I Witness

By Paul J. Williams

I Witness is a tell-all book about the authors family and how their family religion, Jehovahs Witness, destroyed and divided the family. The author, Paul J. Williams, delivers the shock-n-awe truths about the mental and emotional
abuse, pain, struggles, and pressure that his family experienced as Jehovahs Witness. In his book, I Witness, Paul shares his dramatic and controversial conversion from Jehovahs Witness to Christianity. Paul describes his escape
and the impact of leaving the Jehovahs Witness religion and changing faiths. This book provides true stories and life situations this family experienced as devout Jehovahs Witnesses and how the strict rules of the religion dismantled
the family and destroyed valuable family relationships. Paul talks about his Father, who died at a young age over the religions controversial policy against blood transfusions, and how losing his Dad at an early age has affected his life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 6, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465356659

Paul J. Williams

Paul J. Williams grew up in Dorchester, Massachusetts and attended Boston Public Schools. Paul studied at Northeastern University and is pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Management degree. He serves as a Deacon at Greater Vision Tabernacle Church of Randolph, Massachusetts. Paul has been married for five years and is the proud father of five children. He lives in Massachusetts with his lovely wife, Tyeshia Williams, and their “Fab Five.” This is his first book.

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Copyright © 2011 by Paul J. Williams.

Library of Congress Control Number:  2011915202

ISBN: Hardcover    978-1-4653-5664-2

ISBN: Softcover      978-1-4653-5663-5

ISBN: Ebook          978-1-4653-5665-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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CONTENTS

I.    Dedication

II.   Acknowledgements

III.   Foreword

IV.   Introduction

1.   A.C.T.S. of God

2.   Weapon of Deception—Part I

3.   Weapon of Deception—Part II

4.   Brace Yourself—The Blood Issue

5.   The Truth They Don’t Want You To Know

6.   Religious Identity—By Birth or Adoption

7.   The Hand That Rocks The Cradle . . .

8.   Free To Flee

9.   The Heart-spital

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated in loving memory of my Father, James Henry Williams, Sr, and to my Grandmother (Nana) Ms Lucille Young and my Aunt Ida Mae Granger. And to my Aunt Lillie Mae Reed, I miss you!

Nana and Aunt Ida, thank you for being great examples of God’s love. Thank you for your prayers and for all the encouragement and wisdom you imparted in me.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

TO THE BEST friend I have on earth—my lovely wife—Tyeshia, thank you for inspiring me. I love you. And to our children: Ken, Khyra, Donya, Maya and Paul II, I love you all.

To my cousins Gary and Gerald Granger, thank you so much for being there for me and for being my big brothers. Your love and support I cherish—and I will always remember.

Gary, I told you before and I will say it again, when you speak I listen because you are full of love and wisdom—you have wise and genuine counsel. You imparted wisdom in me like nobody else can. You truly have God’s love in you. You have your Mother’s love and Nana’s love all in one man. No wonder you’re a loving man with a genuine heart. I love you.

Gerald, you are one of the funniest people I know. You love me for real. You have the love of God and the love of Auntie and Nana all in one. You don’t know how many times I was down and you lifted me up with your encouraging words. You stayed positive and you made me stay positive. When I wanted to give up you wouldn’t let me. You have been in my corner for as long as I can remember and when life situations and circumstances were getting the best of me and when I was down and didn’t have anything left in the tank to fight back and throw punches and defend myself, I looked to you—I wanted you to throw in the towel and you didn’t—you told me to get up and fight—I have another round to go and you believed I could win the next one. Praise God. Thanks for believing in me. I love you.

I would like to acknowledge and thank a few people who have been an inspiration to me during the writing of this book. First, I thank God for giving me the strength and the courage to write this book. Each time I read this book to reflect on it I say wow because I never knew being an author of a book was in my future. But as Nana told me with all sincerity when she first learned that I was writing this book, she said Paul that is not you. That’s God. I always knew God was going to use somebody but I didn’t know He would use my grandson to tell them that there is only One God, One Faith and One Baptism. Her desire is that I go back and tell the others—the millions of people out there who have a troubled spiritual life and losing their family over religion—Jesus Christ saves. So as I journey back and as my eyes write my story—I thank God that I was afforded this opportunity to tell you that if He can save me he can save you, too. I thank God in advance for the powerful testimonies that I will receive through email, letters, and in person of how this book paved a way for others to learn about Jesus Christ.

I would also like to thank my spiritual Mother and Father. To my Spiritual Father, who has been my personal guidance counselor, Pastor Wallace Brown, thank you for your encouragement, wisdom and fatherly guidance and great incite. Thank you for your advice and thanks for loving me like your son. I thank God for placing such a Godly man of integrity in my life—what a blessing. To my Spiritual Mother, thank you. When you received your degree from Harvard, you walked the stage with an Anointing on your life. You encouraged me!

To my brothers Ezra Joe Williams and Joshua DeSouza, I love you. You are a source of encouragement to me. You laugh at me even when I am not funny.

To my sister Tryphaena I love you with all my heart.

Lastly, I have a unique thank you and acknowledgement. I thank God for technology and the internet. Without the internet, I probably would not have been able to read the many stories of the lives of people who have been negatively affected by the religion I once was part of. Though I never met these people, reading their stories on the internet and/or listening to their stories on YouTube helped me to discover that there are millions of people with a story like mine. People who love God but need deliverance and hope—I am here to tell them they can find it in Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior just like I did.

Thank you all and may this book be a blessing to you and to the world in the name of Jesus.

FOREWORD

By Pastor Wallace Brown

WHEN ASKED BY Deacon Paul Williams if I would write the foreword for his book, my answer to him was, I would be honored. After reading I Witness I found it to be an excellent book written from a sound spiritual awaking perspective and greater understanding of family.

Deacon Williams desires to make a significant deposit in others by sharing his life experience as a Witness to the family dynamics played out in the homes of many families national and international. This book is a must read for all who want to overcome a cause of some dysfunction within family.

At the writing of this book, Deacon Williams has served on the ministry staff of Greater Vision Tabernacle Church and has indeed epitomized an individual growing daily in servitude to God’s Word and his people. His commitment to sharing the truth is a passion deep within him so humanity could move forward with a greater understanding of their purpose of one’s life. Faithful to the vision assignment that he so skillfully reflects in the book, I Witness, is sharing truth; this book is an insightful account which reaffirms the kingdom perspective for living.

Deacon Williams has used his growth and knowledge of studying and understanding of religions and personal experiences to birth a book that will invoke you to gain knowledge of Faith.

I sincerely believe that this book contains insight and revelation, but also relevant understanding to one’s belief that will benefit all readers for ages to come.

I am highly honored to recommend this book to anyone who desire truth and insight to one’s Faith. The Greater Vision Tabernacle Church family, Lady Denise and I are so Godly proud of you. We know that God, by His spirit, will get this book into the hands of those who need it. Thank you for your courage for sharing your experience to awake others to truth. Most of all, thank you for your faithfulness in allowing God to use your life to be a witness and completing this assignment.

Love you; your spiritual Father Pastor Wallace Brown.

INTRODUCTION

AS I SURVEY the damage done, the one question that I keep asking myself is what happened? I witnessed what just happened—I know what happened but I am trying to figure this out—is this real or am I asleep and dreaming? The perfect home inhabited by the perfect family destroyed by what appears to be the perfect storm. But the more I go through the rubble and pieces of evidence I know this was not as a result of a storm—this is the work of violent intruders—this family had just been robbed. This was a hate crime. The children’s dreams were shattered. The family’s purpose unfilled. The love that is common for a family to have—gone. The unity that a family has—gone. With all the discord that I am finding within the family, I’m beginning to think this was an inside job. The experts are in a quandary. They’re scratching their heads and bouncing off speculation to one another and every conclusion—reasonable or out of the question—they came to they were dead wrong. Was it forced entry? Did the protectors of the home—the father and mother—put up a fight? Did they try to fight off the enemy? Investigators are baffled—they don’t know what to think. They don’t know how to write their reports because what they are seeing makes no sense. Every logical conclusion and every theory of what happened was wrong. There are no signs of forced entry. No clues left behind making this tragedy a potential unsolved case. All we know is this family is divided and destroyed. Mother against son. Brother against brother. Sister against sister. Within the rubble is divorce—not the kind of divorce between mother and father but the kind that relates to breaking association within the family. The Father cannot be found although there are signs that a man was present and living in the home.

I am an I Witness of this family tragedy and in this book is what happened, how it happened and why it happened. If I was not an I Witness and I told you this story you would not believe my story. If I was not an I Witness, I would not be able to figure this one out for myself. Like the black box that recorded the events of the cockpit of the plane that crashed and burned killing all aboard, I am the black box or the black sheep of the family that recorded the events that caused this family to crash and burn.

I am a family man. I love family. I see why God loves families. I come from a large family—I have 7 brothers and 3 sisters. For my parents, that’s a lot of mouths to feed. That’s a lot of family fights. A lotta personalities. A lotta clothes to buy . . . and so on. No matter what the family is doing, it takes a lotta something to keep it together and to make it work. If you added the number of months my mother was pregnant and carrying each child and the number of months that she spent in the hospital delivering a baby or there for doctor appointments, it’s a lot of her time that she sacrificed. That is time that if it was given back to her she would receive many youthful years back to her. That’s a lotta love!!! Sad to say she’s had her share of losing a child and going through those pains. Everybody didn’t make it. Raising a family is not an easy job. Carrying the baby wasn’t a lot of fun for the mother. The labor pains and being in that delivery room doing all that pushing and breathing was not a lot of fun. But when you get through it and you have this bouncing boy or girl in your arms to hold—how quickly you forget about everything you went through. I am a 3 Stooges fan and I remember when Curly told Moe his eye was hurting. To stop the pain Moe stomped on Curly’s feet causing great pain to his feet. Curly immediately forgot about his eye and starting holding his ailing feet because the new pain he was feeling in his feet made him forget about the old pain he had in his eye. Likewise, the mother immediately forgets the old labor pains and holds the new pain in the butt (lol)—the new baby in her arms. What great joy for mother and father. Is the mother focused on the labor pains at that moment? Is the father still mumbling about the painful words his wife said to him that hurt his little feelings during the pregnancy? Absolutely not. They are together smiling with tears of joy, love and laughter. This addition to the family is better than any addition you can add to your home. The expansion for the family is awesome and a blessing from God despite all the pain you go through. Despite all the pain that Jesus went through for us, He did what God asked of Him.

Despite all your pain you are now responsible for your family. You will have some good days and some bad days but for no reason is this family to be divided or divorced without checking with God for His approval. Keeping this family together in love and in unity makes God’s heart rejoice. The disunity of the family can only be caused by the devil. His success at this makes him proud of his work. God has His own method and His own way of keeping the family in love and in unity—He deposits His Spirit into the family so the family will be together as one heart and one mind just as Jesus Christ and His Father are ONE—this is the prayer of Jesus Christ. To destroy the bond within a family the devil will take necessities such as love, prayer, and unity out of family and replace them with his desires. When the devil accomplishes his goal to destroy the family, it will be tragic and detrimental to that family. What method did he use against my family? I Witness exposes the truth.

Many people undermine the importance of family and don’t even know God’s purpose and view for