When I was a kid the JWs would come to visit my mother periodically and often leave their literature. When I was about 10 years old I overheard a nice elderly JW woman telling my mother that Jesus was resurrected after three days in his old body. I don't know how or why but I argued with her. I think my reasoning was that if someone sacrifices something, i.e. gives something in return of something then they don't take it back. We went around and around on the subject. I didn't know anything, but what she was saying just didn't make sense to me. Years later the JWs changed their thinking in line with my own.
My mother never ever read any of the literature they left with her. She would usually throw it in the back of the closet or something like that. I was an avid reader so I started saving the stuff thinking maybe some day I will get around to reading it. I never did, until I became interested in the Bible. I wanted to read it, to see if I could, to see what I personally thought of it and possibly to debunk Christianity, which I loathed due to its hypocrisy, history of violence, oppression and repression. So it was their Bible I used along with an old KJV my grandmother had left my mother. After a while I started reading some of the other stuff I had saved away and I became a believer.
I contacted the JWs and started a study and they left me with a great deal more literature. Stuff going back to the 1950s. I read it. I read their newly (at the time) published Proclaimers book when the "society" was admonishing them for not taking enough interest in it. I was considered an excellent student; I could correct elders on the Watchtower's own literature or name books they couldn't remember. But I eventually discontinued my study before becoming a baptized publisher due to their stance on blood transfusions. It wasn't necessarily that I didn't agree, it was that I thought it should be left up to the individual.
Since then I have learned a great deal. Including some things about their past and present that is most certainly a cause for alarm. Their similar bans on vaccinations, higher education and neutrality, their history as false prophets, and their covering up of child molestation in order not to bring reproach on Jehovah's name. Or fear of lawsuits which is often their prime motivation for self correction. The fact that their members are strongly discouraged from examining "apostate" information is very similar to the current worldly tactics using "misinformation," "racism," "science denier" etc to trick people into groupthink and not criticizing or questioning the prescribed narrative.
Most of their teachings I do agree with except when they read themselves into Bible prophecy, then it makes no sense at all. They have had this army of volunteers who research and that research I generally trust more than any other source.
