Chester Harris. I wanted so much to be right that I became a JW. I thought for twenty years after that I was right. When I was first shown some Watchtower blunders and false prophecies, I did what most JW’s do; I defended the Watchtower. I continued defending it for years after because I sincerely thought that these so-called “false prophecies” were just the Devil’s sinister attempts to discredit the Watchtower Society. I saw it as an intrigue on a cosmic scale; and I could be a player. That meant investigating the most incriminating evidence against the Watchtower. Nothing was too dangerous or too apostate to read. If I couldn’t successfully answer any and all allegations against the Society, then I couldn’t consider myself a major league player.

The evidence I read really made me sick to my stomach. I found out that I had frittered away over twenty years selling a sham religion. During most of those years I had cultivated (with the Watchtower’s help) a “holier-than-thou” attitude towards other religions. Now it was my turn to eat dirt. I could do one of two things, I could admit my grave error – or I could entrench myself in error and fight it out. That was unthinkable! I didn’t like the alternative; but I had no choice. I did the right thing and abandoned the Watchtower Society… The Watchtower Society has been wrong on so many things that we all lost count long ago. How many frank admissions-I mean really frank admissions-can you remember them having made?

[from a letter by Mr. Harris to the JW Research Journal]

Ron Frye, former circuit overseer and Witness for 33 years, after having researched the organization…

I did not want the Society to be proven false! When I began my research into the doctrine of the faithful and discreet slave in 1980, I did so with the hope that I would be able to restore my confidence in the Watch Tower Society. But the more I compared the teachings of the Society with the Scriptures and compared its explanations of its own history with proven historical facts, the more obvious it became that its teachings regarding the spiritual authority of its leaders had no basis in either the Scriptures or history. Thus I was forced intellectually to dismiss the Society’s claim that it represents in any way the so-called faithful and discreet slave class. At best I concluded that Watch Tower leaders could be no more a group of sincere religious men who, unfortunately, had taken themselves far too seriously, a fact which has led to their presumptuousness.

… [Charles Taze] Russell was a man whom, Jehovah’s Witnesses will argue, God used to revive the great teachings of Jesus and the apostles. Why, then, do they not study his books today in their congregations if no more than from a historical standpoint? Because much of it, if not most of it, would be considered heresy today!

Grace. Left Jehovah's Witnesses over the false 1914 doctrine. For 25 Years, Grace thought she was serving the only TRUE God – Jehovah, but when Watchtower leaders made it mandatory for all followers to believe in 1914 as the date of Christ’s presence, Grace was “kicked” out of the “Ark” (Watchtower organization) because she could not accept this doctrine. She was devastated! But Jehovah had not left her. He picked her up and brought her to Jesus–the Way, the TRUTH, and the Life!

Dennis. Fear of Armageddon led him out of the Watchtower. Growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness, the biggest fear that drove Dennis to conform to Watchtower standards was the fear that God’s battle of “Armageddon” would come and destroy him if he wasn’t faithful enough. Years of striving to make himself acceptable to God and serving in many leadership roles in the organization left Dennis feeling like a hypocrite. His conscience simply would not permit him to support the unloving policies he was witnessing in the Watchtower organization. How could he continue to wear the façade of being a loyal Jehovah’s Witness when he was not one in his heart? Leaving his leadership position in the Watchtower, Dennis turned to God and found true love in a Christian community where people are accepted, not because of their performance, but because of the ransom sacrifice Jesus Christ applied to all who place their trust in Him alone for eternal life.