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Home | Dedication | Inscription | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | About the cover | Front cover | Back cover | About the author | Feedback | Legal | Links
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Copyright © 1997, 2006 by S. G. Swain
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Chapter 1 My name is Warren Grubber, I’m fourteen
years old, and I burned down the Kingdom Hall. I guess I got the idea to burn it down from my brother, about eleven years ago. Freddie,
my brother, was six years old then, and I was four years old, and we had just sat through our first meeting at the Kingdom
Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses. It was a Sunday afternoon and it was really hot and the Kingdom Hall in those days was
not air conditioned. They didn’t even have a window fan or anything. I remember all these old people sitting there waving
Watchtower magazines in front of their faces, just trying to keep cool. It must have been like August or something, in 1964
I guess. Anyway, me and Freddie and my mother had sweated through over two hours of a public talk
and a Watchtower study, and Mom had made us both sit real quiet and still. We definitely weren’t used to sitting quiet
and still for two straight hours. When it was all finally over, the presiding elder of the congregation came over to greet
my mother, on account of it being our first time there, which classified her as a “newly interested one,” in Witness
terms. After saying hello to Mom, he leaned down to my brother who was standing at her side and said, “Well, young man,
how did you enjoy your first visit to the Kingdom Hall?” Freddie glared up at him and said, “I hope it burns down.” Well, all of the adults within ear shot got a good laugh out of Freddie’s remark,
but Mom said later that she felt like dying from embarrassment. Brother Harris repeated the story about a million times after
that day, whenever he was trying to point out what a fine young witness Freddie was turning out to be, which also in a way
kinda pointed out what a miserable young witness I was turning out to be. “Little Brother Freddie has come a long way,”
Brother Harris would say. “At first he wanted to see the Kingdom Hall burn down, but now he hardly never misses a meeting
and he’s always regular in the Field Service. Now isn’t that a fine, fine witness!” Anyway, that’s my earliest memory of going to the Kingdom Hall, and really it’s
one of the first things I can remember in my whole life. Right now they got me in the Lynchburg Juvenile Detention Center, which is in Lynchburg
of course, which is where the Kingdom Hall is located. What’s left of it. They’re keeping me here until they can
decide what to do with me. Mr. Franks, my counselor here, says the authorities will have to decide whether they’re gonna
charge me as an adult person, or just as a juvenile kid. If they do me as an adult, they’ll probably throw the book
at me. If they do me as a juvenile it could go a lot easier. But you never can tell. And a lot of it will depend on what his
recommendation to the court is. Before he can do that, make his recommendation that is, Mr. Franks is supposed to hold interviews
with me and try to figure out what kind of boy I am, whether I’m a trouble maker kind of kid, or just a kid that made
a stupid mistake. And if I’m likely to make any more big stupid mistakes. So far I’ve only had about one meeting with Mr. Franks, because he’s getting married
next weekend sometime and then he’s going on a honeymoon to Jamaica or somewhere for about two weeks. So I’ve
gotta just sit here at the detention center until he gets back to start our interview sessions. He told me that I can help
him out a lot while he’s gone if I will sit down and write up what all happened, the stuff that made me feel like I
had to burn down the Kingdom Hall. “Write down everything you can think of, and be completely honest,” he said.
I tried telling him that I’m crummy at writing stuff. Really about the only things
I’ve ever written before were some one page book reports, and a ten page term paper in Miss Hiller’s ninth grade
English class this past year. Even those one pagers I had a hard time getting through, because I usually make so many dumbass
grammar mistakes. I try real hard, but I just can’t get a handle on all that grammar stuff. All those rules and exceptions
you’re supposed to remember get me all mixed up, mainly because I can never keep it straight in my head which ones are
the rules and which ones are the exceptions. I don’t know if all kids have that problem, but I do. I got an A on the term paper, though, even with some grammar mistakes. Probably because
I spent most of the night typing it up before I handed it in. I really don’t think it was that impressive of a paper,
but at least with it being typed up and stuck in one of those clear plastic binders, it looked impressive. It was called “Mark
Twain, the Pessimist,” and it was about how everybody thinks of Mark Twain as a funny humorist and all, because of Tom
Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, but deep down he was a pessimist and he hated the human race. I think that was because by the
end of his life most of his family had kicked the bucket before he did. He out lived his wife, and all but one of his daughters.
He really loved his family, too. I’ve read a lot of books about Mark Twain, at least four or five. I don’t like
to write, but I do like to read. I read all the time. Anyway, like I was saying, Mr. Franks said
I could really help things out a lot if I’d give it a shot and write all this stuff down while he’s gone. He told
me to just pretend I’m telling my story to him or to my best friend or somebody, and that might make it easier. He kept
saying that nobody else would get to see whatever I write, except for him, so I could be perfectly honest and write down my
true feelings and opinions about everything. “Don’t worry about your grammar,” he said, “I’m
not going to grade you. Pick where you think is a good place to start, then just start writing down everything you can think
of. Just try it.” Well, they don’t have any good books for me to read in this place and I got nothing else to
do, so I guess I might as well give it a try. I just hope Mom never sees any of it. I guess I can start with talking about Sunday before last, which was June 1, 1975. And
I started that Sunday like most other Sundays, that is I was laying awake in bed real early, about 8:45, hoping that Mom was
gonna oversleep, so that she wouldn’t get us up in time to go to the meetings. The “meetings,” that means
the Kingdom Hall. Half the time, most Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t say, “We’re going to the Kingdom Hall,”
or, “Are y’all going to the Kingdom Hall tonight?” They say
it like, “We’re going to the meetings,” or “We’re going to the Hall.” At least that’s how we say it around our house, and all the Witnesses I know
of talk like that, too. The Sunday meetings these days begin at 10:00 in the morning, not at 3:00 in the afternoon
the way they used to back in the days when Freddie was hoping it would burn down. Some genius Brother about five years ago
figured out that it wouldn’t be nearly so hot in the summer if they started in the morning instead of in the middle
of the afternoon. Last year they even broke down and put in air conditioning, so the heat’s not really a factor anymore.
But none of the Brothers and Sisters wanted to go back to meeting in the afternoon. The congregation was allowed to vote on
it, and almost everybody voted to stay with the 10:00 start. Here’s what I think: If you gotta go, then just
get up early and go and get it over with. That way, it’s just your morning that’s shot, instead of your whole
day being messed up by having to stop whatever it is you’re doing in the middle of the day and dragging yourself off
to the meeting. That’s my way of thinking, at least. I bet a lot of Witnesses think that same way, too, they just wouldn’t
come right out and say it like I’m doing here. If Mom doesn’t get us out of bed by 9:00, it’s usually safe to say that we
won’t be going to the meetings that morning, because it wouldn’t leave us time enough to get ready to leave the
house by 9:30. It takes about thirty minutes to drive from our house in Campbell County to the Kingdom Hall in Lynchburg.
It’s only about ten miles, but the county roads aren’t that great, and part of the way is through town, where
you can get slowed down by all the church traffic. Sometimes you can make it in twenty or twenty-five, but thirty minutes
is more like it. We’ve only got one bathroom at our house, and it’s three of us that have to get ready, so it
doesn’t leave much time for washing up and getting dressed if we’re not all up by 9:00. It’s me and Freddie
and Mom that have to get ready. Dad doesn’t go to the Hall. I was laying there, like I said, agonizing over how slow the time was moving by, looking
at my watch every other second, just waiting for 9:00 to come and go so I could safely roll over and go back to sleep. But
just my luck, at about 8:58 Freddie’s alarm clock went off and Mom must have heard it in her room because about two
seconds later she stuck her head in our door and said, “Y’all get up and get ready now, boys, and hurry up because
we don’t have much time.” She closed the door, but opened it right
back again and said, “I’m glad somebody remembered to set the alarm because I was probably gonna oversleep.” Yeah, good going Freddie. Thanks a lot, pal. So we got ready and dressed pretty quick, but we didn’t have time for breakfast
or anything. I did get to grab an apple off the table as we rushed out the door, though, which I ate in the back seat of the
car while we rode into town. Freddie always sits in the front seat with Mom, and I always sit in the back seat by myself.
Sometimes Mom lets Freddie drive, since he’s got his learner’s permit now, but that’s only if we’ve
got plenty of time to get there. We were in a real rush that morning, so Mom was doing the driving herself, and she knows
how to drive pretty fast. Freddie’s a terrible driver. When we have the extra time and Mom does let him do the driving,
I don’t know which is worse—getting the hell scared out of you on the way to the meeting because Freddie’s
swerving all over the road and screwing up in traffic and stuff, or actually making it to the Hall in one piece and then having
to sit through the stupid meetings. Yeah, that’s a real toss up. I know one thing, before I burned down the Kingdom Hall, I’d always dreaded the
day when Freddie finally got his real drivers license, because I figured then I’d probably never get out of going to
a meeting. You see, every once in a while, usually just on a Thursday night, Mom would tell us that she had a headache or
something and didn’t feel good, and so we wouldn’t go to the meeting that night. It didn’t happen very often,
but sometimes it did. But I figured after Freddie got his license, Mom’s headaches wouldn’t make any difference
anymore. I wouldn’t get to miss the meetings on those nights, because then Freddie would be able to drive himself, and
of course Mom would make me ride along with him. But I don’t worry about it anymore, of course. I guess you can probably tell by now that going to the meetings is not my favorite thing
in the world to do. To tell you the truth, I hate going. I’ve always thought they were a royal pain in the ass, ever
since I can remember. I’m just trying to be really honest here, which is what Mr. Franks told me to be. One of the main problems I have with the meetings is that there are so many of them.
There’s two on Sunday, one on Tuesday night, and two on Thursday night. That’s three different days in the week
that you’re supposed to go. Every time you turn around there’s another damn meeting you gotta go to. And each
one of them lasts at least an hour, and sometimes more. Maybe that doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you’re sitting
there in the middle of one of them meetings, well, they can seem to go on forever. If you’re a good Jehovah’s Witness, you’re supposed to make it to all
the meetings, no matter what. If your long lost uncle that you haven’t seen for forty years shows up at your house just
as you’re going out the door on the way to a meeting, you’re not supposed to skip the meeting in order to stay
home and visit with him. Nope. You’re supposed to invite him to go along with you. If he doesn’t want to go with
you, and he’s not still hanging around the house waiting for you when you get back home, well that’s too bad.
You just can’t risk missing a meeting, you see. You just never know when something new and important might be brought
up at the meeting, and you’ve missed it because you thought it was okay just this once to stay home and catch up with
your uncle. Right. Like anything new and important has ever been said during a meeting. Everything
said at any meeting has already been said a million times before at a million other meetings. Same old songs, same old talks,
same old Watchtower studies. Over and over and over. On top of making it to every single meeting, they expect you to spend all your spare
time studying the Watchtower and Awake magazines and reading all the books they give you to read, and then going out in Field
Service. Field Service is where you go to people’s doors and try to share the good news of the Kingdom with them, to
get them interested in coming to the Kingdom Hall and becoming Jehovah’s Witnesses, too. You do all this by getting
them to buy a magazine or a book. I guess knocking on people’s doors is one of the things the Witnesses are most
famous for, but I’ll tell you about that part later. They’re famous for a lot of other things as well, like for
not saluting the flag, and for not celebrating Christmas, and for not celebrating birthdays, and for not taking blood transfusions,
and for not doing this and not doing that, and on and on. I’ll try and tell you about some of that stuff later on, too.
But like I was saying, thanks to Freddie and his stupid alarm clock, Mom didn’t
oversleep, and I didn’t get out of going to the Kingdom Hall that Sunday morning, June 1, 1975. If you’ve never been to the Kingdom Hall on a Sunday morning, and believe me you’re
lucky if you haven’t, I’ll try to explain a little bit what it’s like. Here goes. There’s two meetings, the Watchtower Study and what’s called the “public”
talk, which is probably called that because it’s the one meeting during the whole week that’s supposed to make
some sort of sense to a regular normal person, that is, a person who’s not a Jehovah’s Witness. I guess it’s
in case some poor idiot from the general public happens to wander in off the street at ten o’clock on a Sunday morning,
he can feel right at home listening to the talk. It’s usually about some bland subject like the flood of Noah’s
day, or how to have a happy marriage and family life that’s based on Bible principles, or how to get along with your
neighbors. Nothing too weird or off the wall, usually just stuff the average person could agree with no matter what religion
they belonged to. The weird stuff is saved for the Watchtower Study, which comes right after the public
talk is over with at 11:00. The study is supposed to be over with at noon, but most of the time it’s like 12:30 or so
before you get out of there. It tends to drag on and on. It’s hard to explain what goes on at a Watchtower Study to someone that’s
never been there, so you might have to pay attention real hard to follow me on this next part. The Watchtower Study is where the whole congregation as a group reads line by line the
same pre-assigned article from a Watchtower magazine, and they answer questions about each paragraph along the way. The questions
for each paragraph are printed at the bottom of each page, and the correct answers to the questions can be found within the
paragraph. I know this sounds kinda strange and probably doesn’t make much sense, but if you’ve ever seen a Watchtower
magazine, and believe me you’re lucky if you haven’t, you might know what I’m talking about. The idea is that you’re supposed to study the article at home first, and underline
the answers to the questions as you go along, and then when you get to the meeting you can raise your hand and read out the
answer to a particular question for a particular paragraph, if and when the conductor of the study calls on you to do so.
And that’s where it can get pretty weird, because most of the articles are based on stuff that only Witnesses understand
or believe in or care about, such as the fact that Jesus actually returned to earth in 1914, but most people don’t realize
it, because his presence is invisible, so nobody can actually see him. But the Witnesses know he’s here already, even
if they can’t see him, because of the increases in lawlessness and famines and earthquakes going on all over the place,
and all the major wars and stuff that started with the outbreak of World War I, which was in 1914. I’ll try and tell
you more about that stuff later, too, if I get around to it. One thing that’s always struck me as pretty strange about answering questions at
the Watchtower study is that sometimes the answer to a paragraph’s question is just another bunch of questions. Like
for instance, the question at the bottom of the page for one of the paragraphs might be, “What questions arise concerning
our world today?” What happens is this: The whole paragraph is read out
loud to the congregation first, and then the conductor of the study will read out the question at the bottom of the page, which like I said might be something like, “What questions arise concerning
our world today?” Then the conductor will call on someone who has raised
their hand. You raise your hand because you know the answer and you want to give it to the congregation, as if they didn’t
already know it themselves. So someone raises their hand and, after being called on by the conductor, says, “Will mankind
ever live under a peaceful and righteous government?” And the conductor
will say, “Very good, anyone else?” Then someone else raises their
hand and, after being called on, says, “And when can we expect the Great Battle of Armageddon to be fought, thus ushering
in a New World Order of righteous rule and paradise conditions?” And the
conductor says again, “Very good, are there any more?” And then someone
else raises their hand and, after being called on, says, “Is this life all there really is?” And on and on. Of course the people that raised their hands and gave the answers had gotten the answers
directly from the paragraph, usually word for word. They didn’t have to think up an answer at all. They had already
underlined the answer to the question before they ever got to the meeting, which was the same answer that every Witness in
the whole world had underlined for that question. I’ve been going to Watchtower studies for over ten years and I’ve
never ever once heard of anyone giving the wrong answer to a question. It would be almost impossible. What kills me is every once in a while you’ll hear someone refer to the Watchtower
Study as the Watchtower “discussion,” but it ain’t no discussion at all. Your opinion about a question
is not the answer they’re looking for. The only right answers are the ones that the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society
puts right there in the dumb paragraph. And you’re supposed to underline it a million times, and then you’re supposed
to believe it, until they tell you otherwise. In fact, you might look over the Brother’s or Sister’s shoulder in front of you sometimes and get a glimpse of the magazine their holding, and they’ve got
practically every damn sentence in every damn paragraph underlined. And maybe even underlined in red ink, to make them stand
out or something. So you’re supposed to get the impression that they’re some kind of gung ho Witness or something,
because they’ve studied the hell out of the Watchtower article in preparation for the Sunday meeting. I’ll tell you something though. Sometimes I don’t even read it. Sometimes
I just go through the article and underline a bunch of sentences here and there without even reading what the question is.
That saves me a lot of time. What’s the difference, anyway? Anyway, we got to the Kingdom Hall that morning with about three minutes to spare, and
I did something that I like to do sometimes, and that is to slip into the little library room in the basement and look for
a book or something to read during the meetings that are about to begin. They call it a library, but it’s not really
much of a library, it’s more like a storage closet with a table and a couple of book shelves. They just mainly keep
a lot of old Witness books and magazines and stuff in there, I guess in case someone wanted to do some research on a talk
they had to give, or maybe look up the answer to a hard question somebody had asked them out in Field Service or something.
All of the books in the library are Witness books, they don’t have novels or Time
magazine or stuff like that laying around. There’s an old set of Encyclopedia Brittanica from about the 1400’s
down there, which you’d probably never want to use because the stuff in them would be so out of date. Somebody must
have donated them to the Kingdom Hall. I guess it was easier than taking them to the dump. Usually I’ll just grab one
of the old books that I’ve never seen or looked at before, and I’ll take it back upstairs to look at while I’m
sitting through the meetings. Sometimes that’s better than actually paying attention to what’s going on. Not always,
but sometimes. I think this is where I got the habit of reading all the time, from just trying to amuse myself during the
meetings. In fact, I’ve read through practically the whole Bible using this method, not straight through from start
to finish like you probably would a regular book, but a little bit here and a little bit there. I’d just flip through
it, and whatever page grabbed my attention, I’d start reading there. Of course it took me about three million meetings
to do it that way, but I had plenty of time to kill. What I really wanted to do that day was hide down there in the library room and read
one of my own books, which was a real book, not a Witness book. You see, we were in the middle of reading a book in my English
class at the time, called Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, but I wouldn’t dare try to sneak it into the
Kingdom Hall to read down in the library room while the meeting was going on upstairs. I couldn’t take the chance that
Mom might somehow notice I wasn’t upstairs with everybody else. She’d probably send Freddie or somebody down to
find me and bring me back. And I definitely wouldn’t be able to sit in the meeting upstairs and read one of my own books,
even though I always sit in the back, because then it would be too obvious that I wasn’t paying attention and following
along with what was being said. I slipped into the library real quick—and almost broke my neck falling over a big
cardboard box someone had left sitting right there in the floor just inside the door. As I was getting up off the floor, I
could hear Brother Harris upstairs on the p.a. system welcoming everyone and inviting everybody to take their seats, so I
knew the public talk was about to begin. I looked at the box I had just tripped over and noticed it was crammed full of old
books, so I just grabbed one off the top without even looking at it, and ran back upstairs. Like I said, I always sit in the back of the Hall during the meetings. Mom used to make
me and Freddie sit with her when we were little kids, so she could keep an eye on us and make sure we behaved and all. But
now that we’re older we can sit anywhere we want to. Freddie always sits up front and pays attention. I don’t
sit up front because I don’t like the feeling that people are staring at the back of my head. And I also don’t
like the feeling that someone’s always watching me to make sure that I’m paying attention, I guess because I’m
hardly ever paying attention. I sit about ten seats away from Sister Straiter. It’s usually just me and her back there.
She’s eighty-some years old and is real hard of hearing. The reason she sits in back, instead of in front like you’d
expect, with her hearing problem and all, is because the sound room is located in the back. They’ve rigged her up a
set of headphones on a wire that runs off the p.a. amplifier in the sound room, out to her special seat. That way she can
hear every word, loud and clear. I remember how her face lit up the first time she put them on and could hear everything being
said, probably for the first time in thirty years or so. She thinks her headphones are a miracle of modern technology. I don’t
know why, but it kinda makes me sad. I mean, here’s this eighty year old woman who lives by herself in a big old house,
without a television or a radio because she couldn’t hear them even if she had them, sitting around all day reading
the Watchtower or something, probably never reading a newspaper or talking to a neighbor or anything. And the highlight of
her life is coming to the Kingdom Hall three times a week, putting on her headphones and listening to the meeting. She probably
doesn’t know that men have walked on the moon. She probably thinks some old guy like Abraham Lincoln is still president
or something. Brother Harris welcomed everybody to the Kingdom Hall, and introduced the visiting speaker,
who was Brother Borall, from down in the Danville congregation. I guess here is where I should try to explain the difference between Jehovah’s
Witnesses and other religions when it comes to preachers and pastors and stuff. Kingdom Halls don’t have full time pastors
the way most Baptist or Methodist churches do. What the Witnesses have is a body of elders, with a presiding elder in charge
of them all. The elders don’t get paid for being elders, either, so they all have regular jobs, like working at the
Foundry or a car shop or the post office or something. None of them have the time to hang around the Kingdom Hall all day.
They do their elder stuff in their spare time. Stuff like making sure the Kingdom Hall is kept clean. Deciding who’s
gonna have what part at which meeting. Making sure the meetings run smoothly. And deciding whether or not someone should be
disfellowshipped from the congregation. You get disfellowshipped for doing stuff like committing adultery or having fornication,
or taking drugs, or going against one of the established beliefs of Jehovah’s Witnesses. I guess the point is, the same elder doesn’t give the public talk every week, the
way the preacher at a normal church would. The elders take turns giving the talks, and a lot of times it’s given by
an elder from another congregation, which was the case the Sunday morning I’m telling you about. Brother Borall, the elder from Danville, came that morning to give a talk entitled “Building
a Happy Family Life,” which was based on chapter 20 of the Truth book. When Jehovah’s Witnesses talk about
the Truth book, they mean The Truth that leads to Eternal Life, which is this little blue book that spells out
most of the stuff Witnesses have to believe in, in order to be Witnesses. It’s the main book that Witnesses take out
in Field Service to try to get people to buy and read. The Truth book has been around for five or six years and like most Witnesses I’ve
had to read it and study it and underline it about a hundred times, so of course I was already pretty familiar with chapter
20 and what it had to say about building a happy family life. Basically it says that if you’d only become a Jehovah’s
Witness, then you’d have a happy family life. I’d also heard this particular talk a bunch of times before, like most everybody
else there that morning, so I was glad I had gotten that old book from the box in the library downstairs. At least I’d
have something else to occupy myself with, besides sitting there listening to that talk again. But I had to play it safe and
listen to the first couple of minutes, just so it would look like I was paying attention. I had my Truth book with me, too, because we’d been told at the previous
Thursday night meeting to be sure and bring it, so we could follow along with what Brother Borall was talking about. I even
had it opened up to chapter 20, like everybody else. “Good morning, Brothers and Sisters, I bring you greetings from the Danville congregation
of Jehovah’s Witnesses,” Brother Borall said to begin his talk. Then he smiled real big, took a step back from the podium, and made a big dramatic pause,
as if he was expecting all of us to shout “greetings!” or something back at him. But everybody just sat there
and looked at him. “Brothers and Sisters,” he began again, thumbing through his Truth
book, “the Bible gives us much sound advice concerning home life. It helps us deal with our everyday family problems.
In fact, it’s the best place to go for advice, because Jehovah is the author of the Bible as well as the originator
of marriage and family life. Could I get a volunteer to read to us the scripture at Genesis chapter two, verses eighteen and
twenty-two?” Freddie raised his hand and read the scripture out loud. I could already see how this
whole talk was gonna go, because Brother Borall had practically read the first paragraph of chapter 20 to us word for word.
Then he did about the same thing with the second paragraph, and had someday look up the scripture mentioned there, too. And
then the third paragraph. It was pretty clear that his idea of giving a “talk” on chapter 20 of the Truth
book was to actually just read it out loud to everybody. I’m surprised he didn’t just go ahead and ask us some
of the stupid questions from the bottom of the page. Well, ten minutes of that was more than a plenty for me, and I figured I’d been
paying attention long enough anyhow, so I reached under my seat and pulled out the old book from downstairs, and started looking
at it. The title on the cover was The Time is at Hand, which didn’t mean a thing to me. It sounded like any other
title to any other Witness book. They all have titles like Babylon the Great has Fallen! God’s Kingdom Rules,
and Then is Finished the Mystery of God, and Life Everlasting in Freedom of the Sons of God, and God’s
Kingdom of a Thousand Years has Approached, and on and on. But when you really get down to it, after you’ve read
a bunch of them, no matter what the title is, they all say mainly the same thing, which is that Jehovah’s Witnesses
are the only people in the whole world who really know what’s going on with God and his divine plan. But then I saw on the spine of this old book it said “Millennial Dawn, Vol. II.” So I knew right away that it really was older than hell, and I also knew right away
who wrote it. None other than Charles Taze Russell himself wrote it, that’s who. In case you didn’t know, Charles T. Russell was the original founder of the Jehovah’s
Witnesses. But back in the old days when he was still around they didn’t call themselves that. In fact, I don’t
think they called themselves anything special at first. Then as there got to be more and more of them they became known as
the Bible Students or something. People who didn’t like them called them Russellites for a while, as a way of making
fun of them I guess. It wasn’t until around 1930 or so that they began calling themselves Jehovah’s Witnesses,
which they took from a verse in the book of Isaiah that talks about Jehovah choosing a bunch of people as his servants right
before the end of the world and saying to them, “You are my witnesses.”
Of course, the Bible Students thought that scripture was talking about them and that they were the direct fulfillment
of that particular prophesy, so they took up that name. Charles T. Russell was long dead by then, though. I guess Russell was the first one who dreamed up a lot of the stuff that Witnesses believe
these days, especially the stuff about 1914 being a marked year in Bible prophesy. He’s the one that figured out that
Jesus wasn’t coming back to earth in the flesh, but was gonna be invisible to everybody when he returned. Then he somehow
figured out that all this would take place in 1914. He came up with 1914 by adding and subtracting and multiplying and dividing
and finding the square root of a bunch of different historical dates he thought were tied to prophesies scattered around in
different places in the Bible, like in Revelations and Daniel and Ezekial and books like that. It’s a pretty tricky
formula, and I ain’t got it memorized, that’s for sure. He wrote about all this stuff in the Watchtower magazine, which he invented, and he went
around all over the world warning people about his predictions. He also wrote a bunch of books for all his followers to read.
I think there was about seven or eight main books, and they were known as the Millennial Dawn books, for some reason. One of the things about 1914, though, is that Russell at first said the world was gonna
come to an end in October of 1914, which of course most regular normal people didn’t believe and so they just laughed
at him for saying that. But then they stopped laughing and got a little scared when World War I broke out in the summer of
1914. I guess right about then Russell’s stock was looking pretty good, and all the Bible Students were getting pretty
excited because they all thought they were going to heaven shortly. But then, of course, the world didn’t come to an
end when Russell said it would, and he died a couple of years later, before he could figure out why or where his calculations
had gone wrong. Maybe he forgot to carry a one somewhere, or something. It wasn’t until after he died that they figured out 1914 wasn’t meant to
be the end of the world after all, but only the beginning of the end of the world, and that the actual end would
come before the generation that was alive in 1914 had completely passed away. I don’t have a clue as to how they figured
all that out. I guess when 1914 came and went and they were all still standing around looking at each other and the world
hadn’t ended or anything, they had to come up with something. That’s really about all I know about Charles Taze Russell. I looked him up in a
dictionary once, but about all it said was that he was the founder of the Jehovah’s Witness religious movement, which
I already knew of course. I also tried looking him up at the Lynchburg Public Library, but I couldn’t find a biography
about him, or an autobiography, or anything. They didn’t even have one of the books that he’d written. I bet if
you asked anyone on the street who he was, they wouldn’t have a clue. The Witnesses these days don’t say much about him anymore, I guess because he’s
been dead so long. I mean, they don’t consider him to be a saint or anything, and they don’t go around hanging
his picture up all over the place. They claim to look to Jehovah and Jesus as their true leaders, not to be followers of any
one man. They just think that Russell was chosen by Jehovah to be the first one to start understanding His divine plan, back
in the 1870’s sometime, because Russell was the only one at the time that was honestly searching for the true religion.
They used to say that Russell was the “faithful and discreet slave” that the Bible talks about somewhere, because
Russell sometimes claimed that about himself. But now that he’s dead they say the Bible actually means the whole Watchtower
Bible and Tract Society when it talks about the “faithful and discreet slave,” because the Society is what Jehovah
is using to spread His divine plan, through the Watchtower and Awake magazines and the other Witness books. Every once in a while, the Watchtower or one of the books will talk about Russell a little
bit, or mention some of the books and stuff he wrote, and maybe show a picture of him. But I’ve noticed they don’t
show his picture much anymore, I think because he had a big beard and kinda long hair and all, and the Witnesses these days
are totally against anyone having beards and long hair. In fact, Charles Russell probably wouldn’t even be allowed to
be a Jehovah’s Witness these days, unless he agreed to shave off his beard and get a shorter hair cut. So anyway, that old book I found, The Time is at Hand, was volume two of the famous
Millennial Dawn books. I had read about those books before and heard about them, but I’d never seen any of them. The
Society doesn’t sell them anymore, or try to get people to read them, like they do the Truth book or any of the
other books I’ve mentioned. I opened it up, and what I found on the page facing the front cover was pretty interesting.
Someone had written, “To dear young Sister Clara, may this book prove to be a blessing from the Lord.” The someone who wrote that must have been the author himself, because it was signed “Charles T. Russell,
June 1, 1889.” Then it started making a little bit of sense to me, what this old book was doing with
a bunch of other old books in a big box down in the Kingdom Hall library. You see, young Sister Clara was actually
old Sister Clara Flowers, and old Sister Flowers had died only a month or so ago. Somebody must have found all them
old Witness books while they were cleaning out Sister Flowers’ house, and decided they’d stick them in the library
instead of throwing them away. When I say she was old, I mean old. Sister Flowers was ninety-nine. No fooling, she would
have been a hundred years old sometime this year. Of course we wouldn’t have had a big party or anything for her, if
she had made it that long, because the Witnesses don’t believe in celebrating your birthday, not even if it’s
your hundredth birthday. The thing about Sister Flowers was she was kinda famous in our congregation and in the
congregations around here, like over in Rustburg and Amherst and Bedford. She was the oldest Jehovah’s Witness in the
area and had been one longer than anyone else around. She was a Jehovah’s Witness back before they were even called
Jehovah’s Witnesses, back when they were called Bible Students or Russellites or whatever. Another thing about her was
that she was the only member of our congregation that was of the “anointed remnant,” which means that she was
one of the 144,000. Here I go again having to explain another Witness thing:
The 144,000 are the people that are going to heaven when they die. The Bible says they are a “little flock.” A little flock can’t include everybody, or it wouldn’t be considered little
anymore. Yes, I know, most religions believe that all good people will go to heaven, but Witnesses believe that actually only
144,000 are gonna go. Everybody else, all other good people that is, will stay dead when they die, but will eventually be
resurrected from the dead and have a chance to live forever right here on the earth, which will be restored to a paradise
again like it was back during the Garden of Eden. These people, the ones that will live here on earth, are called the “great
crowd,” because their exact number is not given in the Bible. All this is coming after the Battle of Armageddon is fought between Jesus and his angels
on one side, and Satan and his demons on the other, which is supposed to happen later this year, 1975, sometime in October. Of course, only Jehovah’s Witnesses are members of the “little flock”
and the “great crowd.” Everybody else might as well kiss their asses
goodbye and be done with it. Sister Flowers never got married or had any children. She dedicated her whole life to
being a Witness and going around trying to talk everybody she met into becoming Witnesses, too. Up until she got sick about
six months ago she was still spending almost all her time going door to door, even though she was ninety-nine years old. She’d
been doing that for about fifty or sixty years, I guess. I think she came from a fairly rich family and must have had an inheritance
or something, because I never heard that she had ever worked at a regular job or anything. So I guess she had enough money
socked away that she could afford to spend all her time out in the Field Service all those years. Almost all of the people at the Kingdom Hall in Lynchburg had started coming to the meetings
and turned into Jehovah’s Witnesses because sometime or another Sister Flowers had come by their house with the Watchtower
or one of the old books. In Witness terms, that’s called “bringing somebody into the Truth,” when a Witness talks another person into becoming a Witness. When you hear an old Witness say something
like, “Well, I been in the Truth for over forty years now,” or, “Yeah, it was Sister Clara who brought me
into the Truth,” what they mean is they’ve been a Jehovah’s Witness for over forty years, or that it was
Sister Flowers that first convinced them into joining up. Being a Witness and being “in the Truth” are the same
thing, you see. In fact, it was Sister Flowers that had come by our trailer about eleven years ago and
gave Mom a copy of a book called From Paradise Lost to Paradise Regained, which was a book that explained the history
of mankind down through the ages and how Jehovah’s Witnesses are the only ones in the whole world who really know what’s
going on with God and his divine plan. So it was Sister Flowers that brought Mom into the Truth. Sister Flowers gave Mom that book, the Paradise
book, because Mom didn’t have fifty cents to buy it. Then she, Sister Flowers that is, came back to our house every
week to supposedly discuss the different chapters with Mom. But what she had Mom doing was finding and underlining the answers
to the questions at the bottom of each page, and then reading out the answers as they went over the paragraphs. I guess this
was to get her in practice for when she became a Witness and had to underline her Watchtower magazines. In Witness terms, Mom was the victim of a Home Bible Study. Except they wouldn’t
use that word, “victim.” But I do. That’s the way you’re supposed to do it when you’re a Witness,
get someone who isn’t a Witness to “study” through one of the books with you at their house, which is called
a Home Bible Study, hoping that they’ll get interested and come to the Kingdom Hall and become Witnesses, too. So Mom studied the Paradise book with Sister Flowers. The next thing you know,
Sister Flowers had talked Mom into going to her first meeting at the Kingdom Hall, which was the meeting I told you about
where Freddie said he hoped the Kingdom Hall would burn down. That was right after we had moved here from Pittsburgh, and
Mom didn’t have any friends or anything here in Lynchburg. Dad’s family lived here, because this is where he’s
from, but I don’t think they were too friendly to Mom at first, I guess because she was a Northerner and all. So she
decided to go see what the Kingdom Hall was like and maybe meet some new friends of her own. What a day that was. Like I said, Sister Flowers gave Mom that book because Mom didn’t have the fifty
cents to buy it. Sister Flowers did the same thing for a lot of other people, too. If you didn’t have the money, she’d
just give you the Watchtower and Awake magazine or the book she was trying to sell you. I’ve heard a lot of people say
that. She believed in what Jesus said somewhere, “You received free, so give free,” or something like that. She
really was a nice lady. What I always liked about her was that she was such a natural type of Witness. That’s the best
way I can think of to say it. She definitely wasn’t the pushy gung ho type like Brother Harris is. She never came across
as self-righteous, even though she was of the 144,000 and had the heavenly hope. In fact, she donated the land that the Kingdom Hall was built on, which was a little
corner lot on Fort Avenue. And that’s one of the main things that bothers me about having burned it down, that Sister
Flowers had been the main reason it was built there in the first place. I know she meant well when she went around all those
years bringing people into the Truth, including my Mom. I don’t hold it against Sister Flowers for doing that, because
I know she was only doing what she thought was right and what she thought Jehovah God wanted her to be doing and all. I’m
really glad she didn’t live to see me burn it down. But I guess she did see me do it, from heaven. It really bothers
me sometimes to think about that part of it all. Anyhow, like I was saying, that book The Time is at Hand used to belong to Sister
Flowers. I was starting to flip through it while Brother Borall was up there giving his talk, to see if there might be anything
interesting in it, or if it was just like any other run of the mill Witness book, which was my guess. But suddenly, someone reached over from behind me and snatched the book out of my hands.
I turned around real quick and it was Brother Harris standing there looking down at me. I don’t know how long he had
been standing there. “Can you come with me for a minute?”
He kept his voice real low when he said it, so that it wouldn’t disturb anybody else. He motioned towards the
swinging doors that separated the main part of the Kingdom Hall from the front entrance way. I got up and followed him out into the foyer. He said, “What are you doing?” “What do you mean?” I was kinda playing dumb. “I mean, why aren’t you paying attention to the talk, like you’re supposed
to be doing.” “Well, I don’t know, I was listening. I guess it’s because I’ve
heard this talk before and I’ve read the chapter a bunch of times before, too—maybe it looked like I wasn’t
listening, probably—but I really was. Honest.” “And what’s this?” He
held up the book he had taken away from me. “Where did you get this?” “Uh, that’s just a book I was glancing at while I was listening to the talk.
I got it from downstairs, in the library. I think it used to belong to Sister Flowers.” “Well you shouldn’t have it. Those old books of hers haven’t been gone
through yet. They’re not officially part of the library yet.” He said that like we had a full time Kingdom Hall librarian or something. Somebody that
spent all their time doing nothing but deciding what books to officially keep in the library and what books to officially
keep out. He stood there flipping through it for a minute or so. “I was just looking at it, that’s all,” I repeated. “Well, you take it back down there and put it back where you found it, right now.
And then you come back up here and sit down and pay attention to the rest of the talk—and to the Watchtower study, too.
You hear?” He handed the book back to me. “There’s nothing in them old books you need to know, all that material is
long out of date,” he said. “They’re nothing but collector’s items now.” Then he said, “Jehovah has lovingly provided these meetings for you today, Warren,
for your personal benefit. And you should be showing your grateful appreciation, by listening to the fine counsel being given.” It sounded to me like a speech or something that he’d memorized. He went back through the swinging doors, back into the main part of the Hall, but then
suddenly stuck his head back through and said, “You know, you could stay out of this kind of trouble if you’d
be like your brother Freddie and sit up front. It’s so much easier to follow along with things when you’re closer
to the front. Much easier.” Then he pulled his head back through the doors and disappeared, this time for good. I was half surprised he didn’t say that last part like, “Why don’t
you follow young Brother Freddie’s fine, fine example? You know, he used
to want to see the Kingdom Hall burn down, but now he sits up front at all the meetings, just so he doesn’t miss a thing
that’s said. What a fine, fine example to us all.” I just kinda stood there by myself for a minute, thinking about what Brother Harris had
just said. I guess part of me was pretty mad at him for thinking that he could tell me what to do, like he was my dad or something.
I didn’t see where it was any of his business what I did during the meetings, whether I was listening or not, as long
as I wasn’t making any noise or bothering anybody else that was trying to listen. But another part of me was thinking that maybe he was right. I mean, about me needing
to be more appreciative of all the meetings, and all. Maybe it was Brother Harris’s business if I wasn’t
paying attention, because after all he was the head elder in the congregation, and he must have gotten that position because
Jehovah God knew he was the best man for it. Maybe it was my own fault that I hated the meetings so much, because maybe I
wasn’t trying hard enough to develop the right attitude, especially in the last couple of years or so, and that’s
what was holding me back and keeping me from wanting to be a good Jehovah’s Witness, not having the right attitude and
all. A lot of times they say that you have to “cultivate the proper heart condition” to be pleasing to Jehovah,
or something like that. I know I’ve tried to before, a bunch of times, I really have. I used to try to want to go to
all the meetings, and to pay attention when I got there. And I used to try to like going out in Field Service. And for a long
time I studied and underlined my Watchtowers and all the other books, every week, just like I was supposed to. But no matter
how much I tried and how hard I tried, my heart never felt any different. Even after I’d prayed and prayed to Jehovah
God to help me straighten it out. There was always this something inside of me that made me feel like Jehovah was still not
pleased with me, and never would be, for some reason. To tell the truth, I’ve never really figured that part out. What my heart is supposed
to feel like, I mean. I remember once when I was a little kid I asked Mom how did the people that were members of the 144,000
know for sure they members of the 144,000? How did Mom know for certain that
she wasn’t a member, and how did Sister Flowers know for certain that she was?
Mom said that it was just something in your heart that tells you. Your spirit is made
to know it by means of Jehovah God’s spirit, if you’ve been chosen as a member of the 144,000, she said. But the
same thing must be true for the “great crowd,” it seems to me. If Jehovah has found you worthy to be a member
of the “great crowd,” wouldn’t you somehow feel it or know it in your heart? Like I said, I stood there for a minute, thinking
about all those things, but I didn’t take that book back downstairs like Brother Harris told me to. I wasn’t gonna
try to read it during the rest of the meeting, that’s for sure, but I figured that I’d take it home with me to
look at later on. Something about it still interested me. I could return it any old time. Brother Harris would never know
the difference. So I stuck it up on the top shelf of the coat rack out there in the foyer, back behind some old hats and things
that people always forget about, so nobody would notice it up there. I’d try to remember to pick it up on my way out. Then I returned to my seat, and payed real close attention as Brother Borall read word
for word the rest of chapter 20 from the Truth book: “Building a
Happy Family Life.” When the talk was finally over, which was when Brother Borall had read out loud to everybody
the last paragraph in chapter 20, Brother Harris returned to the platform and invited everybody to stand and stretch their
legs while we all sang song number 41 from our songbooks, after which the Watchtower Study would begin. Song number 41 is based on Psalm 23 and is called “Jehovah is my Shepherd.” It’s not too bad a song, as Witness songs go. It’s actually a pretty
good one. If you’re wondering if the songbook the Witnesses use is different from the songbooks that other churches
use, I suppose the answer is yes. Of course I’ve never been to a regular normal church before, so I don’t know
what they have, but my guess is that they have a hymn book or something. Well, the Witnesses don’t have a hymn book.
They have their own special songbook called Singing and Accompanying Yourselves with Music in Your Hearts, and it’s
full of songs that probably only a Jehovah’s Witness can relate to. They’re all mostly about Witness stuff. So
they do an awful lot of singing about going out in Field Service, and getting prepared for the Great Tribulation and the War
of Armageddon, and making sure they don’t get themselves ensnared by false religion. False religion is any religion
other than Jehovah’s Witnesses. Most of the Witness songs are kinda peppy, really. That’s the best way I can think
of to describe them. They don’t sound like the hymns that I’ve heard in movies or on TV, like “Amazing Grace,”
or “How Great Thou Art,” or “The Old Rugged Cross.” Of
course the Witnesses would never sing “The Old Rugged Cross,” because they believe that Jesus was put to death
on a straight stake or pole, not on a two-piece cross. They think the cross is a pagan symbol that the Catholics allowed the
converted pagans to keep and bring into the Church. You’ll never see a Jehovah’s Witness wearing a cross, not
in a million years. They’d definitely get themselves disfellowshipped for that. Some of the Witness songs do sound peaceful and somber, like some of those hymns I just
named, but to tell the truth, a bunch of them sound kinda like broadway show tunes. At least to me they do, anyway. I have
a theory about that. My theory is that a lot of the Witness songs were written by some old guy that used to write songs on
broadway before he became a Witness. When he came into the Truth, someone decided to put him to work writing a batch of songs
for a new songbook they were getting ready to come out with. Then they threw his songs in with the ones that another old guy
had just written that were more like normal type hymns. And that’s how we ended up with a few fairly nice hymn-sounding
songs like “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize,” and “God’s Loyal Love,” and “Walking in Integrity,”—mixed
in with a bunch of jumpy marching tunes like “We’re Jehovah’s Witnesses,” and “This Good News
of the Kingdom Let us Preach,” and “From House to House.” Those
last ones sound like something out of Oklahoma! or The Sound of Music or something. Another thing you won’t find at the Kingdom Hall, besides hymn books and crosses,
is a choir. I’m not sure why that is, and I’ve never asked why. I guess they figure if you don’t have a
preacher, you may as well not have a choir either. When it’s time to do a song, everybody in the congregation stands
up and sings. Nobody does a solo or anything. For years and years, a lady named Sister Lewis used to play the piano while everybody
sang, but now they just play the song over the p.a. system from a record. You can get all the songs on record albums from
the Watchtower Society, which I guess is good for congregations that don’t have pianos or piano players. The reason
Sister Lewis doesn’t play anymore is because she moved away, which is too bad because she was really good. She was another
reason why I’d always sit in the back, because that’s where the piano was, and I liked to be real close to the
piano when she played it. After Sister Lewis left, these two other Sisters volunteered to take over the piano playing,
and they were supposed to take turns from one meeting to the next. One of them was okay, but the other one was just dreadful.
I think the reason she played so bad was because she was really old and probably half blind and couldn’t see the music
written in the songbook, or maybe she couldn’t even see the damn keys, I don’t know. When she played, she kinda
lunged around through the song, speeding up and slowing down and muttering to herself and hitting more wrong notes than right
ones, and nobody could tell which way the melody was gonna go next. It usually took her ten minutes to get through a song
that should’ve only taken four or five. It was pretty obvious that she had to be stopped, but I guess no one wanted
to hurt her feelings or had the heart to tell her she was just too lousy a player to play anymore. It got so bad, I was almost
ready to start sitting up front, just to get as far away from the piano as possible. But I didn’t have to do that after
all, because the elders decided to sell the piano and buy all the records and a record player to play them on. So I kept sitting
in the back. So anyway, they played the record for song number 41 and everybody sang the song, and
the Watchtower Study began. Of course, Brother Harris was the Study Conductor, which means he was the one controlling the
meeting, reading out the questions for each paragraph, and then calling on someone who had raised their hand to read out the
answer. The name of the Watchtower article we were studying that morning was “The Reason
for Choosing to Worship Jehovah.” It was 29 paragraphs long, so I knew
it was gonna take forever to read them all out loud one by one, have all the answers read out, and then have all the scriptures
that were mentioned but not quoted read out, too. To go through all that in only an hour would mean allowing only two minutes
for each paragraph, which I knew was impossible. I figured we’d be stuck there at least an hour and a half. And since
the Study started at 11:00, that meant it would be probably 12:30 or so before we’d finally get out. Well, I had underlined the article the night before, but I hadn’t read it. I was
kinda paying attention as the study went along, though, because I was still feeling a little guilty about what Brother Harris
had said when he caught me looking at that old book instead of paying attention during the talk. Basically the article said that a good reason to choose to worship Jehovah now,
was because the time is coming pretty soon when He will be the god of a New System of things. You see, even though Jehovah
God is God and everything, Satan the Devil is the real god or ruler of the current evil system of things, the one we’re
all living in now. Jehovah is allowing Satan to be the god of this system. But Jehovah is getting ready to smash up this system
we’re living in now, and throw Satan and his demons into an abyss somewhere. Then all the worldly governments will be
replaced by Jehovah’s theocratic government. When all that happens, it’ll be too late to decide to worship Jehovah
and be a Jehovah’s Witness. So you better choose to do it now, while you still can. What I just said in six or seven sentences, the Watchtower took 29 stupid paragraphs
to explain. Of course, all of it had to be backed up by some scriptures, too. And of course as always, the article couldn’t pass up the chance to pat the Witnesses
on the back a few million times along the way. Nope, nope, couldn’t let that happen. It had to point out that they’ve
been the only ones in the whole world to see all this coming down the pike, the smashing and abyssing. The Witnesses have
been the only ones in the whole world for the last fifty-six years or so going around warning the nations that their evil
governments are about to get creamed. And don’t forget that the Witnesses have been the only ones in the whole world
for the last fifty-six years or so that have spent all their time proclaiming Jehovah’s new government, and preaching
about the New System of things. All that back patting stuff was in paragraph 25. One
of the questions for that particular paragraph was something like: “What will happen to the politicians of the nations
after they’ve been notified about Jehovah and His coming new government, and how will they respond?” And the answer was: “Then those defiant politicians will learn to know who Jehovah is and what happens
to those who disdain worshiping Him. The Kingdom action will not convert them to the worship of Jehovah but will destroy them.” I remember that part pretty good because I was the one who read that particular answer
out loud, believe it or not. You see, even though I don’t want to, sometimes I’ll raise my hand and give an answer,
because I know it makes Mom feel good, and it gives her and everybody else the impression that I’m trying to be a good
little Witness boy, so then maybe they’ll leave me alone and not come around and encourage me to be more spiritual and
all. I hate it when somebody does that, tries to encourage you to be more spiritual. It’s awkward as hell, because they
have to say it without really coming out and accusing you of losing your spirituality or something. So they come up to you
and say something like, “Warren, we’ve really been missing your fine comments during the meetings lately.” Or, “Warren, we’ve really been missing you out in the Field Service the
past few weeks.” And that kinda puts you on the spot, because you’ve
got to come up with some polite and acceptable response, just so they’ll go away and leave you alone, when what you
really want to say is something like, “Well, the questions have been so stupid lately, I just haven’t felt like
reading out one of the answers for a while. Oh, I’ve still been underlining the answers, don’t worry about that,
I’m just not too keen on reading them out loud.” Or, “Well,
you know, I try to avoid going out in the Field Service as much as possible, because I’m afraid somebody from school
might see me and realize why I’m such a complete and total geek.” Anyway, like I said, I answered that question out loud, which really just means I read
the answer word for word from the paragraph. I’m sure Brother Harris about dropped his teeth when he saw me raise my
hand, because he fell all over himself calling on me to give the answer. And I’m sure that he thought the whole reason
I answered it was because of what he had said to me during the talk, about paying attention and appreciating the meetings
and all. Before going on to the next paragraph, Brother Harris said something like, “Brothers and Sisters, don’t
we all, young and old alike, look forward so much to the New System of things? Won’t
that be a fine, fine time?” Of course, nobody raised their hand and said, “Yes, Brother Harris, that indeed
will be a fine, fine time.” Nobody tried to give that answer because it wasn’t something they had underlined in
one of the paragraphs. I guess here I should try to explain a little bit about the “New System”
I keep mentioning. Witnesses talk a lot about the New System. Sometimes they call it the New World. Especially the old-timers
talk about it. They’ll say something like, “When I get to the New System, I’m gonna build me a really big
brick house out in the country, or maybe a little log cabin up in the mountains somewhere, or maybe even a house-boat.” Or they’ll say something like, “In the New World, I’m gonna travel
all over the world and see the sights. You can’t do that in this system of things, no-sir-ree, because the world
nowadays is just too dangerous a place to be going traveling around in. But in the New System, I’m gonna travel all
over the place, and then I’m gonna learn to play the piano, because I’ll have all the time in the world to practice,
you know. I’ll have forever and ever to practice.” That’s some of the kind of talk you hear about the New World. Some Witnesses also
spend a lot of time discussing what kind of things they’re gonna have there. Like if they’re gonna have cars and
TVs and telephones and stuff. Of course, nobody really knows much about what will be there, but they sure do know a lot about
what won’t be there. Mainly, sickness and death and sin and crime and bad people won’t be there. Everybody
will be working together to restore the earth to its original condition as a paradise, like it was before Adam and Eve sinned
the first time. Pretty much the whole world is gonna be like one big Garden of Eden, and you won’t have to worry about
lions and tigers and bears attacking you all the time. I guess you’ll even get to swim in the ocean without worrying
about sharks. I wonder sometimes if there’ll be any snakes around. Another thing that’s gonna happen in the New World, after the paradise conditions
are restored, is the resurrection. That means all your dead relatives and everybody else that died before Armageddon will
be raised from the dead and come back to life, and it’ll be your job to teach all them dead people the Truth and tell
them what all happened since they died, about the War of Armageddon and the abyssing of Satan and all. If these people accept
the Truth and choose to worship Jehovah in this new paradise, then they’ll be given eternal life, too. If they don’t
accept the Truth, they’ll get the axe again. But why would anybody not accept it? When I was a littler kid, I used to think about how neat it’d be if I was given
the job of teaching the Truth to somebody like Ty Cobb in the New World. And then he could teach me how to really hit a baseball.
Or maybe I’d get the job of teaching the Truth to Mark Twain, and it would cheer him up and then he wouldn’t hate
the human race so much anymore, because his wife and daughters would be there with him in paradise, too. But with my luck,
I doubt you’ll get to choose who you’ll teach the Truth to in the New World. And even if you could, so what. It
doesn’t look like I’m gonna be there to find out one way or the other anyway. Not after what I’ve done. Of course, Satan won’t be hanging around in the New World, trying to get you to
eat an apple or something the way he did with Adam and Eve. He’ll be in the abyss. He’ll be released after a thousand
years is up, though, by which time the paradise will have been restored and everybody will be perfect again. Jehovah will
allow Satan a short time to try to mislead anyone he wants to, but Jehovah will finally destroy him for good before he can
mislead too many people. Now most of this New System stuff is in the book of Revelations, which anybody can read
for themselves if they want to, even though it’s hard to understand because it’s all written in signs and symbols,
like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the Seals of the Mysterious Scroll and the blowing of the Seven Trumpets and
everything. The Witnesses are the only ones in the whole world who have figured out what it all means. You can check it out
by reading Then is Finished the Mystery of God. Well, the Watchtower Study dragged on and on, just like I knew it would. Finally at about
12:20 the last paragraph and the last answer and the last scripture was read. All that remained were some announcements, the
singing of the last song, and the closing prayer. Of course all of that could take another fifteen or twenty minutes. Brother Harris read out the announcements, since he was already on the platform. He said,
“Brothers and Sisters, we have two announcements this morning, or this afternoon I should say, which are really just
reminders, really, as I’m sure everyone is already aware of all the special activities coming up this next week and
beyond. “First, don’t forget that Brother Gottwald, our new Circuit Servant, will
be visiting us this upcoming week. He’ll be with us here starting Tuesday, so you’ll all want to be sure to be
at all the meetings and hear all the fine, fine things that he will no doubt be saying. And by all means, you’ll want
to spend a few hours out in Field Service with him, if at all possible, as that’s always a special privilege, and is
sure to be a blessing to all those who can take advantage of the opportunity to do so. There will be groups leaving the Hall
every morning at 9:00, from Tuesday through Saturday, so by all means plan to come along and join with Brother Gottwald in
this important work that we have been commissioned by Jehovah to carry out before He brings an end to this wicked old system
of things.” I guess the only thing I haven’t told you about Brother Harris so far is about
the way he talks, w-h-i-c-h i-s r-e-a-l-l-y, r-e-a-l-l-y s-l-ooooo-w. I mean, I swear
the man must be from Alabama or Mississippi or somewhere, the way he drawls out his words. He says every word like it’s
got fourteen syllables in it, even if it’s only got one or two. But the thing is, I’m pretty sure he’s from
right here in Lynchburg. I know he wasn’t doing it on purpose, but I swear it was driving me nuts, the way he was dragging
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