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A forty-two-year-old Latino, Raphael, is a Los Angeles-based comic and lecturer.\u00a0 He was born in Texas where heattended his first Jehovah\u2019s Witness meeting at age six.\u00a0 He gave his first Bible sermon [soon after the age of thirteen], tended his own congregation at twenty, and was headed for a position of leadership among the 904,000 Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses in the United States.\u00a0 But he traded in his Bible for a Quran after having braved a visit to a local mosque.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n On November 1, 1991, he embraced Islam, bringing to the Muslim community the organizational and speaking skills he developed among Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses.\u00a0 He speaks with the urgency of a new convert, but one who can make immigrant Muslims laugh at themselves.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n He told his story mimicking a cast of characters.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n I remember vividly being in a discussion where we were all sitting in my parents\u2019 living room and there were some other Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses there.\u00a0 They were talking about : \u201cIt\u2019s Armageddon! \u00a0The time of the end!\u00a0 And Christ is coming! \u00a0And you know the hailstones are going to be out here as big as cars! \u00a0God is going to use all kinds of things to destroy this wicked system and remove the governments! \u00a0And the Bible talks about the earth opening up! \u00a0It\u2019s going to swallow whole city blocks!\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019m scared to death! \u00a0And then my mother turned around: \u201cSee what\u2019s going to happen to you if you don\u2019t get baptized, and if you don\u2019t do God\u2019s will? \u00a0The earth is going to swallow you up, or one of these huge hailstones is going to hit you on the head [klonk], knock you out, and you will not exist ever again.\u00a0 I\u2019ll have to make another child.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n I wasn\u2019t going to take a chance of being hit by one of those big hailstones.\u00a0 So I got baptized.\u00a0 And of course Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses don\u2019t believe in the sprinkling of the water.\u00a0 They submerge you completely, hold you there for a second, and then bring you back up.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n I did that at the age of thirteen, September 7, 1963, in Pasadena, California, at the Rose Bowl.\u00a0 It was a big international assembly.\u00a0 We had 100,000 people.\u00a0 We drove all the way from Lubbock, Texas.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Eventually I started giving bigger talks – ten minutes in front of the congregation.\u00a0 A circuit servant recommended me to give the hour lectures that are done on Sunday when they invite the general public.\u00a0 They usually reserved those [sermons] for the elders of the congregation.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n [In an authoritarian voice:] \u201cSure he\u2019s young.\u00a0 But he can handle it.\u00a0 He\u2019s a good Christian boy.\u00a0 He has no vices, and he\u2019s obedient to his parents and seems to have pretty good Bible knowledge.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n So at the age of sixteen I started giving hour lectures in front of whole congregations.\u00a0 I was assigned first to a group in Sweetwater, Texas, and then, eventually, in Brownfield, Texas, I got my first congregation.\u00a0 At age twenty, I had become what they call a pioneer minister.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses have a very sophisticated training program, and they also have kind of a quota system.\u00a0 You have to devote ten to twelve hours a month to door-to-door preaching.\u00a0 It\u2019s like sales management.\u00a0 IBM has nothing on these guys.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n So when I became a pioneer minister, I devoted most of my full time to doing the door-to-door ministry.\u00a0 I had to do like 100 hours a month, and I had to have seven Bible studies.\u00a0 I started lecturing other congregations.\u00a0 I began to get a lot of responsibility, and I was accepted at a school in Brooklyn, New York, a very elite school that Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses have for the cr\u00e8me de la cr\u00e8me, the top one percent.\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t go.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n A few things no longer made sense to me.\u00a0 For example, the quota system.\u00a0 It seemed like every time I wanted to turn a corner and get into another position of responsibility, I had to do these secular material things to prove my godliness.\u00a0 It\u2019s like if you meet your quotas this month, God loves you.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t meet your quotas next month, God doesn\u2019t love you.\u00a0 That didn\u2019t make very much sense.\u00a0 One month God loves me and one month He doesn\u2019t?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n We criticized the Catholic Church because they had a man, a priest, to whom they had to confess.\u00a0 And we\u2019d say, \u201cYou shouldn\u2019t have to go to a man to confess your sins! \u00a0Your sin is against God!\u201d<\/span><\/strong> And yet we went to a Body of Elders.\u00a0 You confessed your sins to them, and they put you on hold, and said [Elder as telephone operator:] \u201cHold on just a minute . . . What do you think, Lord? \u00a0No? . . . Okay, I\u2019m sorry, we tried our best but you\u2019re not repentant enough.\u00a0 Your sin is too big, so you either lose your fellowship in the church or you\u2019re going to be on probation.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n If the sin is against God, shouldn\u2019t I directly go to God and beg for mercy?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Probably the nail that hit the coffin was that I noticed that they started reading their Bible less.\u00a0 Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses have books for everything that is put out by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society.\u00a0 The only people on the entire planet who know how to interpret Bible Scripture correctly are that group of men, that committee in Brooklyn, who tell Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses worldwide how to dress, how to talk, what to say, what not to say, how to apply Scripture and what the future is going to be like.\u00a0 God told them, so they can tell us.\u00a0 I appreciated the books.\u00a0 But if the Bible is the book of knowledge, and if it\u2019s God\u2019s instructions, well, shouldn\u2019t we get our answers out of the Bible? \u00a0Paul himself said to find out for yourself what is a true and acceptable word of God.\u00a0 Don\u2019t let men tickle your ears.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n I started saying, \u201cDon\u2019t worry so much about what the Watchtower says – read the Bible for yourself.\u201d \u00a0Ears started to prick up.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n [Old Southerner\u2019s drawl:] \u201cI think we got us an apostate here, Judge.\u00a0 Yup.\u00a0 I think this old boy\u2019s one taco short of something.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Even my father said, \u201cYou better watch it, young man, that\u2019s the demons talking right there.\u00a0 That\u2019s the demons trying to get in and cause division.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n I said, \u201cDad, it\u2019s not the demons.\u00a0 People don\u2019t need to read so much of these other publications.\u00a0 They can find their answers with prayer and in the Bible.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Spiritually I no longer felt at ease.\u00a0 So in 1979, knowing that I could not make headway, I left, disgruntled and with a bad taste in my mouth, because all my life I had put my soul, my heart, my mind into the church.\u00a0 That was the problem.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t put it in God.\u00a0 I put it in a man-made organization.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n I can\u2019t go to other religions.\u00a0 As a Jehovah\u2019s Witness, I had been trained, through the Scriptures, to show that they are all wrong.\u00a0 That idolatry is bad.\u00a0 The Trinity doesn\u2019t exist.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019m like a man without a religion.\u00a0 I was not a man without a God.\u00a0 But where could I go?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n In 1985, I decided to come to Los Angeles and get on the Johnny Carson show and make my mark as a great comedian and actor.\u00a0 I have always felt like I was born for something.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know whether it was going to be finding the cure to cancer or becoming an actor.\u00a0 I kept praying and it got frustrating after a while.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n So I just went to the Catholic Church close to my house, and I tried it.\u00a0 I remember on Ash Wednesday, I had that ash cross on my forehead.\u00a0 I was trying anything I could.\u00a0 I went for about two or three months, and I just couldn\u2019t do it anymore, man.\u00a0 It was:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Stand up.\u00a0 Sit down.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Stand up.\u00a0 Sit down.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Okay, stick your tongue out.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n You got a lot of exercise.\u00a0 I think I lost about five pounds.\u00a0 But that\u2019s about it.\u00a0 So now I\u2019m more lost than ever.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n But it never passed through my mind that there is not a Creator.\u00a0 I have His phone number, but the line\u2019s always busy.\u00a0 I\u2019m doing my little movie shots.\u00a0 A film called Deadly Intent.\u00a0 A telephone commercial in Chicago.\u00a0 An Exxon commercial.\u00a0 A couple of bank commercials.\u00a0 In the meantime I\u2019m doing construction work on the side.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Ref. www.islamreligion.com \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 A forty-two-year-old Latino, Raphael, is a Los Angeles-based comic and lecturer.\u00a0 He was born in Texas where heattended his first Jehovah\u2019s Witness meeting at age six.\u00a0 He… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":1380,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories-of-famous"],"yoast_head":"\n
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