Do you honestly think the Witness religion will end? (page 5)

nelly136

nup i think it will evolve and become indistinguishable, they will rid themselves of the blood thang fraction by fraction, a couple more generations and they'll have deferred armageddon indefinately. The older long serving jws will die and take the old light with them.

Dr Jekyll

hopefully knocking on doors and ramming your religious views down someones throat will become politically incorrect and get banned then the only growth will come from procreation... expect to see a ban on contraception.

mkr32208

It's really pretty simple they are an end times church. An end times church can't last forever! They have no belief in life after death no immortal soul so that means that when each generation sees the last die and says "these WORLDLY people who lived their lives had the same reward as my parents! MY contemporaries who are living their lives and having fun will have the same reward as me..." The only way to avoid such reasoning is by telling people the end will come in their lives! As more and more people see it's NOT coming then this religion will fragment and fall!

Sure the Catholic church has survived but how many MILLIONS of religions have not? JW's are not going to survive long term. Neither are most religions we see around us today!

On the other hand their will always be end time churches and I'm sure a lot of them are going to stick a "Jehovah" in their names somewhere!

itsallgoodnow

I don't know. As long as there are people who refuse to be reasonable about it, they could still conceivably be around for a very long time. Listening to Sick of Lies JC meeting makes me think people who certainly know better are hanging on to this religion out of stubborn refusal to scrutinize their own faith.

But to keep anything going, you constantly need new recruits, which seems to be a problem for them. Also the JW religion is very old for an end-times religion. They will probably end up needing to make serious changes and dispose of the armageddon/last days teaching altogether, but will that do more harm than good? I wouldn't be at all surprised to see break-off groups form new cults that could possibly be as successful as JWs if not more so.

Either way, it should be interesting to see what's happened to them over the years.

mkr32208

What about Calvinism? It had several very illogical teachings yet prospered for a while had more members then witnesses today! Yet when people began to DISCUSS the illogical beliefs it almost completely disappeared almost overnight! There are many many many examples! I use Calvinism because the one of the witness teachings that is SO illogical is almost calvinistic in tone!

THIS RELIGION IS GOING TO FALL IN THE NEXT FEW DECADES! A few people in power have already positioned themselves to seize key (read valuable) assets! As long as the money comes in they let it ride, the money starts drying up (which is beginning to happen) those people won't wait, they will act! They will sell off KH's and assembly hall's sell bethel properties and presses. Overnight this will happen! It's happened before! This is basically what Rutherford did to seize power! It will happen again...

You heard it hear first!

brutusmaximus

I think it will carry on for a while yet, sadly. Whilst there are nutters and do gooders and those easily led it will continue. Where there is money and greed it will carry on.

Increase is slowing down for sure but we can only hope people start to see what the troof is really all about, lies, deception and power!

BM

mkr32208

They will probably end up needing to make serious changes and dispose of the Armageddon/last days teaching altogether

THEY CAN'T!

They believe that there is no life after death. When you die the soul is dead. Only existing in "gods memory." They are also big believers in "the wages of sin is death" and the concept of Adamic sin and passed on sin. This paints them into a corner! Follow me for a minute! When you die your sins are forgiven UNLESS your killed by god! Right? Now there's the rub! If you leave the organization and the end comes BEFORE you die then god kills you and you have no Resurrection! Still with me? If your the wickedest apostate ever (hi Danny!) and you are picketing an assembly and get hit by a bus THE DAY BEFORE Armageddon YOU GET RESURECTED! YOU GET THE SAME REWARD AS THE MOST DEVOTE JW ON EARTH!

Do you see the problem? They can only keep people in based on that fear that the end will come during their life times! If people knew that the end was coming in 2075 everyone over the age of 20 or so would stop IMMEDIATLY! Why go? Your going to die of old age in this system right? So the sins that you commit in life will be FORGIVEN at death! They MUST convince people that the end will be in their lifetimes or their power disappears!

AuldSoul

Having said that, they will continue to shrink in Europe, North America and Australia, while expanding in the third world. This will keep them alive financially, while they continue to dilute their theology in order to maintain at least a "core" of diehard believers in the States and Canada.

kid-A, I think you accidentally expressed why they won't survive better than I managed. Consider surplus funds available to typical Western world wage earners. Consider the near complete lack of surplus funds available to wage earners in third world countries. Consider further that the highest wage earners in third world nations are also the most likely to have limited to full Internet access. Consider the shortage of wage earners and the prevalence of crop workers, hunter/gatherers in the third world who literally have NO financial resources at all.

How many third world converts does it take to equal the lost contributions of one disenchanted first world convert? They aren't growing that fast anywhere.

They are scaling back on Bethelites, scaling back on Overseers, scaling back on quality of paper and bindings. They are very concerned about the lack of young brothers reaching out for appointments beyond minsterial servant. They are terribly concerned about the cash shortfalls in congregation after congregation. They have known for nearly a decade that hardly any Witnesses read the Watchtower or the Awake! or the Bible. And so many of those who do study deeply and diligently become prdieful apostates that they can hardly justify pressing the issue.

They are caught in Catch-22 every which way they turn and there is only one way out to avoid collapse. Radical change. But they will not do it, not this bunch. Jaracz is the great Theo-crat, and in his Theo-cracy his word is law and all his ways are upright in his own eyes! Oh, did I mix two Scriptures there?

They will not relax, the ones Jaracz hand-picked from among the COs and DOs are like-minded. They will not relent, so they will break. Jaracz has proven that he personally believes freedom is a dangerous thing for sheep to have. He will never give them freedom. Unless they break free, they will always be in a pen of his creation.

Respectfully,
AuldSoul

Brigid

No, I do not think they will end. Religion serves such a basic need in most people that they will believe and swallow just about anything to make it fit their respective schemas. The type of psychological profile that is attracted to an organization like Jehovah's Witnesses is particularly vulnerable to this contortive thinking.
However, having said that, I do agree with others here that it will have to evolve if they expect to survive and thus become something so totally different as to make it virtually unrecognizable from the extreme organization that we all grew up in and loved

In other words, it will have to settle down and become a nice, tame little religio-corporation or die out from natural causes.

I think it is collectively too smart to let itself die. It will come up with whatever twisting and turning is needed (not enough to alienate the hardcores still in) but gradually, oh so gradually loosen its grip on some of its more insane teachings (look at how they successfully and oh so cunningly distanced itself from teachings like vaccinations were from the devil or 1975 was the end--until now, it's seen by newer/younger ones as just a "few over-zealous publishers--they're actually quite quite cunning and intelligent). History shows this can be done and very successfully. It will slowly and seductively "weed" out its more crazy teachings as the generations who knew these teachings die out. It will be easy to teach the new generations that "we meant 1914 figuratively....we never actually said not to take blood....we never condoned spanking children"---yadda yadda yadda.

It is the nature of the beast. It will probably not even look like a cult in about 50 or so years.

~Brigid

Do you honestly think the Witness religion will end?

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