Posted by jimmyjames [jimmyjames] on November 27, 1999 at 14:53:20 {nwG7wj0NI.0hi4VK0MIQijuk77B9Xg}:
(This letter is pretty long, so I divided it up into two posts. The first half is basically a summary of the blood doctrine, with a few of my own additions. The second half is about mind control.) (I won't be sending it in to the elders for another month or so. The length of the letter was to help a member of my family still in the org. I hope by posting it here I can help someone.)
From: James ******
******, CA
To the elders of the ****** ****** Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses:
This letter is to inform you that I no longer wish to be or be known as a Jehovah’s Witness or be associated in any way with the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society.
I’ve had many good experiences in the organization, but my conscience will no longer permit me to remain associated due to my realization that the blood doctrine cannot be supported by scripture and is thus a dangerous policy that has, for no supportable reason, resulted in the death of many people and children and put the lives of 6 million + in danger. This has led to more profound realizations about the organization itself and for this and various other reasons, I have decided to disassociate myself.
I took to this religion at first simply because my older sister did. Later I came to believe myself that it was the true religion. In all honesty, I’ve had many good experiences. I’ve come to know many good people, including yourselves, and being in this organization has created in me a desire to know what life is about and to know why we are here- and interest that usually comes much later in life. I’ve also been helped by the elders during my teenage years to cope with my mother’s alcoholism, and I’m sure ****** has been helped in this way as well. Other good things have happened to me, but facts are facts and I can’t ignore what I’ve learned.
The first thing that disturbed me was discovering that the Society allows Witnesses to accept various parts of blood as transfusions. I was confused, since I felt that the Bible’s prohibition on blood was clear and uncompromisable. I was tempted to just dismiss this, but I decided to research it which led to more confusing discoveries.
During the course of my research, I began to realize that Witnesses don’t really abstain from blood. Nearly half the types of blood transfusions offered by medicine are acceptable by the Society. These include transfusions of albumin, immunoglobulins, and clotting factors. All the separate components of blood plasma (except water) are permitted. Even one’s own blood can be “reinfused” when it has been circulating through a machine and directly back into the individual, despite the fact that it has left the body. And although Witnesses are not allowed to have their blood stored, the various allowed components necessitate collecting and storing large amounts of other people’s blood, creating a hypocritical double-standard. Hemophiliac treatments are also allowed. This is difficult to harmonize with passages in Watchtower literature such as these:
“So too abstaining from blood means not taking it into your body at all”- Live Forever, p. 216At this point I felt doubts about the doctrine. The scripture that stuck in my mind was the passage about “making sure of all things”. I also wondered why I hadn’t known about this before.“Whether whole or fractional, one’s own or someone else’s, transfused or injected, it is wrong.” (w9/15/61)
Further research told me that transfusions of whole blood are almost never administered in hospitals these days- only the specific component that a given patient needs. Consequently, Witnesses are usually never facing a question of whether or not to accept a blood transfusion. They are facing a question of which type they can accept, since some components are permitted and others are not. Since they are taking in parts of blood when they accept ANY of these types of transfusions (both those permitted and those forbidden), Witnesses do not abstain from blood. This leads to the question: Why are some blood components allowed and some not? What differentiates one component from another and what makes one component acceptable while another objectionable? This led to more research, and I began to be afraid of what I was learning. But this quote from the Watchtower is very appropriate:
“You have nothing to fear in examining your beliefs by the standard of God’s Word, for if you have the true religion you can only be reassured. And if what you believe is not in keeping with the Bible, then you should welcome the truth…” (w7/1/68)I eventually came to realize that the Society’s arguments that the blood doctrine is based in scripture are false. I also realized that the very foundation upon which it was formed in the ‘40’s was on a bizarre idea about blood. While researching it, I was upset and tried to resist the idea that it was false. In the end, though, I could no longer keep this doctrine shielded from the facts.
These are important, life and death matters for every Witness to consider. I hope this letter will be read with an open mind, as it contains my honest and sincere reasons for disbelieving this doctrine.
The first relevant text is Acts chapter 15. While at face value it may seem that this is a clear condemnation on any use of blood, on closer inspection it is nothing of the sort. The counsel to avoid blood was a direct reference to specific laws in the book of Leviticus about the eating of blood for alien residents and was brought up in Acts to help smooth out the social problems existing between the Jewish Christians and the new Gentile Christians over the Mosaic Law.
Acts 15:29, “To keep abstaining from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things strangled and from fornication.”If you compare this with Leviticus chapters 17 and 18, you will see that not only are those same four items stated, but they are even stated in the exact same order:
Leviticus 17:1-9, things sacrificed to idolsIt’s obvious that Acts 15 was directly referring to these laws in the book of Leviticus. These were the basic laws that alien residents had to obey in Israel. Likewise, they were stated to the Gentiles (who were in effect arriving in Christianity as “alien residents” since the first Christians were Jews) as basic things for them to follow. Why? The answer is in the context surrounding the scripture.
Leviticus 17:10-12, blood
Leviticus 17:13-16, things strangled
Leviticus 18, fornication
The chapter begins with the circumcision issue and the problems that came about when “Judaizers” (certain Jewish Christians) wanted the new Gentile Christians to obey the Law of Moses.
Acts 15:15, “yet some of those of the sect of the Pharisees that had believed rose up from their seats and said, ‘It is necessary to circumcise them and charge them to obey the Law of Moses’”What did Peter say in reaction to this problem?
Acts 15:9-11, “He made no distinction at all between us and them, but purified their hearts by faith. Now, therefore, why are you making a test of God by imposing upon the neck of the disciples a yoke that neither our forefathers nor we are capable of bearing? On the contrary, we trust to get saved through the undeserved kindness of the Lord Jesus in the same way as those people also.”Then the apostles attempt to bring unity.
Acts 15:19,20, “Hence my decision is not to trouble those from the nations who are turning to God, but to write them to abstain from things polluted by idols and from fornication, and from what is strangled and from blood.”It is crucial to note that this was directed to “those from the nations”, the Gentiles. Why were the Jewish Christians not commanded to abstain from these four things? Because they already were doing so in obedience to the laws in Leviticus, from where these four items were taken. Since Peter made it plain that the Law was now obsolete and that Christians were under undeserved kindness, it must be asked: Why would he then send a letter telling the Gentiles to obey certain parts of that law? The entire reason is stated in the VERY NEXT VERSE:
Acts 15:21, “For from ancient times Moses has had in city after city those who preach him, because he is read aloud in the synagogues on every Sabbath.”Jewish Christians who were zealous for the Law had Moses preached to them on every Sabbath and felt that all Christians should have to obey that Law. Obviously, then, the decision of the “Jerusalem Council” was a temporary measure designed to help the Gentiles assimilate better with the Jews during these early days in Christianity. No such social problem exists among Christians today. It’s a very interesting (not to mention revealing) fact that the Society has never dealt with or even discussed this argument even though it is the nearly unanimous view of Bible commentators and was even the view of C.T. Russell. Why can’t they even address it?
In Acts 21, we see that this social problem still existed. This is borne out in the fact that Paul, in verses 20-26, performed a ritual of the Law in front of Jewish Christians, specifically to avoid offending them.
This was the principle stated by Paul in 1 Corinthians 8 about things sacrificed to idols. Paul makes it clear that since they are not under the Law, it’s fine to eat these meats. However, they were not to stumble another brother with a weak conscience. Since the Jews had “weak consciences” in regards to the Mosaic Law, Peter wrote the Gentiles to obey these four things so that the Jewish Christians would not be “stumbled”, and the two groups could come together. Obviously, this was not some universal, binding law set upon all Christians for all eternity, and there exists no evidence to support such an idea. The entire situation was caused specifically by the problems between the Judaizers and the Gentile Christians, a problem now long resolved. The only one of the four that all Christians are still required to obey is the one on fornication. This was the only moral (as opposed to ritual) law of the four and many, many more condemnations of fornication appear throughout the rest of the scriptures, unlike the other three.
If the Watchtower’s interpretations of the Jerusalem council as being binding on all Christians is true, that would make Paul an apostate for teaching that these “things sacrificed to idols” were okay to eat. Clearly Paul did not view the Jerusalem council as a binding law for all Christians. The Society tries to overcome this fact in the Watchtower of October 15, 1978 p. 30-1 by conveying the idea that what Paul was talking about and what Acts was talking about are two different things. But this argument falls apart when you notice in the Kingdom Interlinear that the same Greek work, eudolothutos (things sacrificed to idols) is used in both cases. It seems very suspicious that the New World Translation chooses to translate this word differently in each case and is nearly alone among Bible translations in doing so. Yet it conveniently supports the Watchtower position. Why has the Society not dealt with this or even discussed it? Surely it should have been brought up in the above-mentioned Watchtower.
The next important thing I discovered is that throughout the Bible, whenever the prohibition on blood is mentioned, it is always in the context of eating it, as food. No other prohibition on it is mentioned. The Society has even acknowledged this fact:
“Each time the prohibition of blood is mentioned in the Scriptures, it is in connection with taking it as food, and so it is as a nutrient that we are concerned with its being forbidden.” (w9/15/58 p.575)Since the prohibition in Acts 15 directly refers to the laws in Leviticus on eating blood, it is clear that it is in that context (eating it) that it was being forbidden. Here is where we come to the real crux of the matter. A blood transfusion is in no way an eating of blood. The doctrine was born in the 1940’s under the mistaken impression that blood is actually eaten by the body and used as food. They thus believed that a blood transfusion was a literal eating of blood and in violation of Acts 15:29. It was even believed that the food a person eats was eventually turned into blood, which was then eaten by the body. Here’s a quote from the ‘60’s:“doing so does not seem to be included in God’s expressed will forbidding blood as food.” (w 9/15/58 p.575)
“Since the Bible forbids the eating of blood, how are Christians to view the use of serums and vaccines?” (w11/1/61 p.670)
“It is of no consequence that the blood is taken into the body through the veins instead of the mouth. Nor does the claim by some that it is not the same as intravenous feeding carry weight. The fact is that it nourishes or sustains the life of the body. In harmony with this is a statement in the book Hemorrhage and Transfusion, by George W. Crile, A.M., M.D., who quotes a letter from Denys, French physician and early researcher in the field of transfusions. It says: ‘In performing transfusion it is nothing else than nourishing by a shorter road than ordinary- that is to say, placing in the veins blood all made in place of taking food which only turns to blood after several changes.’” (w9/15/61 p.558)What they don’t tell the reader is that “Denys” (Jean Baptiste Denys) had been dead for more than three hundred years since he lived in the 17th century! Medicine long ago abandoned the ideas quoted here, yet the Society based their blood doctrine on them. Blood by no extension of the imagination nourishes the body. It is a liquid tissue that transports the nutrients, a vehicle. To demonstrate what kind of bizarre misunderstandings about blood were in existence when the blood doctrine was formed, consider this quote:
“The poisons that produce the impulse to commit suicide, murder, or steal are in the blood…Moral insanity, sexual perversions, repression, inferiority complexes, petty crimes- these often follow in the wake of a blood transfusion.” (w9/15/61 p.564)During this time, vaccinations were considered a “crime against humanity”, made out of dog pus.
“Thinking people would rather have smallpox than vaccination, because the latter sows the seeds of syphilis, cancers, eczema, erysipelas, scrofula, consumption, even leprosy and many other loathsome affections. Hence the practice of vaccination is a crime, and outrage, and a delusion.” (g5/1/29 p.502)Now I ask, how can a doctrine that was born during this level of medical paranoia be a doctrine from God? Only by ingesting blood through the mouth can it be eaten. A transfusion is never eaten by the body or absorbed any more than an organ transplant. It in fact is an organ transplant, a liquid tissue transplant. This fact is acknowledged by the Society:“How can it be otherwise? The streets are just lined with M.D. poison squirters [doctors]. They are seen everywhere with grips full of the most deadly poisons and needles for injecting them. This they do to every child they can corner.” (g7/24/29 p.682)
“A cardiovascular surgeon, Denton Cooley notes: ‘A blood transfusion is an organ transplant.” (g10/22/90 p.9)So, a blood transfusion is an organ transplant, not a meal. The Society later tried several arguments in an attempt to justify the doctrine, each of which were nullified either by medical science or the Society’s own reasoning. The last attempt made by the Society to link a blood transfusion with an eating of blood is found in the Reasoning book on page 73:“When doctors transplant a heart, liver, or another organ, the recipient’s immune system may sense the foreign tissue and reject it. Yet, a transfusion is a tissue transplant.” (How Can Blood Save Your Life?- 1990 p.8)
“Consider a man who is told by the doctor that he must abstain from alcohol. Would he be obedient if he quit drinking alcohol but had it put directly into his veins?”This may sound convincing, but on closer examination it turns out to be a false analogy. No matter how alcohol is administered, either through the veins or through the mouth, the result is exactly the same- absorption by the body. But a blood transfusion remains inside the body just like a transplanted organ. The error of that analogy is made clear by a similar one:
“Consider a man who is told by the doctor that he must abstain from meat. Would he be obedient if he quit eating meat but accepted a kidney transplant?”He has, after all, taken meat into his body. Would you say that he has abstained from meat? Of course! The doctor obviously meant not to eat meat. A kidney transplant is radically different from eating meat, just as a blood transplant is radically different from eating blood. They aren’t comparable at all.
Since then the Society has resorted to the “sustain life” argument. This can be found in the current blood brochure. The argument is that it’s wrong to “take in” blood to “sustain life”. The problem with this is that it cannot be found in the Bible. The Bible condemns only the eating of blood. Extending this to say that it’s wrong to TAKE IN in any way, shape or form is going beyond what the Bible says and is dishonest. You would also have to argue that when a person uses Visine, they are eating it when they “take it in” their eye. The words “to sustain life” are never used in conjunction with the prohibition on blood. There is never any mention that the motives a person had in eating blood were ever a factor, and eating is hardly the only thing we do to sustain our lives. Why would the Society feel the need to reword what the Bible says? Doesn’t the Bible’s original wording fully support Watchtower doctrine, without the need to add, switch or reword? Also, how can Witnesses be allowed to accept ANY blood fractions, even as a conscience matter, since these are all obviously “taken in to sustain life”?
The other scriptures that the Society uses to support the doctrine offer no help. The Law of Moses was made obsolete by Christ’s sacrifice and is not binding on Christians. It applied to the Israelites. The commands given to Noah in Genesis 9 are also appealed to, but they do nothing to support the Watchtower position. As has been mentioned, the command is in connection with eating blood, nothing more. In fact, a Witness is more in violation of the command every time they eat a steak than they are when accepting a transfusion, since the former involves the actual consumption of blood, and the latter involves nothing of the sort. An unbiased reading of the command reveals that it was not even blood that was the problem: it was meat with blood still in it. In other words, this was basically just a command to bleed meat before eating it, a totally appropriate bit of instruction given that this was the first time men were allowed to eat meat. The idea that this has anything at all to do with a modern day transplant of tiny fractions of human blood to save a human life is not only absurd, it’s totally perverted reasoning. Additionally, the Society interprets these as an “everlasting covenant” binding on all man. But since both Jesus and Paul advocated singleness, and the Society has recommended both childlessness and singleness (all in violation to the third command given to Noah), this was not an “everlasting covenant”. And since the Mosaic Law meted out no punishment to a foreigner that ate blood, it wasn’t binding on all man. It was basically just a command to “get on with life” with specific instructions on the care and preservation of life after the biggest mass death up to that time.
Another common argument is that God has set blood aside as sacred because it represents life and should thus not be taken into the body at all. Beside the fact that none of this can be found in the Bible, (except, perhaps, that blood represents life), this creates a logical problem. How are you showing respect for what blood represents (life) if you are letting someone die? You are showing respect, not for life, but for the symbol. You are putting the symbol on a higher pedestal than what it symbolizes, a clear case of idolatry.
It may seem complicated, but the bottom line is this: In order for the Society’s blood doctrine to be true, two criteria have to be met. It must be established that: 1. All Christians are commanded to abstain from eating blood, and 2. That a blood transfusion is an eating of blood. Neither one of these criteria are met. The doctrine is thus false.
There is much more evidence against the blood doctrine than is practical for me to include here, and I have By no means tried to be exhaustive. But there is one more extremely important bit of information which, by itself, effectively discredits the doctrine.
The current reasoning on why certain blood fractions are allowed is found in the June 1, 1990 Watchtower on page 29. The argument is that these components pass from a pregnant woman’s bloodstream to the fetus’, and since Jehovah allows this “natural movement” (designed it, in fact), it is evidence that he does not object to these blood fractions passing from one person to another.
I’m sorry to relate, but the Society, again the victim of poor medical knowledge, has overlooked something very important. It has been scientifically proven that red and white blood cells transfer from mother to fetus and vice versa (Isolating Fetal Cells from Maternal Blood- JAMA November 17th, 1993). So, using the Society’s own reasoning, it should be perfectly acceptable for a Witness to accept a transfusion of red and white blood cells. This is a very important bit of information the crucialness of which cannot be overemphasized. The Society will either have to: 1. Abandon the mother/fetus argument (and along with it the acceptableness of fractions), 2. Allow Witnesses to accept red and white cell transfusions (which will make acceptable nearly all types of transfusions offered by medicine, hardly a “firm stand against blood”), or 3. (the choice they have so far favored) Ignore it.
In summary, this doctrine cannot be supported by scripture, medicine, or even common sense. It’s a tragic mistake that routinely results in death. I want to stress that I do not want a blood transfusion any more than anyone else if there is an alternative available. But JWs should be allowed to decide this for themselves and not be afraid of the threat of disfellowshipment if they have reviewed all the evidence and have concluded that God does not require them to refuse it. In fact, that is precisely why everything I say in this letter will not make any difference to those who are followers of men, because regardless of whether or not the information in this letter is the truth, the bottom line will always be that it’s not the Truth™.
The Society has appealed to a few scattered sources from the early centuries of Christianity in an attempt to demonstrate that Christians didn’t take in blood. However, most of these were based on a spurious text of Acts called the “Western text” and at most can only be used to demonstrate that some Christians interpreted it that way. They also interpreted that they were to obey the Sabbath and many other precepts of the law. Why does the Society appeal to these sources when they believe that this was during the “great apostasy”, a turning away from true Christian teachings?
While researching this doctrine, and questions arose in my mind, I was tempted to dismiss them thinking that someone, somewhere in the organization must have the answers. But the fact of the matter is that even the Society does not. They have received letters from people requesting answers to these questions and by members of the Associated Jehovah’s Witnesses for Reform on Blood (AJWRB) concerning these issues. So far the Society has either ignored the letters or responded with “let the matter rest” and “wait on Jehovah” for answers. I cannot really accept this, since it’s essentially a non-answer. Either this doctrine is true, or it isn’t. If there are no answers to these questions, then the doctrine is without Biblical support and, since people are dying over it, it should be discarded at least until it can be found to have some form of coherent rational backing to it.
There is even evidence that the Society is already in the process of slowly abandoning the doctrine, as it has in the past with the ban on organ transplants and vaccines, gradually. The stance in the beginning was based on a wrong idea about blood. When the Society realized this, they used the intravenous feeding argument found in the Reasoning book. Now the Society no longer tries to link a blood transfusion with an eating of blood. Why? Because they know it’s not. The fully documented trend has been to allow more and more types of blood fractions, more and more types of blood treatments, and provide less and less arguments against blood transfusions. I’m not asking anyone to take my word for it, but to look into the Society’s publications and view the evidence for themselves. The stance in ’61 was this:
“Whether whole or fractional, one’s own or someone else’s, transfused or injected, it is wrong.” (w9/15/61)Today that sentence translates to something like this:
“Whether whole or fractional (except for over half the fractions, since they are permitted), one’s own (except in hemodilution or when it circulates continuously through a machine) or someone else’s (except in the case of fractions and hemophiliac treatments which necessitate the collection and storage of large quantities of other people’s blood), transfused or injected (except for serums and vaccines), it is wrong.”The doctrine is becoming looser and looser. Articles dealing with the scriptural arguments on transfusions have become scarce. Even the current blood brochure, which is 32 pages long, has only 3 pages devoted to scriptural arguments. The remaining 29 deal mostly with propaganda about the dangers of blood.
In addition, the Society has reached an agreement with the government of Bulgaria to be included as a religion. They have agreed to have “no controls or sanctions” against a Witness who accepts a transfusion, which would include disfellowshipment or even a removal of privileges. There are only two possibilities here: 1. The Society has two blood policies now- one for Bulgaria and another for the rest of the world, or 2. The Society has lied and misrepresented its true intentions and practices to the Bulgarian government. I am not making this up. It can be checked by anyone by contacting the European Commission on Human Rights or by viewing the document itself on their website. Further information on this can be found on the webpage of the Associated Jehovah’s Witnesses for Reform on Blood (AJWRB), which is run by an active Witness. The address is http://www.ajwrb.org
Similar public announcements have happened in Spain and Sweden. Which country is next? What conclusion should a rational person draw from this? It seems that the blood doctrine will eventually become another “conscience matter” or be abandoned altogether. I believe they cannot abandon it right away because that would cause a mass exodus from the organization and leave them open to litigation. Any who doubt this should recall the comments in the Watchtower of December 15th, 1952, concerning the reversal of the vaccine doctrine:
“And our Society cannot afford to be drawn into the affair legally or take responsibility for the way a case turns out.”Eventually, I had to face the question: If this doctrine is false, how can this be God’s organization? At first I felt that I just needed to wait for “new light” to correct it, but I quickly realized that wasn’t an option. Transfusions were not banned until the ‘40’s. It will have gone from “transfusions okay” to “transfusions not okay” to “transfusions okay”. God simply does not change his mind back and forth like this, especially not about a doctrine that is so obviously false and which routinely results in death.
Leaving a religion is not a light issue. This is the result of much time spent thinking. In the end, I had to disassociate.
“It is natural that you should desire not to be misled. But how can you avoid it? How can you know for sure that your religion is the true one? It can be done by finding out whether its teachings are supported by God’s Word, which Jesus said is the truth (John 17:17)” (w7/1/68 p.389)How could I play the hypocrite by telling others they should closely examine their religion yet refuse to do the same with my own? I could no longer allow myself to display the attitude mentioned in this article from the Watchtower, and neither should ANY Witness:“It is important, then, that you ‘keep testing whether you are in the faith’ as Paul declared. Keep checking to see whether the things you believe are in keeping with God’s Word. But the question is, Are you willing to put your religion through such a test? There is nothing to fear, because if you have the right religion you can only be reassured by the examination. And if what you believe is not in keeping with the Bible, then you should welcome the truth.” (w5/1/58 p.261)
“Once having committed themselves, they are balky about changing. Pride is quick to protest any admission of error. To change would be to say their parents were wrong, or their neighbors or their circle of friends, or their business associates. So they cling to their religion, too prejudiced to examine its teachings in the light of the Bible, too proud to acknowledge the possibility of wrong, too hardened in pride to consider a change, and many times to indifferent to care. They think that change would make them lose face…I had to be honest with myself. I cannot pretend to believe something that I know is false. Such a thing would make me a hypocrite.
The proud are cocksure, convinced they are right, unwilling to consider contrary views. Refusing to think they might be wrong, they direct all their thinking toward justifying themselves rather than examining themselves. What supports their side they gullibly grab, what opposes their position they arbitrarily reject. Disgrace comes when they are proved wrong though even then pride may harden them till they refuse to face disgrace and change. And when the pride is exercised relative to choosing the right religion, and erring proud one refuse to reason, destruction follows. Their pride brings blindness, blindness to reason.” (w6/1/54 p.325-7)