There are many websites that promote the NGO conspiracy theory. Their claims range from mere factual inaccuracies, such as the hopelessly wrong authors who claim the Watchtower “joined the UN” or “became a UN member” (which only countries can do, of course) — to the more clever individuals who twist the evidence, ignore select parts, and exploit emotions in order to promote their own agenda.
We shall only consider one of the latter type of authors, Mr Robert King of Michigan, USA. Why this person? This disfellowshipped man has done an extraordinary amount to promote the NGO conspiracy theory and condemn Jehovah's Witnesses on the Internet. Also, he has spent thousands of dollars sending letters to the elders of every congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses in the United States, some congregations in the UK, and all of the branch offices worldwide to promote his ideas. Furthermore, he wrote a book entitled Jehovah Himself Has Become King, of which he has distributed tens of thousands of copies. If you, or someone you know, has received one of his letters or a copy of his book — you may find the following information of great interest.
An Awake! article, when warning readers of the effects of propaganda, advised that it's readers should ask:
“What is the motive for the message? ... try to check the track record of those speaking. Are they known to speak the truth? ... Why should you regard this person–or organization or publication–as having expert knowledge or trustworthy information on the subject in question?”
This is sound advice. As Mr King is one of the prime promoters of the NGO conspiracy theory, it is only proper to ask serious questions about him, his track-record, and whether he is a trustworthy source of information.
Robert King of Michigan, USA, believes himself to be a “watchman”, or prophet of God. On the Internet he goes by the name of “e-Watchman”. He believes he was predicted to appear in the scriptures as a modern-day fulfillment of the prophet Ezekiel. In his own words, he describes his supposed transformation this way:
“...a few years ago I had an intense, life-altering spiritual experience that very few of Jehovah's Witnesses living today can relate to. For lack of a better term, I became born again, as Jesus worded it. I refer to it as 'my little change.' It was like reading the Bible for the first time. Everything seemed fresh and new, as if, like Paul described, scales had fallen from my eyes, so as to see things in a new light.”
King went on to write scores of essays detailing how the Watchtower Society has fallen from God's favor and is to be destroyed — partly due to the NGO issue. He calls Jehovah's Witnesses “liars”, “Baal-worshipers”, and “spiritual adulterers”. Despite all of this, King falsely claims to be a:
“...devoted Jehovah's Witness”
Yes — despite all he writes against Jehovah's Witnesses, he attracts members to his sect by hiding the truth. Any new reader to his website is deliberately given a specially crafted false impression of him. They are fooled into thinking he is a loyal and faithful Jehovah's Witness who is simply “re-examining” our prophetic interpretations. This false front has lured many spiritually weak worshipers of Jehovah into his way of thinking.
What Robert King plays down is the fact he was disfellowshipped for apostasy in 2005 and he did not get his ideas from any “little change” sent from heaven. We believe his teachings were copied from the writings of an Alabama man named Donald Burney. Most of King's teachings are identical to Burney's — with some copied almost word-for-word, using the same phrases, sentence-structures, and even step-by-step arguments appear in the same order. Interestingly, the man we say he copied his teachings from does not believe himself to be a mere prophet, but Burney believes that he is Jesus Christ — yes the Messiah (the claims vary, sometimes he merely claims to be equal in importance to the Messiah). After reading this man's ideas, in 2002 Robert King set up a website to promote his own version of those ideas, and declared himself a “watchman” who is “serving Jehovah's Witnesses and the Watchtower Society”.
Soon a few Jehovah's Witnesses and former Witnesses were persuaded by his writings and joined with him in arguing that due to the NGO status, the Watchtower Society is now spiritually unclean, has committed “spiritual adultery”, and will shortly be destroyed by Jehovah God. His website simply became an online sect. In time, quite a few of these sect members became “anointed” — with some even claiming to have seen and heard strange things from angels, and at least one now wondering whether she receives messages from God in her dreams.
Nowadays, most of those former brothers and sisters cannot lower themselves to attend meetings at the Kingdom Hall, because there might be something “spiritually unclean” there — as they are far too oh-so holy to take part. Yet, amongst these supposedly spiritually pure “Christians”, is pure spiritual filth. To cite just one example, the sect's own webmaster and King's closest associate openly promotes the Trinity-based teaching that Jesus' name is Jehovah, and also talks about praying to Jesus. Yet King sees nothing wrong or hypocritical about this. In fact, almost every teaching from Babylon the Great has been promoted in some way among his sect on it's discussion board — all with King's silent approval. There are also admirers and followers of other prominent apostates. So much for “anointed” King's much-touted “truth seeking” and spiritual cleanness!
Also, the sect members have been repeatedly known to lie and use abusive and foul language — especially to those who leave the sect. One follower who returned to the truth had his e-mail account flooded with so many abusive messages from King's other followers, that he was forced to close the account. Also, recently King and his webmaster, Timothy Kline, threatened former members of the sect by gathering personal information about them to use against them, and by tracing where they live! Yes — this is the sort of people that they really are, and these are the sort of people who want you to leave Jehovah's Witnesses and become your “clean” spiritual guides.
“Be on the watch for the false prophets that come to you in sheep’s covering, but inside they are ravenous wolves. By their fruits you will recognize them.” —Matthew 7:15, 16a
One former follower of Robert King, and a researcher for this work, tells us what happened when he discovered that King's claims about the NGO issue were wrong. He comments:
“I think my final post on [Robert King's] discussion board was when I told those that had been disfellowshipped for accusing the Watchtower Society of being a [spiritual] prostitute over the NGO thing that they should go to the elders and tell them they were wrong, apologize, and seek reinstatement. At that point, since King was one who had been disfellowshipped over [the] NGO [issue, he] booted me off — saying that I had nothing worthwhile to add to their discussion board. Then came the directive that anyone defending the Watchtower Society on their “adultery” with the UN would be immediately removed ...”
As soon as Robert King was presented with the arguments shown here, he banned any discussion of these points and the evidence which shows errors in his NGO essays. Now anyone who wishes to dispute King's claims would be automatically removed and silenced. He continues:
“It became quite clear that they were not interested in the truth and 'Christian freedom' but only to promote their own apostate agenda.”
Interestingly, when the evidence presented in this work was first published on the Internet, Robert King banned all outside links on his discussion board. He claimed this was to “protect the flock” from links to possible harmful websites. In reality, this was a lie. The real reason for the sudden ban was to prevent his followers from reading allegations that he had stolen his interpretations of scripture from false Messiah Donald Burney, and also that his NGO accusations were full of errors.
As part of King's further action to censor the truth, he successfully managed to take over this author's e-mail account and also got this website temporarily shut down — then for a while tried to keep his actions secret, blaming this site's owner for its sudden disappearance whenever someone asked. Yes, “anointed” watchman of God, Robert King and his trinitarian associate Timothy Kline, ignore the evidence and censor the facts in a deliberate effort to hide the truth about both themselves and the NGO issue.
At the start of this chapter, we quoted from an Awake! article which advised that we should consider the source of the information we read. After learning the key facts about the most prolific promoter of the NGO conspiracy theory today, do you think he is worth listening to? —See the Appendix entry, “e-Watchman — a conspiracy theorist or an anointed prophet?” for more information