Three Interviews with former Jehovah's Witnesses, how the Watchtower affected them, and what they have gone on to do with their lives.

An Interview with Dr. Edmund Gruss

Randy Watters: This is an interview with Dr. Edmund Gruss, Professor of History at the Master's College. Ed, you are a former Jehovah's Witness, not that you would go by that as a title, but that is part of your experience. Tell us a little bit about your background in the Witnesses.

Ed Gruss: As the Witnesses currently visit homes, they also were doing this in the 1940's. In 1940 we lived in Palms which is close to Culver City, down in the L.A. area. A woman Witness visited our home stressing Armageddon soon and started studying at home with myself and my mother. My father was not really involved in the Witnesses. Being only a child of seven at the time, the thing I did was to fall in with what my mother was being exposed to and I accepted what was being taught, because I knew nothing else. I had never been to Sunday School or Church except for one time when I did go to Sunday School. So I never had a real exposure to Christianity or anything that would be any competition to what the Witnesses were teaching. As the normal development would take place, [I was] studying at home, going to the Kingdom Hall meetings, and working in the kitchen when there were assemblies. I would do (at least part of the time) street corner work, and door-to-door work, the normal experience of most kids in the Jehovah's Witnesses.

My childhood hell in the Jehovah's Witnesses. Warning!

Jennifer's family wanted her out of the Jehovah's Witnesses so she would continue her schooling, as they frown on higher education. After her exit-counseling, Jennifer and Donna discuss what it was like. Although recorded in 1990, it is still timely today. 1 hr. 55 min. Purchase DVD

Just because I didn’t believe that the soul was immortal, I still had some related questions that bothered me.  Instead of having a soul that lived on after I died, the WT-Society taught that I would be stored in “God’s memory” until He decided to resurrect me or not.  If I qualified, then when the time came, God would just recreate me according to the information stored in His memory.  The mechanics of that concept was a challenge for me to explain to myself.  How did God update His memory with my very last thoughts?  Does that imply that we are directly connected to God’s memory somehow and that everything we experience is immediately recorded in His memory, too?  Do I take up any space in God’s memory?  Was I assigned a specific location along with everyone else?  Were the wicked stored in another place away from the righteous and those in between?  What type of data is used to record all the information needed to reconstruct both me and the record of all my past thoughts and experiences, as well as my body?

Deep down inside there is as strong primal instinct in me that says, “Survive at all costs.” When it comes down to the line, I will do whatever it takes to protect myself. I learned that at an early age.

Those former Jehovah's Witnesses, with whom I have become familiar and who are now atheists, have said that it was science that opened their eyes to the real truth.   I personally have traveled a similar road, but with a different outcome.  It has been my experience that the more one learns about the subject of science as it relates to the earth and humans, the more one appreciates how advanced the Bible is regarding the earth's history.  Paraphrasing Hugh Ross, it can be said that:  If a person doesn't believe in God, wait a week because new evidence may make that person change his or her mind.  In recent years, this circumstance has resulted in many of the atheistic arguments against God and the Bible becoming out of date, scientifically speaking.