issue a passport that goes to the heavenly glories.” (Russell Studium Band) This was your old thought. Now, with an entirely different teaching and course, do you set about seeing going in the opposite direction as development and explaining it with the saying “the sun of the righteous shines more and more”? Because this change in you is a change toward not the good but the bad. For this reason it cannot be compared with the righteous. We characterize this yours as a going not to the light but only to the darkness.

With the belief you put into the minds of all your members, “the end will come very soon,” you want them neither to build a house nor to buy anything new. Indeed, even if they have health problems, saying “the end will come anyway,” you have guided them to live with these problems for a whole lifetime. While you look askance at the person who buys a new car and builds a house; at the same time you gather free workers to be employed in the construction of your Bethel buildings to be built! And this being the main Organization's teaching: “By no means go outside our word. This is for your good. The end will come anyway, throw the burden related to the future off your back. But take our burden on your back, carry it!” — while saying this I saw that your faces do not redden at all. In Matthew 23:4-5 and 27, how beautifully Jesus says:

…Because they themselves do not do the things they say. They bind heavy and hard-to-carry burdens and put them on others' shoulders, but they themselves do not even want to move their finger to carry these burdens. They do all their works to be seen... Woe to you, scribes, Pharisees and hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs that look beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead bones and every kind of filth. On the outside you appear to people as righteous persons, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and evil.

You boast of lengthening your own fringes and widening your hems. Like your forefathers! But the maintenance of those buildings you boast of, the modern, latest-technique, most expensive printing machines, the latest-model cars you use — just as you obtained all these for free — you also have done for free, riding on the backs of the people you told to strip off their burdens. And those poor things do it lovingly, with a smiling face, saying “I am serving Jehovah.” You are not the only ones in this world who provide themselves interest and comfort with God's name. But your end, as you yourselves proclaim, is very near. Do you suppose you will be saved at that end? We again say no to you. Did you suppose God too is a bandit like yourselves?

And to do all these abominable works, you come and stand before me in this house that is called by my name, and say: “we are saved,” do you? Has this house that is called by my name become a bandits' den in your eyes? Behold, I too have seen, says the LORD. Jeremiah 7:10-11

With this letter, as Paul said to the Galatians: “Now are we seeking the approval of men or of God?” (Gal. 1:10)

It is certain that you need unity in order to remain standing as an Organization. You have put this unity into your members' brains so much that the slogan «whatever happens, even if the Organization makes a mistake knowingly or unknowingly, always stand behind it and defend it» is a very normal and obligatory manner of behavior for you. If, even on a subject of dates, for instance, you throw out from among you the one who looks with doubt at the belief you teach about 1914, so that this unity may not be broken, and declare that person a son of destruction and forbid everyone even to greet him. As we mentioned in the previous subjects. This example is only the most famous of thousands. And the one who says, “God sees the future always, not now and then,” you throw out with the stamp of having apostatized! And while doing all these, teaching, “it was necessary because we feared your unity being broken.” Boastfully, you liken yourselves to military armies marching with the same steps. While on one hand showing military service and wars as a part of Satan, on the other hand, without shame, you say, “we are Jesus' soldiers.” When and whom did Jesus force, with the discipline of a military Roman army, to a thing they did not believe? Whom that came to him did Jesus drive away? I have not read it, but if you know, tell us.

Well, I ask you: With what face can you go door to door and say, “Research your religion, and if you do not come out from among them and come to us, you cannot be saved”? You teach your supporters that every price be paid in order not to break your unity; well, why is it wrong when the other religions teach this? Think a little of the number of all the religions on earth. After that, reckon the millions of hours of the sermons you have given with this mind and attitude, and again after that, compare that number you boast of with all the religions in this world! Is this the number you call your success?! Are those people, by saying that they believed in every foolishness and took a stance behind it in order not to break the unity in their own religion, more foolish, more unfeeling, more stone-headed and bad-hearted than you, and in the end win God's wrath? Again we say no to you. We feel the need to remind you of Jesus the Messiah's word: “First take the beam out of your own eye so that you may see the speck in your brother's eye.” In the same way, in the apostle Peter's 2nd letter 2:18-19:

“For, speaking empty and swollen words... to those who have just escaped from those who walk in the wrong way... They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of corruption,” — by writing this, we appreciatively recall what a beautiful warning he made about you and our time.

We want to return briefly again to the subject of blood. Since we had no knowledge on this subject, we too for years applied your fanatic and foolish teachings in our lives. Again, for detailed information on this subject, you can find detailed, scientific information in the parts from page 143 to 158 in the 2nd volume of brother Raymond Franz's book Christliche Freiheit (this book's German exists for now as a CD). We will try to write only briefly and as far as we understand, in our own words. Otherwise our aim is not to give a conference about blood. Our aim is to show, by combining what we understood in the light of the Holy Scripture with your practices, how one can become a fanatic.

You accept and do organ transplants. The same substance that is in organs is also in blood. The flour-like substance obtained by separating from the plasma in blood enters, as it does, into the salami, sausage and similar food substances of our time. On that produced substance it does not write plasma but occurs in German as “Stabilisator.” It goes from all of our tables to our stomachs too. Besides, the vaccines once forbidden and then permitted by necessity, which your missionaries had administered, are ordinary things. We believe you know better than us that these vaccines are obtained from at least 15 liters of blood. It is reported that in one state of America the Red Cross gives to hospitals as whole blood only 6% of the blood they obtain in the whole year. This must be more or less the same in other places too. From the remaining blood, as we said, by analyzing and dividing, the necessary medicines are obtained. For immunity, leukemia disease, etc., and many more kinds of medicine we do not know. We take all these too, you take them. Well, what else is left that you do not take?

As a doctor mentioned in Franz's book said about you: “The person will be advised a diet, told to eat a sandwich, that is, inside the bread, salami, cheese; and he will take all of them out and eat them separately.” This is what your not taking blood plasma is too. Supposedly you do not take blood, but you accept all the substances found in blood separately! This too is your “Organization” logic!

We do not take blood, because God says keep away from blood — so you place watchmen from your congregations who wait like idols at the head of one dying from a bleeding illness. In case, you know, a doctor gives blood! You keep watch at his head until that person's death. In talk, all these are to comfort the patient. And with this, supposedly, you did a great work before God. Let us come to the Holy Writings; does it really say there do not take blood; or is this too like 1914 and a host of your hypocritical teachings?

After Noah's flood God:

But you shall not eat flesh with its life, which is its blood. And surely your blood, for your lives, I will seek.... whoever sheds man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed. Genesis 9:4-6

Abstain from things sacrificed to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from fornication. Acts of the Apostles 15:29

While in both verses and in Moses' laws it says blood must not be used with the aim of eating, drinking, digesting; God to Noah says that man's life must not be slain, that He opposes the shedding of innocent blood. Because, by saying its life is in its blood, God emphasizes that life is holy.

Again, against the same fanatic religionists of his own time, how did Jesus voice the problem about the Sabbath? Did he not say, “Which of you, if his sheep or his donkey falls into a pit, will not save it on the Sabbath day? Will he not trample the Sabbath day to save it?” But to say that what is done with the aim of saving the life of someone about to die, by happily giving blood without any suffering and without losing anything of one's own health, or of saving his health, is wrong in your eyes — is that so? If God, by saying “its life is in its blood,” emphasizes that a person's life is holy, then what is saving it if not a holy work? Which is more valuable, the sheep or human life? Which is more valuable, the donkey or human life? To save the sheep and the donkey, God's law, the Sabbath day, is trampled, and the aim is not to harm that person's economic power with the donkey and the sheep. Because a donkey or sheep that died randomly in the field does not make a nation (people, society) guilty, but for a person killed in the same way for an uncertain reason, God, by saying “I will seek this blood from all Israel (or from that country),” again shows the value He gives to human life. God opposes the use of blood only as a food substance, and that for the sake of our health. While He shows that the shedding of people's blood will not be without penalty and that with this He opposes massacre, with what right shall we, with the knowledge and technical possibilities of our time, forbid — and that as «God's command» — the blood that is for saving it, if a person's life is in question?!

Again let us shed light on this subject with a comparison of Jesus':

Whoever swears by the altar, it is nothing, but whoever swears by the offering on the altar is bound, you say. You blind men, which is greater? The offering, or the altar that makes the offering holy? Matthew 23:18-19

It does not surprise us to see this same reverse teaching in you too. If blood means life, and God too sees life as holy; you hypocrites who forbid taking blood to a person who is face to face with death from loss of blood and from another illness. Which is holy, the blood or the life? What holiness does lifeless blood have? Did the Creator not create the two bound to one another? Which is holy, the altar or the sacrifice on it? Is it not the altar that makes the sacrifice holy? Is it not the life that makes the blood holy? Whoever the blood may be in, it preserves its holiness as long as it keeps its owner alive. If we give organs to one another, and this helps to keep that person alive; why is blood, given by a far easier way, wrong? On the contrary, with today's knowledge we have about blood, to give blood in order to save a life is in fact a command of God. We cannot, like you, draw any other conclusion.

But was it not your forefathers who maddened with rage, “why did Jesus heal on the Sabbath day,” over people with a maimed, withered hand, the blind, the lame, the crippled? You too are no different from them. I think there is no Witness to whom you have not made memorize the verse written in the Acts of the Apostles section of the Gospel, “keep away from blood.” If those apostles said keep away in the literal sense that even touching blood is wrong, then we should not even have surgery. According to this we could not eat any meat either. Because the possibility that at least or at most 3% blood can be found in animals occurs in the German butchers' law. The logic that there will not be even a single drop is impossible anyway. If we are to understand these according to your head, of course.

And what shall be said about morphine? You who do not even smoke a cigarette! Which of you does not take morphine during a surgery? Why do you not go into heart surgery alive? So then, while morphine serves a person in surgery, when used as a means of pleasure it becomes harmful. But can a fanatic not come out and say keep away from morphine? And from every kind of it. Why should he not say it, since you have drawn that meaning for blood!

The difference between taking blood and eating: Blood that is eaten mixes with the digestive organs and goes out (outside). Blood taken into the body, however, remains as a part of the body, like an organ. The organs we take are now also a part of our body, like blood. God, however, was against eating blood and against massacre. Not against saving life, the soul.

I never forget, when I was going to have surgery, with the education I received from you I had done the same disgrace on the subject of not taking blood in the hospital. As I remember it I feel only shame. I never fear dying as God's servant, but I have always feared the stain I would bring upon God's name by becoming a blind fanatic, distorting God's purpose. Thanks to you we did this fanaticism too. By saying these, do we ignore my side effects related to blood? Which of us, before surgery, did not accept and sign a whole page written in tiny writing showing the side effects related only to the anesthetic, the countless dangers that could lead to death? The situation related to blood is of course no different. Does even the simplest-seeming aspirin not have a side effect?

Until 1980 organ transplant too was forbidden in you. By permitting it after that, did you, as it were, accept your error? No. By saying “from now on organ transplant can be done, but this is a matter of conscience,” you will perhaps do a similar clownery on the subject of blood. But those who died because of that fanaticism of yours for years, those cut off from association, those you told “you are now an unsavable son of hell” — what will become of them?

But while with these we indicate how superficial your knowledge is, at the same time, to see your hypocrisy and not say it means only to be a partner in your works, and let that be far from us. Because you have much more knowledge than us, but you misused it and are misusing it.

Are we more righteous than you? No. But we do not claim to be righteous like you. There are very valuable persons among you too. And those you call apostates are, in our view, generally even more valuable. Because they show that they live not with fear but with faith, trusting in God, but not in an organization. And they give the glory to God and to the Messiah as king, again not to an organization.

Our letter has become very long. As we said, there are hundreds more subjects not treated here and your distortions. My husband, who pushed me from behind to be a Witness, and a brother whom you threw out from among you as having apostatized because he said “God sees the future always, not now and then,” helped me to write this letter. Otherwise it would never have been possible for me to gather such various subjects alone. While we rejoice on our own account that we have seen the truth, it would truly be a lie to say we are not sad on your account. With great sorrow on your account, our plea to God will be for you to free yourselves from the thought of Organization and to draw near to Jehovah by walking on your own feet, without trusting in man and making him your strength.

The Lord says thus: Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes man his strength and whose heart turns away from the Lord. Jeremiah 17:5

Every kind of Organization thought distances a person from God. On this subject brother C. Taze Russell and brother Franz have very beautiful explanations. Jehovah never has need of an organization. As we said, this word is not encountered even once in the Holy Scripture. God, with the commands and rules He gave the nation of Israel in Moses' time, had only an educational aim; until the Messiah came, these laws would be their teacher. (Galatians 3:24) But He did not organize them. Organization is a method Satan uses. States, nations, armies, workplaces, mafias, terrors, schools work on our earth by being organized. But in paradise this will not be so. Neither the angels in heaven nor our earth will be organized. And this will be so because God places His purpose in the hearts and minds of all His creatures. Do you still not understand? If God organized Israel — which, as we said, no, He only educated them. Again let us suppose, let us say He organized them. What became of this organization in time? It vanished. Who can organize better than Jehovah? Besides, God even hates the thought of organization. Because this organization mentality is a destroyer of happiness, spirit, initiative, thought, love, mercy, faith and whatever there is in the name of freedom. The individual thoughts of no organized institution, society, nation, religion, army are valued. But the persons under the organization take orders and are obliged to do them. Whether he likes it or not, whether he believes it or not, whether he loves it or not. The Organization aims at carrying out the order. Even if this seems very necessary for us imperfect humanity, God never uses this method. We do not say in the sense that God does not command. But in the thought of Organization there is making a slave. God, however, calls us to be free. Both in the present and in the future time. Jesus the Messiah, before his death, to his disciples:

I no longer call you slaves; for a slave does not know what his master does; but I have called you friends; for I have made known to you all the things I heard from my Father. John 15:15

Does any thought and aim of an organization appear at all in these words? Which organization is as open and clear as in the words of Jesus the Messiah? This organization system, only Satan has used for thousands of years. God, however, hates it. It occurs in the most beautiful example, after Noah's flood. The whole world's people, organized, whose thoughts, language and aims were one; this world's people, which is you Witnesses' ideal, are the first BABEL. Their beginning and their end, and God's reaction to them — that before they could build the city they were making, God confused their languages and they were scattered — we read from the Holy Scripture. We recommend to everyone to read again and again, in Genesis 11:1-9, God's reaction against “a unity, an organization at whatever cost” that you claim. In the first century, in the time of the apostles, is there a term such as the word organization? But when, in the third century, they were organized as the Roman state religion, it was after that that Christianity plunged into its medieval states and its present spiritual emptiness and abominations. Only organizations achieve this anyway.

Yet “...GOD loves a cheerful giver,” it says in 2 Corinthians 9:7. The organization mentality cannot achieve this. The organization does not look at joy, love, mercy. They look at figures, statistics, hours, their forces, their numbers, their show. And all these, after a certain time, happen not with love but only with pressure.

There are many more things to write about this subject. But since our letter has become longer than necessary, we contented ourselves with writing only this much.

With this letter we did not write things you do not know. The things we emphasized in our letter are, we believe, perhaps only one ten-thousandth of your works. But we wrote with the aim of emphasizing that even this much is things we too know, have heard and learned by living about you. And this was enough for us, and more. We had come out from that old religion of ours without showing the care, tolerance, loyalty we showed you, without researching that religion this much. By this we want to emphasize not that we feel regret, but that you too are no different from them.

As we said, if the things we wrote were events lived behind you without your knowing, without your awareness; by warning you we could expect you to change them, correct them, apologize. But on the contrary, we write so that many, unaware like us, may hear these things you do knowingly and in secrecy from us. We wrote this letter so that those who insist on remaining faithful to an organization that has these works that lead not to eternal life but to death cannot say “I did not know.”

We thank you for the time you spared us.

The congregation I belong to is the Murrhardt German congregation, which I could never go to. In fact the congregation I could easily go to and understand was the Neckarsulm-Turkish one. For reasons I cannot understand, they as it were forcibly pushed me there. (The reason I heard indirectly is that, by going to the meetings, I was carrying news to my husband and doing a spying duty!!! What is being done in secret there? And what kind of danger arises from my husband hearing this — we have still not been able to solve!!!)

N. Kiper I. Kiper B. Penack

2nd Letter

To

Wachtturm Gesellschaft

Am Steinfels

65618 Selters /Taunus

19 January 2005

To the Watch Tower Publications Organization

I am writing this letter again to draw attention to the letter I wrote on 10 October 2003. We did not expect an answer from you to the things we wrote anyway.

In time we understand better that organizations have features that will lead us not to life but, on the contrary, to death. God has wanted us always to serve Him with decisions people make freely on their own. (Galatians 5:1) But God has never wanted an organization that thinks, speaks and makes decisions in the name of all humanity, with a slave-driving approach as you have planned, aimed at and applied, and this is also contrary to His principles. (Luke 12:57) This system you apply is only an example you have taken from this world. Do you yourselves not compare yourselves with this world's armies, its military orders? And that although you say that order and arrangement is a part of the Satanic system! While my, or our, sins are already big enough to reach the heavens, how and why should we take yours upon ourselves too?!

My leaving my own former religion was for reasons that would be counted much lighter and more unimportant compared to the things I saw and endured in you. Even if their sins have perhaps passed into history as bigger and worse compared to yours (the reason being that, just as they have existed for centuries, the number of their members too is incomparably more than you), I had not been among them until I researched them as I did in you and acquired certain knowledge. By this I want to emphasize that we did not show that religion the patience, understanding and tolerance we showed you. With these words we do not aim to raise ourselves above anyone. But, as we just indicated, we want to emphasize that we have no intention of being a partner in others' foolish and planned sins either.

For this reason I am not in favor of having any relationship with the works of your organization. I do not at all believe, thinking like you, that there must be an organization and that formerly God always had an organization and represented God. As a religion to belong to, I reject you with a definite decision. But this should not mean that we have cut off and thrown out from our hearts the people who belong to you. We learned from God not to make a distinction by looking at any person's skin color, language, religion, nationality. But we characterize the idea that there must necessarily be mediators between God and me (or, personally, every human himself) as shameful and a great ill-manneredness toward God. (1 Timothy 2:5) For all these reasons, I importantly request that my name, which shows that I belong to you, be removed from everywhere! Please do not think it too much that I ask you for a brief confirming letter that you have fulfilled this wish.

With our sincere greetings.

Note: So that you can immediately understand the content of the subject, I also send enclosed the letter I sent on 10 October 2003.

N. Kiper İ. Kiper B. Penack

3rd and Last Letter

14 July 2005

With this we want to send you our last letter. Despite our specially requesting and sending a letter twice, and despite our asking in writing for a brief and simple answer, or for you to confirm that we no longer belong to you, to your organization, and that we do not support any organization thought, until today we have heard from you neither a reaction nor even a sound. It is no hard thing for us to understand your reason for not showing a reaction on this subject. Since we had already left the organization on our own, the situation of expulsion from the society, which is your way of threat and revenge over us, of course cannot be in question. As Raymond Franz too indicates in his book, “one of the things the Organization can never tolerate is a person's going on his own, and consequently the organization's no longer having any right over that person” — we again and again confirm this thought with our own experiences too.

One thing we have been sure of from the beginning too is that with every kind of criticism we direct at the organization we would draw your wrath upon ourselves. On the other hand, because of this feeling you have given all your members, none of them can even show the courage to criticize you. Yet would not a different manner of behavior be expected from people who go door to door preaching with the Holy Scripture they carry as God's word in their hands? When he was criticized, how did David, God's prophet and at the same time the ruling king of that country, behave? (2 Samuel 12:1-15) Would anyone in his time fear to criticize someone like David and to criticize him because of the wrath he would draw upon himself, even if unjustly?! (2 Samuel 16:5-13) It is plainly evident that, although he was king, he gave this feeling to no one. In all those years of knowing your organization and being in it, we never witnessed, even by hearsay, that you had an attitude similar to David's.

According to the knowledge and conscience we have, we want to state again that your organization does not in any respect conform to God's standard and morale that we learned from the Holy Scripture. Just as we no longer expect an answer to this letter we wrote, we only announce, lastly, that we confirm the decision we have taken.

N. Kiper I. Kiper B. Penack