Over 60 years ago, the Watchtower Society assembled a remarkable record of hard fought legal victories that had the
long term effect of carving out a protected niche for themselves. They were enabled to create many decades of
solid growth based on a good field of case law and precedents that allowed them a freedom to expand.
These developments were so dramatic that Jehovah's Holy Spirit was quietly invoked as a reason why such a
comparatively small organization could establish such 'walls' of legal protection.
But what about the present? What do we see?
We see an international organization - that is stretched painfully thin across the globe - and being gradually hemmed
in by one legal defeat after another. The protective work of decades past is being eroded as the Watchtower
Society is being forced to comply with one small legal failure after another. These defeats seem to be coming faster
as time progresses. You can start with the Jimmy Swaggart/ voluntary donation mess and move along to courts
rejection of "volunteer" status for Watchtower employees and then notice other matters like the recent rejection
of elder status as "clergy" ( !!) and emerging property tax matters in Canada.
There is no one big case that has hit them yet - but that doesn't mean one never will. For now, it should be clear
that their general position is wearing away, especially as the world is often manifesting higher ethical standards
that contradict Watchtower policy, as regards child molesters, for example.
I don't foresee them dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century ( I'd rather they weren't in this century at all!)
It is more likely that they will quietly fade away, amidst the layoffs, cash flow crunches, dwindling growth and
general malaise they currently manifest. Nevertheless, a dramatic legal defeat could change all that, suddenly.
For you lurkers, the question remains, if Jehovah was behind their victories in the past, why is he allowing their
gradual defeat at present?
metatron