Hello everyone. I just thought I'd share something if you don't mind.
My conviction in the legitimacy of the Society was slowy eroded over a number of years simply by reading the publications and becoming increasingly frustrated at how little the interpretations of prophecy and scripture made sense, added to the complete ineptitude of senior figures in the organisation.
For me, the "glue" that kept everything roughly held together into something that can be called a "faith" was the concept of "increasing light", which as you all know is the principle employed by the society to excuse any mistakes or backtracks that are made. They routinely flog Proverbs 4:18, which as we all know has nothing to do with gradual refinements in understanding when read in context. Regardless of this, the concept managed to keep me loyal to the organisation for quite some time, as I was too fearful to bring it under direct scrutiny. When I finally did, and realised that each of the 3 scriptures routinely used to expain "increasing light" were irrelevant to the principle as it had been propounded, everything fell apart, and the blinkers fell off. This was just another religion, and not God's spirit-directed organisation.
The way I explain this to people is "the makeweight scenario". So far this explanation of the "increasing light" doctrine has baffled two elders, neither of whom have come up with an effective repost. I'm wondering whether sharing it with friends/loved ones who are "teetering" might be helpful for them as it was with me, although I realise that everyone is different, and there is no "one size fits all" argument.
Anyway, here's the makeweight scenario in the form of a question as it might be posed to a believer of "increasing light":
Can you show me one scripture that supports the idea that the Holy Spirit would deliberately feed God's servants untrue information or a flawed understanding of scripture as a "makeweight" until actual truth would be revealed at a later date? Is there a biblical principle that justifies Jehovah dealing with his servants in such a way?
There it is, let me know what you think of it as a reasoning tool.