“Please don’t turn your back on Jehovah, son! I raised you in the Truth. How can you turn your back on us and on Jehovah by leaving His organization?”

"Dad, I love Jehovah! That’s why I'm leaving the organization—because it isn’t His. It’s just a group of men claiming to represent God."

“Don't Leave Jehovah!”

The Watchtower argument is simple: ‘We are God’s organization. Leaving us means leaving God.’

Simple but convincing to millions of Jehovah’s Witnesses. And who wouldn’t be convinced? After all, hasn’t God always dealt with mankind through an organization?

And, even if the Watchtower Society has made some mistakes over the years, aren’t the churches worse? Don’t many people leave the organization to pursue a materialistic and immoral life? Haven’t even religious ex-Witnesses shown that they have left Jehovah by no longer using the Divine Name?

For the sake of those who sincerely ask such questions, a discussion will follow:

From Adam until the Exodus
God dealt with individuals
and with families

The Watchtower Society argues its claim to be “God’s Visible Organization” by saying, “The Bible shows that Jehovah has always guided his servants in an organized way.” (You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth, 1982, p. 192) Has God always had a visible organization representing Him on earth?

From Adam’s creation until the Exodus from Egypt, God dealt with men as individuals and as families. Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and others had a close, personal walk with God, but the only patriarch with organizational authority was Joseph—as Prime Minister in the pagan Egyptian government.

Later, during their trek through the wilderness, the Israelites were indeed organized. “And Moses chose able men out of all Israel, and made them heads over the people, rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens.” (Ex. 18:25 KJV) Once Israel settled in the Promised Land, however, there is no evidence of any such tight-knit organization remaining.

The Judges organized Israel
only for battle

The Judges do not appear to have ruled through any formal structure; rather, it seems that they organized the people only when forming armies in time of war. “In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” (Judges 21:25 KJV)

When the people eventually demanded that Samuel the prophet “appoint for us a king to govern us like all the nations”, God said that “they have rejected me from being king over them.” (1 Sam. 8:5,7 RSV) But He allowed them to have their wish, and the Jews once again found themselves organized with “commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties”. (1 Sam. 8:12 RSV)

Saul, the first king, proved unfaithful; and, of the subsequent rulers in the line of David, only a few like Josiah “did what is pleasing to Yahweh”. (2 Kings 22:2 JB) Most were like Jehoiakim who “did what is displeasing to Yahweh, just as his ancestors had done.” (2 Kings 23:37)

The organized priesthood functioned throughout this period but often corrupted itself as under high priest Eli whose priestly sons “were scoundrels; they cared nothing for Yahweh…they treated the offering made to Yahweh with contempt.” (1 Sam. 2:12,17 JB)

Faithful prophets were
often outcasts

God’s prophets—faithful individuals— often found themselves outcasts, reproved and disfellowshipped by the governmental and priestly organizations.

Jeremiah, for example, was accused of disloyalty when he urged fellow Jews to leave the ‘organization’ of his day, telling them “that everyone remaining in Jerusalem would die . . . but anyone surrendering to the Babylonians would live”. (Jer. 38:2 LB)

Those loyal to the organization viewed Jeremiah as an apostate rebel and turned a deaf ear to his advice. Rather than join with the Babylonians as God commanded, they felt safer staying within Jerusalem, the headquarters of Jehovah’s organization where His king and His high priest were. But the prophet told them, “Do not put trust in lying phrases, ‘Jehovah’s temple, Jehovah’s temple, Jehovah’s temple they are.’” (Jer. 7:4 Byington)

The fulfillment of Jeremiah’s words proved that there are times when men must chose between loyalty to an organization and loyalty to God Himself. That unfaithful organization was dissolved when the Jews were carried captive to Babylon. Hundreds of years later, when Jesus Christ came to earth, worshipers of Jehovah were found to have re-assembled an organization centering on the rebuilt temple in Jerusalem. But Jesus applied to them Isaiah’s words, "`These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.'" (Matthew 15:8-9 NIV).

The leaders of God’s organized people “decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Christ would be put out of the synagogue”–i.e., disfellowshipped. (John 9:22 NIV)

As soon as the followers of Messiah had formed their own congregations, there appeared “weeds among the wheat” — a condition Jesus said would continue until “the end”. (Matt. 13:25,40 NIV) Already in John’s day some congregations were in the hands of men like Diotrephes: “he refuses to welcome the brothers. He also stops those who want to do so and puts them out of the church.” (3 John 10 NIV)

So, while God has always had faithful individuals on earth, the organizations claiming to represent Him have often failed to live up to their names. In fact, such self-serving power structures have often become the persecutors of individuals faithful to God.

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