How significant was the 1995 bombshell - generation?

by jambon1 23 Replies latest jw friends

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  Athanasius

  I had left the JWs 11 years earlier so it didn't have any effect on me. However, being curious about how the JWs were taking it, I attended the Watchtower Study at a congregation in Sacramento, CA a month before they were scheduled to study the Generation article. Surprisingly the KH was so full that I had to sit in the room used for the second school. I thought it might be the week of the CO's visit. But no, it was just a regular public talk and Watchtower Study. After the meeting I got a copy of the Generation Watchtower and took it home for closer study. A month or so later I attended the same congregation to see how the JWs would respond to the "new light," as it was the weekend for the Generation study. This time I had not problem finding a seat. In fact the attendance was only a third of what it had been during my previous visit. What was also interesting is how few commented during the Watchtower study. Also nobody said anything about this being a new understanding about the generation.

  I thought that the low meeting attendance for that important study article may have been due to the fact that it was early December and maybe a lot of the JWs were doing their Chistmas shopping.
• 

  garybuss

  I left in 1974 and read COC in 1992. Some of us were debating what they'd do for a fix. I guess we thought they'd move up the 1914 date. It didn't occur to me that they'd re-define the word "generation". That was brilliant!
  
  Those were interesting times. They changed the time for the judging the sheep and the goats, they opened the back end for the last generation, and they opened up alternative military service without sanctions. Then in 2000, the Governing body members all resigned their director jobs, and in 2000 blood fractions became allowed by promotion. Literature sales became free will donation based, and assembly food went away.
  
  Shunning tightened up, then in early 2003 there was a 3 month purge. More than a few elders started over Christmas of 2002 and used Christmas decorations as a easy way to shun a former member.
  
  Now Witnesses can take the intra-operative and post-operative collection and reinfusion of the patient's own blood which is a timed autologous blood transfusion.
  
  
• 

  No Apologies

  Hi Gary,

  Shunning tightened up, then in early 2003 there was a 3 month purge. More than a few elders started over Christmas of 2002 and used Christmas decorations as a easy way to shun a former member.

  Can you explain these two sentences a little more? a few elders started what?

  thanks,

  No Apologies
• 

  garybuss

  You wrote: "a few elders started what?"
  
  They started their January through March 2003 purge in December of 2002. The elders made those calls they love to make during the early December Christmas decoration season and if they located a walkaway who had decorations up, they went to the next step so they could order the other members to start the shunning practice.
  
  The history of that purge is located here in the archives. There were posters here who were purged during the headhunts of 2002 and early 2003. The local elder here in Sioux Falls even called my private home and had the privilege of speaking to me personally:-)