Greetings from Massachusetts!

I was raised in a Unitarian "Church" (not really a Christian church, even by their own admission), and became an atheist in my teen years after reading a number of books by the likes of Charles Darwin, Harlow Shapley, Julian Huxley, et al. When I attended Harvard, I found myself right at home with my atheistic thinking.

In my early twenties I had a job working beside a Jehovah's Witness, and conversations with him helped me to believe in God again, but also resulted in my joining that cult, where I was trapped for the next thirteen years, eventually becoming a JW elder and presiding overseer (=pastor).

In order to become better JWs, my wife and I began reading the Bible itself (which most JWs don't do), and we began telling others about what we found in Scripture. We came to realize we should be following Jesus as head of the Church, instead of a group of men at Watchtower Society headquarters in Brooklyn, NY. As an elder, I gave a sermon to the congregation in which I urged them to read the Bible instead of The Watchtower if they didn't have time to read both. You could have heard a pin drop in the Kingdom Hall audience, and that was the last time they let me speak to the congregation.

So, I started publishing an underground newsletter secretly, using the pen name "Bill Tyndale, Jr." After a close friend reported me, my wife and I were put on trial and disfellowshipped. That was 1982. After meeting in our home for a while to read the Bible with other disgruntled ex-JWs, we found a Baptist church (ABC) and joined.

A few years later I authored Jehovah's Witnesses Answered Verse by Verse (Baker Book House). I continued researching Bible topics and served for a decade as a contributing editor of the late Dr. Walter Martin's Christian Research Journal. Over the years I wrote several other books on the JWs and their history, also teaming up with an ex-Mormon to write a few books exposing Mormonism and its history.

All of this research eventually led me farther back, to the writings of the Reformation. I read works by Rev. Dr. Prof. F. N. Lee, as well as commentaries by Calvin, Luther and others -- all of which led me back to the original Reformed faith.

After moving to the Buzzards Bay area on the Massachusetts coast a few years ago, Penni and I joined a 300+ year old Congregational church (NACCC) -- which was once Reformed in its teachings -- where we try to interest people in the Bible and the original teachings of the Reformation through the Bible studies that we conduct and participate in.

It has been a long road, but that is to be expected, considering how far from the truth I started out.

It has been a joy to find The Puritan Board, and now to join.

__________________
David A. Reed
NACCC, Massachusetts
http://www.LeftBehindAnswered.com
author of
LEFT BEHIND Answered Verse by Verse
Mormons Answered Verse by Verse
Jehovah's Witnesses Answered Verse by Verse