think they'll encourage JWs to have kids?

by outsmartthesystem 6 Replies latest jw friends

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  outsmartthesystem

  The rhetoric today is as strict as ever. Don't go to college and don't have kids. Pioneer as this system winds to an end.

  But surely the head honchos by now have realized that they have an unsustainable economic model. That model being that most of their converts are coming from 3rd world countries......and the work in those countries is being largely supported by donations coming from wealthier countries....where the growth is stagnant at best. Surely they realize that the internet is their worst enemy. Surely they realize that those that may be "interested" are actually doing their homework and researching this cult (something that couldn't be easily done 20 years ago)....and that this IS a growing trend.

  Do you think it is a possibility that they could realize that the only real hope to maintain numbers is to grow from within? 20 years from now it will be easier to brainwash a born in child than to try to get those they meet in the ministry to voluntarily NOT do research on the organization. After all, the Mormons have done a pretty good job of growing that way.

  Do you think we may in the future see them tout "be fruitful....become many and fill the earth!" as new light? That Jehovah wants his organization to grow from within just like the Israelite camp?
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  LostGeneration

  They might, but it may come too late, like in another 20-30 years. I don't think GB 2.0 has the balls, or even an original thought in their head to change doctrine in an extreme manner like that. They are convinced of 1914 still (see latest public WT where they bang that drum yet again) and are gonna wait it out til their death as their overlapping bullshit is now on the books.

  Mormons were smart by encouraging it all along, have massive communities in the American West with a guaranteed 10% tithe.
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  wha happened?

  I think sooner. It's an easy way for them to have the younger generation support the older generations. They don't do something, they will burn out and shrink drastically
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  DesirousOfChange

  I think they really believe deep down that the Big A is gonna come immenently and bail them out of the fiasco they are in.

  Yes, I think they really believe it.

  Doc
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  steve2

  There actually was a baby-boom among JWs after 1975 - at least in some Western countries like New Zealand and Australia. The pressure leading up to 1975 saw unprecedented numbers pioneer and even put off marriage. Afterwards, it was like eveyone went crazy. The "up" side to the end not coming is you can start to bring some decent quality into your life, including thinking about who you want to spend it with. Despite the rampant warnings about 'the end's (still)just around the corner' few were actively listening. I recall in one local congregation the birth rate was phenomenal; there were pregnant sisters - all married of course - everwhere and noisy, noisy kids. I've always been interested in "numbers" and remember siting in the kingdom hall one Sunday morning in the late 1970s estimating that if each person in the jam-packed hall stayed in the organization and those eligible for marriage, actually married and had kids at the then rabbit-like birth-rate, even without converting outsiders, the "natural" increase would be huge.

  That never happened, because the organization was busily bleeding active members after the 1975 fiasco and began to bleed even the born-ins - and, for the first time in decades, the number being converted from field service plummeted.

  So, even if the Watchtower encouraged eligible ones to 'be fruitful and multiply', and the kingdom halls once again rang with the noisy, smelly aura of babies and kids, they'd still disappear around adolescence, leaving the older, grumpier, duller ones behind to lament the state of the world and emptily bang the 'nearness-of-the-end' drum.

  No, the Watchtower's heyday is well and truly over, but unlike the Titanic, there may be relatively more time for rearranging the deck chairs on this unweidly but slowly-sinking religious vessel.
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  Disillusioned Lost-Lamb

  Encourage away, with all the quick cheap easy private access to any and all information, wash-towel doctrine has a snowballs chance in hell with these kids.
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  pbrow

  Hey lamb

  I agree. My kids still go to meetings with their mother but I can see them thinking their way through some of the doctrines that dont make sense. Cognitive dissonance works when they are surrounded by the bubble. When kids are encouraged by ANYONE to finish their thought process to completion it goes a long way towards making them immune to the jw model. Pop the bubble!

  pbrow