It is important to bear in mind in any discussion with Jehovah’s Witnesses that they are trained to accept whatever the Watchtower Society says, without questioning the material or critically examining it. This point is subtly conveyed time and again at Kingdom Hall meetings, but occasionally the Society actually puts it into print, as in these quotes from the February 15, 1981, Watchtower, pages 18 and 19:

How shall we view the spiritual food provided by this “faithful and discreet slave”? Should it be viewed critically—‘Oh, well, it might be true but then again it might not be and so we have to scrutinize it very critically’?… We should have confidence in the channel God is using. At the Brooklyn headquarters from which the Bible publications of Jehovah’s Witnesses emanate there are more mature Christian elders, both of the “remnant” and of the “other sheep,” than anywhere else upon earth.… We all need help to understand the Bible, and we cannot find the Scriptural guidance we need outside the “faithful and discreet slave” organization.

It is very difficult, therefore, for a Jehovah’s Witness to see errors in Watchtower Society publications, even when you point them out. The JW has been conditioned to close his eyes to the possibility of critically examining anything that comes from Brooklyn. To break this hypnotic conditioning it may be necessary to find some shocking examples—cases where the Society taught outright nonsense—pure and simple—that no argument can justify.

One such teaching that ought to have shock value for Jehovah’s Witnesses today relates to the matter of God’s whereabouts. Ask any JW where God lives, and you will most likely receive the answer “In heaven!” How startling it is, then, for a Witness to discover that the official teaching throughout much of the organization’s history was that God resides on the star Alcyone in the Pleiades star system! The Society first taught this in 1891, reinforced it later at various times, and let it stand as “the truth” until it was finally contradicted in 1953. Here are quotes to that effect from two Watchtower books published nearly forty years apart, the first in 1891, and the second in 1928:

‘ … Alcyone, the central one of the renowned Pleiadic stars … Alcyone, then, as far as science has been able to perceive, would seem to be ‘the midnight throne’ in which the whole system of gravitation has its seat, and from which the Almighty governs his universe … ’ (Studies in the Scriptures, Vol. III, 1891, p. 327, italics added).

The constellation of the seven stars forming the Pleides.… It has been suggested, and with much weight, that one of the stars of that group is the dwelling-place of Jehovah.… The constellation of the Pleiades is a small one compared with others.… But the greatness in size of other stars or planets is small when compared with the Pleiades in importance, because the Pleiades is the place of the eternal throne of God … (Reconciliation, 1928, p. 14, italics added).

Although it was accepted as “the truth” for decades, this teaching appears so nonsensical to Witnesses today that reading it can help awaken in them the desire to critically examine other Watchtower doctrines.

Another example that could beneficially be shown to a Witness is found in The Finished Mystery, the seventh volume of Studies in the Scriptures, published in 1917. As is typical of other JW publications, this book interprets much of the Bible as if the inspired Word were written with specific reference to the Watchtower Society. But The Finished Mystery carries this to an extreme that even a present-day JW would find ridiculous. Thus when Revelation 14:20 symbolically describes blood flowing from a winepress in a deep torrent for a distance of “a thousand and six hundred furlongs” (about 200 miles), the book interprets this as prophesying the precise distance from where The Finished Mystery was produced in Scranton, Pennsylvania, to its shipping destination at the organization’s Bethel offices in Brooklyn, New York. The verse-by-verse commentary actually cites the “Official Railway Guide” for the distance from the Lackawanna station in Scranton to Hoboken Terminal in New Jersey, and then adds the “New York City Engineer’s official distance Hoboken to the Bethel, via Barclay Street Ferry, Fulton Street and Fulton Ferry” … coming up with a figure that is claimed to be the exact distance predicted in the Bible at Revelation 14:20 (The Finished Mystery, 1926 edition, p. 230).

Evidently fascinated by railroads, the Watchtower Society also includes in the same book a verse-by-verse discussion of Job 40:15 through 41:34, in which leviathan is interpreted to be a prophecy of the steam locomotive. For a full two pages, the commentary presents a “corrected translation” of Job with the claimed prophetic fulfillment inserted in brackets, as in the following excerpt covering 41:1–6 (page 85):

“Thou wilt lengthen out leviathan [the locomotive] with a hook [automatic coupler] or with a snare [coupling-pin] which thou wilt cause his tongue [coupling link] to drop down. Wilt thou not place a ring [piston] in his nostrils [cylinders] or pierce through his cheeks [piston-ends] with a staff [piston rod]? Will he make repeated supplications unto thee [to get off the track]? Or will he utter soft tones unto thee [when he screeches with the whistle]?… Wilt thou play with him as with a bird [make him whistle at will]? Or wilt thou bind [enslave] him for thy maidens [so that you can take them to a picnic or convention]? Companies [of stockholders] will feast upon him [his earnings] … ”

Today’s sect leaders, in agreement with most other commentators, understand leviathan to mean a crocodile. Most Witnesses would be truly shocked to see that the organization once claimed it represented the steam locomotive.

Now, if the Watchtower Society can teach that God lives on the star Alcyone in the Pleiades star system, that Revelation 14:20 tells the distance from Scranton, Pennsylvania, to Brooklyn Bethel via certain railroads and ferries, and that Job’s leviathan prophesied the steam locomotive, what of the Society’s other teachings? Might not even the less fanciful ones be just as wrong? That is the question that should rear its head in the minds of Jehovah’s Witnesses who are exposed to the information presented here.

You can help your loved one reason on this by asking a few challenging questions. For example: Since the Society claims to be God’s “channel of communication,” did he tell Watchtower writers that he lived on the star Alcyone? If not, then why did they keep “communicating” that teaching in the magazines and books for so many years? If the Society was wrong in interpreting Job’s leviathan as applying to the steam locomotive of the World War I era, might it not also be wrong in applying other Bible verses to that time period? And, what about the organization’s presenting Revelation 14:20 as a prophecy about the distance its own book traveled via rail and ferry? Might this not also indicate that the interpretation of other verses as relating to the Society might also be the result of narrow, self-centered thinking? Keep bringing the discussion back to the main point: that the organization is not God’s prophesied “faithful and discreet slave,” but, rather, a man-made counterfeit.