Wow.. have to say I'm overwhelmed by your response, and also the suddenly new idea that I should read and study. I feel STUPID..lol. that I thought I was reading and studying. Last night I hardly slept. I found a reference online that said Jerusalem was destroyed in 586 not 607 and I looked and looked.. and this seems to be true. Yet I went back to the watchtower library, searched for 586... NOT ONE REFERENCE. I mean if there was some debate surely they are likely to say.. some people say it's 586, we dont believe this because.. but not one. THis rocked everything I've ever thought. I've always considered myself to be a thinker, a questioner, intelligent. But why did I never question that because the organisations say something is true it may not be? This ONE point just knocks everything away doesnt it!
Anyway! In answer to a question from Nathan I think.. I pioneered between 86 and 93, and this may seem daft now, but I never wanted children, but I got pregnant so I had an excuse to stop.. Not that I regret my lovely boys. But when I look back, where was my spine? They were building a huge Sainsburys here in the early 80s. I vividly remember my mother and her friend saying "that'll never be built"..That was 20 years ago. the feeling is now in the organisation literally as it always has been, there is no date, but it is imminent. But since we had a WT a couple of years ago 'correcting' some thoughts. ie that the generation that saw 1914 does not mean literally people that were alive then. There has been a gradual decline in numbers. In my own congregation we have gone from having 100+ to meetings to sub 50 most of the time. I drive past the catholic church and they are brimming, and I think of references I've read about churches being turned into social halls etc.. My mother still often rings me and says "did you see the news, can you see how world events are moving".. and I say little but think.. yep, the same way they have been since I was a baby and you were telling me it was this year. I started doing a chart of publisher numbers, because it interested me that they were going down. But then they introduced a new thing a year or two ago that said even if you did 10 minutes you should count it, and now they have risen again, but I have a spreadsheet and everything. Guess I've been questioning a long time,just taken many years for the wheels to grind round.