Generation Change

by slugga 48 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Saoirse

  I was beginning to fade before the generation change mainly because of the lack of love and all the legalism. Once the generation change took place, my husband and I never went back except for an appearance or two at the Memorial for his mother's sake.

  The generation of 1914 was beat into my head since I was a child. 1914 is what made it the "truth" and what made the FDS God's sole channel. Taking that away just made them liars and false prophets.

  I would say that about 75% of the kids I grew up with left the WT. I doubt they left solely because of the generation change but I'm sure the change just cemented any doubts they had.
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  willyloman

  Yes. Exactly. I see the mid-1990s as the turning point in the growth of the Witnesses. There are two reasons for that, and you mentioned them: changes in key teachings (the 1914 generation in particular) and the rise of the Internet. In my opinion, the WTS will never recover.

  [puts hand down but is handed microphone anyway]

  "Same thought."
• 

  doofdaddy

  As I have noted here before, when that "new light" came out, I never graced a kh again.

  I had hammered people's doors for 20 yrs telling them that the gen of 1914 will see armageddon. When I approached the "elders" with my shock and dismay about this radical turnaround, they said "What change?" !!

  A couple of hrs on the wt CD cleared my head of the wt gobbledegook.

  Most jws don't seriously read/study the wt propaganda. Worshipping a god is secondary to being in a community of like thinkers.
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  zugzwang

  Sadly, my father, who was a Witness, died on September 1, 1995 just as this new light was coming out. He died as a result of not accepting a medically necessary blood transfusion. Of course I, being a pioneer and wanna be Bethelite, was more determined than ever to "defeat Satan." After all he had just killed my father, right? So when the new light came out I would have to admit that I missed the import and didn't fully understand what had just happened. To me it was a test that Jehovah was allowing to "sift" out the ones who were serving "with a date in mind." It wasn't until I actually "made it" to Bethel that I began to realize the total lack of anything that resembled Holy Spirit was there. And even after I left Bethel, I think the cognitive dissonance was still so great that I managed to go on "serving" for another 4 years, before finally my own crisis of conscience occured. So I spent 8 years in serious denial of what was going on in my own mind. Mostly because I wanted to believe what the WTS taught. Because if they were wrong that would mean that my father died for a lie and that I would never see him again. I guess some people are able to live with that disconnect from reality longer than I was able to. But I suspect the longer you live with it, and the more you have invested in it, the harder it is to break away.
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  willyloman

  Most jws don't seriously read/study the wt propaganda. Worshipping a god is secondary to being in a community of like thinkers.

  Based on my experience, this is absolutely right on.
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  undercover

  I noticed the "generation change" when it first came out in the WT.

  If I remember correctly, there was some mention of it at the convention earlier in the summer but, like most brain-dead dubs, I didn't catch it. I was most likely asleep during that talk.

  But when the WT came out, I remember a couple of pioneers talking about it and being curious as how the congregation would react during the WT study when it was covered. After hearing them talk of it I looked closer at the articles and realized that the change was much deeper than it appeared on the surface.

  I remember that the study went off without a hitch without nary a controverial question or answer. But in my mind, it raised a lot of questions which in turn led me to recall a lot of other doubts that I had suppressed over the years.

  Still, it wasn't like a switch that turned on the light to realization, but more like a small pilot light that lit the fires of enlightment which led to my feeding the flames of doubt and suspicion which in time grew to a fiery inferno that could no longer be ignored.

  It may have not been the very first thing or the biggest thing to push me out the door but it did play an important role in my questioning teaching and doctrine.
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  joelbear

  my parents acted as if there was nothing to it at all. just something new to study about.
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  JT

  The WBTS clearly claimed that Armageddon would occur before the generation that was old enough to understand the social and political events of 1914 would pass away, or die. Not only did they make this claim, but they published it bi-monthly on the 3rd page of one of their rags. Certainly this would happen within my life span. I understood this at a very early age

  #########

  this was me as well and afterward we started our journey out of the org
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  IP_SEC

  What were peoples in the congregations reactions

  We in our hall ate it up as we ate up all new light. Huzzah for something new!!