Watchtower Claims Modern-Day Miracles within Jehovah's Witnesses

The December study edition of Watchtower's flagship magazine closes a four-page article with a declaration:

The growth, unity, and love that we experience in our organization prove that Jehovah is performing miracles in our time.

That sentence went out to millions of people on jw.org. It is not framed as hope or feeling — it is a claim of proof, of evidence. The article then picks three things to substantiate it: miraculous growth, miraculous unity, and miraculous love. When you hold each one against Watchtower's own definition of what a miracle is, their own published numbers, their own governing body broadcasts, and their own scriptures, the case doesn't just fall short. In the love section, the article contradicts itself on the very page it is printed on.

I spent most of my life inside this religion, reading articles exactly like this one every week in a Kingdom Hall, paragraphs underlined, answers ready to raise my hand. I know how these get built — the cadence, the scriptures, the words that do quiet work while you are not paying attention. Reading this the way a believing witness reads it and reading it again the way an objective outside observer reads it are not the same read. Not even close. Everything quoted below comes directly from the article as published.

The Miracle Standard Watchtower Established

The article opens by defining its own terms:

Imagine how thrilling it would have been to stand on the shore of the Red Sea and watch as Jehovah divided its waters. And just think of the joy you would have had to see Jesus cure the sick and even raise the dead. These are just some of the miracles recorded in the Bible. But those amazing events occurred a long time ago. Are miracles happening today? Yes. Why can we say that a miracle can be defined as something that is beyond the ability of man to accomplish or even to understand fully. It is something that Jehovah brings about by his power. In this article, we will examine three miracles that Jehovah is accomplishing within his organization today. We can call them miracles because only Jehovah is able to cause them to happen.

Hold that definition. A miracle is beyond the ability of man — something only Jehovah is able to cause. Parting the Red Sea: no human can do that. Raising the dead: no human can do that either. The article established the bar itself. The only question that matters for each of the three claims that follow is whether what they describe is actually beyond the ability of man, or the kind of thing ordinary people and ordinary organizations achieve all the time.

Miracle One: Growth

The growth claim rests on this:

In 1914, those serving Jehovah were about 5,000. But since that year, the small one has grown to over 9 million kingdom evangelizers. That number is larger than the population of more than 130 countries. While Jehovah's people are still a minority compared with other religious groups, there can be no denying that the growth foretold in God's word has occurred. The small one has indeed become a mighty nation.

For the sake of argument, take that number at face value. Even so, the article immediately plants a flag worth marking: still a minority compared with other religious groups. By their own admission, they are small. File that away.

The article then makes a broader claim:

Unlike many other religious organizations, we do not inflate our numbers by means of infant baptism. Neither have we increased our numbers by relaxing our adherence to God's moral standards.

Read that second sentence one more time. They claim the 9 million is clean — that the standards have never changed. That is demonstrably false. Watchtower has changed what it calls God's moral standards many times. On the blood doctrine alone, a major change came this year in March, when they allowed witnesses to store their own blood for later use — something they previously said violated God's law. They used to teach that performing alternative civilian service was a violation of God's law; thousands of witness men went to prison for refusing it before Watchtower reversed that position. For thirteen years, organ transplants were classified as cannibalism; now that is a matter of personal conscience. The shunning policy has been relaxed, at least slightly. The sentence is carefully worded to imply sexual purity — which is where Watchtower's notion of morality almost always lands — while quietly omitting every other category where the teaching changed. Taken as written, the claim is not true. And even if it were, it cherrypicks in a way that makes the organization look far cleaner than the record shows.

How the Count Changed in 2023

The 9 million figure carries a second problem: the method for counting members changed fundamentally two years ago, at the exact moment the number needed saving.

From the early 1920s until October 2023, a publisher had to report actual hours in the ministry every month. Watchtower's own 1988 ministry guidance was explicit:

Only whole hours should be reported to the congregation.

Not fractions, not estimates — whole hours. If you spent two minutes at the doorstep and didn't add up to a full hour that month, you reported nothing. Six months of nothing got you moved to inactive and off the count. The only exception was for those who could not manage a full hour due to age or incapacity. Their own publications stated:

When a publisher is very limited because of advanced age, is shut in, is confined to a nursing home, or is otherwise incapacitated, they may report field service in 15-minute increments.

That 15-minute grace was essentially reserved for the dying. Since November 2023, there is no time requirement for anyone. Publishers tick a checkbox — "shared in the ministry" — and a 30-second comment to a coworker or a cashier now fully qualifies. The exact people who used to fall off the rolls — the barely active, the drifting, those who couldn't honestly log an hour for whatever reason — now check a box and get counted without even having to feel bad about it, because they are fully meeting Watchtower's requirements. The grace once reserved for the elderly and infirm now covers everyone.

I cannot tell you exactly how many of the 9 million are there because the counting threshold dropped — Watchtower doesn't publish that breakdown. What I can tell you is the timing. The two years the decline reversed into growth, 2024 and 2025, are the first two full years under the new counting system. The article's response to all of that is to state with full confidence that the organization has never relaxed its way to higher numbers.

The Back Door and the Retention Rate

There is another number the article will never print. Pew Research found that Jehovah's Witnesses have the lowest retention rate of any religious group in America. Two-thirds of the people raised as witnesses leave as adults and don't come back. Two out of every three of their own children walk away.

A significant but uncountable portion of the 9 million who remain are PIMOs — people who are physically in but mentally out, staying only because leaving means losing their family to the shunning policy. You cannot call 9 million people faithful adherents when the mechanism holding them inside is the threat of being cut off from everyone they love.

This is a bucket with a massive hole in it. The water level holds because new converts from regions with higher birth rates — particularly Africa — keep pouring in faster than young people in the West are leaving. The article itself admits the growth isn't coming from the West. That is not a miracle. That is geography and demographics.

The Gamaliel Problem

To reinforce the growth claim, the article invokes Gamaliel, the first-century Pharisee who advised the Sanhedrin to leave Jesus's disciples alone:

Do not meddle with these men, but let them alone. For if this scheme or this work is from men, it will be overthrown. But if it is from God, you will not be able to overthrow them.

The article wants the reader to conclude: we survived, we grew, therefore it must be from God. But apply that principle honestly. By Gamaliel's test, everything that survives and grows is from God. That means the Catholic Church — 1.4 billion members, 2,000 years and still standing — must be from God. It means Islam: between 2010 and 2020, Pew Research counted the world's Muslim population growing by 347 million people. Every other religion on earth combined added 248 million in that same decade. Islam outgrew all of them put together.

No one in Warwick is going to conclude that Jehovah blessed Islam to grow that fast. They will say it is birth rates and geography. And they would be right — that is exactly what it is. But if that explains Islam, it explains Jehovah's Witnesses too. Growing at around 2.5 percent a year is not the parting of the Red Sea. A modestly run business does better. A standard 401(k) does better. The moment you call ordinary arithmetic a miracle, you have admitted the bar was never really beyond the ability of man at all.

Their own scripture proves too much. Pick it up and it hands the miracle to Rome and to Mecca before it ever gets to Warwick.

The article then adds:

Today, thousands are flocking to the truth even though they are being rejected, disowned, or persecuted by family members, workmates, and others.

Using the word thousands is a tell. Not tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands. Most new Jehovah's Witnesses are simply the children of current witnesses being baptized. And a religion is not a turnstile that only counts people walking in through the front door — it is a room with a back door, and people leave through it constantly. The two-thirds raised in the faith who walk away as adults go unmentioned.

Notice also who the article says is doing the disowning: family members and workmates, persecution aimed at the faithful witness from outside. But the disowning witnesses experience in massive numbers comes from inside the organization. This is a religion that instructs your own parents to cut you off the day you leave. When a witness loses their family, it is usually not the world taking them. It is Watchtower policy. Keep that in mind for the section on love.

The article's theological summary of the growth miracle:

Each time we engage in any form of the ministry, we are working alongside Jehovah and Jesus in the miracle of growth.

Any form of the ministry. That phrase is the checkbox written into theology. A 30-second comment to a cashier is now a share in a supernatural event. The miracle is a label printed on top of ordinary math — growth stalled across the wealthy world, Britain, Australia, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan, and the United States all sitting below peaks they hit years ago, propped up by an easier way to count people and hollowed out by the worst retention rate in America. The flagship method that built that growth chart, the door-to-door work, is being quietly abandoned country by country while the headline number keeps climbing. Both of those things can only be true at once if the number stopped measuring the real work and started measuring paperwork.

Miracle Two: Unity

The remarkable unity of God's people. God's people today live in harmony despite any differences they may have in personality or background.

There is an admission wearing a compliment in that phrase: despite any differences they may have. To say people are united despite their differences is to concede the differences are real — and that something is suppressing them from surfacing. Unity that exists despite differences when those differences are freely expressed, worked through, and reconciled would be a real achievement. Unity that exists because differences are never allowed to be voiced is coerced silence. From the inside, the two look identical. They are not.

The article continues:

We are not divided by culture, economic status, or political beliefs. Never before in history have so many people from so many lands and cultures been united in thought and in conduct. Our unity is miraculous because it is in striking contrast to the world's widespread disunity.

"Unity at All Costs"

In 1954, Watchtower's own attorney, Hayden Covington, testified under oath in a Scottish courtroom. He was asked whether a witness who disagreed with a teaching could remain a member. He defended what he called unity at all costs — even, in his own words, if the teaching turned out to be erroneous, false.

Unity at all costs, even when wrong, is not the Holy Spirit binding hearts together. It is a rule: agree or get removed. And Watchtower enforces it. Anyone who reaches an unauthorized conclusion gets disfellowshipped and shunned. A unity you are not allowed to question and not allowed to leave without losing your family is not a miracle. It is an enforcement policy. Every controlling institution in history has produced this identical result with those same two ingredients — a rule and a severe penalty — without parting any sea or raising anyone from the dead. If the Holy Spirit is what holds 9 million people in agreement, you have to ask why it needs the threat of losing your family to back that up.

Six years after Covington made that statement in court, Watchtower printed those same four words in the Awake! of June 22, 1960 — not about themselves, but about the churches of Christendom:

Knowing that her many religious divisions could mean her downfall, Christendom now cries for unity at all costs.

When Watchtower used that phrase about someone else, it was not a compliment. It was a diagnosis. Unity at all costs is what desperate, frightened institutions reach for when they are staring at their own collapse. Six years before Watchtower printed that diagnosis about Christendom, their own attorney applied the identical phrase to Jehovah's Witnesses under oath. I don't have to argue that their unity is fear-driven conformity. I only have to read Watchtower's own definition of that phrase and remind you who their attorney said it about first.

What Contributing to Unity Actually Requires

The article tells members how to contribute to this miracle:

We can contribute to the bond of unity in Jehovah's organization. By carefully listening to and applying what Jehovah teaches us. Each time we overlook a flaw in a fellow believer, each time we control the urge to gossip, and each time we extend forgiveness, we are working along with Jehovah as he accomplishes a modern-day miracle.

Every verb in that list points the same direction: inward, quiet, compliant. Listen. Apply. Overlook. Control. Not one of them says raise a concern, ask a question, or disagree in good faith. The section renames obedience as unity, then renames that coerced unity as a miracle. Two labels stacked on one standard.

Miracle Three: Love — and the Contradiction on the Same Page

The article opens its love section with a definition:

Jesus said that his followers would be identified by their love for one another. Such love was central in the lives of first century Christians. For example, they shared their belongings with those in need. They supported those who were persecuted. They cared for orphans and widows. And despite their own poverty, they sent relief aid to other Christians.

It invokes the second-century writer Tertullian, who quoted what outsiders said about the early Christians:

See how they love one another.

Look carefully at what those examples describe. Shared belongings. Relief aid. Care for orphans and widows. Every single example is physical — food, money, shelter, provision for people who could not provide for themselves. That is the love the article says identifies God's people. Not a warm feeling about your brothers, but goods moving from people who had them to people who didn't. That is the standard. They chose it.

Zero Institutions

Does the modern organization of Jehovah's Witnesses run food banks, even for its own members? No. Homeless shelters? No. Orphanages, soup kitchens, free clinics? No. Daycare for the single mother in your congregation working two jobs to make rent? No. Watchtower operates not one hospital, not one food bank, not one shelter anywhere on earth.

Meanwhile, the organizations it calls false religion — Babylon the Great, a ruse of Satan — run thousands of such institutions. Catholic Charities. The Salvation Army. Whole hospital systems. Refugee resettlement agencies. The United Methodist church up the street from me has a food bank, a clothing drop-off, and a box out by the front road where anyone can drop off non-perishables or take what they need. Beth and I have put canned goods in that box many times. They are Babylon the Great. Watchtower, which does none of that, is the true religion.

Apply the article's own test: you will know them by their love, using the very examples the article lists. Every institution on earth delivering physical charity to orphans, widows, and the destitute belongs to the religions Watchtower calls false. Watchtower: zero. Babylon the Great: 100 percent of every religious charity institution on earth.

The only medical structure Watchtower operates is the Hospital Liaison Committee — thousands of trained volunteers in more than a hundred countries, available around the clock, ready to reach a hospital at 3 in the morning when called. Not to help a witness receive the treatment they need. To make sure the witness in that emergency room is treated without blood, no matter how necessary for survival. Watchtower built a worldwide medical network. It simply did not aim it at healing the sick. It aimed it at enforcing a rule that prevents their healing.

The one thing they do run is disaster relief, and the article cites it in a footnote as its lone example of love in action. That aid goes overwhelmingly to Jehovah's Witnesses — rebuilding witness homes and Kingdom Halls — and it has been extensively documented that Watchtower representatives asked the witnesses who received that aid, labor performed entirely by volunteer witnesses at no cost, to hand over their insurance payments. For the witness who loses a job or a home in an ordinary week — no hurricane, no earthquake — there is no fund. No safety net. I have read countless accounts from people who, while still Jehovah's Witnesses, had to go to the false churches with actual food banks to get help when they fell on hard times.

All of this sits against this reality: Watchtower is conservatively worth around $55 billion, while its members are the poorest religious demographic in the United States. The first-century church the article quotes sold its possessions to feed the poor. The modern organization asks the poor to help build its multi-billion-dollar empire.

"No One Begs or Coerces Us"

That brings us to the sentence the entire love section breaks on:

To support that work, we contribute financially. No one begs or coerces us to do so, nor are we required to tithe.

No one begs. Here is governing body member Stephen Lett, on a 2015 worldwide broadcast:

As you know, for over 130 years, this organization has never solicited for funds, and it is certainly not going to start now. Most donations, in fact, are contributed anonymously. Over the years, I have told various Bible students that a person could attend our meetings for 20 years and never put a penny in the contribution box and we would not know it. Jehovah, of course, would know it, but we would not. Yet, as you can well imagine, millions of dollars are required each month to finance the colossal kingdom work that is being supported by this organization in some 239 lands. Where does all of the financial support come from? Largely from you, dear brothers and sisters. Sometimes we may feel a little shy to talk about the financial needs of the organization. That is understandable because we in no way want to be categorized with other organizations, religious and otherwise, that coerce their supporters to donate. However, because all of us have the privilege to donate funds, we would like to let you know something about our current situation. Then you can respond as your heart impels you. We have looked forward to this next fiscal year and projected the expenditures for all of the theocratic initiatives we are scheduling. In doing the math, we found that the amount of money flowing out will be much greater than the amount of money that we have coming in at this time.

The full broadcast that talk came from has since been scrubbed from jw.org. The money appeal was left up.

Six years later, governing body member Anthony Morris delivered a morning worship talk in September 2021:

We're going to talk about money. Now, the fact is we never beg for money... we have never considered it proper to solicit money for the Lord's cause after the common custom referring to Christendom. It is our judgment that money raised by the various begging devices in the name of our Lord is offensive.

He quoted 2 Corinthians 9:7 — "Let each one do just as he is resolved in his heart, not grudgingly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver" — and then turned to Deuteronomy 16:

Three times a year all your males should appear before Jehovah your God in the place that he chooses at the festival of unleavened bread, the festival of weeks and the festival of booths. None of them should appear before Jehovah empty-handed. The gift that each one brings should be in proportion to the blessing that Jehovah your God has given you.

Then he applied it to the worldwide membership, including those in poor circumstances:

None should appear empty-handed. So that takes in all of us whatever our circumstances are, whether Bethel or in the field. Jehovah doesn't approve coming empty-handed.

A governing body member declared "we never beg for money," then told the entire worldwide organization that God does not approve of them approaching the contribution box with nothing. If telling someone that God disapproves of their giving nothing is not coercion, the word has no meaning. And notice who both men name as the real beggars: Christendom, with their solicitations and begging devices. The other organizations beg. Jehovah's Witnesses simply explain what God will not approve of you for.

No one begs or coerces us, the article claims — while no fewer than two governing body members did exactly that on camera. If you have ever sat in a convention while the announced deficit in donations was read aloud, you know exactly what that announcement was designed to make you feel. That deficit, as it happens, was artificial: Watchtower demands a fixed amount per head at every convention, not its actual operating expenses.

To illustrate the sentence "no one begs or coerces us to contribute financially," the article placed a photograph of a child dropping money into a contribution box.

The article then continues:

The love shown by God's people is a miracle because it thrives in a selfish world. The apostle Paul wrote that in our day, people would be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, and lovers of pleasures.

The organization that just told you no one begs while begging on camera now quotes a warning about lovers of money — and points that warning outward at the world, while it sits on $55 billion conservatively. The fingers always point outward. The contribution box is aimed at you.

And then:

By consistently demonstrating love in both words and actions, we reflect the quality that identifies God's people.

In words, yes — there are many words written about it. In actions, measured against the article's own standard of orphans, widows, and out-of-pocket physical aid, the actions are a disaster fund for members and a contribution box at the Kingdom Hall door.

That brings us to the close:

The growth, unity, and love that we experience in our organization prove that Jehovah is performing miracles in our time. We are not passive bystanders. We are God's fellow workers. Who would have thought that there would be a time when people from all lands of the earth would enjoy growth, unity, and love in such a troubled world? Yet, that is exactly what we see today. Always treasure your privilege to have a share in God's modern-day miracles.

That is the entire case. Growth, unity, love — proof of divine miracles. And now that we have read it from the top, watch how each one collapsed the moment it was held to the bar the article itself established on the first page. Growth that is ordinary, conceded to be a minority by their own admission, stalled across the wealthy world, and recovering only after the counting got easier — not beyond the ability of man. Unity maintained by removing anyone who fails to comply — the most ordinary thing in the world for any institution with a rule and a penalty. Love defined by orphans and out-of-pocket aid, then unsupported by a single institution to deliver it, printed next to a photograph of a child at a donation box while the text insists no one ever begs.

What the Article Never Says

Four pages about the health of the organization, and certain words never appear. It never mentions that two-thirds of the children raised in this religion leave as adults. It never mentions shunning — the mechanism that holds the manufactured unity together and extinguishes the real love the moment someone moves toward the exit. It never mentions the change in how members are counted, made two years ago at the exact moment the numbers needed saving. It never mentions the survivors of abuse who found no relief aid and no safety net when Watchtower moved to suppress the evidence and silence the victims. A document this carefully written does not forget those things. It leaves them out on purpose.

Step back and ask what this document is actually for. There is no argument here that would move someone who doesn't already believe. It is not written to convince. It is written to reassure. It is a morale article handed to a body stalled across the wealthy world and hemorrhaging its own young. It takes the three things a shrinking group is most anxious about — Are we still growing? Are we still together? Do we still love each other? — and answers each anxiety not with the facts but with the word miracle.

You do not call the ordinary miraculous when things are going well. You reach for that word when you need people to stop asking questions and keep believing. What holds that organization together is the fear of losing your family, a loyal core in Africa and a few other regions still pouring in new converts faster than young people in the West are leaving, and lately a headline number kept afloat by a checkbox. Take those away and there is no miracle here — only an organization doing what organizations do to survive, and printing the word miracle hoping that is explanation enough.