Jehovah’s Witnesses are taught that the members of their Governing Body are all chosen by holy spirit and as such are righteous men. The same goes for branch committee members, and the circuit overseers that visit the local congregations. Even the elders in each congregation are said to be appointed by holy spirit.
So, when Jehovah’s Witnesses read what Paul wrote to the congregation in Corinth, they think that it applies to all other religions but not to their own. They ignore the fact that Paul wasn’t speaking about other religions. He was referring to the congregation of spirit-anointed Christians in Corinth. Paul wrote about some of them this way:
“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)
Are the men who lead the Organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses truly righteous men, or is it all a sham, a façade, a pretense to dup a trusting flock.
It’s easy to point the finger at other Christian denominations but shouldn’t you look at your own religion first?
Jesus says:
“Why, then, do you look at the straw in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the rafter in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Allow me to extract the straw from your eye’; when, look! a rafter is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First extract the rafter from your own eye, and then you will see clearly how to extract the straw from your brother’s eye.” (Matthew 7:3-5)
But if the leaders of your religion are truly disguised as ministers of righteousness, how can you see through their disguise? Don’t worry. It’s not as hard as you might think. In his rebuke to the Corinthians, Paul gave us the key to see through the façade that the ministers of righteousness create to fool their followers. He wrote:
“…their end will be according to their works.” (2 Corinthians 11:15)
To put it another way: They can talk the talk, but they can’t walk the walk. When push comes to shove, they will do what their master, Satan, has always done. They will lie.
They will lie, because that is their chief weapon, the same one Satan has used since the start. Jesus made that clear to us when he rebuked the ministers of righteousness in his day, the Jewish religious leaders.
“Jesus said to them: “If God were YOUR Father, YOU would love me, for from God I came forth and am here. Neither have I come of my own initiative at all, but that One sent me forth. Why is it YOU do not know what I am speaking? Because YOU cannot listen to my word.” (John 8:42, 43)
Does that ring a bell for you? Have you tried to speak the truth to your JW friends and family members only to have them turn a deaf ear to your words? Not only will they not listen to what you say, but they cannot. They are ruled not by love of God, but by fear of man.
Jesus identifies the root cause of their spiritual deafness when he continues speaking to the Pharisees:
“YOU are from YOUR father the Devil, and YOU wish to do the desires of YOUR father. That one was a manslayer when he began, and he did not stand fast in the truth, because truth is not in him. When he speaks the lie, he speaks according to his own disposition, because he is a liar and the father of [the lie]. Because I, on the other hand, tell the truth, YOU do not believe me. Who of YOU convicts me of sin? If I speak truth, why is it YOU do not believe me? He that is from God listens to the sayings of God. This is why YOU do not listen, because YOU are not from God.” (John 8:44-47)
What incredibly powerful words. Those self-proclaimed ministers of righteousness were in fact, children of Satan. They were his offspring. Jesus told them that they wished to do the desires of their satanic father. They wanted to serve Satan. Imagine that!
Given Paul’s warning that ‘their end will be according to their works,’ and Jesus’ words to religious hypocrites, we have to ask: Are modern-day religious leaders producing the kind of fruit that comes from God or from his enemy?”
Well, let’s look at their works, because Paul tells us that their end will be according to their works. Do we see these “ministers of righteous” acting righteously? Do they speak truth, or do they lie to protect themselves as Satan does?
Did you notice that Jesus didn’t stop at calling the devil the Father of the lie. He also said that he was a manslayer. He killed people. Not directly, but his lies led to the death of Adam and Eve and through them, every other human that has ever lived.
The scribes and Pharisees and priests to whom Jesus was speaking were also like their father, the Devil. They didn’t just lie. They were also manslayers. They successfully conspired to have the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, murdered by the Romans. They also persecuted and killed many of his followers in the years that followed.
For that reason, their end was according to their works. Yehovah God killed them using the very Romans they themselves had used to murder his Son. They were destroyed along with their cherished nation less than forty years later, in 70 C.E.
Nothing has changed. Many modern religious leaders also use lies and deception to try to protect themselves and their nation, that is, the religion they lead. They also persecute the innocent and hate those who stand up for truth and who preach the good news of Jesus Christ. Like the Pharisees of old, the modern ministers of righteousness value their money, their power, and their position. If they feel those things are in jeopardy, they lie and they accuse others to deflect attention from themselves.
Let me give you one very current example.
In the July 2025 Watchtower, there is a five-page article praising the head of the legal department of the Watch Tower Society, Phillip Brumley. Mr. Brumley has fought many legal battles on behalf of the religion of Jehovah’s Witnesses. If you read only that article about him, as most Jehovah’s Witnesses will, you’d think of him as a champion of freedom of religion, a truly righteous man who stands up for the weak and protects the innocent.
So, it would surely come as a surprise to learn that he has just been fined $154,448.11 for lying to the United States District Court of Montana, USA. This fine has nothing to do with religious persecution. If it did, the Watchtower would have exploited it as an example of how Jehovah’s Witnesses expect to be persecuted by Satan’s wicked system of things. But there is no mention of this fine in any Watch Tower publication or broadcast. Why? Because in this case, it is the Organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses that is doing the persecuting of innocents.
According to court documents, the Watch Tower lawyer, Phillip Brumley engaged in an “intentional and sustained effort to deceive” the District Court of Montana in two cases involving child sexual abuse in which the Watch Tower was being sued for its failures to protect the victims.
His efforts delayed court proceedings by 17 months, resulting in added pain and suffering on the part of the victims, as well as additional court costs. The fine that was inflicted on Mr. Brumley was specifically to reimburse the plaintiffs for their costs.
There are many more details which I won’t go into here. I’ll put a link to the reference material in the description of this video for those who are interested in knowing more.
The takeaway from all this is that acting on behalf of his client, the Watch Tower, Bible and Tract Society, Phillip Brumley lied to the court and was found guilty of lying. Yet, the Governing Body, who claim to be righteous servants of Jehovah, the God of Truth, did not condemn nor discipline Brumley for lying. Instead, they’ve gone out of their way to praise the man with no less than a five-page spread in their flagship magazine, the Watchtower, Study Edition.
If confronted, they would likely excuse Brumley’s strategy as “theocratic warfare” which is a non-biblical term employed back in the 1950s and 1960s during the Nathan Knorr/Fred Franz era. Theocratic warfare uses examples like Rahab who deceived the men who wanted to kill the Israelite spies she was hiding (Joshua 2:1-4), or King David who acted like a crazy person to avoid being killed by the King of Gath. (1 Samuel 21:12)
But there is a fundamental difference between what David and Rahab did and what Phillip Brumley did. The assumption we all are conditioned to make is that any statement that isn’t true, is a lie. But is that a reasonable assumption?
Revelation 21:8 tells us that “all the liars” are destined for the lake of fire, the second death. Yet, Rahab was blessed when she did this:
“The king of Jericho was told: “Look! Israelite men have come in here tonight to spy out the land.” At that the king of Jericho sent word to Rahab: “Bring out the men who came and are staying in your house, for they have come to spy out the entire land.” But the woman took the two men and hid them. Then she said: “Yes, the men came to me, but I did not know where they were from. And at dark when the city gate was about to be closed, the men went out. I do not know where the men went, but if you quickly chase after them, you will catch up with them.” (Joshua 2:2-5)
How could she be approved of by God if what she did was to lie? You see, what makes an untruthful statement into a lie, a sin, is the moral dimension. Perhaps we can illustrate it this way.
Revelation 21:8 also tells us that all the murderers are destined for the lake of fire, the second death. Yet, the Israelites of Joshua’s day killed thousands of Canaanites at the command of God. God himself has executed wicked people. Are we to claim that Yehovah God is a murderer? Of course not. All murder is killing, but not all killing is murder. It all depends on whether your action is righteous or wicked, and God is the one who determines what is right and what is wrong. Rahab’s deception protected God’s servants from harm, and so it was righteous, meaning it was not a lie, not a sin.
But in Brumley’s case, he wasn’t protecting God’s servants from an unrighteous attack by wicked people. The ones who needed protection were the suffering victims of child sexual abuse who were now seeking justice and compensation. There was nothing righteous about Brumley’s delaying tactic.
The Watch Tower Corporation is being sued in country after country by people who’ve been victimized by sexual predators that the Organization has ended up hiding and protecting.
How can they do that and still claim to represent Jehovah God? They clearly do not imitate his Son about whom Isaiah prophesied:
“No crushed reed will he break; and as for a dim flaxen wick, he will not extinguish it. In trueness he will bring forth justice. He will not grow dim nor be crushed until he sets justice in the earth itself; and for his law the islands themselves will keep waiting.” (Isaiah 42:3, 4)
A sexually abused child constitutes the most vulnerable of all God’s human children. They are like a crushed reed, but with loving care, they can be restored. Instead, by not dealing with the child predators in their midst, many crushed reeds have been broken. Many dim flaxen wicks have been extinguished. There are well-documented cases of victims who took their own life after being silenced or neglected by the Organization. These real tragedies underscore the deadly cost of injustice. And now that the day of accounting for their sins is at hand, and the Organization is facing lawsuits in country after country, and state after state, they continue to abuse these victims using tactics like Mr. Brumley has just been disciplined and fined by the court for using.
If you think we are being too harsh in reporting on this, if you think that the Organization is truly run by righteous men who value truth over all things, then you might consider writing in to headquarters to ask them to explain how they can justify supporting a man who has been found guilty of lying in court. Ask them why they haven’t removed him as an elder and expelled him from Bethel as their legal counsel. See if they are willing to respond as righteous truth-lovers would. Or do you fear to do so, feeling that they will turn on you for challenging them, labelling you as an apostate.
Before you do, think about what Jesus said:
“Do not give what is holy to dogs nor throw your pearls before swine, so that they may never trample them under their feet and turn around and rip you open.” (Matthew 7:6)
Thank you for listening.