The Last Days (May 15-21, 2023)
Issue No. 5
Welcome to the fifth edition of The Last Days newsletter.
You can find the last edition of TLD covering May 8-14, 2023, here if you missed it. If you prefer to read The Last Days on our webpage click here.
For this issue we were asked by subscribers to provide a greater variety of unique content, information, and news. We believe, in this issue, we have delivered our biggest and most diverse newsletter to date!
The Last Days delivers a collection of curated Jehovah’s Witnesses-related news articles from around the world, and other entertaining information, straight into your inbox every weekend. You choose what you want to read, believe, download, listen to, watch, or subscribe to.
This edition of The Last Days, covering the week of May 15-21, 2023, features: a Special Announcement Event in Pennsylvania for abuse survivors of Jehovah’s Witnesses; a scaled-back JW News highlighting a growing movement in Japan and an article from the UK on shunning; our leading Feature of the Week, the documentary Rebekah Vardy: Jehovah’s Witnesses and Me (for obvious reasons); a JW Leak of the Week featuring the May 2023 version of the secret JW Elder’s manual (with download links); and your regular JW Celebrity News ‘gossip’ section with this week’s celebrity in focus, Luke Evans.
To lighten the news and keep you awake!, this week we also feature a JW Book Review of I Felt the End Before It Came; and an account of a disfellowshipped person who gets reinstated and then shares his story in Interview: Apostate Gets Reinstated as Jehovah’s Witness, from YouTube content creator, EXJW Diaries.
Enjoy the Last Days!
“The events unfolding around us, are making clearer than ever, that we’re living in the final part of the Last Days, undoubtedly the final part of the final part of the Last Days, shortly before the Last Day of the Last Days.” - Stephen Lett, member of the governing body of Jehovah’s Witnesses
Please support The Last Days for as little as the cost of a coffee.
JW survivors rally opportunity in Pennsylvania on June 5, 2023
CALL OUT: Pennsylvania – a speaking opportunity is available for Pennsylvanian-based victims and survivors of institutional child sexual abuse, from within the Jehovah’s Witnesses, to speak at a press conference and rally, hosted by PA Rep. Mark Rozzi, and to line up in support of victims and survivors from the Amish community.
If you are available to speak for 1-2 minutes then please message JW Leaks, via the below links, and you will provided with the authorized email address for vetting:
If you would like to attend the press conference and public rally as a supporter, then you are most welcome.
The Event
The Host: Rep. Mark Rozzi
The Subject: Statute of Limitation Press Conference (SOL Reform - the Amish Issue)
Event type: Press Conference and Rally
Location: Front Capitol Steps, Harrisburg, PA 17120
Date and Time: Monday, June 5, 2023, 11:00am.
The event is registered and included in the official PA State calendar of events
Rebekah Vardy: Jehovah’s Witnesses and Me
With over 100 online news articles and reviews about the documentary Rebekah Vardy: Jehovah’s Witnesses and Me to chose from, it was difficult to select and recommend only one article for featuring. We not only managed this but we also found an online direct link to the documentary for readers and subscribers of The Last Days to watch.
[REVIEW EXTRACT] It may sound as if its title has come from the Alan Partridge school of TV commissioning, but there is nothing at all humorous about Rebekah Vardy: Jehovah’s Witnesses and Me. Vardy gets her notoriety out of the way in the early moments of this powerful film, explaining that she is best known as the wife of a Premier League footballer and “a bit of a controversial character from that trial”.
What follows is a harrowing account of her early life as a Jehovah’s Witness and an investigation of the Christian denomination, its structures and its practices.
…As you would expect from a film so accusatory, there is a lot of back and forth, as the Jehovah’s Witnesses UK branch committee is given the right to reply to each allegation. In one response, they call the idea that the religion is controlling “misleading and discriminatory”.
…The Jehovah’s Witnesses deny that “shunning” takes place.
- Rebecca Nicholson (The Guardian)
Read the full Guardian review here or click on the article below
Watch online - Rebekah Vardy: Jehovah’s Witnesses and Me
Did you know?
This week, JW Leaks reported via its Twitter account that, in the lead up to the documentary Rebekah Vardy: Jehovah’s Witnesses and Me, the official JW website JW.ORG scrubbed clean and removed all news references relating to legal matters on the site and created an entire new page dedicated exclusively to ‘Resources for Journalists and News Media’. See the JW Leaks Twitter posts below.
With ‘nothing to hide’ why are the Jehovah’s Witnesses trying to hide?
Japan - published on May 19, 2023
A petition by former Jehovah’s Witnesses in Japan has been presented to the Japan Branch of Jehovah’s Witnesses. The petition states:
We request apologies for physical child abuse by the Jehovah’s Witnesses and we request that the spokesperson of the religious group retract their comments denying child abuse by Jehovah’s Witnesses.
The Last Days intends to publish more information when it becomes available.
United Kingdom - published on May 20, 2023
Elder’s manual (May 2023 version): Shepherd the Flock of God
The Jehovah’s Witnesses secret elder’s manual has been updated and leaked, as usual.
The anonymous links below this section contain versions of the Shepherd manual in English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, and Russian. No doubt there will be more offical versions in additional languages to come.
Of special note, in the updated version, are instructions to congregation elders to destroy records pertaining to allegations of adultery within the congregation. Why? Could it be that, not too long ago, a written request was made by a Norwegian XJW, to the Jehovas Vitner religion (Jehovah’s Witnesses), for copies of such documents as held by the religion on this exact subject pertaining to this XJWs own personal marriage? We believe… Yes!
In the above legal request, the Shepherd the Flock of God book, in Norwegian, was used as evidence in the formal complaint to the Norwegian authorities that the Jehovas Vitner religion (Jehovah’s Witnesses) maintain such records, and that they refuse to hand such records as required by the law. Of course now the Jehovas Vitner religion can claim ‘ingen slike poster finnes’ (i.e. ‘no such records exist’) because they have destroyed them. The new instructions apply to both current and historical records of any “confession of adultery”. The updated Shepherd manual changes, as sent out in the notification of changes to the elder’s manual, stated the following:
The Last Days newsletter was anonymously sent the following download links to alleged copies of the updated Shepherd the Flock of God manual (May 2023 version) in all of the above cited languages, except for Norwegian … at the moment:
Main Download Link of all updated Shepherd the Flock of God secret manuals
Backup Download Link of all updated Shepherd the Flock of God secret manuals
Let’s face it, there are a lot of actors, singers, musicians, artists, sports stars, and celebrities that are former or even current Jehovah’s Witnesses, or that were raised as children within the religion.
In focus: Luke Evans
Luke Evans, star of The Hobbit, Beauty and the Beast, The Fast & Furious franchise, the new Echo 3 movie available on Apple TV+ (see below trailer), and maybe the next James Bond, was raised a Jehovah's Witness within his home country of Wales.
In a 2019 podcast interview on Table Manners with Jessie Ware [1], and reported on in the Belfast Telegraph [2], Luke Evans explained about his experience as a child enrolled in the Theocratic Ministry School of Jehovah’s Witnesses - a worldwide religious school which at its highest peak in recent times had millions of students. The Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses are currently denying the school ever existed, after having dissolved the school a few years ago. Why? One reason could be that the school directly implicated the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Watch Tower Society in the direct supervision of, and authority over, child students - and any vicarious liability that carried in relation to enrolled child students that were sexually abused within the Jehovah’s Witnesses institutional setting (you read that correct). To understand the legal liability in this area we recommend subscribers, especially law firm subscribers, review the Say Sorry website and its submissions page.
At The Last Days we choose believe the words of Luke Evans over the words of the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses on this subject. And we add as a witness: we also as children were enrolled in the Theocratic Ministry School of Jehovah’s Witnesses. It really was good training, and the ‘door-to-door work was great prep on getting a thick skin when becoming’, in our case, an activist.
In his exclusive podcast interview with Jessie Ware, Luke Evans, who was indeed a child student enrolled in the Theocratic Ministry School of Jehovah’s Witnesses, explains:
Every couple of weeks you’d get a letter saying you have to go up to the front [of the Theocratic Ministry School] and tell everyone what the religion meant to you.
And you’d effectively have to write your own script and then stand up in front of 200 people on a Thursday night … and you’d have to speak to them and learn how to present yourself.
Then you would be critiqued where they’d tell you you need to work on empathy or illustration or gestures. It was all very specific.
In a way I would never say that any of that upbringing had any detrimental effect on what I ended up doing and you know, having a door slammed in your face, which happened regularly on the door-to-door work, was great prep on getting a thick skin when becoming an actor.
I was brought up as a Jehovah’s Witness … I’m not one anymore but my parents are … I was a Jehovah’s Witness for 16 years.
My first birthday was when I was 18 and I had so much guilt.
Even though I hadn’t been a Witness for over two years I just thought this is weird and that this feels so strange. It was the same with Christmas and Easter. - Luke Evans [2]
[1] Table Manners with Jessie Ware, S8 Ep 6: Luke Evans
I Felt the End Before It Came by Daniel Allen Cox
“I spent eighteen years in a group that taught me to hate myself. You cannot be queer and a Jehovah’s Witness—it’s one or the other.” - D.A.C.
Daniel Allen Cox grew up with firm lines around what his religion considered unacceptable: celebrating birthdays and holidays; voting in elections, pursuing higher education, and other forays into independent thought. Their opposition to blood transfusions would have consequences for his mother, just as their stance on homosexuality would for him.
But even years after whispers of his sexual orientation reached his congregation’s presiding elder, catalyzing his disassociation, the distinction between “in” and “out” isn’t always clear. Still in the midst of a lifelong disentanglement, Cox grapples with the group’s cultish tactics—from gaslighting to shunning—and their resulting harms—from simmering anger to substance abuse—all while redefining its concepts through a queer lens. Can Paradise be a bathhouse, a concert hall, or a room full of books?
With great candour and disarming self-awareness, Cox takes readers on a journey from his early days as a solicitous door-to-door preacher in Montreal to a stint in New York City, where he’s swept up in a scene of photographers and hustlers blurring the line between art and pornography. The culmination of years spent both processing and avoiding a complicated past, I Felt the End Before It Came reckons with memory and language just as it provides a blueprint to surviving a litany of Armageddons. - Goodreads / Amazon
EXJW Diaries - an ‘apostate’ gets reinstated as a Jehovah’s Witness and shares his story.
On Wednesday, February 22, 2023, it was announced at the World Headquarters of Jehovah’s Witnesses that
“Brother Anthony Morris III is no longer serving as a member of the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses.”
Still no news on the reasons for the removal of Anthony Morris III from the governing body of Jehovah’s Witnesses, or his whereabouts, although online speculation continues to abound.
Brilliant
Well done
Keep up the good work 👏