In 25 Years Will The WT.Organization Still Be Around?

by minimus 51 Replies latest jw friends

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  minimus

  AKA CULTISTS
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  Vidiot

  villabolo - "I personally think that Society and Civilization itself, will be highly distressed 25 years from now due to the effects of Global Warming and the wars, famine and misery it will cause. Unfortunately, that will provide the Bitchtower ORGANization the steroid shots it needs."

  Maybe, maybe not.

  I used to think so, too, until I realized that the vast majority of JWs expect the Great Tribulation and Battle of Armageddon to manifest themselves in an overtly supernatural manner. This is common to most of the other apocalyptic millennialist Christian groups, too; in fact, the Big A often serves as their own personal supernatural revenge fantasy. It certainly did for me.

  Climate change, unsustainable population growth, resource-related conflicts, and the effects of Peak Oil, while arguably "apocalyptic" in nature, are, however, fundamentally mundane, "real world" phenomena. Not miraculous, even though they can and may very well thin the herd over the course of the next few decades. (Have you ever heard of the "Olduvai Slope?")

  What's more, they will impact everyone, leaving no one unaffected. No invisible force-field of Holy Spirit will protect dutiful JWs (for example), because all humans bear some degree of responsibility for these conditions, whether they're aware of it or not; Earth and everything on it is fundamentally interconnected.

  It's one of the big reasons why I've come to suspect that fundamentalism is destined for the footnotes of the history books; there's just no room in a Biblical literalist worldview for these realities, thus the vast majority of conservative/authoritarian religions have done virtually nothing to prepare their membership for an entire world being reshaped (and thusly unavoidable) by them.
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  besty

  caliber - maybe http://www.freeminds.org/psychology/cults/do-cults-follow-the-same-patterns.html
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  besty

  3% annual growth compunded for 25 years = 15 million publishers.....

  we can only hope for dozy'sblack swan..
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  caliber

  Thanks soooo much besty that is the article I had in mind.. http://www.freeminds.org/psychology/cults/do-cults-follow-the-same-patterns.html

  for this question page 2.....

  Someone please help me out here... I was looking for an very excellent article ( I thought it was on Randy Waters site) that talks

  about the 4 or five stages of cult development then it's decline. anyway this article seemed to indicate that cults have a "limited Shelf life"

  Just a worm or insect goes through stages that cannot last forever but must change or tranform into the next step so too with cults !

  (they can now even determine approx. time of death in decomposing bodies by stages of insects development within !)

  Stage 1: The Seductive Appeal Of Unity
  Stage 2: Conferring Infallability
  Stage 3: The Scholastic Dishonesty Of The Cult
  The Silent Victims
• 

  Vidiot

  besty - "http://www.freeminds.org/psychology/cults/do-cults-follow-the-same-patterns.html"

  Sweet; thanx.

  I found this introductory line interesting: "These cult leaders were disillusioned with traditional Christianity, and sought to bring light to others through their efforts to "simplify" the Bible message or make it more understandable to the rational man." The bit about making it more "rational" reminds me of an interesting theory I read about the origins of modern fundamentalism; that it arguably exists as a sort of byproduct of, ironically, the Enlightenment.

  With the advent of the Enlightenment came critical thinking and more importantly, the scientific method, which worked so well at explaining physical reality around us that "myths" became essentially discredited as explanations for the way the world worked. As a result, the word "myth" eventually became associated with "lie" (even though the two terms were originally unrelated); we still occasionally use the word "myth" as an alternative to "lie", in fact.

  In light of that, what "Bible-believing" Christian would want to associate his or her beliefs with "lies"? And so the modern form of the Genesis-as-literal-history (and arguably Revelation-as-future-history) concept became anchored in the collective worldview of conservative Christianity. The modern-day results are Young-Earth Creationism, the Dominionist Movement, and, ultimately, a Sarah Palin presidential candidacy.
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  poor places

  The way I look at it, Jesus was wrong about the end coming a couple of thousand years ago, but that hasn't stopped well over a billion people from being part of religions which claim to follow him. So while I've often thought that Witnesses will be proven wrong as time passes (mainly about the end of the world coming soon), I'm not certain. People believe what they want to believe, it seems.

  I still think it's likely that Jehovah's Witnesses won't exist some day, but the interesting question for me is how long it will take. Twenty-five years seems like not nearly enough time, but what about a hundred years? Two hundred? How long would it take for Witnesses' end-time prophecies to look ridiculous to masses of people?
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  slipnslidemaster

  Yes.
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  koolaid-man

  The Watchtower Organization is dead it just hasn't fallen over yet. More and more witnesses are coming to grips with the cold hard facts..... Its a cult not a religion. It has been estimated that upwards of three million witnesses are in the conscious class (ONE FOOT IN ONE FOOT OUT) and are only connected to the Org. because they know what happens when they question the Org. How long can any organization last when almost half of the members are not loyal?
• 

  Dogpatch

  Vidiot says,

  I found this introductory line interesting: "These cult leaders were disillusioned with traditional Christianity, and sought to bring light to others through their efforts to "simplify" the Bible message or make it more understandable to the rational man." The bit about making it more "rational" reminds me of an interesting theory I read about the origins of modern fundamentalism; that it arguably exists as a sort of byproduct of, ironically, the Enlightenment.

  With the advent of the Enlightenment came critical thinking and more importantly, the scientific method, which worked so well at explaining physical reality around us that "myths" became essentially discredited as explanations for the way the world worked. As a result, the word "myth" eventually became associated with "lie" (even though the two terms were originally unrelated); we still occasionally use the word "myth" as an alternative to "lie", in fact.

  Yes, C.T. Russell couldn't buy the ancient world view that the composition we call the Bible seems to paint. He used different watercolors to make it fab for his day. The Bible clearly teaches earlier Greek concepts of Tartarus, Gehenna, the Lake of Fire. The writers of the New Testament substitute the descriptions and titles of the tribal God Jehovah and applies them to Jesus and calls him God and worships him, and renders the complete law system no longer operative. This was too "mythy" for Russell, who made his religion palatable by denying that the NT teaches hellfire, that Jesus is NOT God, that the earth is NOT just 6000 years old, and that "Christendom" has interpreted the 66 books wrong because of their evil ways.

  So Russell basically goes back to the OT myth along with its tribal God, adaptive afterlife concepts, and develops the way for plenty of laws. He just peddled backwards.

  Whether the organization continues to exist or not is irrelevant, as it will have lost all common sense as well as any charisma to draw people in. It will lose people into various daughter sects.

  It's kind of like Christian Science. It's still around, it's got money, but it is NOT fab and has no appeal to practically anyone anymore; because of rational thought. It might be around another 50 more years or more, but who cares? It's days are long gone.