A Wandering Minister10

I mentioned the "itinerant minister" above. Indeed, I met him first. His arrival was an event for the community. They began to prepare for it many weeks in advance, arranging so that the itinerant minister could stay with various brothers, for whom it was a kind of privilege, or go to the preaching with different brothers. He usually spent one week at a local association, during which he exhorted him to call for new activists and sell more and more publications in this way. He checked the accounts of the community, and from 1975 onwards, those who were to be made priests or deacons were presented to him.

I remember that people usually felt a reverence for him close to idolatry, relating, however, not so much to him as to the mission that he carried out. The first time Janie spoke to me about the itinerant minister, she spoke with such admiration that it seemed to me that it must be a very exceptional being. When I met him a few weeks later, he seemed to me like any other presbyter I had ever known, and I could not understand what was so special about him. Even today, I cannot explain it otherwise than as a cult of personality fomented by the Watchtower for the purposes of commerce and marketing: to use us as cheap performers and convinced that we have nothing better to do.

Chapter 5

Theocratic Organization

First Assembly

From August 7 to 10, 1975, I attended the first national assembly of Jehovah's Witnesses. It took place in the Municipal Sports Palace in Barcelona, and its theme was the supremacy of God.

It seems to me that both in its subject matter and in its purpose it was similar to all the other assemblies at which I attended as a "Jehovah's Witness," and it seems to me that they have been similar to one another in the future.

Of course, the dominant note was the insistence on the imminent end of the world. I still have the program of this assembly, and this theme is present in every part of it. In support of what has been said, I will cite the titles of several speeches: "Watch to be saved," "Meet great torments with hope," "Keep the family united in the last times," "Our refuge is the incorruptible kingdom of heaven," "One world, one government under the rule of God," etc. Another great theme was the imperative need to go from house to house: "The joy of serving Jehovah," "Do not miss the blessings," etc. Thus, Consequently, we were very insistently tied to the theocratic organization as the only means of salvation.

Alternative to Catholicism