A Newbies Story
by Lets Think 34 Replies latest jw friends
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Lets Think
Hi All
Just to respond to a few questions:
Very fortunate that my wife is on board with me. I will teach my child Bible truth and love of God. (but often Bible truth means just not knowing and some who say they know often don't) I know it's tough with children they prefer absolutes.
My leaving position is burn out and health reasons (there is always a game to be played)
Feild Service, thats a tough one ( don't mind it, just teach or present what i go along with and leave the rest, this may not work)
Two elders in My Congragation have completely left in the last three years for multi reasons, some others I know as well have concerns doubts questions etc
Thanks for all your thoughts and support
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Billy the Ex-Bethelite
Welcome! Sorry I'm a month late to the party. But your great story deserves a BTT!
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Ding
For the WTS, EVERYTHING is proof of how close the end is.
If times are bad, they talk about how this wicked system can't last much longer. TURMOIL and INSTABILITY prove the end will come any day now.
If times are good, they tell you that the end will come when everyone is saying "true peace and security" just like the people who ignored Noah's warnings. So PEACE and STABILITY prove the end will come any day now.
If you trace what the WTS has said about "generation" over the years, I think you'll find that they interpreted it as a very short period of time whenever they were hyping a particular date such as 1941 or 1975. They stressed how close the end must be. Then when the hyped date came and went they interpreted it to be longer. Hey, we never said for SURE this was the year...
When the Life Everlasting book was published (1966), the date 1975 was hyped and hyped. The Watchtower published articles saying things were so bad that the old system might not hold on until 1975.
When 1975 arrived, Fred Franz started to hedge his bets by writing about how we really didn't know the length of the gap between the creation of Adam and the creation of Eve (Jehovah's "sabbath rest" didn't begin until after Eve was created). That bought them a few months, maybe even a year, after 1975.
The whole gap explanation was simply dropped when it became obvious that 1975 was really nothing in Biblical prophecy. Then they started blaming the brothers for expecting too much.
The latest change in "generation" was made to buy them up to 50 years, and they'll alternate between "any day now" (to keep JWs working hard) and "could be longer" (to avoid another embarrassing failed prophecy.)
No doubt they figure if nothing happens in 50 years it'll be someone else's problem because they'll all be long gone.
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Ding
I personally believe that the GB is as deceived as its faithful followers.
They really believe God's kingdom centers around them and their work.
I think they are like the false prophets in Jeremiah's day who really believed their own false prophecies.
In Crisis of Conscience, Ray Franz discloses that the GB was genuinely shocked when 1975 turned out to be nothing.
They were scrambling to figure out what went wrong.
For awhile, they even believed Fred's Adam-Eve creation gap explanation. Armageddon surely would come in a few months or a year at the outside.
When that stopgap explanation failed, instead of humbly admitting that their entire chronology and claim to be God's spirit directed faithful and discreet slave organization is simply a colossal pompous and presumptuous error derived from Russell and Rutherford, they decided to redefine "generation" in order to explain to themselves why the end hasn't come as they expected.
I wonder if any of them ever wakes up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night and wonders if their whole system is nothing but a house of cards.