I got married at 18 and a half, pushed by my parents who wanted to make sure I didn't become a nun.


In my husband's family there were Jehovah's Witnesses and he himself was interested. When they offered me free Bible study sessions at my home once a week, I jumped at the chance! My great thirst for God only asked to wake up.


In reality, we were not studying the Bible but a book of the Society, giving the doctrine of Jehovah's witnesses, and interspersed with biblical quotations at their convenience; The first aim of this teaching is to warn you against Christians and to destroy the foundations of Christianity. They also offered me a Bible - The Holy Scriptures, New World translation - proving to me that their translation was better than that of my Jerusalem Bible ... And I adopted it ...

2 Heaven on Earth ...


Soon I was invited to Sunday town halls and weekday breakout meetings. It was always the same system: commented reading of the book or the magazine The Watchtower with questions and answers, always according to a plan provided by the central organization in Brooklyn. It was impossible to ask questions or show any critical thinking, but that didn't bother me. And then, I had been welcomed like a sister and the group was very warm. It was heaven on earth. Very quickly, I was encouraged to go door to door to evangelize and I was asked to write to the priest who baptized me to have me deleted from the Catholic baptism records. I was renamed by immersion in a bathtub.

3. Door to door


The life of the Jehovah's Witness is totally "locked up". He is not allowed to associate with (except for the purpose of converting them) those who are not or have left Jehovah's Witnesses (they are called the "excluded"). His time is consumed by five one-hour meetings per week and twelve mandatory door-to-door hours per month. If we don't do them, we have the people in charge on our backs who are responsible for making you feel guilty. Each town or village is squared, we have to make reports on all the people we meet and we are watched. You will even be invited to be a pioneer, that is to say to do 150 hours from door to door and you will be suggested during the holidays to choose a region to evangelize and to be a holiday pioneer (100 hours per month).


This door to door is less difficult than one might think. We knew that the whole world was going to be destroyed in the fall of 1975 (Jehovah's Witnesses call it Armageddon), there was little time left to save as many people as possible from the disaster since only the Jehovah's Witnesses will be saved. So it was a matter of life and death: you are on a sinking boat and only you know where the lifeboats are, it is normal that you warn as many people as possible. If the witness had the door shut in his face, it did not shake him, on the contrary because it was written "narrow is the door, few are those who discover the way". If the door closes, then that is more proof that you are in the Truth, for Satan is unleashed against those who follow the Truth.

4. Response to everything


So you are on track, you have answers to all questions. And there are people who are ready to walk, and not just uneducated people (there are doctors, lawyers, engineers among the witnesses ...) because we play on fear and we offer solutions simple to difficult problems. In addition, witnesses know the client well. All visits are recorded, we will know by what weak point to take it. They also easily exploit all the errors of the Church, and since few people have a religious or biblical culture, it works. Finally, the sect has a rewarding side: everything is going badly and the world will be destroyed, but you will be spared because Jehovah will establish a reign of 1,000 years on earth: the true paradise on earth. And you will be!

5. Impossible couple life


At the end of three years, my husband had had enough of this life we ​​were being led to lead and he left. It is unthinkable that a witness lives under the same roof as an "excluded". Moreover, when one of the two is not a witness, married life is impossible and one cannot imagine the number of divorces! Me, I continued because I was convinced that the end of the world was near. The winter of 1975 has arrived ... without anything having happened. We then saw articles flourish saying that they had made an oversight in their learned calculations. Indeed, there must be 6,000 years between the creation of Adam and Armageddon , but the delay was due to the fact that we do not know very well how to estimate the time between the creation of Adam and that of Eve.


Then, as nothing was happening, we talked about the 90s and we saw other articles telling those who waited until 1975 that they were not good witnesses. In short, tissues of lies and contradictions.

6. First doubts


I started to doubt. I fell like lightning: "If this prophet spoke in the name of Yahweh and his word remains without effect and is not fulfilled, then Yahweh did not say this word there. The prophet spoke with presumption, you do not have to fear it ". (De 18:22). This applied well to Jehovah's Witnesses; and I thought if they had made a false prophecy, it should be the first and I tried to know their story. I discovered that the founder Charles Taze Russel had announced Armageddon for 1874 (year of the foundation in Pittsburg), then in 1914. The second president had announced for 1925 the return to earth of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to rule the world . To receive them,

7. Judged and excluded


I asked for time to reflect, a month without meetings, they refused me. I was called to the Tribunal for Jehovah's Witnesses and refused to appear, saying that I only recognized God's right to judge. I was therefore excluded in 1981.


Overnight, I found myself alone because, for thirteen years, I had neither the time nor the right to associate with people other than witnesses.. These brothers, who were so warm at first, no longer knew me. When we go out, we are afraid of everything, we have lost all capacity for reasoning and we no longer know where to find the answers to our questions. I would surely not have gone to seek them from a priest as I had been persuaded that the devil was present in all the churches! I had also lost all sensitivity and you do not realize it right away. Rather, witnesses rejoice in cataclysms and catastrophes. This confirms them in the approach of the end of time. The witness does not have time to take care of those who are hungry or who suffer: they are there to convert, it is much more urgent!


I remember the meetings where we said: there are 50 Jehovah's Witnesses in prison in Fresnes because they refused to do their military and civilian service (if we do, we are excluded) and we applauded. We need martyrs ... And then, in prison, we make conversions.

8. With my son


My son was ten when I was kicked out. I asked him to choose. Without hesitation, he chose to stop. He was tired of not celebrating any holidays, Christmases or birthdays and having meetings almost every night. Because we take the children to meetings and door to door to train them. But the witnesses tried to hold my son back: they were going to pick him up when he left school. I had to file a complaint with the police for the embezzlement of a minor, so that they left him alone.


In 6th grade, my son, trained by friends, wanted to go to catechism. I didn't like it but I left it ... And, it was I who got trapped by the Lord! He would bring index cards home from school, and I would take out my books to prove it was wrong. He in turn took his book and maintained that he was right. I then took my old Bible out of Jerusalem and realized that Jehovah's Witnesses are tampering with the Bible. But it still took a long time for me to ask God for forgiveness and return to the Church.

9. Back to my church


When I returned, I found a lady whom I had tried to convert and it was she who led me to a priest. First introduced to a Bible group, I then did two years of Bible training at the Faith Information Center. For everything to fall back into place in my head, it took four or five years. It was the discovery little by little of a God of love, of tenderness, who does not make you feel guilty. What an event the day when we can say: "My God, I need you!". I also discovered prayer as a meeting, and true fraternity: in the Church we are not always saying: "we love each other, my brothers", but when I have had hard blows , there have always been brothers around me.

10. This sect is dangerous


Jehovah's Witnesses are a dangerous sect. At "Moon" or "Krishna" to indoctrinate people, they are taken to a castle, while at Jehovah's Witnesses, they are left in life. They thus have the prison in the head.


Not only do they falsify the Bible but they do not have a Christian vision of Jesus Christ since, for them, he is not God but only a son of God like you and me. He died on a pole, not on a cross, precisely because the cross is the emblem of Christians. Not resurrected fleshly either. Today he is in heaven in the guise of the Archangel Saint Michael. There is never a celebration except once a year for a mock Eucharist where the words "this represents my body" are pronounced instead of "This IS my body". Only the 144,000 participatewho are elected, whose list is closed and who will spend the 1,000 years in heavenly paradise and will be Jehovah's government that will rule the earth. 

The Holy Spirit for them is not a person but a current, a force. We are saved to the extent that we are part of the organization and if we do what it says. The sect is hyper-hierarchical. Everything starts with the holy mother organization and its president in Brooklyn who gives all the instructions to the whole world. It is a theocratic organization; everything she says is irrefutable. It's almost the Holy Spirit, God live.

11. A very profitable organization


In each country, the central body is Bethel, "house of God", in Hebrew. Almost in every town there is a "Congregation" headed by a group of elders who ensure that all instructions are passed on.


The "District" brings together about ten "congregations" with a district supervisor. Each year (for the Paris region it was July 28-30 and August 4-6 at the Colombes stadium) district assemblies bring together thousands of people with programs in Arabic, Armenian, Portuguese ... In sign language for the deaf and dumb ...


There are two journals appearing twice a month: The Watchtower (13 million copies worldwide) and Awake (10 million copies). Like all of the organization's services, they are provided by volunteers, housed, fed, living in isolation, who do not have Social Security. A very "profitable" system. Especially since each witness has to buy a certain number of magazines, whether they resell them or not. Not to mention the 500,000 cassettes sold per month, and books.


Not to mention either the voluntary offerings and the incessant financial appeals to build such a "Kingdom hall" (meeting house). To be able to recover wills or receive donations, associations were founded in 1901.

12. Denounce the imposture


Jesus Christ freed me from the fear in which the sect had locked me up to suffocation. It was a rebirth. In my parish, we reflect together in a small group on the pastoral council but with freedom. Even our priests do not impose what to think. We live in the breath of the Spirit. They say churches are less warm than sects, but they are what we make of them. When I got there, I made it my goal to say hello every Sunday to a new person. The difference in the Church is that you have to take the first step yourself, whereas with the witnesses you are immediately included.


If I spent thirteen years with Jehovah's Witnesses, I believe it was not for nothing. I wanted to be a missionary ... well, I believe that's a real mission the Lord gave me. I try to denounce their lie as much as possible . I meet young people in the chaplaincies, I work with the ADFI, I also meet witnesses and I say who I am; the basic witnesses are sincere, we must receive them with love and try to enlighten them. There are also small groups of former witnesses, aided by sympathizers, who are starting to form to help those who come out. Testimony collected by Monique Hébrard and published in "Panorama" of October 1989, n ° 241 http://ns4005993.ip-192-99-13.net/tj7.htm