The Governing Body just reversed a policy that they’ve enforced since I was a teenager. It’s their prohibition on Higher Education.
Is it appropriate for Christians to pursue additional education? With this update, we’d like to clarify our understanding. While there are dangers involved in pursuing certain forms of education, basically, whether to obtain additional education or not is a matter for personal decision. And, while an elder or a mature friend may discuss with us the pros and cons about obtaining additional education, no Christian, including the elders, should judge a fellow Christian’s personal decision on this matter.
What should concern you about this reversal is this: Does it come from God or from men? If it comes from God, as the Governing Body would have you believe, then from whom did the previous policy come?
They made it virtually a sin to pursue higher education. I say “virtually” because while they couldn’t disfellowship you for going to university, they went out of their way to vilify anyone who ignored the Organization’s rule against it.
Here’s the proof of that from a leaked video produced in 2021. This video was used to instruct congregation elders at training seminars and was JW.org policy until just a few months ago.
Brothers, thank you for considering this matter regarding Brother Brown and the impact that his family situation is having on the congregation. I asked you brothers to review his qualifications as an elder after we spoke, and Brother Brown had an opportunity to explain to me some of the decisions that he's made for his family. I'm aware that you brothers have considered this matter before, but since then, another one of Brother Brown's daughters have enrolled in a school for higher education, which raises questions as to how this affects the congregation.
Does the flat, matter-of-fact tone of the coordinator surprise you? Do you get the feeling that the holy spirit is active at this meeting? Remember, this was specifically staged by JW.org as a training tool. This is how the Governing Body wants elders to behave. Do you see the love of Christ being displayed here? Let’s watch some more.
When we make decisions, it's important that we consider the conscience of the congregation as well as the elder body. Brother Brown, I know this can't be easy for you, and it's not easy for us either. Please be assured that we love you, and we only want what's best for and your family. Remember, you're among friends here, so please feel free to express yourself and to answer any questions that your fellow elders may have.
This is a carefully crafted training video designed to show elders how to deal with someone who dares to challenge the Organization’s policy and direction. The coordinator’s words, though framed as loving concern, come across as formulaic rather than heartfelt. The emphasis on “we” and “your fellow elders” shifts the focus from personal care to Organizational authority. His expressed empathy, delivered in a flat monotone, shows no real emotional investment. Even the invitation for Brother Brown to “express yourself” is tightly bounded by the expectation of answering elder questions, creating an atmosphere of managed compliance rather than true support.
Brothers, we are obligated to put the interests of the congregation first. Brothers, with all due respect, I don't agree with you that the congregation is disturbed about my or my family's situation. I've been in the congregation for 20 years. I know the publishers very well, and I'm sure no one is disturbed about my daughters pursuing higher education. No one has approached me expressing that they're disturbed about me supporting my daughters seeking higher education, trying to better themselves. It's not like they're leaving the truth. Brother Brown, thank you for expressing how you feel. Let's give your fellow elders an opportunity to express their observations or concerns. Brothers, are there any comments or questions that you have for Brother Brown?
The coordinator’s insincere reply makes the attitude unmistakable: “Brother Brown, thank you for expressing how you feel.” What he’s saying is, “Okay, we’ve heard you, now listen up, because we’ve already made our decision.” What follows is mere theatre, a staged display meant to give the illusion of fairness. In reality, the elders are bound to follow the Organization’s directives, and Brother Brown’s removal is a foregone conclusion.
Andy, the scriptural qualifications at first Timothy, Chapter 3, say that an overseer, in verse 4 and 5, should be a man presiding over his own household in a fine manner, having his children in subjection with all seriousness. Verse 3 says that he should be reasonable not quarrelsome. Now, I know this is difficult for you. It's difficult for us to…Don't tell me about being difficult. When we started this discussion, you all brothers said you love me and my family. Right now, I'm not I'm feeling it. Brother Brown, I'm sorry that you feel that we don't have your best interests at heart. All I can say is that we're just trying to come to the best conclusion for everyone involved. Please let them finish. That way we can have all the facts on the table, and then we can move forward. Thank you. Andy, as I was saying.
Before David Splane’s talk, the Organization leaned on 1 Timothy chapter 3 to argue that an elder who allowed his children to pursue higher education was failing to preside over his household properly. After Splane’s talk, that same verse suddenly lost its force. What changed? Has the Organization stopped caring about the conscience of the congregation? Was it ever a thing? For seventy years they insisted on one standard, only to reverse it overnight. Is this really new light from God, or are they simply feeling the pressure from nations, like Japan, that are now investigating high-control religious groups?
Do you remember what worried the Pharisees and Jewish priests and motivated them to murder Jesus Christ?
“Consequently the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the Sanhedrin together and began to say: ‘What are we to do, because this man performs many signs? If we let him alone this way, they will all put faith in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.’” (John 11:47–48)
The flurry of recent changes in JW practices and policies appears to stem from the Governing Body’s own anxieties rather than divine direction. If you are one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, it may be hard to accept the idea that these men could be acting wickedly. Perhaps you excuse them as merely imperfect men doing their best. But are you willing to put that assumption to the test? How honest are you prepared to be? Jehovah has not left us without a way to distinguish truth from falsehood, or sincere guidance from harmful lies. Consider the words of James, the half-brother of Jesus:
“Every good gift and every perfect present is from above, for it comes down from the Father of the celestial lights, and with him there is not a variation of the turning of the shadow.” (James 1:17)
How does Jehovah God give his good gifts and perfect presents to his people? According to the Governing Body, who claim to be the Faithful and Discreet Slave, these gifts come through them in the form of food at the proper time.
How exactly does Jehovah reveal clarified understanding of the Scriptures—new light—in modern times? When the Governing Body is meeting together, as the faithful and discreet slave, how does it work? So just with those two first points, it’s very clear to us, how spiritual truth, new understanding, is communicated from heaven to earth. By means of the holy spirit through the channel of the faithful and discreet slave.
So, was the previous policy, typified by the leaked video we saw earlier, also food at the proper time? If it was truly revealed by Jehovah, the Father of the celestial lights, then it would be a good gift and a perfect present. But it wasn’t, was it? Take this account, which I’m sure is representative of thousands of others.
Growing up opposite bethel, our congregation was essentially the congregation every Bethel visitor attended, from 1 meeting to a few months. Every meeting was like 60% visitors.
For years, we'd regularly receive groups of about 30 young black brothers from the very poorest rural areas of South Africa for a period of 6 months at a time. Many of them gave up life changing study bursaries [or scholarships] that could've transformed the lives of their families, just like their friends who are living amazing lives in the city. They gave up the only opportunity they had to pick their families up out of poverty. They did it for JEHOVAH!
Then, when Bethel started downsizing, I spoke to a few of them of them. Everyone was in a state of panic because the reality of being sent back to the poverty they left behind was finally dawning on them. Then they disappear, "Reassigned to their home congregations."
Now they returned home, absolute disappointments to everyone who had hope in them. They become a laughingstock to people in the community who tell them, "We warmed you about that religion, you thought you knew better."
This one brother told me that when Bethel accepted him, he had a huge fight with his non-JW dad because he refused to study, so he walked out straight to Bethel. Now he's being "Reassigned back to his home congregation."
Now, an announcement comes, and they find out that it never mattered. They sacrificed everything, the only opportunity to finally see joy in their families' faces... but it was all for nothing
Now they scroll through social media, seeing past friends who went to college doing very well.
They are going to see those who were "spiritually weak" thriving. Meanwhile, they did everything "the right way," and their reward is a bag of thorns.
What a cruel joke to play on people's lives.
I remember that time in the early nineties when worldwide staff was cut by 25%. Often, the older and more experienced were sent packing while younger ones remained.
The ban on higher education was not food at the proper time. It could not have been a good and perfect gift from Jehovah. Therefore, it came from men. Wicked men? You may protest,
“No—they’re just imperfect men.” Yes, we are all imperfect, and we all make mistakes. But what is it that turns mere imperfection into wickedness? Is it not a hardened heart—one that refuses to repent, refuses to admit wrongdoing? Did you hear even a whisper of repentance from David Splane’s lips as he announced the reversal of a long-standing and harmful policy?
Well, knowing this, then we are not embarrassed about adjustments that are made, nor is an apology needed for not getting it exactly right previously.
“Not get it exactly right”!? Jeffrey, old chap, you got it exactly wrong! But you’re not even willing to say you’re sorry? What is in your heart, man?
Many of us dismissed higher education because Fred Franz pushed the idea that 1975 would mark the end. When that prediction collapsed, they never apologized or accepted responsibility—instead, they blamed the rank and file. In the mid-1990s, they quietly dropped the “generation” teaching that had led us to expect the end before the turn of the century. Did they apologize for misleading us for nearly a hundred years? Of course not. And rather than owning their error, they replaced it with something even more absurd: the overlapping generation doctrine, yet another scheme to keep the flock fixated on a manufactured countdown to the end.
Now I remember when our current understanding first came out, some quickly speculated. They said well what if a person in his 40s was anointed in 1990? He would then be a part of the second group of this generation. Theoretically he could live into his 80s. Does that mean this old system is going to continue possibly till 2040? Well, indeed that was speculative, and Jesus, remember he said that we weren't supposed to try to find a formula for the time of the end. In Matthew 24:36, just two verses later, two verses later. He said, "Concerning that day and hour nobody knows," And even if the speculation is a possibility there'd be very few in that category. And consider this significant point. There is nothing, nothing in Jesus’ prophecy that suggests those of the second group alive at the time of the end would all be old, decrepit and close to death. There's no reference to age.
Of course, their eyes were fixed on 2040, Kenneth, because that’s how you brothers trained them to think. They’d naturally run the calculation and see that a forty-year-old man, anointed man in 1990, whose anointing overlapped with Fred Franz, would be 90 years old in 2040. By that time, he’d be surrounded by Governing Body members of similar age, the very ones Kenneth Flodin assures his viewers would not be old and decrepit when the end comes.
Flodin’s talk was delivered in 2015, just ten years ago. Now we stand only fifteen years from the supposed end of the overlapping generation. And what’s happening? They’re quietly retreating from that absurd doctrine, hoping the flock won’t notice the silence as yet another failed teaching fades into the background.
In its place comes the November 2025 Watchtower (Study Edition, page 4, paragraph 7), which asks: “What can help those who are saddened by the possibility that the end of this system will not come in their lifetime?”
Let’s pause and review. The Father of the celestial lights gives only good and perfect gifts, and he never changes. By contrast, the Governing Body, over the last one hundred years, has handed out harmful and shifting doctrines, constantly changing course while taking no responsibility for the damage they’ve caused. They claim to provide the flock with “food at the proper time,” insisting that Jehovah himself reveals truth through them. But what has been served is bad food, and when the flock falls ill from it, the Governing Body does nothing to heal them.
Jesus tells us:
“Who is the man among you whom his son asks for a fish—he will not hand him a serpent, will he? Therefore, if you, although being wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more so will your Father who is in the heavens give good things to those asking him?” (Matthew 7:9–11)
Jehovah’s Witnesses have spent their lives asking for fish, yet time and again they are handed serpents. My brothers and sisters, it is time to wake up. Every good and perfect present comes from Jehovah, but the poisonous offerings you’ve been fed can only come from Satan.
Paul tells us:
“For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself keeps disguising himself as an angel of light. It is therefore nothing extraordinary if his ministers also keep disguising themselves as ministers of righteousness. But their end will be according to their works.” (2 Corinthians 11:13–15)
So, we have Satan disguising himself as a light-producing angel, and that light is transmitted through men who disguise themselves as ministers of righteousness. But their end will be according to their works.
Don’t you find it interesting that those verses are in the present progressive tense? Satan keeps transforming himself, and his ministers “keep disguising themselves.” Those are the characteristics of inveterate liars. It is hard to sustain a lie when reality hits you in the face. The “generation” lie worked, but they kept having to revise it every decade until finally dropping it at the end of the 20th century, then resurrecting it with Splane’s silly overlapping generation, and now dropping that again.
The true faithful and discreet slave provides good food from the Father of the celestial lights. That is good food that never changes.
But there’s another slave, an evil one:
“But if ever that evil slave says in his heart, ‘My master is delaying,’ and he starts to beat his fellow slaves and to eat and drink with the confirmed drunkards, the master of that slave will come on a day that he does not expect and in an hour that he does not know, and he will punish him with the greatest severity and will assign him his place with the hypocrites.” (Matthew 24:48–51)
Babylon the Great is a drunkard, “drunk with the blood of the holy ones and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus” (Revelation 17:6).
The evil slave is cut from the same cloth—an abusive leader who beats his fellow slaves in countless ways. He compels them to build halls with their own money and free labor, only to seize ownership of all properties worldwide and sell those halls out from under them. He demands they deposit all their donations into his accounts. No independent bank accounts allowed. He demands a monthly stipend—disguised as a “voluntary donation”—from every congregation. He commands them to shun their own children, grandchildren, parents, and grandparents if they dare to leave or expose his lies. Worst of all, he insists that children be left to die rather than receive a lifesaving transfusion, clinging to a twisted application of a single verse rather than humbling himself and admitting he was wrong.
How many more serpents will you swallow, Jehovah’s Witnesses? How many more blows will you endure before you refuse to be beaten any longer?
“And I heard another voice out of heaven say: ‘Get out of her, my people, if you do not want to share with her in her sins, and if you do not want to receive part of her plagues.’” (Revelation 18:4)
Jesus never told you to join another religion or Organization—he simply said, “Get out.” You do not need an institution to worship God. In truth, such institutions only stand in your way. “Religion is a snare and a racket.” How much more proof do you need that Rutherford’s projection is true.
When James urged us to look for every good and perfect gift from the Father of lights, who does not change, he prefaced it with this warning: “Do not be misled, my beloved brothers” (James 1:16). Do not be misled. Do not mistake Satan’s counterfeit light for God’s true light. And do not accept a serpent when what you asked for was a fish.
Now is the time to open your eyes, to step out from under the yoke of men, and to trust your Heavenly Father who gives only good gifts. He calls you, not to an Organization, but to himself, through his Son, Jesus Christ.
Thank you so much for watching.