The 'Last days' of the Watchtower Society - any truth in this? (page 3)

TheLoveDoctor

I think if we all have a positive attitude and talk as if it is fallinmg (it will)

punkofnice

If they start falling they'll say it's Satan persecuting them.

I wonder if they might bring in making the R&F practice 'titheing' (did I spell that right?) although having said that that might backfire.

I think the fall of the watchtower is wishful thinking! I'm wishing it though.....free those who are havig their minds controlled.........

thetrueone

If they start falling they'll say it's Satan persecuting them.

So true Punkofnice, the WTS has a readied answer for everything that happens to them still in the vein of exploitation.

The claim that true followers of Christ have to be persecuted just as the Christi's own followers is a segment

of their impending indoctrination, to heighten the believability of themselves and what they are doing.

The reasons they are going to schism (not die or disappear) is simple. If you think of it in terms of MONEY or MEMBERS, STOP. Just look at the state of the Catholic church, which has far more of both.

Christian Science has been around for over 100 years and they still seem to have a good amount of money, but who even knows about them? It is only supported by old people with money to support such stupidity. They need a place to put their butts, feel comfortable in their fantasy, and call it "my religion right or wrong." Does that make them powerful? Do your children have to worry about becoming a Christian Scientist??

NO. IT'S NOT "IN" so cannot attract youthful members, so when the old people die off, so does the money and ignorant theologies. It would have to become a different religion altogether, with virtually no resemblance to the former. Or , in a disaster period, a cultic shield, a police state in a global crisis of huge proportions. (Are they really building bomb shelters? They could sell pieces of them and form a compound like Jonestown).

There is nothing to offer the primal being except people to be with that will rat on you in a New York Minute.

There is no welfare system, with the 'Watchtower OR Jehovah; it is all dependent on your loyalty to their demands.

They currently have no realistic program to make money now that the digital age has arrived and magazines are a waste. The programs they have could be audited by the IRS and they could get in big trouble, should the IRS get greedy and needy.

There is no charisma nor does there appear to be a charismatic leader on the way; they tolerate no youthful, inspiring leaders; younger people drift off rapidly and never come back. They are told, and mocked, for dissing higher education.

They are innoculating the masses in every Watchtower about a false message coming from some of the new ones claiming to be of the anointed (can't you guys see this!) Even the overlapping generation nonsense is probably part financial.

Their messages are an insult to almost everyone's intelligence and ability to think for themselves. The hypnotic repetition is a farce.

They are VERY concerned about the internet and especially Facebook, which most people will continue to use and "apostates" like us will no longer be needed as they will seed their own demise.

College willl continue to be disdained which makes them an obvious laughingstock.

The ones it appeals to are the older and the power hungry, and that is precisely why at this time they are castrating all those with a hunger for power before they can get a foothold. FEAR precedes loss of power in the religious world. You can't make up your own talks (hell, I made up all of mine, and most were slide shows!) I quit speaking after that; I refused to follow their outlines like a child. It's like the Children of God and others that educate their own members on how to deal with any kind of "deprogramming", making it harder to talk to them.

Someone in the Service Dept. is directing this. Plus the attorneys. They will silence the old power moguls like Gene Smalley on the blood issue. You wait and see. It will not be tolerated much longer. Or the "fine" will be lessened as has been mentioned before.

This part is a likely scenario, could change:

1. They become more lenient and quit shunning and become a milqtoast organization. Many would stay but they really lose their appeal to many new ones who want the strong and exclusive "Armageddon" message; as there are much more exciting and engaging churches out there than a 19th century carnival experience that lies and deceives and steals.

2. Then there are the standfasters who actively and forcefully believe in the nearness of Arrmageddon and accuse the Watchtower of being apostate. They will form a few sects, like the Bible Students did and still have.

3. Others may form a more normal semi-orthodox church. Not likely to have much influence.

At any rate, the old guys have had the attorneys sell property, make sure they still own all the kingdom halls, get more aggressive with wills and donations, and asking for money, which will continue to be invested, not in the needy, but in buildings and other money-making schemes.

Let's hear the counterargument. And don't base it on logic, base it on the primal animal needs and instincts, which always determine whether a movement fails or succeeds. People don't join religion because of doctrine, nor do they leave because of doctrine. They can stay home and believe it! But they leave because their primal needs are not being met.

Take a punch at me. I won't bite.

Randall Watters

compound complex

You always make such sense, Randy ...

Who really are you?

CoCo

moshe

The WatchTower Org is a corporation and the only way they will go out of business is to become bankrupt, which for the time being doesn't seem very likely.

factfinder

It would be interesting to see, but I don't think I will see it in my lifetime.

WTWizard

I don't put much faith in the viability of the religion. Just because they are reporting more than 7 million members means nothing--that does them no good if they are spending more money than they are taking in. It also does them no good if 80% or more of them are only nominally in it--any more than Dow 15,000 would do if the toilet paper dollar it's represented in ends up losing most or all of its value.

Unfortunately, there is no reasonable test for this. With the Dow, you simply measure its worth in gold or silver--while the Dow was nominally up 110 points last week, it was down nearly 4% in terms of silver. With the witlesses, there is no similarly simple way to compare the real value of their hyperinflated nominal membership. When you take out the fake slips, slips turned in by parents or hounders on behalf of people, coerced field circus, and those who are simply trying to not look like a complete dork, I bet more than 80% of those numbers would be lost. Remove the ones in it for the power from what's left, and you would be left with the true number (which I think is under 200,000).

Vidiot

callitquits76 - "Is it wishful thinking?"

I've said this before, but I'll reiterate:

I'm having a hard time imagining how a semi-secretive, authoritarian, apocalyptic millennialist high-control group can adapt - that is, change - to survive and accomodate the realities of the information-saturated, technologically forward, WikiLeaks-level-transparency-craving socio-cultural environment of the 21st Century.

The reasons why are thus; if they "mainstreamed" and effected progressive reform, they would arguably no longer be Jehovah's Witnesses, but if they become more hidebound and archconservative (which - by all indications - is happening), they marginilize and alienate themselves from the rest of humanity even further, which won't help them at all in the increasingly prevelant "global village".

Frank Schaeffer once called the Christian Right the village idiot who keeps going around, poking everybody in the eye with a stick, and then crying "persecution!" when someone finally gets fed up and punches him in the nose. I have come to view the WTS as the Chistian Right in microcosm.

The 'Last days' of the Watchtower Society - any truth in this?