Could you help me with a little Witness history ?

by ukgirl 13 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  ukgirl

  Hi everyone.

  As part of a student film project that I am completing I will be conducting a telephone interview with an exJW tomorrow.

  The person I am interviewing was a witness between the years of the 50's (born in) - late 80's so obviously would have been in their late teens for the prophecies and events of 1975.

  As this person is older than I, I am plan to tailor my questions around being a witness in that time period. I just wonder if you could point me in the direction of any more date specific events surrounding this time period that I could touch upon in my interview ?

  Much appreciated
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  Finkelstein

  search 1975 / Jehovah's Witnesses
  

  1975 was an indulgent commercialized fraud based from a bogus dating scheme used 60 years previously by the WTS. This doctrine exemplifies the fact that the WTS. is a fear mongering religious publishing house and a corrupt one at that.
  
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  ukgirl

  Thankyou, I plan to speak about 1975 and what it was like to watch this prophecy fade
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  Village Idiot

  I remember, around 1974, going to a talk by then Vice President Frederick Franz at the Inglewood Public Forum in Southern California. The stadium was jam packed all the way to the floor (seating capacity 17500). He set out his long winded calculations of 1975 then came out with the conclusion that the world would end by 1975 or a few months or years thereafter.

  I also remember being in the ministry school meeting one night in 1974 when the Kingdom Ministry was being read. It stated that there were reports of brothers selling their homes in order to spend the short remaining time in the witnessing work and that that was a good thing.
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  Wasanelder Once

  !986 could get honorable mention because they made a BIG deal about the "international year of peace" that the UN declared. There was an awake magazine with a dove on the cover as I recall. It highlighted that the cry for "peace and security" may be at hand because of it. That was a big deal for some but 1975 was the big one for that time. For so long expectation had been built up for 1975 that there was no need for any other dates for the 50's and 60's. Afterwards they have stopped speaking in specifics, just generalities. The computation wing of the WT has closed down. They are back to "Soon", instead of a "when" time frame. Just find the stats for the 1976 and you'll see just how big a disappointment it was. It was no small amount that quit the organization. Any other pivotal dates were the usual 1914, 1918, 1919, 1925, 1948 and of course 1975.
  
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  James Mixon

  Ask him did he proclaim the end times, if not why not. All was suppose to

  warn the world , the end was near. This message came from Jehovah's spiritual

  direct GB, straight from the mouth of Jehovah..

  If you didn't you rejected those taking the lead and Jehovah.
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  stan livedeath

  hello UK girl. i'm in the UK--and was an active dub in the late 60's--but resigned in the early 70's. feel free to ask me.
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  Juan Viejo2

  Another important feature of the 1950s to 1970s was the release of the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures. The New Testament (the Greek Scriptures) was first released in 1950 and the first of the Hebrew Scriptures was released in 1953. The whole Bible was translated and released by 1960.

  What we did not know was that we were being lied to the entire time. At the big International Conventions we were told that the Society had employed highly qualified scholars and translators to do the hard work. We were given word pictures of highly qualified brothers and non-Witness scholars viewing the Dead Sea Scrolls, accessing museums and libraries around the world (even the Vatican was mentioned), and pouring over ancient manuscripts with magnifying glasses, etc.

  We would all cheer and clap and stand up to applaud the hard work being done. I remember getting my very own first leather bound edition of the complete NWT Bible in 1960.

  But it was all lies. All a sham. We did not have specialized scholars accessing manuscripts and papyrus rolls in the British Museum and the Vatican. None of that ever happened. It was just Freddy Franz and a few specialized hellpers who took other modern and popular translations, along with the Emphatic Diaglott and similar books and then rewording using more modern (but not necessarily conversational) speech and writing styles. Freddy would approve and then read sections to Brother Knorr and the other officers of the Watchtower. They would rubberstamp his work and it would get published.

  The fact is that we were scammed - and still are being scammed. They just outright lied to us from 1950 to 1975. They simply pulled it all out of Freddie's ass that whole time. Frankly I'm surprised that Raymond Franz, who all but acknowledged that he was aware of what happened, didn't throw in the towel earlier. It had to be bothering his conscience knowing that his uncle was scamming everyone.

  JV
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  ukgirl

  Thanks everyone, some very good pointers here. And Stan Livedeath, I will inbox you shortly about your experiences if that's alright ?
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  Nathan Natas

  A telephone interview fir a FILM project? ...I guess it would be a still-life - 30 minutes of a telephone on a desk; RIVETTING! At least your focus should be sharp...

  I was a dub kid in the late 50's... your interviewee may remember the book "From Paradise Lost to Paradise Regained," with its explicit illustrations of death and destruction as a result of Gd's righteous judgements. This was a book aimed primarily at KIDS, and the message was clearly "SAVE YOURSELF BY WORKS."

  Later came other fine Bible study aids, like "BABYLON THE GREAT HAS FALLEN - GOD'S KINGDOM RULES" and "THEN IS FINISHED THE MYSTERY OF GOD."

  In 1967 the book "Life Everlasting-in Freedom of the Sons of God" began the BIG count-down to 1975 (though other, earlier books pointed at the early 1970s but didn't make a big deal of it). In 1968 the emphasis was on the "life-saving" door-to-door witnessing work, and special instructions were provided that if a new bible student did not progress to baptism in 6 months, they were to be dropped and considered a waste of time, because Armageddon was closer than the inside of your eyelid!

  We also saw the emphasis on the sanctity of blood and the flip-flopping about whether organ transplants were permissible for God's people. We also learned that if a Christian was raped and did not scream, that Christian was a FORNICATOR, because no scream implies consent.

  Yes indeed, those were the days!