The Heavenly New Jerusalem Auxiliary Courthouse #37 Room E19b (“Earth Court”) October 4, 2114 (Earth-time) Court Transcript (prepared by brother McRoberts)

Brother Chairman: Praise God! On this occasion of the 100th anniversary of the start of our co-reign over the Earth, I call the General Assembly of the Governing Body to order.

Brothers and Sister, please lay down your harps (and other assorted musical instruments) and cease singing God’s praises for the moment. Thank you.

The only topic on the agenda for this Earth-day is whether to annihilate Sister Innocenti Gonzolez for Conduct Unbecoming.

Brother Everest will read the charges.

Brother Everest: That said sister did, knowingly and with full intention, entice a man along the ‘chain of desire’™ by holding said man’s hand.

Brother Chairman: We will now hear arguments from the floor… The chair recognizes Sister Emily.

Sister Emily: Why is this sister the only one being tried: why not the brother involved?

 

Brother Chairman: The brother is an elder’s son. Any more discussion?

Brother Peter: Can we call her just Sister Gonzolez? “Sister Innocenti” sounds prejudicial.

(General Laughter)

Brother Swenson: Innocent my ass!

(Laughter.)

Sister Emily: You haven’t got an ass anymore, brother.

Sister Finehart: (Whispering) He never did.

Brother Alpine: Were these two engaged at the time?

Brother Swenson: They were engaged in hanky-panky, that’s what they were engaged in!

(Loud Laughter)

Brother Chairman: (Half-heartedly) Order, please… No, they were not engaged to be married at the time.

Sister Finehart: She loves him and wants to marry him. She was hoping he’d pop the question if she showed him a little physical affection.

Brother Jorgenson: She put the cart before the horse, that’s what she did. How many times have we seen a “little physical affection” turn into the ugliest of sin? Plus it looks like she dolled herself up with make-up!

Brother Fenster: A hundred year-old make-up! That must’ve been attractive!

(Laughter.)

Sister Finehart: She did not use make-up; that was all destroyed in the great conflagration. She just pinched her cheeks to give them some color. It’s an old trick we learned back in the Old Order since we weren’t allowed to buy blush.

Brother Peterson: Oh, that may have worked for you, but this sister is black, isn’t she?

Brother Alpine: Holding hands is the first link in that inexorable chain that leads to fornication.

Sister Emily: Can’t we just give her a warning?

Brother Bombast: There’s no excuse for this sort of thing anymore! We’re in the New Order now, people! Wake up! There’s no more winking at sins. It’s shape up or ship out time. All infractions against God’s law must be met with the ultimate punishment: no exceptions! You give ’em an inch and they’ll take a mile, every time.

Sister Finehart: Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

Brother Chairman: How dare you quote the King of Heaven!

Brother Jorgenson: That was a quote applicable to the Old Order, not the new.

Sister Finehart: I’m not so sure about that.

Sister Emily: Should we request the King’s attendance and ask him?

Brother Swenson: I think he’s out on the golf-course, isn’t he?

(Restrained laughter)

Brother Peterson: I heard he was over in hall K2: the Klingons’ Court, helping to decide a big case.

Brother Ronald: Yeah, I heard that he had to die twice for them: once on each of their planets.

Brother Chairman: Let’s put a stop to all these rumors once and for all! Christ the King is currently on guard-duty over the Abyss in his role as Michael the Archangel.

If you think I’m about to disturb him to rule over such a simple, insignificant matter as this, you have another think coming!

Sister Emily: It’s not insignificant to Sister Innocenti.

Brother Alpine: What are they still getting married for down there, anyway? The Earth’s crowded enough as it is.

Brother Bombast: It’s only crowded because we’re not meeting our annihilation quotas, as I’ve pointed out time and time again. Right now I’ve got 200 brothers waiting to be tried for passing around an old paperback copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover which somehow survived the book-burnings, while we’re wasting all this time on one erring sister. We need to come to quicker decisions without all this hemming and hawing and letting the sisters speak. You’d never hear sisters speak in my old congregation!

Sister Emily: Probably you just weren’t listening.

Sister Finehart: (Whispering) Just like now.

Brother Bombast: No sir, we’d come to quick decisions in my old congregation. Somebody slipped up? Too bad: no mollycoddling. Poof–disfellowshipped! You learn your lesson, repent and reform your ways and come crawling back begging for reinstatement and then maybe we’ll talk.

 

Sister Emily: But now there’s no “crawling back”; we’re talking about everlasting death here, not disfellowshipping.

Brother Chairman: They are one and the same now.

On a side-note, brother secretary, please send a memo to the Enforcement Squad to do another Earth shake-down for contraband; we’re hearing too many accounts of the existence of non Watchtower books and worldly things like this make-up.

Back to the matter at hand: are we in general agreement regarding the annihilation of this sister whats-her-name?

Several voices: “Sister Innocenti Gonzolez”.

Brother Chairman: (under his breath) “Sister Guilty Gonzolez, more likely.”

Sister Finehart: But we used to just give public reproof for something like this.

Brother Bombast: There was no “we” involved. It was us brothers who took charge of all of that, so we’re the ones with experience, and we don’t need sisters telling us —

Brother Chairman: Sister Finehart: you bring up a moot point; there is no public reproof anymore. Sin is punished with one ultimate penalty. Must I read to you from the Organizing for Eternity in the New World book?

(Collective groan.)

Brother Chairman: All right, then. All we need to decide here is whether a sin was committed, and if so apply the punishment.

Brother Alpine: That is our duty.

Brother Jorgenson: It is our ‘privileged responsibility’™.

Brother Chairman: We can’t afford to have Christ the King come back at the end of the thousand years and find sinners walking about on Earth. Then he’d accuse us of not having been his Faithful and Discreet Slave™.

Several brothers at once: We can’t have that! Think what would  become of us!

Brother Chairman: Yes, indeed. Do I have a motion from the floor?

Brother Alpine: I move that Sister Gonzolez be annihilated for the sin of enticement.

Brother Chairman: Do I have a second?

Thousands of brothers at once: I second the motion!

Brother Chairman: All in favor?

A choir of heavenly voices: “Aye!”

Brother Chairman: Opposed?

(Deathly silence)

Brother Chairman: Motion carried!

(The sound of the gavel banging, followed by the sharp retort of a thunderbolt and a faint, pitiful scream.)

Brother Chairman: Meeting adjourned. Praise God!

 

I’ll never forget the time I went to visit our dear Elder Anderson in the hospital after his heart attack.

I went into his room to find him, and his bed, gone!
I feared the worst, and walked back to the nurses’ station to inquire.
The nurse behind the counter frowned when I mentioned his name. “I’m afraid he’s taken a turn for the worse,” she said. “They’re working on him in ICU right now.”

I took a seat in the empty waiting area and began silently praying.

About an hour later an exhausted looking doctor came over, looked at me and asked, “Are you here for Gordon Anderson?”

“Yes,” I gulped, bracing myself for the worst.

“Gordon has had a brush with death,” he explained in his calm, professional manner. “We managed to revive him after several attempts, and he appears to be stabilized now. Would you like to see him?”

“Yes,” I replied, and numbly followed the doctor to the recovery room.

Elder Anderson was lying in bed, white as the sheets and every bit as unconscious. I waited till the doctor was done checking on everything and then pulled up a chair close to the bed.
I sat by Elder Anderson for several minutes in silent prayer before his eyes opened and he looked at me.

“Praise Jah!” I exclaimed. “How do you feel?”

“I was dead,” came his feeble, whispered reply.

“You should rest, now,” I told him, though I hadn’t a clue whether he should rest or jump up and do calisthenics.

“No,” he replied to my surprise, “I have to tell you about death while I still have time.”

“Okay,” I said, my curiosity piqued. Elder Anderson was one of the anointed, so anything he had to say about his after-death experience would be invaluable information.

“Where is my family?” he asked, wondering what he was talking to me for, of all people.

“They’re at the district convention,” I said.

He eyed me suspiciously, probably wondering why I wasn’t at the convention as well. He wasn’t aware that I had attended the previous week when I was out of town on our family’s vacation.

“Very well,” he said with a sigh, as if to say that he would have to make do with me for a listener.

“Fred Astaire,” he began, then took a long breath as if the effort to say the name had taken his all.

“Fred Astaire?” I echoed, doubting that I had heard correctly.

“Yes, yes,” he affirmed, impatiently. Then he began to sing:

Heaven! I’m in heaven! And my heart beats so That I can hardly speak!

After this he shut his eyes and almost immediately began to snore. A nurse came in to check on his vitals, smiled an “everything’s okay” smile at me, then left us alone again.

“That’s what they were playing in the background.” I jumped at these words that Elder Anderson spoke. He was evidently fully awake again.

“I see,” I said, secretly doubting that they would be playing worldly music in heaven.

“They ease you into it,” he explained, seeing the doubt in my eyes. “That was a popular tune back in my day, you know.”

“Did you see anything?” I ventured to ask.

“Such things,” he said, and after a long pause he repeated in whispered wonderment, “such things.”

He lapsed back into silence and stared off into space. After several minutes I asked him if he could share any of the experience with me.

“Listen carefully then, because I need to tell someone. But promise me you’ll never speak these words to anyone else.”

I promised, and he began.

“The music was playing, and there was this hairless person floating in front of me in the nude.”

“No white robes?” I innocently asked.

“No, I guess we were wrong about the white robes,” he answered dejectedly.

“Probably just symbolic,” I offered.

“Yes, yes,” he agreed, and went on with his tale: “When I say hairless, I mean not only bald, but no eyebrows, and not even any eyelashes.”

“I suppose there’s no dust, or overhead Sun to block out,” I reasoned.
He gave me a look that said I should stop commenting and let him speak. I bit my tongue.

“This hairless person then spoke to me saying: ‘Praise God! I was Elder Nair. Praise God!’ That was an Elder who had asked me some of the 80 questions many years ago in preparation for my baptism.”

“I don’t know him,” I commented, having released my bite.

“Died before your time,” Elder Anderson explained. “But I didn’t recognize him. He was a fatty with glasses and ugly ties when I’d seen him last. Now he has a perfect body.”

“Like he’s been working out?” I asked.

“No; no abs or muscles, but no flab either. Just straight and solid like a smooth cylinder with a head on top. And no –uh– you know… no private parts.”

“None?” I asked in astonishment.

“None,” he affirmed. “And this worried me, so I reached down to check out mine, you know, and I was shocked to find nothing there: just smooth between the legs all the way around.”

“All the way around?” I asked, leaning forward in concerned interest.

“That’s right,” he said, “You don’t need to eat or drink in heaven, so there’s no need for any openings down there front or back.”

“Well, I guess you never have to hunt for a restroom, at least,” I said, trying to look on the bright side while hiding my disappointment at an eternity without sex (which, come to think of it, is not much different than my present life.)

“Later,” he continued, “when he took me around to meet the others I found the sisters were the same way. There was no way to tell the difference between brothers and sisters.”

“We’re all the same in God’s eyes,” I reminded him.

“Yes, but it was disconcerting,” he admitted. “Then I opened my mouth to speak to Elder Nair, but nothing came out; I was mute. So Elder Nair explained it to me, ‘Praise God!’ he said, ‘You must praise God as the first and last words out of your mouth. Mostly what we do here is praise God; there’s nothing else left to talk about. Praise God!’ So I said ‘Praise God! Tell me, do we get to see Jehov–‘ and then I felt a choking in my throat and huge painful boils began sprouting all over my body! Then Elder Nair said, ‘Praise God! We were wrong about the name: God hates that name and punishes anyone who tries to say it. But don’t worry, the boils will heal in seven days — though a day here is seven thousand Earth years, of course. Praise God!'”

I shuddered at the thought, but gave encouragement: “Well, at least we got that part right: a day being seven thousand years.”

“And then I saw sister Olson,” he continued, ignoring my upbuilding.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Sister Olson wasn’t of the anointed: you couldn’t have seen her.”

“I know she was of the Earthly class,” he acknowledged, “but there she was clear as day. I guess we were wrong about the whole Earthly class / Heavenly class distinction.”

“Amazing!” I cried. “Then you mean I’m going to heaven when I die rather than ‘live forever on a paradise Earth’™?”

“God knows,” he said with a sigh. “But that’s not all. I also saw my old next-door neighbor Carlos.”

“But he was worldly, wasn’t he?” I exclaimed.

“He sure was,” he said. “I well Remember how he used to decorate his house for Christmas, and he was always throwing big birthday parties in his backyard for his kids, and he worked three jobs to save up enough money to send them all to college.”

“Yeah, so what was he doing there?” I asked.

“Smiling.”

“This is passing strange,” I said. “Non Witnesses in heaven?”

“Yeah, I guess we were wrong about that too,” he said. “But that’s not the worst of it.”

“There’s more?” I asked, afraid of what he might relate next.

“I saw Ray Franz.”

“No!”

“Yes. There he was, big as life, autographing that damn book of his.”

There was a long silence as we both tried to digest the full import of an apostate in heaven.

Finally I tried to break our sad mood with a bit of humor. “Well, at least there weren’t any people floating in the clouds strumming harps,” I chuckled.

He looked at me and frowned. He seemed to be considering whether to tell me more or not. “Actually there were,” he said, “but they were all in the Mainstream Christian section.”

I considered this latest shock for a moment, and finally asked him: “Are you telling me that everyone goes to heaven and it ends up being pretty much the heaven that their religion imagined for them?”

“Well,” he admitted, blushing and looking down at the bedsheets, “all I can say is that I intend to convert to Islam as soon as I get out of here.”

We all know that Armageddon is right around the corner™. That means we’ll be dealing with resurrected ones before you know it.

Now, some of these will have been criminals. Some of these criminals had received the death penalty — a penalty which is effectively canceled out by their resurrection. But does that mean society needs to be any the less wary of them? I think not!

Law enforcement made great efforts in the past to capture, try, sentence, and incarcerate these individuals. Still others got away scot-free and have yet to pay their debt to society. I think the Society will want us to know the criminal histories of these people so we can be on our guard. Perhaps the Governing Body will even rebuild some prisons to house them until they have reformed in the peaceful new order.

The “Watchtower” may take on a whole new meaning!

But what can you or I do pro-actively to help? I think we should collect criminal records and be sure they are preserved into the new world.
In the past, record keeping was very poor. However, one thing they did have was Wanted posters. To get a jump-start on all of this, I have gathered together the oldest Wanted posters in history for some of the individuals whom the Society says will be among the first to be resurrected. They can constitute our first “top 5 most wanted” list. You can all thank me — in the New Order!

If you locate any more Wanted posters or criminal histories, please post them so we can add them to this important collection. Be sure to count your time in this activity since you’ll be helping us prepare for the new order!