Preparations for the Journey to America

March 26, 2004

If you want to get to know someone, you will also listen to what his enemy says about him. And I too came to believe in the Quran after listening to these people. In all my dealings with the Witnesses, the strongest arguments I got from them for saying about the Quran, “It cannot be the word of God,” were exactly the things I have written here. I did not even bother to mention their nonsensical claims. There were those who said all sorts of things. As I said, everyone said something in proportion to his manners and his intellect. I, however, believed that they did this out of ignorance. Thinking that all of this was due to the fault of the Islamic world, I wrote letters to the Witnesses’ Governing Body about this and other subjects. But the letters would come back to the responsible people at the congregation I attended, saying, “Look after this person.” And they, presumably, said, “We looked after him, but he refuses to understand.” No matter how many letters I wrote, the answer was always the same. And they even had someone sitting there in the writing department dictate the reply. In fact, on one occasion I had the letters translated into English for every single member of the Governing Body, one by one, individually, and sent them registered mail with return receipt, yet even so they did not reach the hands of the people I wanted. So I said: “Then let me go in person to the place where these people are and explain the things I believe myself,” and I went. To set out on such a journey I actually had no money at all. On the contrary, I even had many debts. I had worked for a construction firm, and it too had gone bankrupt without paying us our money. We were in such distress over money that sometimes we did not even have enough to buy 10 marks’ worth of petrol to go to the meeting once a week.

Because the architectural layout of the house we lived in was old-fashioned, the people who lived on the upper floor entered and left the house by passing right in front of the door of our bedroom. To reach the lowest basement floor, too, one had to pass through our hallway. When we first moved into that house, there were two hippie-looking girls. Although my wife’s rings and such kept disappearing out of nowhere, both of them were understanding people when it came to noise. When they came home, if it was late, they would take their shoes in their hands and climb those wooden stairs like that. Even though we were not the types to be bothered so much by noise, these girls’ good manners pleased us very much. A short time after we moved into that house—if I am not mistaken, about a year and a half—they too scattered off to other places. After them, a family that had fled from East Germany moved in, the man of the house weighing 130 kilos. At that time the Eastern Bloc had not yet opened up. They had two boys and one huge black dog. The man going up and down the stairs was a terrifying thing. It was as if hundred-kilo sacks were rolling down the stairs. Husband, wife, children—they were all the same. Whatever we said, however we pleaded, nothing worked, it was no use. The more we spoke, the noisier they seemed to become. Even though the two floors above belonged to them and they had eight rooms, on Sunday morning their children would blow a trumpet they had bought out in the hallway! Living together with these people was a terrible thing. Moreover, the man of the house was also very nosy. Every time they wanted to take their dog out onto the street, they would pass in front of our living room. Our doors were of frosted glass, but even if the inside was not clear, it was still visible. This man would not just walk on by with his dog. First he would stop right in front of our door and take a good, hard look inside, and only then go on. Our nerves had begun to fray. We opened up about these situations to the landlord as well. As it turned out, his heart too was smarting. They would pay the rent once and skip it three times. Or they would pay whenever they felt like it. At that time I was reading the Holy Scriptures. However bad the conditions were, I did not care at all. Or rather, for a long time I did not care. In any case, even if one of the parties were an animal, one would inevitably snarl and quarrel with such people. I said, let us leave the house without getting into a fight. In my opinion this was the wisest decision. A saying from the Quran came to my mind. It was a verse along the lines of, “If they oppress you, was there no place to go to?” In other words, it was advice meaning, “Rather than quarreling, if you have the means, it is wiser to go elsewhere.” The landlord kept telling us: “Please don’t you leave, I will throw them out of the house.” And I would say: “No, dear man, don’t you dare do such a thing for us.” And he would say: “It is not only for your sake; we don’t want them either, and we feel sorry for you as well.” But getting them out was like making a camel jump over a ditch. The hospital where my wife worked had staff quarters. Even though I did not want it at all, I said, “Come, let us move there for a while.” Because for me, moving into an employer’s staff housing was like selling oneself to that employer. The more dependent one is on people, the more unbearable and terrible they become. One must give them these powers over oneself as little as possible, but most of the time that just isn’t possible. Indeed, after we moved, my wife complained about that workplace every single day. They pressured the girl with every kind of burden, and at that time they made life bitter for us. Because the officials at that workplace looked at your state of neediness, and their behavior and attitude were accordingly. Even though it is said not to be so, I am telling what I saw and what I lived through. To fall into people’s hands is a terrible thing. I do not distinguish “German” or “Turk” or any other nation—I just say human, that is all. At least I have grown wise enough not to divide people by nation, the way narrow-minded people do. Because we live in Germany, from time to time I describe their good and bad sides too, that is all.

We rented the house we would move into. In three months we would move. We also informed the owner of the house we were living in that we would be leaving. Oh, and in the meantime, unintentionally—or rather, unplanned—we also had a baby. It was mostly for that baby that we wanted to leave in the first place. We would put the child to sleep with the greatest of difficulty, and then the moment some noise broke out, it would wake right up. Then you had to struggle all over again. Moving was very expensive, but I kept saying, “Never mind.” And on top of that, the staff quarters we were going to move into were two tiny rooms. They were barely half the size of the house we were living in. In other words, most of our furniture would not fit into that quarters. I did not think about any of this. Because living in that house had begun to seem far more dangerous to me. For me it had increasingly begun to take on the form of a great test.

Our kitchen cupboard was outside. We would put the food and fruit we bought there. But the things belonging to the refrigerator were inside the kitchen. We had strange kitchen expenses. Sometimes I remember buying 6 or 7 kilos of bananas. Perhaps without eating even a single one, all the bananas would be gone within five days. I would think my wife was eating them, and I would say, “It’s shameful, what she’s doing.” Could a person not at least leave me one? We were at work all day, and there was no lock or anything on that cupboard. And I did not stoop to putting one on. In fact, doing such a thing seemed very shameful to me. Only once, when we returned from vacation—and even then only because a person would see it even if he were blind—they came and told us what they had taken. Supposedly they had taken two bottles of oil and a bit of pasta!!! “Bon appétit,” I said. What was I to say? Our situation had been going on like this for years! Still I say, bon appétit. And while they sat upstairs, surely they were saying, “We’ve found ourselves some sucker Turks, haven’t we?” Let them say it; they were not the only people who called us suckers. Either the swindlers say “stupid Turk,” or, if he cannot swindle you, he hates you and says “dirty Turk.” Whether you do good or you are bad, the result is always the same! I cannot say this of all of them. Perhaps there are also many people of character. People who will not sell themselves in any way. There are such people, even if very, very few. Such people are scattered all over the world. Whatever nation they belong to, it is like this. But we may simply not have met them.

I had a friend I had known since childhood who owned a shop. I would go there to do my shopping. On the day we rented that house, I went there too and said joyfully, “I’m moving out of my place.” Just to make conversation. I would both do my shopping and chat with my friend. I came home, and this fellow called me on the phone. “If you’re moving out of your place, there’s a friend, a good lad, his wife and all are in Turkey—why don’t you hand the place over to him?” he said. As I was saying, “This isn’t up to me,” he asked, “Shall we come together with that lad and look at the place?” Again I said: “Of course, come, but this is not something that is up to me.” They came. However many years the lad had been married, he had never been able to bring his wife over—whether because he couldn’t find a place, or what. And he had been living for years in the staff quarters, in a single room. It was no place for a family to live. He saw our place, and that friend already knew why I wanted to leave the house, but I explained it anyway. “Never mind,” he said. Since he had nothing at all, he would have to buy and set everything up again from scratch. I said: “If you like, we’ll leave everything to you—down to the curtains and the forks and spoons—and just move out.” I was saying it half as a joke, and he accepted. Wouldn’t we work things out on the money side too? As if I were the landlord and we were the ones making the decisions! They said to me, “You just do it,” and off they went. I explained everything just as it was to the landlord. The landlord’s son was a decent man. The house too had come to him as an inheritance from his grandmother. That very year, because of the East-West reunification, a kind of East-German craze had started among the Germans. Like everyone else, they too wanted to give their house to people coming from the East. Although there were people who came and looked, they did not like the house. In the end it turned out as we wanted—it did, but they did not say yes until about a week to ten days before we were finally to move. For two and a half months we were in agony over what would happen. When it happened, I was so overjoyed that I kept saying, “With this money I’ll go to America.” In fact, with the money I received I even paid off one of my many loan debts. I had prayed to God very, very much. I believe that God had accepted these pleas of mine. The lad who moved into that house also turned out to be content and decent. I did not feel at ease about the money he gave, and although I said, “Let me leave you the washing machine too, and I won’t ask for any money at all,” he said, “No.” “How astonishing—so there are people like this too,” I thought to myself. Together with our eight-month-old baby, we took only our own personal belongings and moved out of that house.

My business of getting a visa and going to America was accomplished within exactly three and a half months after we moved. Out of fear that the money would run out if it stayed in my hands, I acted very quickly. True, once again we were left without a penny in hand and went into debt, but at last I was able to go. And so I went—and what came of it, as it were?! What came of it, I will explain little by little.

When we do something, if our expectation is according to our own head, it is not possible not to be disappointed. However much we think we have mastery over that thing, we are only human; our strength, our mind, our abilities, and our knowledge are limited. And a good thing too. We see those who imagine their strength and their mind to be limitless! Humanity flees even from their vicinity, from their very shadows. If we do not know our limits, we too can become like such unpleasant people. On the subject of expectations that are according to our own head, I think of an actual example from the Holy Scriptures, and it puts me in my place and puts me at ease. It has to do with an army commander.

This man had leprosy. And at that time there was no cure for leprosy. A child they had taken captive from Israel to serve in their household says: “Ah! If only my master were before the prophet in Samaria, then he would cure him of his leprosy,” foretelling that he would be cured of this disease. This means the girl had come to love that family and that man. That he was a beloved man we understand also from the way his soldiers spoke with him. They addressed him as “father.” This is not like the mafia bosses of our present time. It is certain that this was a word spoken from the heart to a true, honest, forgiving, trustworthy, good man by those people.

That army chief, whose name was Naaman, goes to the king and tells him what this girl had said. The king was the king of Syria, and at that time Syria too was a powerful kingdom. The king says: “Go now, and I will send a letter to the king of Israel.” Naaman takes gold, silver, and garments as gifts with him, and the letter is sent to the king of Israel. In the letter the king of Syria writes: “Now when this letter comes to you, behold, I have sent my servant Naaman to you, that you may cure him of his leprosy.” When the king of Israel reads this letter, he tears his clothes. Tearing one’s clothes is a custom in Israel that expresses a sorrowful, distressing event. And he says: “Am I God, that he sends this man to me? But understand, I beg you, see how he seeks to pick a quarrel with me.”

The king of Israel thinks the king of Syria did this as a pretext for going to war. The man had a point—how is a king to cure a leper? Moreover, this king was not very faithful in Israel, and he was someone whose relationship with God was bad as well. But when the prophet Elisha hears of the matter and that the king had torn his clothes, he sends men to him and says: “Why did you tear your clothes? Let him come to me now, and he shall know that there is a prophet in Israel.” So Naaman goes and stands with his horses and his chariot at the door of Elisha the prophet. But Elisha, without even coming out, sends his servant to say: “Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored to its former state, and you shall be clean.” But Naaman becomes very angry and goes off. He begins to grumble: “I thought that he would surely come out, pray in the name of his God, wave his hands and so on over the leprous spot, and the leprosy would be cured. Are there not better waters in my own country, that he tells me, ‘Go wash in the Jordan’?”—grumbling like this, he turns back in fury.

When his soldiers see this anger of his, while they were near the Jordan River they approach him and say: “Father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he says to you, ‘Wash and be clean’?” What a logical and easy-to-apply way. This advice made sense to Naaman too, so he applies it at once. And the man of God, according to the word of Elisha, plunges into the water in the Jordan seven times. His flesh at once returns to its former state like that of a little child, and he is clean. (2 Kings, the whole of the 5th chapter)

Who knows how joyful and at the same time ashamed this man was. It is certain, too, that he was a decent man. He immediately returns to the prophet with a whole company of his men. Standing before him, he says: “Behold, now I know that there is no God in all the earth, but in Israel; and now, I beg you, take a gift from this servant of yours.” But the prophet answers: “As the living Lord before whom I stand lives, I will take nothing.” However much he pressed him, he would not take it.

Later, the prophet’s servant, who had seen all this, says within himself: “My master has taken nothing from this man’s hand,” and secretly runs after Naaman. Wondering who was coming, the whole company halts. Our man says: “Just now, right after you, two young men from among the sons of the prophets have come; I beg you, give them a talent of silver (probably about 34.5 kg) and a change of garments—so my master has sent me to you.” And Naaman says: “Be so good as to take 2 talents. And he pressed him, and bound two talents of silver in two bags, with two changes of garments, and gave them to two of his servants, and they carried them before him,” as it goes in the writing. The greedy servant takes these and hides them in his house. Then, as if nothing had happened, he stands before Elisha the prophet. Elisha asks: “Where were you, Gehazi?” And he says: “Your servant did not go anywhere.” But Elisha gives this answer: “When that man turned back from his chariot to meet you, did my heart not go with you? Is this a time to take silver, garments, vineyards, sheep, oxen, servants, and maidservants? Therefore the leprosy of Naaman shall cling to you and to your seed forever.” And the servant at once goes out from before him leprous as snow.

There are so very many lessons to be drawn from this incident. If only we could understand how wrong it is to have expectations according to our own head, our faithlessness, our ambition, our greed, our deceitfulness. And along with this, if only we knew the value of decency, of uprightness, of devotion to God, and of contentment. Because within this lesson these too are present.

In our middle school we had a Turkish teacher. They called him Crazy İrfan. He would get angry out of nowhere and start shouting, spraying spittle from his mouth. It was not even clear whom he was shouting at. I had told my mother about this teacher. “They call him crazy anyway,” I said. And my mother said: “Don’t be afraid of that man; people whose nickname is ‘crazy’ are good; you should fear the ones whose nickname is ‘sly, sharp, slick.’” I did not forget this saying, and I began to look at this teacher with a more attentive eye. What my mother said turned out to be true. And besides, this man’s lessons were very interesting. Or rather, he applied a method we were not used to. For example, after covering a topic in class, he would ask us for the main idea of the topic. In his first lesson a boy raised his hand and gave an answer. He listened, then motioned with his hand for him to sit down. We, thinking that boy had said it wrong, raised our hands again; he listened to them too and said, “Sit down.” He listened to what a third of the class said and said neither “right” nor “wrong.” And we began to think to ourselves: “There’s no main idea left anymore, we’ve said them all, what does this man want from us?” He understood this situation and got angry at us. “There is no main idea like some fixed mold,” he said. “Whatever each person has understood in his own way, that is the main idea for him. I am not asking you what the author meant to say; I am asking what the main idea is according to you. Besides, who can really know exactly what the author meant to say?”—that he said this astonished all of us. We were both glad, saying “Ah!” and also left thinking. At the very least, for me this is still such a thought-provoking and at the same time very valuable method. Because those teachers who looked for mold-like answers had worn us out.

Think of different people reading the very same crime novel. One reads the same novel and becomes a policeman, another reads the same novel and becomes a thief. Those who lay down a rule that “everyone must, without fail, become a policeman whom everyone likes and admires” are narrow-minded people. Even though the author of that book wrote it with the aim of making the reader admire the policeman, there is no rule that everyone will like that policeman. Reality is in any case most of the time different from what is expected. In some films, I too would rather that the thieves robbing the bank get away. Whether it is because they are playing the lead roles, or because the film gives more information about them and wins the audience’s sympathy, I don’t know—it could be. In fact, even when we can guess the ending of the film, we still wholeheartedly wish for them to win. It’s not as though we ourselves are going to go and steal and rob banks. And when policemen, nations, and states are thieves, people begin to show a tendency to look with a different eye at the ordinary characters in that film. People of fixed thinking cannot be flexible and forgiving, and cannot understand such things. In the book Les Misérables (Victor Hugo) there was a chief of police. He was a duty-obsessed dolt. In the end, even his human feelings, his conscientious sentiments, would not allow him to carry out that duty. It defeated the organizational mindset; he could not do the duty he was supposed to do. This time he killed himself and escaped from that mold-like personality! This is merely an incident in a novel, but its true side is very great.

The things I have described also greatly resemble the situation of the extreme religionists. Those members who cannot get out from under those burdens either commit suicide, or end up in the madhouse, or live their whole lives spiritually sick and depressed. Because those broke wretches at the top always strive to instill in them a feeling of guilt. By giving the sense of “Only if you do what we want can you be at ease,” they make an effort to knead their members’ consciences into shape that way. This is why Jehovah’s Witnesses preach, and if they don’t, their conscience is troubled and they berate themselves. They say, “We do this in God’s name,” but the real truth lies in the obligation to turn in a report. And this is the desire of those broke wretches at the top, not God’s. When one turns in a report filled with many hours, that month he feels relief. Of course, this too is a reality planted in their subconscious that none of them would openly admit. I said that the rank of pioneer used to require 90 hours of preaching per month and then dropped to 70. After this, no pioneer ever did an extra 20 hours each month as a gift. If there are a few exceptions, I have not heard of them. I wonder why? These are precisely the effects of the pressure of those broke wretches. Whereas one who does it with joy pays no attention to these things. To say, “What have I done in God’s name—wait, let me write down the hour,” is in fact an enormous piece of rudeness done in God’s name. It serves no purpose other than to take away all of a person’s joy. And over time, it only develops hatred toward that path. But those broke wretches at the top need new customers, new blood. Otherwise, who will prop up their money? Who will serve up their mush on time! The more preaching is done, the more customers are gathered. Customers mean money, money means power, power means for them security. They walk in the ways of their forefathers who came before them. Then they say to those newcomers: “Come, you donkeys, you too, into this stable,” “carry our burden—giddyup!” And on top of that, it is supposedly God who has them do all this!!! Apply this system that they tell you to apply, from the heart, toward a person you love most, and just watch—before long you will even begin to hate that person, and don’t be surprised. Even if you don’t hate them, your love will surely die out. Indeed, is this not, whether they know it or not, their real aim? All of you have surely heard that Satan’s goal is always to cool people toward God, to make them hate Him, and to steal them away from Him.

So, according to God, what was the definition of love?

Love is patient, love is kind. Love is not jealous, it does not brag, it does not become puffed up.

Love does not behave rudely, does not look for its own interests, does not become easily provoked, does not keep account of the wrong.

Love does not rejoice over unrighteousness, but rejoices with what is true.

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails. 1 Corinthians 13:4-8

Would someone who is going to make an announcement about God with such a love keep an account of hours, or not? Again, you decide. No prophet has ever been seen to do such an absurdity. No apostle, nor Jesus’ disciples, has been heard to do such a piece of rudeness, and it is not written either.

When David the prophet was king, he insisted on knowing the number of his army. As if the successes he possessed were tied to that number. But God becomes angry with him, and this event causes the death of many people. (Please read the whole of 2 Samuel chapter 24 and the whole of 1 Chronicles chapter 21—it is interesting.) And these people imagine that by having reports turned in and counting hours—so to speak—they are motivating people! By force, by hatred. What is meant, of course, is always the coercion of conscience and psychological pressure. With these rules they have laid down, they resemble the man who builds a house upon the sand. The rain comes, the floods come, and the collapse of that house is terrible. In Jesus’ time he spoke these words directed at the men going in their own crooked and twisted teachings. (Matthew 7:24-27) I personally could never write such a report and say, “I preached so many hours because I love God.” Is this a measure belonging to my love for God? Does God not know what I do? This matter remains only between me and God. There is no need for anyone else to know either. Well then, what is the difference from those who spread a prayer rug on the street and pray? What is the difference from those who, because they gave to charity, have their pictures taken again and again in front of journalists with a check in their hand? What is the difference from the Witnesses who go door to door in God’s name and then write the account of it in a report and keep track of the hours? And what did Jesus say?

“Take care not to practice the righteousness you ought to do before people in order to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in the heavens.

So when you give charity to someone, do not sound a trumpet before you to announce it, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets to gain the praise of people. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.

When you give charity, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your charity may be kept secret. Then your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

“When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites. They love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that everyone may see them. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.

But you, when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. Then your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

When you pray, do not go on repeating empty words like the pagans. They imagine they will be heard because they use many words.

Do not be like them! For your Father knows what you need before you even ask Him. (Matt 6:1-8)

Jesus Christ, who said these things, was doing the will of God; so whose will are the Witnesses doing? Is this not perfectly clear from Jesus’ words? Regarding those hour reports, they also have their humbug of saying, “They are necessary for statistics.” Why would people need information that would arouse a wrong purpose? As I just mentioned, was it not with just such a purpose that David too wanted his soldiers counted? So why did his wanting to know their number become a sin in God’s eyes? Because with this David was in danger of developing a spiritual attitude of trusting, from his heart, not in God but in the number of his soldiers. And for this reason he paid the price again in a heavy way, and they paid it. (2 Samuel chapter 24 and 1 Chronicles chapter 21.) Or are the Witnesses too striving, by counting hours, to prove how hardworking they are!

In this journey of mine to America and in my expectations on many other subjects, the example of Naaman always comes to my mind. The experience he lived through has been a great lesson to me and still is. We cannot evaluate an event only according to what is right in our own eyes and then expect from it, without fail, a change according to our own head. And besides, our knowledge on these matters is sometimes so little. For this and similar reasons, I have learned that we must always leave room for the will of God. As time passes I understand this even better. We are on the earth, and the Lord is in the heavens. (Ecclesiastes 5:2) No one can be like Him, no one can think like Him. There will be many things we must be patient with, must endure, and cannot understand. But no one who waits for the Lord with all his heart, without doubting, and trusts only in Him will ever be put to shame. (Romans 10:1-13)

I had to go to New York. At that time I believed that these people were making mistakes without knowing it. And I did not think that God had given me, or anyone else, the right to hold a different opinion. What I mean by this is: from where I sat, God, with the knowledge I had, was not giving me the right to hold thoughts like, “These people won’t listen to reason, they’re doing what they do on purpose anyway, whatever you say to them is useless.” That would mean an absolute passing of judgment, and God did not appoint us as judges in this manner. That is His own work, not ours. Moreover, we cannot lay down a firm rule by saying, “I did it this way,” or, “I believed this way.” It was because I believed as I have written here that I went to America. Had I possessed my present knowledge, perhaps I would not have gone. But this knowledge, these experiences, do not come to a person on their own while he sits still. Someone else, in a similar event, might perhaps do something different. These things will surely vary according to those people’s means, abilities, knowledge, their love for the thing, and their faith.

Again, I need to make an explanation, since some things could be misunderstood. For example, the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:1-5: “Do you not judge one another among yourselves?” The judging that is meant here and the thing I mean are very different. Paul says, in a matter that is plainly evident—in sin, in ugliness, in filth—judge one another. This applies to people who have accepted the same divine moral and life standards, not to a stranger. In fact, the man about whom Paul said, “Remove such persons from among yourselves,” had taken his father’s wife! And judging such persons cannot go beyond removing them from among yourselves either. Again, Paul says of even this person, later on, that because he repented he should be taken back among them. Paul stated this in the letter he wrote in 2 Corinthians 2:5-11. And the form of judgment meant was not, as the church did right up to this last century of ours, burning people alive in the fire and cutting off their heads. The form of judgment Paul meant is merely to separate from among themselves those who, though they gave their word to God, do not live in accordance with that word. Here Paul did not mean, as the Witnesses do, systematically leaving no other people around a person, making them dependent only on oneself, and then casting a person out from among themselves, saying, “You deserve hell,” because he said, “God always sees the future.” Nor did he ever say you can declare those who do not believe in their own teachings, or the dates they made up—like 1878-1914-1918…1975—to be sons of death. If these people claim to possess such great authority, let them not forget that they will meet with an equally great judgment. And those who believe the ones who say, “Stick with us, don’t be afraid, let your sins be upon us,” should not much hope that they will be saved. If the people of Israel were saved by conforming to their kings and priests in their crooked, twisted deeds, then these too will be saved. But no—if they were not saved, then these will not be saved either. It is that simple.

Well then, are not the things I write in this book judgment upon all these religions?

I am only bringing their deeds to light, showing God’s judgment on those deeds from the books, and trying to prove it. If this is judgment, then it is not I but God who has passed judgment. And this too will be exactly as Jesus said:

As for anyone who hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him. For I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world. There is one who will judge the person who rejects me and does not accept my words. The word I have spoken is what will judge that person on the last day. For I did not speak on my own initiative. But the Father who sent me, He Himself commanded me what I should say and what I should speak. And I know that His commandment means everlasting life. So whatever I say, I say just as the Father has told me. John 12:47-50

With this, is not Jesus Christ clearly stating what will judge a person? And I too, with everything I have written here, have taken great care not to speak of a justice, a rightness, and a truth that is according to my own head. With words I try to prove in the light of the Holy Scriptures or the Quran—the sacred books they themselves say they believe in—I try to explain the judgment that will come upon them. It is not as though I wrote those books, so that they can say, “He’s making it up out of his head.” And the decision, everyone will make on his own behalf. In doing this, am I committing a crime by warning a person, a society, a religion, or the whole world? No, on the contrary—to know and yet not warn: in God’s eyes, this is the real crime. (Ezekiel 3:18-21) If only those fanatic, bigoted, blood-sucking soul-thieves—these religions, nations, people, who have no benefit other than taking lives and who lead people only to unhappiness—yes, if only all of them would turn to the true God and do His will. But since they do not, if these people were among me, would I not also judge them by casting them out from among me because of their deeds? I would surely do that. Well then, what is the difference? The difference is not in the judging; the difference, in fact, is in what is judged and why. Otherwise, whoever it may be—whether the Witnesses, whether the church, or whether some other religion or nation—no one can say to them, “Why do you judge?” Of course there will be a judge, judgment will be passed, and the guilty will be punished. I am not opposing why they judge; I am striving to show the subjects they judge, how they do it, and their own dirty deeds far from God. In short, I am striving with this book to write about how the guilty pass judgment on the innocent. You did not read it backwards: in our world the guilty pass judgment on the innocent. People who deserve judgment condemn the innocent. Those who ought to be slaves and servants have been crowned and seated over us; it is they who have judged this humanity. In this book I am talking about the things that are upside-down, not about judging being wrong. Solomon, the son of David, explains better what I mean on this subject.

There is an injustice I have seen under the sun,

resembling an error that comes from a ruler:

The rich (spiritual riches) sit in low positions,

while fools are appointed to high positions.

I have seen slaves on horseback,

while princes walk on the ground like slaves. Ecclesiastes 10:7

This is precisely what I want to explain. More than anything, I want to give a message to the humanity that follows these people. Because I can understand those exploiters, but those who let themselves be used, who let themselves be made into donkeys—and who do this, moreover, from the heart… These I cannot understand. Wake up! This voice, which I am trying to make heard, saying, escape from donkeyhood and become human, is the purpose of the God who has created us from the beginning. For this reason, let us be human, not donkeys, and all together let us be human. And on these matters let us encourage one another. Because all of us have need of this. None of us is superior to another. The master of the person we see as the lowest is God; and the master of the person we see as the highest is again the same God. We are all His slaves. Which slave has a right over another slave greater than his own master has? None of them. In that case, by what right do we raise ourselves over those slaves as though we were the master?

The friend whose shop I said I went to had a relative. He too lived somewhere near New York. This friend said: “You must see him without fail; in a strange place you don’t know, at least he will help you.” Even though I do not want to be a burden to anyone, because of his insistence—which was also a situation that put me at ease—I accepted. He immediately let his relative know, arranged it, and the man would wait for me at the airport with my name written on a piece of paper in his hand. These thoughtful people had no connection whatsoever with religiosity or such. Although they had their faults, if I said that the decency and contentment I saw from these people I have never seen from any of the religious people who boast of having actively served God for 20, 30, even 40 years, I would not be lying.

I will never forget: there was one Witness whom I loved. He was also one of the elders responsible at the meeting we attended. One day he came to visit me together with someone newly appointed to that meeting hall who also earned money from that work. They call those who do this work “regular pioneers.” I, however, with my present knowledge, call those poor wretches “regular donkeys.” And among these too, the foxes who think of their own benefit are not few. Just as a guilty child’s teacher speaks to the parent, this one was giving an actual report about me to that newly arrived official in our home, in exactly the same way. “Because I had the pride of life and conceitedness in me, I had clung to the Quran, and this was why I could never come to the truth.” This word “truth” is a term the Witnesses use a great deal. Everyone who does not believe in and accept their organization and what they say is not in the truth! Only they have the truth, and only they know it! And they apply an intensive program to make all their members believe this too. And those members, with a self-assured pride and conceit, when they say, “I came to the truth on such-and-such a date,” mean the day they were baptized to become a Witness. The reason that elder I mentioned had come to me was to inform the regular pioneer newly appointed to that district about what was going on around there and to introduce those people to him. I did not care about their talking about me this way, but I was upset by the hypocrisy of that man I said I loved. These people do not fear even God as much as they fear one another. And I, in response to that attitude of theirs, gave sharp answers, and a tense atmosphere arose. In the end, as they were leaving, this elder I said I loved asked me: “Do you know that I love you?” And I, without giving the answer he wanted, said: “People who know the Holy Scriptures can be very dangerous.” This was not the answer he wanted, and he asked the same thing again. And I again said: “Brother, people who know these books, if they do not walk in their way, become very dangerous; how am I to know whether you love me or not?” In my opinion he was very upset, and unjustly so. But actually it really is so. When I say people who know the sacred books, I mean the knowledge of distinguishing good from evil. An ordinary person cannot distinguish good from evil. However old he may be, whatever schools he may have graduated from, this world does not teach him the knowledge to make the distinction between good and evil. Such a person does good at random, and evil too. That person behaves as it strikes his mind—according to his own head, according to his ego, according to his desire and what his heart craves, and most of all according to the culture he possesses. Everything they know as evil is only within the framework of the laws. Whatever the law of that country commands, doing it is good, not doing it is a crime, and it brings punishment in its wake. And even for the thing that will bring punishment, he still does not necessarily say, “This is evil”; he merely fears its punishment. But in secret he breaks these laws at every opportunity, and is ready to break them. Moreover, if he breaks these laws without suffering any punishment, he even boasts about it. These people can be very merciful, just as they can be very cruel. Just like the blowing of a wind, even he himself does not know when or where he will blow. Different from these, people who have read the Holy Scriptures and learned them receive training in making the distinction between good and evil. Generally those people too, in the end, choose the path of doing what is evil. But this time they are on the way to becoming professionals at doing evil. Or at least, after the knowledge he has received, he knows better what he is doing. In the coming chapter I will touch on these matters a little more thoroughly.

I supposedly began these subjects in order to talk about the preparations for the New York journey. Still, before I write briefly about what will happen there, I want to touch on one more important subject. And that is the subject of conscience. If we do not know the meaning of these things, we may have difficulty grasping the value of the subjects I am dealing with.