Could Watchtower Collapse Be Sooner Than You Think? (page 3)

sacolton

The day the Watchtower collapses ... I will shout with great glory:

FALLEN! BABYLON THE GREAT HAS FALLEN!

cattails

You are just so funny!

Sounds like you'll come

to a climax about it.

yknot

Cameo-D said

Well, they knew the end was near. They should have planned for it better.

METATRON- Good thread and thoughts. It very well could come sooner than we think. I believe to speed it up or expedite the WT societies downfall though it will take not only a financial collapse - but perhaps some HUGE scandal like what took down Jim Bakker and others bilking money fraudulently from rank and file members and GB members knowing of it and approving of it. Also- Another LARGER financial child abuse settlement involving many more witness victims. I think these 2 things would speed up the process. Will it happen ? I don't know. But it might happen. The WT society doesn't cover all it's bases in other ares- they might not in these areas either

badboy

INTERESTING YOU SHOULD MENTION ANOHER FINANCIAL COLLAPSE BECAUSE SOME ARE SAYING THEY WILL BE ANOTHER BANKING COLLAPSE SIMILIAR TO THE RECENT ONE

jookbeard

the problem is that there is still a huge membership of millions, and they still convert, tens of thousands in developing nations, and when the real crunch time comes financially for them, they will just make more dig deeper talks from the Hall and from Circuit and District conventions, the recent months have been very interesting, especially with their stock market stock falling , but watch this space

steve2

An interesting thread, leading to a comparison:

Which Will End First: The Watchtower or the World?

neverendingjourney

They haven't had any new ideas in two decades

I'm fairly certain that a lot of the religion’s problems are tied to the organizational structure. Leadership by committee is a good way to maintain a large, stable organization, but it stifles innovation. It's a terrible way to head an organization that's on the decline.

There are a lot of signs that there is gridlock at the governing body level. By that I mean that there is not a sufficient consensus to get any major reforms passed, so we see a bunch of stop gap measures designed to plug holes in the dam's wall, if you will. The organization is stuck in the past. Its doctrine is out of date and nonsensical and badly in need of reform. The preaching work is useless and ineffective. To modernize the religion, a strong leader is needed to take the group in a new direction. Its leadership by committee structure inherently prevents this.

For many years, the governing body consisted of 12 members, sometimes more. It's been at nine members for a while now. This suggests that there's a power struggle at the top. Adding new members could upset the balance of power, so replacing dead GB members gets put to the side in order to avoid confrontation and preserve the peace. When it became clear that the 1935 sealing of the anointed doctrine was unworkable, they simply scrapped it. Instead of innovating and presenting some fresh interpretation of their end times eschatology, they resurrected a decades-old interpretation of the "generation" doctrine and passed it off as new light. This, to me, all suggests gridlock at the highest levels of the organization. This inability to take real leadership over the group and move it in a new direction is as responsible for its decline as anything else.

*Edited to add:

I just remembered to add that GB member Gerritt Losch is quite fond of telling crowds at U.S. conventions that American football is inappropriate for Christians, yet there's never been anything in writing backing him up. For the most part, American JWs have ignored his statements. I don't think that shows a very cohesive leadership team.

Lost-In-Translation

I heard that a letter will be read in the congregations regarding a new arrangement regarding the magazines. Currently, each publisher has a specific number of magazines ordered each month to use in the ministry. The new arrangement eliminates that. When the new magazines arrive at the Kingdom Hall, a stack of magazines will be placed on the Magazine counter so that each publisher can take magazines they plan to use within one week. If the publisher places all their magazines that week they then can take more magazines the following week. If after two weeks the publisher cannot place the magazines they took they should bring the magazines back to the Magazine counter so that other publishers can use them. If magazines run out the publishers should use brochures or tracts in the ministry.

I believe there are two reasons for the new arrangement:

1. Simply the Magazine Counter. Depending on the arrangement used in the congregation, the Magazine Servant has to separate each publisher's magazine order and put them in the publishers holding box "cubbyhole." That method requires time to count and separate magazines. The other method is to have a list of all publisher orders and count out the magazines when the publisher comes to pick up their magazines. That method also requires updating lists and counting out magazines. The new arrangement eliminates all of that.

2. Stop the hoarding of unused magazines. When the Circuit Overseer visits he compares the number of magazines ordered to the number of magazines places each month. In some congregations there are hundreds of magazines not being placed. That means the publishers are just storing hundreds of magazines in their homes each month. The Society sees that as a huge waste of resources.

The WTBS is really feeling the financial squeeze. They benefited tremedously when the financial markets were good. They could purchase and sell real estate and always made a huge profit. They operated thinking that they could afford to spend millions of dollars on Missionaries, District/Circuit Overseers, Special Pioneers, and Bethalites. The Old Guard of the GB is dying off. The New GB Members realize that if they don't make even more changes - their worldwide enterprise will crumble. People cannot handle the burden of being part of a religion that tries to control every aspect of their lives. There is a huge push-back worldwide - that can be seen by the reaction of the Spanish JWs when it came to the "destruction" of their Branch office. The GB is starting to realize that people are not going to just obey and be happy about it.

bluecanary

neverendingjourney, I remember a convention about 10 years ago when a brother on the platform told us that anything with aliens was unsuitable for Christians. Aliens were an abomination and an affront to Jehovah's creations. I never heard or saw anything else about this again. Most of the elders in my hall at the time were Trekkies. We all just ignored it.

Could Watchtower Collapse Be Sooner Than You Think?