Barbara Radke Testimony

I want to start off by saying my parents believe in God and I wasn't raised in the Jehovah's Witness religion. I was raised to pray to Jesus and to follow him. Even though I kept following him, I slowly stopped talking to him. This is my story.  

We lived in a small rural community with no church to attend and no pastor to minister to us. We were sheep without a shepherd. If a person wanted to travel, it would take about 25 minutes to drive from the country into the city of Prince George. You could find lots of church's there. Being of little means, our family only went into town on a grocery shopping day. We had what it took to survive and my mother's love for us was the thread that she used to sew everything together, so to speak. My father's work took him away from his family very often. He wasn't around too much for us because he was trying to make a living.

As a child, I loved country living. As I recall, by the time I was seven years of age my mother had arranged for a pastor to come to our small town to minister to the children there. I was excited that she had done this. This was the first time I memorized scripture and prayed with a group of others. As a family we said grace at mealtimes and prayed just before we went to bed. As I recall, the minister who came from town only stayed for the summer. He never came back.

By the time I was 16 and with the love of God still in my heart, my mother permitted me to join a youth group with a local church in the city. That encounter was short lived too. There were only two summers that I was able to associate with other Christian kids. I still read my Bible and as the next few years passed, I married at the age of 20. Both my husband and I attended the Free Evangelical Church for a time. We stopped going to church for our own personal reasons and it wasn't too long after that, some people came knocking on our door. They were Jehovah's Witnesses.

My sister, who was a Jehovah's Witness, called me often to talk to me about her "Truth," but I still felt that what I had been formerly taught was the truth. After all, for what reason would any of the clergy lie to me? For what reason would they lie to anyone? My sister challenged me to confront my minister back then about what Jesus had said about “the good news of the Kingdom.” What was it? When is it going to come? So I did and the Jehovah's Witness explanation of scripture at the time seemed more reasonable.

Not too long after the first knock on my door by them, I became one of them by being baptized. I eventually realized I wasn't being baptized into the body of Christ, but I was being indoctrinated into an organization that wears the cloak of Pharisees with its legalism, rules and manipulative thought control. It doesn't take too long for the Watchtower to have anybody "under its spell.”

I felt as if I went into a deep sleep one night and woke up 25 years later, coming out of a coma like state. I felt as if I was groping through a thick fog and I suddenly knew that the Holy Spirit was waking me up. He showed me scriptures and with each scripture it was like he was nudging me, patting my arm, softly saying, "Wake up, wake up now. It is time to wake up.” He showed me where Jesus said "You are my friends if you do what I am commanding you," and I thought, "Who never talks to their friends?" Believe me when I tell you, people in the Watchtower Society never talk to Christ. Not EVER. They have him locked safely in their closet behind Watchtower walls. Jehovah’s Witnesses are not encouraged to have a relationship with him. 

Then the Holy Spirit nudged me some more and showed me 1 Corinthians 12 and Romans 12 where not all first century Christians were teachers, but they all had gifts differing from one another that the Holy Spirit gave them. You see, in the Jehovah’s Witness religion, if you're not a door-knocking, disciple-making teacher, you are not considered to be a qualified Jehovah's Witness.  You are made to feel as if you don't measure up and somehow your salvation and your faith and your love for God and more importantly, God's love for you is in question.

During the months that the Holy Spirit was showing me scripture after scripture, he introduced me to two former Jehovah’s Witnesses who brought the real truth of God's word to me. One of them lives in southern California and the other lives in England. Never in my life would I have thought that Christ would have used two people from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth to show me THE WAY!

"They showed me the way to God and what his love for me truly means." They showed me the way to salvation. That salvation was not through working for an organization that claims to have God's only acceptance and approval. No, Christ teaches that salvation is a free gift since He bought us with his shed blood up on that Cross! As imperfect as I am, as imperfect as you are, Christ's blood is enough to cover all our sins. I'd like to say that my correspondence with these two women that God brought into my life is a blessing. He continued to bless me through yet another person. The Holy Spirit didn't just speak to me, but on three different occasions he raised his voice at me to give her a phone call. I procrastinated until I could no longer ignore him. I thought to myself, she isn't going to remember me and probably will just say so and that will be the end of the conversation. Not only did she remember me after 25 years of no contact with her---but she was praying for me during that time. It was really a special time of great joy for me. She asked me to think about joining her in her Bible study class. Wouldn't you know it, I didn't see it coming--the study is called BREAKING FREE! Now, if these events weren't directed by the Holy Spirit, I don't know what is!

I'd like to take a minute to say something about the people who attend the Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Halls. Many are very sincere, lovely, honest hearted people who earnestly want to please God and live a good life. In my opinion, there are as many  people practicing godly  principles in those Halls as there are those who attend any other church. Their Governing Body keeps them bound so tightly that they are unable to practice Christianity. Does that make sense?  It's those at the top of the JW organization, the ones running the show, who think they are untouchable. They feel they aren't accountable to "their flock" or shall I say they feel they aren't accountable to the people they govern through their own established policies.

If anyone questions these men at the top, then their faith is put under scrutiny. The elders in the local congregation Kingdom Hall would contact you to "straighten you out." That isn't the way it happened with me. I know their game. I played by their rules, but I left on my own terms.  It's very sad when that type of authority will not tolerate questions or accountability for their own decisions. They play the "God Card” every time with the standard lines of, "This is Jehovah's Organization and he is directing it and if you don't agree---then (according to them) you're an apostate and will be put out of their organization. Furthermore, not one person from that organization will speak to you from that day forward because somehow, unknowingly to them, they have been PROGRAMMED not to.

HOW UNLIKE CHRIST! They tell their people it is a form of discipline not to speak to anyone disfellowshipped or not to speak to anyone who leaves because, “He or she just might return to their senses or they might pull others out of the organization.” It is such a shame and it's sad because it keeps good people living in a very limited box. Their box of thinking has kept so many people trapped and afraid, but God isn't about fear. Jesus taught that God is about love and that he makes an estimate of our heart, not of statistics. Not of how many hours a person reports to stay "qualified" to be called a “Witness of God.” The mentality is that if you don't report your hours of activity and show up to most of the meetings, you'll be considered spiritually weak in God's eyes. I wonder who they think they are to judge someone else's personal relationship with God.

Well, I became tired of living in their small box. I saw people go through difficult circumstances and I experienced enough for myself that I silently questioned the organization. Not the people in it, but the Governing Body who at New York Bethel, will sit and discuss topics and then vote for policies that would affect millions of people. I'll tell you those policies have destroyed many, many people's lives.

I realize now that I had been living in a religion where obedience and punishment was preferred over God's way of love and understanding, over God's way of mercy and kindness. I think one of the hardest realizations I had to deal with when I left the Watchtower organization, was that I had the right to make my own choices, that I didn't need someone else telling me what to do, telling me what was right, and what was wrong. I could decide what I wanted to think and believe. It was a bit scary at first but FREEING once the realization set in that it's my life, God gave it to me, not an organization. I get to live it.

We don't need to serve God through an organization since Christ is the only mediator we need. God wants us to be free and to live in the fullness of Him so the Spirit of Him who is in us will overflow to affect other people's lives in a positive way. God wants us to live in freedom and to live in His fullness so that His life is expressed in us and through us.

A person can have a heart for Christ but their minds can be deceived. People are being seduced by Satan and it doesn't necessarily come from a place you'd necessarily expect it to come from.  God wants us to live in freedom and He wants us to know the TRUTH because it's the TRUTH that will set you free. The Spirit of manipulation and intimidation and the guilt that's put on people in the Watchtower Society makes a person browbeaten, dominated and intimidated.

I lived in that Society that did not produce the life of God and it kept me locked there for years. The ones at the top made an idol out of their belief system that has no life and doesn't line up with the scriptures and so people are being deceived.

I am very conscious of the certainty declared by the apostle that "We shall ALL stand before the judgment seat of God" where "each one of us will render an account of himself to God." His Son will be our Judge. I am now unable to believe that loyalty to the interests of any religious organization will be a determining factor in my personal judgment. The older I get, it seems the more imminent the end of life becomes and I'm ever more convinced that the most valuable thing any of us can leave behind is a moral legacy that is determined by the principles for which we have stood. Principles can never be sacrificed or rationalized away. Devotion to God, submission to His Son as our Sole Head, integrity to truth and compassionate concern for others are my principles to live by.

I'd like to end by saying, today, as in every day since I've left the Watchtower Society, a new sun rises for me. It speaks to me about my passion for Christ and everything inside of me invites me to cherish it! I worship the Father of the universe, the Almighty God of the universe with every breath I take. My grateful heart rejoices because as 2 Corinthians 3:17 say, "WHERE THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD IS, THERE IS FREEDOM!"