Proof of the 75' incident

by iamwhoiam 39 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  wasblind

  It's so sad, While the witnesses were preppin' for the end and bein' lied to

  the world was dancin' to the Bee Gees " Jive Talkin' " havin' a ball

  Maybe that was a subliminal message ringin' from the dance halls
• 

  ScenicViewer

  @rebel8,

  "...the petting zoo is coming before xmas comes next, so I wouldn't miss anything."

  Now that seems funny, but sad at the same time. What a terrible thing to say to kids. The manupulative control of this religion is horrifying.
• 

  OnTheWayOut

  This was enough evidence for me of WTS leading the flock to believe one thing without directly saying it:

  *** Awake! 1969 May 22 p.15 ***
  If you are a young person, you also need to face the fact that you will never grow old in this present system of things. Why not? Because all the evidence in fulfillment of Bible prophecy indicates that this corrupt system is due to end in a few years. Of the generation that observed the beginning of the 'last days' in 1914, Jesus foretold:'This generation will by no means pass away until all these things occur.' Therefore, as a young person, you will never fulfill any career that this system offers.
• 

  shepherd

  I am a witness - to the 1975 fiasco.

  My parents were baptized in 1969 and I saw and heard it all with my own eyes and ears. Whatever they now say, the JW org DID promote 1975 as the end. They may not have done it with an outright statement, instead they used phrases like 'in the remaining months ahead', not years, and things like that. I was in attendance at the convention in London where the speaker even said it was okay to max out on credit because you will never have to pay it back. Okay, so the GB may say this was not in the script, but it was said in front of many thousands and there was no retraction or correction whatsoever from the platform (in fact, in all my years as a JW I never once heard a correction or retraction and even when someone said something insane during a PT we still all clapped at the end).

  So when a modern JW says it never happened that way - I was there.
• 

  steve2

  If the latter question is true, can you provide links to talks or articles that point to this?

  You been hibernating, man? Have you not seen the many threads on this website discussing "that point"? Could you provide links or articles that point to your needing to ask? Just kidding; yet I still find this a very strange question from someone who's been on this website for as long as you have. However, I'll still dignify your question with a decent reply:

  In the early 1970s, The Kingdom Ministry, the monthly meeting outline for the kingdom hall service meetings, provided a month-by-month literal countdown to 1975. Each month, the total of remaining months got smaller and smaller and smaller. Get the picture? Sure, the countdown did not overtly state "Countdown to the Year 1975 When Armageddon Will Start". But it didn't have to be so explicit because the organization was gearing us all up to do our utmost to warn non-active JWs that 6,000 years of human existence was to end in the mid-1970s. The hours and hours and hours of talks in the kingdom hall speculating about this were not mere passtimes; they were heavily thudded reminders about how very close we were to the end.

  We were purposely stuffed full of a diet rich with 1975 fat and flab . How could we not put on weight and strain our crimpolene suits? How could we not waddle door-to-door with our fatty foods to entice householders to gorge themselves with the mouth-watering goodies in our over-stuffed Watchtowers and Awakes!?

  As 1975 approached, some elders with full knowledge of COs were bold enough to intone from the platform there were literally only months left. "Yes, brothers and sisters: only months left!". Frightened by the Bibilical certainty of their speech, I ate more and more from their gluttonous table. As much as I struggled to put on my thred-bare crimpolene trousers each day, I knew this was the time neither for midriff comfort nor to buy a larger suit - because there would not be time before the end arrived to wear my new threads. I was that fat-eyed on the 1975 smorgasbord.

  A newly interested woman who rush-studied to become a JW was baptized at a District Convention when she was overdue in giving birth. Why would she imperil both her own and her baby's health, if not life? Because the witnesses who studied with her told her there would be no more District Connvetions after 1975 because Armageddon would have already broken out. She named her son "Justin", because she genuinely believed she had been baptized "just in" time.

  That baptism-before-birth is a true story. So is the fact that this balloon of a woman joined the tens of thousands who left in the immediate post-75 years - and they left with good reason: Their interest had been fear-fanned by eager witnesses who declared you had to get baptized and be actively preaching door-to-door in order to be saved.

  The worst aspect of this intensely shameful era of the Watchtower's history is this: The rank and file were required to comply with this disgusting perpetuation for end-times gluttons.

  It is one thing to be wrong - we're human and we know we are all prone to errors of judgement. But to impel others to parrot and promote our error-ridden speculation is a gross violation of human decency. Of course, the Watchtower did more than just "committing" this violation. It tried to worm its way out of accountability by blaming nameless ones within the organization.

  You want "proof" of the 1975 "incident"?

  You'll find living proof in the eyes of those who were fooled into compliance. The eyes of those who have left will be dulled with a cynicism born of having been frightened into foolish compliance while the eyes of those who stayed will be dulled with the robotism that protects their beholders from personal responsibility. Oh, and since leaving I've shed mountains of stir-cracy Biblical prophecies and - most admirable of all -while I could fit a teen-age sized crimpolene suit, I've moved on to clothing of more authentic and durable thred. No end times are imminent with that kind of quality thred.
• 

  Quendi

  I couldn't have put it any better, steve2. And while I did have a teacher who personally downplayed 1975, that wasn't the case with most. My teacher only said that if 1975 saw "the End", well and good, but he wanted me to remember that a dedication to God was to last for the rest of mylife, however long or short that proved to be. Remembering his words kept me in the organization long after 1975 faded to black because I wanted to stay true to my personal dedication to Jehovah. It took me years to realize that the organization had taken Jehovah's place and so any dedication was to the WTS and its goals and not to God. That was a major factor is helping me decide to get out decades later. By the way, steve2, you have a PM from me.

  Quendi
• 

  iamwhoiam

  Thanks for all the input everyone. Very well put together.

  Steve, I have been around awhile and have always been aware of the 75' issue. There are alot of new ones to the forum which makes for new thoughts and personal experiences on the matter, so why not post it? There maybe a take on it we haven't heard before.

  Personally, every time I asked the elders in my hall or people that lived during that time about it...they always say, "they don't remember much about it", "they've slept since then", "there were a few that went ahead of themselves", and my personal favorite "it doesn't matter, that was all in the past....we need to worry about keeping in step with Jehovah's Organization now." That last statement meant to make others feel guilty about inquiring about it.

  Also, I love asking people that were never around during that time or came into "the truth" after. They regurgitate the same robotic answers and like to tell you the story like they were there. They are under the dilusion that the society never mentioned the year 1975 and that people went off on there own to come up with that date for the end of the world. I find it funny how new ones in the org don't have access to the old books outside of the wt cd (post 1970 publications). Sure, the congregation library has older books for now, but if you start reading them while at the meetings, you will be questioned. They are only good for collecting dust (therefore creating more during the cleaning of the KH). This is why the internet is so awesome...the past doesn't die, it takes new life on the information super highway...it keeps them from forgetting, or worse, rewriting history.
• 

  steve2

  Thanks Quendi. I look forward to reading your pm when I am at home. I am away from home at present and cannot access pms on this site - I keep getting an error message. I've heard others have that problem too. I'll be in touch.
• 

  Quendi

  I appreciate with what iamwhoiam says about how Witness veterans can and should share our memories of what it was like in the organization forty years or so ago. It was a radically different environment then. If any who had passed away since that time were resurrected into today's WTS "spiritual paradise", I doubt they would even believe the people they would come in contact with were really Jehovah's Witnesses. There has been a sea change in the organization from top to bottom since those heady days of Armageddon-anticipation.

  I find it interesting what is happening with respect to the older publications as iamwhoiam has pointed out. Most of them have been quietly removed from Kingdom Hall libraries and either given to those Witnesses who have wanted them or, as is the more frequent case, destroyed. This is the paper trail the WTS does not want present-day Witnesses to ever see. But that has always been the modus operandi of the organization. I can't recall ever putting my hands on a physical copy of anything C.T. Russell wrote or J.F. Rutherford either, for that matter. And while the WTS used to mention such publications as Studies in the Scriptures, The Finished Mystery, Light, Vindication, Enemies, Children, Babylon the Great Has Fallen! and others with pride, now their titles and existence have been drowned in silence and secrecy.

  But there is no mystery as to the reason for all this revising, rewriting and denying of history. If anyone read those old books and writings, he would immediately draw the conclusion that this organization has proved false to its claim of sole divine direction and support. The history of failed predictions and prophecies, the simple-minded and parochial worldviews expounded, and the chauvinism, sexism and racism advocated, would quickly destroy all those claims. And as others have pointed out, the WTS has even altered some of the documents on its Watchtower Library CD. The texts there sometimes are at variance with the original hard copies that can be read in the old bound volume series. The alterations have been subtle, but they have had the effect of changing the flavor, thrust and meaning of the original thought or teaching that was put forward.

  If this organization had divine sanction, it would be as transparent as glass. It would have nothing to hide and would welcome inquiries from all quarters. It would encourage active, restless and energetic study and investigation of not only its teachings, but of the Bible itself. It would foster autonomy, creativity, independent thinking and free will among its followers. But the passing of time has seen it do the exact opposite. And now that we have the tyrannical and retrograde "leadership" of the present Governing Body, we will witness continued atrophy and decay leading, I sincerely hope, to the organization's collapse. That day can't come soon enough.

  Quendi
• 

  rebel8

  They stated Armageddon was going to come in many different specific years dating back to the 1800s.

  And a few times they pronounced it had come. 1975 is only the most recent one, not the worst.