Will Watchtower Fold Like The Taliban?

by metatron 24 Replies latest jw friends

  • metatron
    metatron

    One day, you have a religious movement calling for
    total sacrifice, that every man should fight to the
    death in God's service.

    A few days later, the leadership is negotiating a
    surrender in disgrace.

    Could this portend the future of the Watchtower?
    I think so - and I'll explain why:

    First, no particular issue like the UN or Governing
    Body corruption is going to affect the average,
    willingly ignorant Witness. While I look forward to
    the Dateline show, I know it isn't going to "bring
    down the house". However, as I've tried to bring out
    in posts about the "gelded Watchtower", their ideology
    is decaying rapidly. Although their statistics are
    merely stagnant, they can't defend or explain even the
    simplest aspects of their own peculiar doctrines.

    So, even though this feature of Watchtower rot is difficult
    to quantify, I rate it as most significant.

    Consider some history: In the book Lies My Teacher Told
    Me, it points out that the defeated Confederacy could
    have supported guerilla war for many years but didn't.
    This was because the idea of enslaving blacks as
    natural inferiors was exposed as nonsense since countless
    numbers of them were capable soldiers in the Union Army.
    Hmmm ... with so many women proving their managerical abilities
    in the workplace, what will the old farts do to "keep the
    sisters down" in the organization?

    Long before the Soviet Union fell apart, its ideology
    fell into disrepute as a means of human development.
    Its fall was swift because its people had already lost
    faith in its effectiveness - kinda like the way congregations
    are losing zeal because the organization's advice on raising
    children is so ineffective.

    The Taliban will melt away into the mountains
    and create trouble from time to time.

    Russia still has some faithful communists, who hope
    for revolution.

    And the Watchtower will go on for years, in some
    form or another.

    Yet, humiliating changes can erupt suddenly when
    the human market for ideas articulates the judgement
    "THIS DOESN'T WORK ANYMORE!"

    It going to get interesting!

    metatron

  • slipnslidemaster
    slipnslidemaster

    Fold what? Laundry?

    Slipnslidemaster:"The average person thinks he isn't."
    - Father Larry Lorenzoni

  • patio34
    patio34

    As usual, Metatron, very insightful and logical. Thanks!
    Pat

  • JT
    JT

    Very interesting post - i guess only time will tell.

  • Room 215
    Room 215

    Meta,

    Your prognosis is eminently pluaisible. The inexorable ticking of the clock is invalidating WT chronology and sapping the organization's vitality right down to the grass roots. There's little in their current magazines that isn't stale, bland, self-serving and worst of all, bewreft of spirituality.

  • joelbear
    joelbear

    The Watchtower continues to grow therefore they have something that people need.

    The Watchtower's beliefs are not as extreme as the Taliban's and they are much smarter than to pick frontal assaults against governments that would cause the kind of reaction the Taliban got.

    I don't see anything quick happening. Old Religious organizations don't die, they just fade away.

    Joel

  • avengers
    avengers

    You'd be surprised how chiseling little by little can bring down a castle. If everybody just keeps chiseling. Time is not important. The work we do now, is.

    "Few are they that look through their own eyes and feel with their own heart"
    A Einstein
  • nytelecom1
    nytelecom1

    I was to that statements like this were made after the 1925, and 1935
    and they never came to be.......does that make apostates false prophets too?

  • voltaire
    voltaire

    Nytelecom1,

    Those who predict the downfall of the WT don't claim to have authority from God.Therefore, they are not false prophets. BTW I doubt the WT society will fold or even shrink. In fact, if there is a significant loss of membership due to current controversies, it could signal a brief decline followed by an even more spectacular increase. On Randy's site there's a great article about what happens to groups after their prophecies are disconfirmed. The results are quite often the opposite of what one would expect. Those who remain despite the evidence that their leadership's predictions failed are the most committed. Recruiting new members is a way of proving that they were right after all, since the new members wouldn't be joining if there were a problem(I know, it's dubious reasoning) At any rate, people are free to belong to the WT if they wish to. I'm glad that now there's information available so that people can make an informed choice.

  • metatron
    metatron

    Well, if they lied like the Society did about those dates,
    then yes, they were all false prophets.

    metatron

Share this

Google+
Pinterest
Reddit