This video is specifically for Jehovah’s Witnesses, and you’ll see why in a moment.
If you are or have been one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, let me ask you this: Did you ever refer to your religious faith as “the truth”? Would you ask a fellow Witness whom you just met, perhaps at a convention, a question like this: “How long have you been in the truth?” Or perhaps, “Are members of your family also in the truth?”
Now let me ask you this: Do you love truth? Not love the truth, but love truth? Would you sacrifice everything for truth, like the man who sold everything he owned to acquire a single pearl of great value? You remember the parable, don’t you?
If so, then consider now that Jesus Christ is speaking to you personally when he says:
“I have spoken these things to you that you may not be stumbled.” (John 16:1)
What things had he spoken of, and why was there a danger of being stumbled—in what sense?
To answer that, let’s go back to the first century to the situation at that time. You’ll be amazed at the parallels we’re going to uncover with your situation.
Jesus was speaking to his Jewish disciples. They had grown up believing they had the truth. They were part of the only form of worship that God approved of. They were the one true religion. All around them were false religions, pagans who worshipped mythological gods, like Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva.
The leaders of their religion were the scribes and Pharisees, together with the Sadducees and chief priests. These men formed the Sanhedrin, the highest Jewish religious and judicial council in the first century. They were the Governing Body of Israel. They followed the law of Moses, but they went beyond the law, making up rules of their own. They hated Jesus and refused to recognize him as the Messiah. They tried to force others to also reject Jesus as the Messiah.
Do you recall the incident when Jesus cured a man born blind? When the Jewish leaders asked the man’s parents how he came to have his sight restored, they evaded giving them a straight answer out of fear.
“‘Ask him. He is of age. He must speak for himself.’ His parents said these things because they were in fear of the Jews, for the Jews had already come to an agreement that, if anyone confessed him as Christ, he should get expelled from the synagogue.” (John 9:21, 22)
There was no scriptural basis for this rule that the Jews had made up. Making rules that go beyond what is written in Scripture, does that ring a bell for you?
Now try to put yourself in the place of one of Jesus’ apostles—simple men, like Peter and John, mere fishermen. He was asking them to reject the idea that they were in the truth, that following their religion was the path to salvation. They were surrounded by evidence of what seemed like God’s blessing. A magnificent temple where they met every sabbath. Centuries of tradition. The law given to them from God through Moses. Yet here, this simple carpenter from Nazareth was telling them to follow him. He wasn’t pointing to another religious organization, nor was he talking about reforming what was wrong with their form of worship. He offered something new and it all pointed only to him. Most could not grasp that.
On one occasion, when he spoke very deliberately, telling the multitude that to be saved they had to eat his flesh and drink his blood, most departed from him without even asking for some clarification. He then turned to his apostles and asked:
“‘You do not want to go also, do you?’ Simon Peter answered him: ‘Lord, whom shall we go away to? You have sayings of everlasting life. We have believed and have come to know that you are the Holy One of God.’” (John 6:67–69)
Notice, Peter didn’t reply, “Lord, where else shall we go?” No, he asked, “Lord, to whom shall we go?”
They were coming to realized that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. But the way to what? The way to the Father, the truth about the Father, and the life from the Father.
If you are or have been one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, the parallel is stunning, is it not?
In my case, I was raised from infancy to believe I was in the only true religion on earth. I was taught that we alone had the truth. I was led to believe that only Jehovah’s Witnesses were preaching the good news in all the inhabited earth. Like Peter and Andrew, James and John, I was in the truth. All the other religions, including those claiming to be Christian, were steeped in paganism, with their crosses, their idols, and their hellfire and Trinity doctrines.
Like ancient Israel, which started out with Moses as its mediator who brought God’s law down from Mount Sinai, my faith had Jesus as its mediator, and it was the law of the Christ that we followed. Or so I thought.
But just as the governing body of Israel layered their oral law upon God’s written law, restricting the Israelites and making them beholden to their leaders, so Jehovah’s Witnesses did the same.
We were required to turn in monthly reports of our time in field service. If we didn’t do so over a period of six months, we would no longer be counted as publishers, members of the congregation. There were many restrictions which were imposed by the leaders of the organization. For instance, women had to wear skirts out in the preaching work, even in the dead of winter. Brothers had to wear suite and tie, and couldn’t sport a beard. We couldn’t celebrate birthdays or most other holidays. We had to shun anyone the elders told us to shun, even though we had no idea why. For a time, we had to refuse organ transplants. And until just a few weeks ago, we had to deny ourselves and our children blood transfusions, no matter the need.
Like Israel, we had an oral law—though in our case, it was written down in the Watchtower magazine and in letters to the elders—that went beyond what was written in Scripture. Because of that, just like Israel of old, we lost God’s favor because of exceeding our authority. I say our authority, because we all went along with it, and so were all culpable to some extent though the leadership of the organization, like the leaders of the ancient Sanhedrin, bore the heaviest burden of guilt.
But there came a day, as it did for those fishermen, when a man, the son of man, called out to us to follow him. For me, it was subtle, as I’m sure it has been for many of you. But there came a day when you stopped listening to the words of Jesus through the filter of the Watchtower magazine and began to hear him plainly. His words were clear and powerful, and they spoke from the pages of the Bible. And you came to see that what you had been taught all your life was not what Jesus teaches.
With that realization, let us return to John 16 to learn what the things Jesus had spoken of were, so that we also might not be stumbled. Remember that John’s writing was in Greek, and there were no chapter and verse divisions in the original manuscript. So, just before Jesus said those words we read at the start, he said this:
“These things I command you, that you love one another. If the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were part of the world, the world would be fond of what is its own. Now because you are no part of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, for this reason the world hates you.” (John 15:17–19)
As Witnesses, we were taught to think of the world as the political systems surrounding us, but for Jesus’ Jewish disciples, the world was Israel. The Jews in general, and their leaders in particular, hated Jesus and eventually killed him by collaborating with the Romans. The world was the religious system of Israel, and that system hated Jesus and so hated his followers.
You may not have thought of the world that hates you as the Organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses, but that is your whole life and your hold surroundings. Your world as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses is the Organization, and once you side with Jesus, it will hate you.
Oh, they say they believe in Jesus—you can’t call yourself a Christian if you don’t mention Jesus—but in reality they minimize his role in myriads of ways, as is evident in a recent article in the July 2026 Watchtower on page 20. The title is “Help Others Come to Know Jehovah.” The theme text is “This means everlasting life, their coming to know you, the only true God.”—John 17:3.
But they removed part of the full text, which reads: “This means everlasting life, their coming to know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ.” (John 17:3, NWT)
The name Jehovah appears 84 times in that single article. But Jesus only appears 6 times. Yet, If you begin to promote the teachings of Jesus Christ in the congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses, you’ll immediately encounter resistance. Just try referring to Jesus as often as they refer to Jehovah, and you’ll see the proof of what I say.
Yet Jesus name appears over a thousand times in the Greek Scriptures while God’s name doesn’t appear once in the original manuscripts. Do you think that maybe Jehovah is trying to tell us something about the importance of his son?
Continuing with the things Jesus was speaking of, we read from verse 20.
“Keep in mind the word I said to you: A slave is not greater than his master. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have observed my word, they will also observe yours. But they will do all these things against you on account of my name, because they do not know the One who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin. But now they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me also hates my Father.” (John 15:20–23)
We now know that the Governing Body was wrong about blood transfusions. Accepting or rejecting them was always a matter of conscience. Yet, if you came to that awareness from your study of Jesus’ words without the Watchtower filter and then proclaimed it to your brothers and sisters, you would have been persecuted. You would have been thrown out of the congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses and labels a divisive apostate.
Jesus said that they will also persecute you if you observe his word.
They claim to know Jehovah, the Father, but they cannot persecute those who speak truth while claiming to love the God of truth, Jehovah. Their actions prove that they hate God and Christ.
Now we have this reassurance:
“But this happened in order to fulfill the word written in their Law: ‘They hated me without cause.’ When the helper comes that I will send you from the Father, the spirit of the truth, which comes from the Father, that one will bear witness about me; and you, in turn, are to bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning.” (John 15:25–27)
You may not realize it, but you too have been with Jesus from the beginning. Why can we say that? Because your love of truth was always there. Once you realized that what you had been taught was not the truth, you didn’t make excuses. You didn’t close your eyes and stop up your ears so as not to see and hear. You saw it as a pearl of great value and were willing to sacrifice everything to get hold of it. This happened because the spirit of truth is in you—the spirit that comes from the Father.
So now let’s return to our initial scripture and read the context, but I’ll try to bring it into our modern day with a little judicious editing.
“I have said these things to you so that you may not be stumbled. Men will expel you from the synagogue [or the Kingdom Hall]. In fact, the hour is coming when everyone who kills you [or shuns you] will think he has offered a sacred service to God. But they will do these things because they have not come to know either the Father or me. Nevertheless, I have told you these things so that when the hour for them to happen arrives, you will remember that I told them to you.” (John 16:1–4)
When the brothers and sisters you called friends in the Kingdom Hall turn on you and shun you and call you an apostate, remember Jesus’ words to you and do not be stumbled. You are doing the right thing by standing up for truth. They may now hate you, but in doing so, they show they hate Jesus. And who knows—perhaps one or two of them will realize their error and turn around and join you.
What is important is that you have now passed from death to life and have entered into a remarkable new reality, one that is hard to contemplate but is nonetheless real.
The apostle Paul expressed it beautifully, as rendered in the New Living Translation:
“So don’t boast about following a particular human leader. For everything belongs to you—whether Paul or Apollos or Peter or the world, or life and death, or the present and the future. Everything belongs to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.” (1 Corinthians 3:21–23)
Dwell on that for a bit.
Thank you for watching and for sharing with me in this work.