Is the Watchtower Using the Same Playbook as Jonestown?

Three days ago, Jonathan Smith stood before millions of Jehovah's Witnesses on the Watchtower's official broadcast and asked a question that has never appeared before in 60 years of Watchtower publications: what if an instruction from the organization seems to put you in danger? His answer was that you obey anyway. That word—dangerous—is new. I searched the entire body of Watchtower literature going back six decades to be sure. In old magazines it shows up in articles about car accidents and household chemicals. In the context of obeying organizational direction, it has never appeared until now.

This matters because that word did not arrive out of nowhere. Between 2007 and 2024, the Watchtower spent nearly two decades systematically removing every reason a person might hesitate before an instruction. The language escalated one adjective at a time: from keep in step to even if it doesn't appear sound to even if it makes no sense to even if you don't understand why to even if it comes from imperfect men who make mistakes. Each rung was small enough to feel unremarkable on its own. Laid side by side, they form a staircase. Dangerous is the newest step—which means the only question worth asking is what comes next.

The Talk on Its Own Surface

The broadcast talk is titled "Faithfully Obey in What Is Least." It is built on Luke 16:10—"the person faithful in what is least is faithful also in much"—and walks through the Exodus: the plagues, the Passover, the Red Sea crossing. On its face the message sounds unremarkable. Be reliable in small things and you will be reliable in big ones. Lots of religions teach trusting God through difficult circumstances.

I was a baptized Jehovah's Witness for all of my life. I sat through hundreds of these talks. I know the difference between ordinary trust-God encouragement and something with a harder edge underneath it. This one has that harder edge, and it shows up in the very first line:

Well, our scripture text for today, along with the Watch Tower comments, uh indicate that our obedience in small matters may actually affect our survival during the coming great tribulation.

That is not a line about character. That is a line about staying alive. Once survival enters the frame, every instruction that follows carries a different weight. The talk then stacks quote after quote from recent Watchtowers to build its case—a sequence Smith himself lines up as proof of how consistent the message has been. This escalation is not something I assembled by combing for alarming sentences. It is a progression the organization is proud of.

Twenty Years of Language, One Rung at a Time

2007. The foundation:

We may well receive some detailed instructions. Our safe journey through those troublesome days will depend on keeping in step with other loyal servants of Jehovah.

Keep in step. Survival and obedience are already linked, but the language is soft enough that no one hears it as a threat. Marching in a parade.

2012. The first hard edge. From the simplified edition of the April Watchtower—the version written in plain language for newer members, younger members, those with the least education:

Christians will need to obey instructions from God's word and organization. We will be saved only if we obey the instructions we receive at that time.

Saved only if we obey. That is categorical. There is a detail worth pausing on: the regular study edition of that same article was softer—it said only that deliverance would "depend on obedience." The simplified edition was the one that spelled it out. The plainer the audience, the plainer the threat.

2013. The door marked "but this doesn't look right" gets nailed shut:

All of us must be ready to obey any instructions we may receive, whether these appear sound from a strategic or human standpoint or not.

The instruction may look strategically wrong, humanly wrong. Obey it anyway.

2021. The focus shifts to who is giving the orders:

At times, those appointed to take the lead may give direction that does not make sense to us. However, Jehovah blesses obedience.

No longer sound. Now it does not even have to make sense.

2022. The March study article puts names on what that might look like:

At times this slave may give direction that we do not fully understand. For example, we may receive specific instructions designed to prepare us to survive a natural disaster that we think is unlikely to occur in our area. Or we may feel that the slave is being overly cautious during a pandemic. What should we do if we feel that the instructions given are not practical?

Obey survival instructions even for a danger you have good reason to believe is not real or is not coming to your area. The December 2022 study article removes the last qualifier entirely:

Do your best to obey the direction you receive even if you do not fully understand why it is being given.

Not if it seems unsound. Not if it doesn't make sense. Now, even if you have no idea why. Every off-ramp a thinking person might reach for has been closed, one article at a time.

That same December article includes one more instruction:

Also, never reveal information about our brothers and sisters or about congregation activities to those who are not entitled to it.

Who exactly is not entitled to that information? The police? The courts? The article does not say. But the very next paragraph frames that moment as part of Satan's war against God's people—and the Watchtower teaches that Satan rules the governments of the world. Their own representatives have lied under oath. Philip Brumley was sanctioned for it, paid a $150,000 fine upheld on appeal. The question of who Witnesses are being told to withhold information from, in what the organization calls a time of crisis, is not abstract.

The COVID Shutdown Was Called a Rehearsal

2023. The organization looked back at the COVID shutdown and described it this way:

For example, during the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic, when we were asked to stop meeting at our Kingdom Halls and to suspend our house-to-house ministry, did you struggle to obey? Yet, your obedience protected you, united you with fellow believers, and pleased Jehovah. All of us are now better prepared to obey any instructions we received during the Great Tribulation. Our lives may depend on it.

That sentence is a tell. The COVID shutdown was not merely managed—it is now being described as a drill. Your compliance then made you better prepared to comply the next time. The article makes the stakes explicit in six words: our lives may depend on it. That is the moment this stops looking like a religion teaching patience and starts looking like a system running drills.

2024. The last rung before dangerous:

We might occasionally find it a challenge to follow Jehovah's guidance, especially when it is conveyed by imperfect men. Why? The counsel may conflict with our likes or dislikes, or we might feel that the direction we receive is unwise and conclude that the counsel must not be from Jehovah.

The Governing Body admitted in 2017 that they are neither inspired nor infallible and that they can err in doctrinal matters or in organizational direction. And then the 2024 article names the natural feeling you would have when fallible men who admit they make mistakes give you an unwise-sounding instruction—the feeling that this can't be from God, this isn't right—and labels that feeling a temptation you need to resist. Your own conscience, your own internal alarm, is reframed as a flaw in you.

I remember being taught to feel proud of my own obedience, to treat hesitation as a flaw in me, never a flaw in the instruction. That feeling has a long runway behind it.

2026. The new rung. Smith's own words from the broadcast:

What if we receive instructions from Jehovah's organization that at first seem ineffective? Maybe these instructions seem to make our life even harder, as when Israel had to find straw in addition to making bricks. Or what if the instructions we receive seem overly intrusive into our personal lives, personal decisions, such as what we eat, how to cook it, and even how we eat it? Or what if we don't understand the reasons for certain instructions for days or weeks or months or even another 1,500 years? Or what if instructions from Jehovah's organization seem to put us in danger, as when Israel appeared to be trapped at the Red Sea?

Seem to put us in danger. First time in the literature. That entire library is free and searchable on the Watchtower's own website—run the search yourself. In the context of obeying the organization, the word dangerous has never appeared before now.

How Conditioning Works One Step at a Time

The talk's own title names the training method. Faithful in what is least—the instruction to practice obeying small things—is precisely what psychologists call the foot-in-the-door technique. You establish the habit of saying yes on small, harmless requests and then escalate, because each small compliance makes the next larger one feel consistent with who you already are. Practice what you wear. Practice how you spend a Saturday. Make obedience automatic so it is already running when the significant instruction arrives.

Now's the time to train ourselves to trust Jehovah, trust those whom he is using, and faithfully obey, even in little things.

The psychiatrist Robert J. Lifton, who studied thought reform and how totalitarian systems reshape thinking, described how that change happens incrementally without being visible to the person it is happening to. One step at a time. No single Watchtower article is alarming on its own. Keep in step is not particularly frightening. Each rung is small enough that objecting to it feels paranoid. That is not a flaw in the method—it is the whole reason it works. The danger is never in any one step. It is in the staircase. Train obedience on things that are least. Escalate one small step at a time. The person never sees the staircase, only the next step.

The Mechanism, and Where It Has Led Before

I want to be careful here, because this is where it would be easy to be irresponsible. I am not telling you that Jehovah's Witnesses are about to do what these other groups did. I am telling you that the mechanism is identical—and the mechanism is what matters, because every group that ended in catastrophe got there by climbing a staircase that looked reasonable from each step.

Before the day everyone knows about, Jim Jones ran drills he called white nights. He called his community together, told them they were under attack, and had them rehearse their response. On at least two occasions the rehearsal was a practice mass suicide. Members lined up, drank a liquid they were told was poison, and waited to die—then were told it had been a loyalty test. Researchers who studied this concluded that each repetition

prepared members first to accept and then commit even more extreme acts.

The horror at the end was not a single decision. It was the last rung of a ladder of rehearsed obedience. Hold that against the 2023 Watchtower article calling the COVID shutdown practice that left members better prepared to obey any instructions during the Great Tribulation. The content is not the same. The structure is.

Heaven's Gate. The Order of the Solar Temple. Different labels, the same architecture: obedience to leadership conditioned in small steps, total trust installed over years, dissent reframed as personal failure, and then at the top of the staircase an instruction that ended lives—obeyed because obedience itself had become the highest virtue. Not one of those people thought they were in danger on the day they took the first small step.

Why the Exodus Argument Doesn't Hold

The talk leans entirely on Moses. The Israelites obeyed strange instructions—don't break the lamb's bones, ask the Egyptians for gold, camp against the sea—and they were right to. So the argument goes: obey strange instructions from Jehovah's organization today.

Before the 10th plague, the Israelite families were instructed to slaughter a 1-year-old lamb. Roast the lamb. Don't boil it. Don't break any of its bones. Don't save any of it till morning. Burn the leftovers in the fire. And eat it with your belt fastened, sandals on your feet, staff in your hand, and eat it in a hurry. A lot of instructions. He says, "Go ask the Egyptians for articles of silver and gold and clothing." Now, did the Israelites object to this instruction? Could they have said, "Moses, don't you think this is bad timing? After all, the entire nation of Egypt, every household, has just lost their firstborn. And now we're going to ask them for their silver, their gold, and their clothing? Isn't that a little insensitive?"

The problem is what the talk admits without noticing. In the Exodus account, God had authenticated himself publicly—ten plagues the Egyptian magicians could not replicate, a proof the entire nation had witnessed. The instructions were strange, yes. But the source had been proven with evidence nobody could fake. The talk even says so:

Well, we have to remember this. With each plague, Jehovah repeatedly showed he was using Moses and Aaron. And has he not done so today? Think how during these difficult last days through disasters and wars and pandemics, we have repeatedly been guided by wise direction from Jehovah's organization, the faithful and discreet slave.

Proof first, obedience second. That is the actual logic of the Exodus story. Then read the swap. The talk takes that principle—obey God who proved himself with miracles—and transfers it onto the Governing Body, which the 2024 Watchtower called imperfect men and which the 2017 Watchtower admitted can err in doctrinal matters and organizational direction. There are no plagues. There is no parted sea. There is a group of men in New York asking for the same unconditional, evidence-free obedience that Israelites gave to a God who had just turned a river to blood in front of Pharaoh.

But at that time, did the Israelites think, "Moses, excuse us, but you're giving us cooking instructions. Isn't this rather personal? I prefer to boil my meat, even if I have to break a few bones when I put it in the pot. I get indigestion if I have to eat in a hurry." Some possibly grumbled about it. But did they obey? Remarkably, yes. Jehovah told Moses to have the Israelites turn back and camp up against the Red Sea. Now, they were trapped between the Red Sea and Pharaoh's oncoming war chariots. Seem illogical? Dangerous? Or brilliant? You know the answer.

The argument only works if you do not notice that the Watchtower has quietly placed itself in God's position. In the Exodus, the people had proof. Today, Witnesses have a directive from men who have admitted they make mistakes—and an instruction to treat their own doubt as the real danger. That is not the faith of Moses. That is the opposite of what the Israelites did, and what they did based on what they had.

The Rung Above Dangerous

Here is where twenty years of language has actually landed, in the Watchtower's own words:

• 2007 — keep in step
• 2012 — saved only if you obey
• 2013 — even if it doesn't appear sound
• 2021 — even if it makes no sense
• 2022 — even if you don't understand why
• 2023 — and COVID was practice
• 2024 — even though it comes from imperfect men, and your doubt is the real danger
• 2026 — even if it seems to put you in danger

Every rung is tied to survival. Every rung removes one more reason a person might say no. The adjective for the instruction has climbed from unsound all the way to dangerous.

I am not going to tell you that a room full of men schemed this out on a whiteboard. I do not know that, and neither does anyone else. The simplified edition being blunter might be nothing more than what happens when you simplify language—blunt is simpler than nuanced. This argument does not require a master villain. That is exactly what makes it worth your attention rather than your dismissal. Whether this staircase was built deliberately or drifted there one reasonable-sounding article at a time, with nobody at headquarters ever quite seeing the whole picture, the person sitting in the chair gets conditioned the same either way. Lifton's point is that it usually is not a conspiracy. It is one step at a time, and no one sees the staircase.

When an organization has spent twenty years training millions of people to obey instructions that seem dangerous, and has openly called a past compliance event a rehearsal for the real thing, the people being trained to obey the next instruction will not be allowed to ask what it is. They have been taught that the question itself is the sin.