More Panic from Watchtower in this Bethel Morning Worship

Three separate Watchtower programs, delivered across eleven days, all carried the same message: obey the governing body even if you are not convinced, and do not argue about it. That message came right after an 81-year-old rule that cost people their lives was quietly turned into a personal decision. A document carrying Watchtower's own signature — a Bethel morning worship talk chaired by Paul Gillies, a director of Watchtower's British Corporation — explains why that happened, and it has nothing to do with Bible study.

I was born and raised a Jehovah's Witness. I left when I was 40, about nine years ago. I know how this kind of talk lands in a room full of Witnesses, and I know how to walk through it line by line against Watchtower's own printed record — because nearly every line in this program is contradicted by Watchtower's own material from the same decade, sometimes the same book.

Three Scripts, Three Programs, Eleven Days

On September 25th, governing body member Jod Jadelli gave a morning worship talk saying that if Watchtower's teachings were never changed, that should worry us. On October 3rd, the annual meeting — watched by over 200,000 people — said that trying to convince another Witness that your view is the correct one is itself the danger. Then on October 6th, just three days after that meeting, a morning worship talk at headquarters told Jehovah's Witnesses to obey even when unconvinced, and not to argue about it.

All three came after September 18th, the day Watchtower dropped most of the blood doctrine. An 81-year-old rule that cost people their lives became a personal decision in the span of a 15-minute video. Since then, one message has been repeated over and over: how Jehovah's Witnesses should feel about that change. That is not confidence. That is an organization that knows what is happening in its own congregations, getting feedback it doesn't like, and trying to get ahead of it.

Four weeks before this program, Paul Gillies gave another morning worship talk, "Reject Apostate Teachings," telling Bethelites not to read anything critical about the organization. In this one, he escalates: don't even think anything critical about the organization.

The Daily Text Switch

The daily text behind this program comes from Hebrews 10:1:

The law has a shadow of the good things to come.

Paul was talking there about the law of Moses being set aside — the Ten Commandments, the Mosaic law. Every commenter in this program applies that verse to Watchtower changing its own rules. That substitution is the trick running through the entire program, and once you see it, everything else falls into place.

The Mosaic law was given by God to Moses, which is exactly why it would be hard for Jewish Christians to set aside — they would feel they were setting aside a God-given law. That is not what is happening here. Watchtower is setting aside its own law code: the beard rule, the hours-reporting requirement, the dress code, and now the blood rule — the biggest one so far. These are rules Watchtower itself wrote and enforced with shunning while calling it "the truth," despite all the changes. That is not comparable to what Paul addressed in Hebrews.

The blood rule got people hurt and sometimes killed. Nobody struggles with it because it's unfamiliar — they struggle because they watched people die obeying it, believing it was God's law, and now it's a personal decision, because the scriptures don't say anything about it. It was a rule for 81 years.

Watchtower saw this exact argument coming 43 years ago. The Watchtower of January 15, 1983 says:

Yet there are some who point out that the organization has had to make adjustments before. And so they argue this shows that we have to make up our own mind on what to believe... Such thinking is an evidence of pride.

That is the natural argument after a rule change like this one: they've been wrong before, so I'll think for myself. Watchtower labeled that "independent thinking" and "evidence of pride" back in 1983. Pulling that 43-year-old script back off the shelf tells you how much independent thinking is happening right now — and that is exactly why they're worried.

The Winter Coat That Killed Children

One commenter in the program compares old rules to a winter coat: you move somewhere warmer, so you toss it, no hard feelings, you just don't need the coat anymore.

Look at who died under that coat. The Awake of May 22, 1994, titled "Youth Who Put God First," says on its contents page:

In former times, thousands of youth died for putting God first.

They were proud of that coat — and they just tossed it aside. In the September update, the written version states plainly:

The scriptures do not comment on the various products that may be derived from blood and that the governing body is not authorized to go beyond the things that are written.

Most blood transfusions in wealthier countries don't even use whole blood — just components. The governing body admits there was never a scriptural basis for prohibiting any of it, not in 1994, not in 1970, not in 1945 when the rule was first written.

Jared Scepter was 11 years old, dying of lymphoma. His parents refused blood because of what Watchtower taught, and he died in June of 1992. Watchtower told his story from the platform as an example of faith in a 2019 JW Broadcast episode, and it came back again at this year's annual meeting. In 2019, his parents said, "In no way would we accept a blood transfusion." In 2026, just weeks after the rule change, the speaker left blood out entirely when mentioning Jared.

If the rules were a coat, then the organization before the change was a cold, harsh place you needed protection from — by wearing a coat that it handed you. It's cruel to the families who buried someone to call that a coat you could toss aside.

Food at the Proper Time, or Poison With a Label

A third commenter says the faithful slave gives "food at the proper time," pointing to the 2017 book, God's Word Is Truth — A Handbook to the Bible, and argues that digging deeper into God's word brought this new understanding.

But that isn't what happened. They didn't discover anything new. They announced the Bible doesn't support the policy — and the Bible didn't change in 81 years. The modern blood ban originated with the Watchtower of July 1, 1945. If this is "pressing on to maturity," then by the commenter's own account, Witnesses were spiritual infants for 81 years, and the faithful slave wasn't serving food at the proper time — it was serving something people died eating. By their own illustration, it was poison with a Watchtower label on the jar.

"Our Role May Be Temporary"

A fourth comment quotes the 2017 Watchtower:

Our place in God's arrangement is not fixed.

And Jeremiah 31:3:

I have loved you with an everlasting love. That is why I have drawn you to me with loyal love.

This isn't about the blood change. It's a switch from Bethel being a full-time career to a temporary role. Three days before this program, it was announced that performance reviews would happen at ages 30, 40, and 50, with some people sent home to make room for younger workers. The 2017 Watchtower article this comment quotes, "Why Modesty Still Matters," is about staying humble when you lose a "privilege" — an unpaid assignment or task. Now it's being repurposed to cover layoffs at Bethel.

A letter to all congregations dated October 29, 2015, "Making the Best Use of Dedicated Funds," says:

We will be reducing personnel at Bethel. Some Bethel family members will be invited to serve in the field.

That's a staff cut. "Invited to serve in the field" is not a choice — it's the same as a boss firing someone and "inviting" them to the soup kitchen. The 2019 Watchtower worded a similar move as members "receiving new assignments." It means they were laid off.

What makes it worse: Bethel recruits very young men with no experience and, until 2025, no college education — attending university was seriously discouraged and could get an elder questioned if his kids went. The Watchtower of July 15, 1984 admits:

Since many enter Bethel service early in life, they do not have much in a material way.

That phrasing implies Jehovah — or Watchtower — will provide for them, without ever actually promising it. Ten years ago, thousands of Bethel family members were sent home without financial assistance, and the only help offered in the manuals on leaving Bethel is a letter to local elders to help the person "regain his spirituality." The organization protects itself while the people absorb the cost.

Who Is the Governing Body Serving?

Gillies moves to Hebrews 12:2, saying Jesus perfects our faith "by providing reliable guidance through men that he has appointed to take the lead in the congregation."

But Matthew 23, in Watchtower's own New World Translation, says:

Do not you be called rabbi, for one is your teacher and all of you are brothers. Neither be called leaders, for your leader is one, the Christ, but the greatest one among you must be your minister. The greatest is the one who serves.

So who does the governing body serve? Not the Bethelites told to pack up and leave. Not families who fall on hard times, since Watchtower has no hospitals, food banks, shelters, or hardship funds. Disaster relief volunteers rebuild a Witness's house for free, and the homeowner is asked for the insurance check — the Watchtower of June 1, 2003 holds up a sister who immediately donated her insurance money to the relief fund as an example for other Witnesses to follow. If enough members sign over their insurance money, it stops being charity and becomes a line of business. Meanwhile, the elders manual tells elders to help families in trouble find out if they qualify for government assistance programs.

The First-Century Governing Body That Never Existed

Gillies quotes Hebrews 13:7 — "Remember those who are taking the lead among you who have spoken the word of God to you and as you contemplate how their conduct turns out, imitate their faith" — but skips the part that says to look at the outcomes before imitating anyone.

Paul was a tent maker so no one could say he was in it for money; the governing body has no jobs and lives on donations. Paul traveled constantly in full-time ministry; it's not established that governing body members do the same. And how has the governing body's conduct turned out? 1914, 1925, 1975, "the generation that will not pass away" — failed predictions. Thousands of young men imprisoned over the alternative-service rule Watchtower later dropped. Children who died under a rule Watchtower now admits the scriptures don't address.

Gillies calls the apostles and elders in Jerusalem a "first-century governing body." But that term isn't in the Bible, and Watchtower admits it. The Watchtower of November 15, 1972 states:

The term governing body as such is not found in the scriptures.

The 1972 article points to the one-time meeting in Acts 15 about circumcision to argue a governing body existed anyway — but that was a single meeting of older men to decide one issue. There was no standing committee, no title, and the phrase is never used again. A group that meets once and never again isn't a governing body; it's just a group. Compare that to the modern committee: the governing body was enlarged in 1971 and again in 1974, and on December 4, 1975, it voted to take authority away from the Watchtower Society's president and hand it to itself, effective January 1, 1976. That apostolic-sounding committee is a 1975 board vote.

Gillies adds that the first-century leaders were "not leaders in the sense of dominating others." The Elders Manual defines apostasy as "spreading teachings contrary to Bible truth as taught by Jehovah's Witnesses and undermining the confidence of the brothers in Jehovah's arrangement" — a judicial offense punishable by expulsion and shunning. That dictates belief, dress, grooming, holidays, blood, and even whether a parent may speak to a child who leaves. The Watchtower of April 1, 1953 says, right after quoting Matthew 23:

Servants in Jehovah's organization do not carry a whip of authority empowering them to dictate, boss, browbeat, or lord it over the congregation.

The shunning policy took effect the year before that, in 1952.

"Based on This Superior Quality of Love"

Gillies says every governing body decision is "based on this superior quality of love," citing 1 Corinthians 16:14. Test that against a clear case. For decades, alternative civilian service was treated as a violation of Christian neutrality. The Watchtower of September 1, 1986 puts alternative service in the same category as shedding blood, saying faithful Christians "took the position that there was no middle ground" — and thousands of young men went to prison over it.

In June 1994, Bulgaria refused to re-register Jehovah's Witnesses as a religion. In September 1995, Watchtower took Bulgaria to the European Commission of Human Rights. On May 1, 1996, Watchtower suddenly made civilian service a matter of conscience. In March 1998, a friendly settlement was reached: Bulgaria promised a civilian service law, and in the same legally binding settlement, members in Bulgaria were promised free choice on blood for themselves and their children, with no advance refusal cards used for minors. That promise was made in one country to recover registration — and kept there — while the same rule was still enforced everywhere else for 28 more years, until last month.

The rules bend when the organization's legal standing is on the line, not when members are being hurt.

On shunning specifically: the Watchtower of January 15, 2013 instructs members not to "look for excuses to associate with a dysfellowshipped family member, for example, through email." The Watchtower of April 15, 2015, "Why Dysfellowshipping Is a Loving Provision," says:

All in the congregation can show principled love by avoiding contact and conversation with the dysfellowshipped person.

Compare that to Watchtower founder Charles Taze Russell, writing in 1880:

We honor and sometimes greatly love a fair antagonist and never intend to dysfellowship any brother in Christ because of mere difference of opinion.

Today's Elders Manual cites a 1986 Watchtower allowing expulsion of any believer in God, the Bible, and Jesus for "false teachings" — meaning whatever the governing body isn't currently teaching, even if it taught the same thing in the past, or will teach it in the future. People expelled for beliefs Watchtower now holds don't get reinstated and don't get their families back.

When the Ship Takes an Unexpected Turn

Gillies says Jehovah's Witnesses may be "put to the test" when the ship takes an unexpected turn, but should obey because they have confidence in those taking the lead, who in turn have confidence in Jesus. That links the governing body to Jesus's authority with nothing actually connecting the two. It's natural and healthy to question leadership when you see its decisions heading toward harm — nobody on a ship would stay calm watching the captain steer straight at an iceberg.

This pattern has a name, given by Watchtower itself. The Watchtower of December 1, 1981 calls it "tacking" — the zigzag a sailboat makes into the wind — and admits the organization has made "adjustments seemingly to previous points of view," adding that "accepting those reversals has often served as a test of loyalty." That article was printed a few years after the 1975 failure, right after governing body member Raymond Franz left.

Blind Obedience, and the Watchtower That Once Condemned It

The study note on Hebrews 13:17 says being "submissive" can mean doing something "even when one is not inclined to do it or remains unconvinced," using the Apostle Peter — who refused a vision from an angel three times — as the example.

But Watchtower's own publications once condemned exactly this. The Awake of October 22, 1964 says:

Blindly following anyone is dangerous, even if that person is right, since the one following has no sound basis for his faith and can easily be stumbled when problems arise or when his beliefs are questioned.

The Watchtower of August 1, 1994, speaking of God, says:

He never requires blind obedience of his creatures.

The same article cites 1 Corinthians 4:6 to say God prohibits adding burdensome laws beyond what is written — which is exactly what the governing body has done, including, by its own admission, on blood.

Peter had walked with Jesus and watched him raise the dead and heal the sick, and still pushed back three times — he changed his mind only after Acts 10:44 describes the Holy Spirit visibly coming on the people in front of him. The governing body has shown no comparable demonstration of evidence; in Bulgaria, with registration on the line, it changed its rule immediately once legal pressure arrived.

The study note also leaves out the rest of Peter's story. Galatians 2:11 says:

When Cephas came to Antioch, I resisted him face to face because he was clearly in the wrong.

The Watchtower of April 2017 explains:

Paul confronted Peter in Antioch and exposed his hypocrisy and Peter humbly accepted Paul's corrective counsel.

Paul was not a member of the so-called first-century governing body by Watchtower's own reckoning — he was an outsider publicly correcting a governing body member to his face, with no judicial committee and no shunning. Today, "undermining the confidence of the brothers in Jehovah's arrangement" is listed under apostasy.

Gillies cites James 1:19 — "Everyone must be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger" — to mean don't argue with instructions you don't understand. But Watchtower's own publications once praised the opposite. The Watchtower of February 2017 admits:

The governing body is neither inspired nor infallible. Therefore, it can err in doctrinal matters or in organizational direction.

The Watchtower of August 15, 1950 states that the magazine:

Invites careful and critical examination of its contents in the light of the scriptures.

Rejecting a claim after examining it and finding it wanting isn't rebellion — it's the standard Watchtower itself used to set.

Two Hundred Forty Changes and the 1925 Flop

Hebrews 13:8 says, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever" — but Watchtower's own doctrines haven't been. The Watchtower publications index lists a "Beliefs Clarified" heading tracking doctrinal adjustments since 1870; counting just the 1986-to-today index comes to over 240 entries, cited in a 2014 study article titled "Are You Convinced That You Have the Truth?" You can't call something the truth today while admitting you changed it from yesterday.

Gillies cites one example: in 1925, the Watchtower article "Birth of the Nation" presented a new understanding of Revelation 12 that differed from what founder Charles Taze Russell had taught, and some left over it. He quotes a brother who said:

We sat down and studied it all night until I could understand it very well, and it was a great blessing for me because many of the brothers left the truth at that time. That was a lesson to me to watch out that I didn't lose the truth, but to stick to the faithful slave class, as that was Jehovah's instrument to help us learn his word.

What Gillies leaves out: the 1920 booklet Millions Now Living Will Never Die promised, "We can confidently expect that 1925 will mark the return of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the faithful prophets of old," and Rutherford called 1925 "a date definitely and clearly marked in the scriptures, even more clearly than that of 1914." Watchtower's own history book, the Proclaimers book, admits on the same page as the "Birth of the Nation" article that "the year 1925 came and went. Some abandoned their hope." Watchtower's own figures show 90,434 people took the memorial in 1925, versus only 17,380 in 1928 — roughly four out of five gone in three years, not "many of the brothers."

The Watchtower of October 1, 1984 carries former governing body member Carl F. Klene's life story, with a footnote on page 24 noting that Rutherford, regarding the 1925 failure, "once confessed to us at Bethel, I made an ass of myself."

The founder's own attitude toward people who left was different from today's. The Watchtower of October 1, 1909, under Russell, says:

If some think that they can get as good or better provender at other tables, or that they can produce as good or better themselves, let these take their course. Our wish for them is that they might find something better. How could we find fault with others for doing what we ourselves would do? Rather, let us bid them Godspeed in their search for something more satisfactory.

Sixteen years later those who left over the 1925 teaching became a cautionary tale. A century later, anyone who leaves is shunned as if formally expelled.

The Test Watchtower Fails by Its Own Standard

Gillies reads a scripture about Jehovah telling Jeremiah:

This is the sign for you, declares Jehovah, that I will punish you in this place so that you will know that my words promising calamity against you will surely come true... Here I am giving Pharaoh Hophra the king of Egypt into the hand of his enemies and of those seeking to take his life, just as I gave King Zedekiah of Judah into the hand of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, who was his enemy and who sought to take his life.

The lesson of that passage is that a prophecy's fulfillment tells you whose word is true. Deuteronomy 18:22 states the same test: "If a prophet speaks in Jehovah's name, and the word doesn't come true, Jehovah didn't say it, and you must not get frightened at him." Watchtower applies that test to others — the Awake of October 8, 1968 calls date-setters "guilty of false prophesying" for lacking "God's truths and the evidence that he was guiding and using them" — while exempting itself.

Watchtower has, in fact, claimed the title of prophet. The Watchtower of April 1, 1972, "They Shall Know That a Prophet Was Among Them," asks whether Jehovah has a prophet today and answers that this "prophet" was "not one man but was a 'body' of men and women... Today they are known as Jehovah's Christian witnesses." Its own predicted dates — 1914, 1918, 1925, 1975, and "the generation that will not pass away," carried on the Awake masthead until 1995 — did not come true. Psalm 146:3, in Watchtower's own translation, reads: "Do not put your trust in princes, nor in a son of man, who cannot bring salvation." The governing body itself states it is "neither inspired nor infallible."

Bulgaria, Japan, and the Real Reason the Blood Rule Changed

Why did a rule people died under for 81 years become a personal decision on September 18th? The documents point to two countries: Bulgaria in the past, and Japan now.

On December 27, 2022, Japan's Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare published guidelines on child abuse connected to religion that named making a child carry a blood-transfusion refusal card as neglect — the same practice Watchtower had agreed to stop for Bulgaria in 1998, but which continued elsewhere. On March 25, 2025, the Tokyo District Court ordered the Unification Church dissolved as a religious corporation; the Tokyo High Court upheld that ruling on March 4, 2026. Japan has shown it will dissolve a religious corporation over harm to members even without a criminal conviction of its leadership. In November 2023, lawyers representing former Witnesses formally asked the Japanese government to examine whether Jehovah's Witnesses meet the same grounds for dissolution. Watchtower's own Japanese branch sued the government to overturn the 2022 guidelines, filing in March 2025 and making it public in April of this year. Then, on September 18th, the blood rule changed, attributed to prayer and study.

I can't prove one caused the other. But the documents show the blood rule never bent because Jehovah's Witnesses were being hurt by it — it bent when the organization's own legal standing was at risk, in Bulgaria then and, I believe, in Japan now. That is the answer Gillies spent this entire program trying to convince Bethel never to ask for.

We don't know whether accepting blood would have saved every child who died under the old rule. But if it had saved Jared Scepter, he would be about 45 years old today. The organization that told his parents refusing blood was God's law is the same one now telling its own headquarters staff to obey even when unconvinced, and not to argue about it.