Were you 'alive in '75' and how was that year for you?

by punkofnice 179 Replies latest jw experiences

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  im stuck in

  Yes I was. I remember people selling houses and pioneering and then in 1977 or so many of them left the org thru the back door. I preached 1975 with a vigor I thought of all the good people that would be dead soon. It makes me sick to see them trying to rekindle that kind of attitude again.

  I doubt though that it will ever get back to that. I remember being at an elders meeting for the circuit around 1978,the question was raised about 1975 and no end as well as so many leaving. One guy pops up in back and says give em another date. Everyone began laughing. But that is exactly what they would like to do today if they thought they could get away with it.

  What a crock! stuck in
• 

  Band on the Run

  1975 was a very horrid year. I graduated from Columbia University with high honors and distinction in Political Science. I kept pinching myself. My family had no college graduates. Very bright relatives worked menial jobs due to the Witness influence. The surrounding relatives they rejected for not being in the Truth were kingmakers, gubenatorail candidates and such. The chaos and violence in my family made leaving home hard. Few would have predicted I would last a single semester.

  Armageddon was the key component of the Witness teachings. The very graphic illustration of the violence and mayhem in the orange book designed for children, supposedly, terrorized me. These were the years of the atom bomb and imminent nuclear annihilation. We practiced scrouching up under our desks in school and memorized all the local air raid shelters on the way to local spots. I longed to die with my mother. Being alone terrified me. We were told to be certain to cover our eyes. Slowly, we realized we were fortunate to live within a few milels of Manhattan. We'd disintegrate in a nanosecond. Rather, we pitied those poor suckers in Vermont.

  So I was 21 in 1975. I left the Witnesses forever at age fifteen but was dragged against my will and publicly kicked and pinched in front of the entire congregation. The monster died when I was sixteen. I could breathe. Despite my freedom in every other matter, I remained hypervigilant for Armageddon and demons. I could laugh at myself. A Witnesses called. My family was amazed at how I refuted every teaching clearly. Of course, it wasn't like confronting Knorr or Franz. She admonished me in leaving to remember 1975, which was a closely guarded topic. Good riddance. Later that night, my entire family was roused when I screeched my head off in a nightmare. They woke me and I cried hysterically for hours.

  Perhaps b.c I feared 1975, I developed my own bad luck. It was a year of a deep recesumpsion. Jimmy Carter was president. I think. Bad times. So 1975 remains a year of great triumph but more importantly almost, marred by the 1975 predictions. I remember sititng in Yankee Stadium when Franz revealed 1975. I was a young teenager but do not remember any qualifications. Freddie knew when Eve menstruated. He had a special Bible, unique to only him. My family would mock Knorr but was very impressed with Freddie's mind. Do you know that they actually called him "Freddie" affectionately? They knew him. My father was a bodyguard to Rutherford and Knorr. Rutherford attracted more violence and nut jobs. Perhaps the times were more violent. My local Witnesses did not know who Franz was for the most part.

  My mom always highlighted Bethel hypocrisy for me. Clearly, she stayed b/c of family and did not want to die at my father's hands. Young children cannot process such contradiction. Her cynicism while hard when young was a tremendous asset to me.
• 

  willyloman

  I was studying with JWs that year and got baptized in January 1976. The man who studied with me was excited about the possibility of the end coming in 1975, but he wisely counseled me not to put my spiritual eggs in that basket ... so when 1975 came and went my disappointment was rather mild.

  Quendi's experience parallels mine. It was clear to me when I began studying that too many events would have to occur for the Big A to come in a few short months. But all around me was a great deal of excitement and expectation. I remember in one of my first meetings the elder giving the talk mentioned "the end of this system of things." He said, "And brothers... in just (pauses and looks at watch)... 5 months, 3 days and 14 hours... we'll be in that new system."

  Later I asked the elder who was studying with me about it. He said, "That's just his opinion. He shouldn't have said that. We don't serve for a date."

  However, some teenagers in our congo had quit high school to pioneer that year - including two whose fathers were elders. And two of six elders had quit their jobs to pioneer "while there was still time." One had sold his home and moved to our rural area several months before because he wanted to be able to say he pioneered right into Armageddon, a "once in a lifetime" experience.

  Others who were skeptical about the precise date that Fred Franz came up with were convinced he wasn't that far off. The elder who studied with me said "we don't know the day or the hour" but he reasoned that the WT Society had J's holy spirit and must know something... so it might be just a matter of months before the end came, possibly as late as summer '76. As October approached, a lot of JWs conjured up reasons to move the date forward a little, but very few had the courage to say the theory was bullshit. Which, of course, it was.

  I was a newbie then and didn't know everything that was going on. But I do recall that by 1978 we had an entirely new body of elders. Two had left the organization completely, another had given up his elder "privileges" and the other three had moved to other congos. By then three new ones had moved in.
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  cantleave

  I was 9. I remember that year very well. I remember 1976 too (hottest summer in the UK since records began) where my mum quickly forgot the 1975 fiasco and started speculating about 1984.
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  thetrueone

  I was in my teens during the years accumulating to and up to 1975.

  Since I was a child brought up in this religion I was pretty much a believing soul but two things happened to wake me up

  in very shocking way . One being the suicides by other JW teens around my age group. I suppose the built up anxiety and depression

  pushed and commercialized by the WTS. involving 1975, was being mentally absorbed by these young people in very unhealthy egregious way.

  One poor lad who was about 14 or 15 hung himself in a garage which was located right behind one of the Kingdom Halls in are town.

  Since the garage was located next the the parking lot of that Hall, it was notably creepy to walk past that garage when attending that Hall.

  The other thing that shocked and started to question what was going on was when after a Sunday meeting a highly respected elder who just

  returned from Bethel, was talking to me after the meeting and startling said that he thought what was being said by the WTS.

  was because its a publishing house and not to take the information out of the organization too seriously ....WHAT ?

  I was totally taken back by that one statement for days afterward as well, particularly since it was him saying it.

  I completely left the organization in 1980 and have never returned, except for the odd weddings and funerals.
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  BluesBrother

  I was a newly appointed elder . Some of the more senior elders were very public in their enthusiasm for the date but I witheld judgement, not wanting to go beyond the writings "It onlys says 'could be' , I said...Deep down though, I believed it would come then or abouts. I did take on board a comment from another elder who said that "Jehovah would not allow his Organization to be so very wrong on a matter of this importance" . That seemed O K to me back then.

  My wife was skeptical about the whole thing...annoyingly right again ! . But I remember having a dentist appointment late in '74 and I came home and said "Well, that is the last dental filling that I will ever have" meaning that the New World was going to be here before my next check up.. I was only half joking. I did believe that it was here, although I never encouraged anyone to quit their job or anything.

  Afterward, when '75 became '76 and then '77 ? How did we feel? A little puzzled to say the least. But "It is nearer today than it was yesterday" we said. It became a point of honour, to show that we were not fair weather Christians and could take disappointments and keep going.

  Many years passed before I "saw the light"
• 

  Ding

  Yes, the WTS aggressively pushed 1975, all but saying that the end would surely come in that year.

  In 1972-1973, I was studying with JWs and they were pushing 1975 and warning me to get into the ark ("God's organization") before the flood of Armageddon came.

  At 1974 assemblies, you were told you should be excited about 1975 will bring and talk about it.

  In early 1975, the excitement was at fever pitch

  In late 1975, JWs looked puzzled but said nothing.

  In 1976, they talked about the Adam-Eve creation gap.

  By 1978, they stopped talking about 1975.

  In the early 1980s, if you asked questions about 1975, you were weak in faith.

  Today, if you ask questions about 1975, you are an apostate.

  And who caused this entire fiasco?

  Fred Franz.
• 

  Invetigator74

  For some reason, we the rank & file ,ran ahead of the WTB&TS and assumed 1975 to be the year of the BIG A Coming home from High School every day in that month of October, I remember we had some mild days with much sun and thinking "could today be the day?" As im stuck in stated "I remember people selling houses and pioneering and then in 1977 or so many of them left the org thru the back door." Well for me in 1977 I went out the front door choosing to be DA'ed.
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  james_woods

  I was an elder at the time. What I saw behind the scenes was that the whole "end in October 1975" started getting backed away from and talked down at least by spring and summer of 1975.

  Remember, even Freddy came up with the excuse that we did not know how long Adam was in the garden before Eve was created...whatever difference that made, I thought at the time.

  I personally had NO expectation that anything was going to happen - other than that a lot of witnesses were set up for a big dissappointment.
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  thetrueone

  1975 was devised wholly to stir up circulation of the WTS books and literature and you could say it worked in this regard.

  But it was devised with an intension based on deception for it was impossible to accurately calculate a date ( October 1975 )

  right back to Adam's existence through bible chronology or historical archaeological dating.

  Something even to this day isn't fully acknowledged or realized by ex-JWS or still in JWS in the organization.

  It was nothing but a marketing scam for the naive and accepting followers to be exploited upon and to attract the attention

  of the general public whom the literature was being commercialized to.

  Is there intensional corruption in religious organizations trying to pull money out of people toward themselves,

  you better believe it ! Religion is seen as a vehicle to draw money out of people, particularly notable in the United States who

  legally supports this activity through the government's own Constitution.